He really did mean parsecs
Mar.24, 2007, filed under Miscellany
Yesterday I rode home from Perth (Gmaps reckon 28 miles – having driven it I can assure you it’s 30 – 32, which means I’ll have to check Fingal’s rollout because he’s reading short too).
This isn’t really very far. I’m used to distances of 50 – 125 miles. Or I was. A series of illnesses and injuries have kept my bike mileage down to pretty much hardly anything for about 6 months now. Plus I’ve been finding that getting evening and weekend rides in now that I’m living in the frozen north is a million times harder. The weekends have been plagued by gales and freezing rain or snow; the nights have had the same, only they’ve been dark as well. It’s amazing how much difference a decent commute can make.
I really miss riding to work. I miss the riding for the sake of doing something: not just pelting round in a loop for “training” or to “keep fit and get the miles in”. Riding for utility purposes. That’s what got me into cycling in the first place and it’s still my first love. The bicycle as a workhorse: performing a function that is useful and contributes to your daily musts while at the same time providing all these other benefits.
Traffic jamming, quite possibly my favourite sport, is only a real pleasure when it’s for utility. If the ride is being done for the sake of the ride alone, one might as well avoid the serious traffic because it will only hinder progress and lead to inadequate time in the appropriate heart rate training zones. Traffic jamming is a by-product of finding the most efficient route from A to B and sticking to it. It’s like playing Rez or Wipeout for real. Locked in to a single route, girl and bike sweep effortlessly around the hazards: the inert obstacles, the herbivores, the carnivores and the occasional domesticated beast. I don’t have the option of shooting down the hazards (we can dream). The principle is there, though. They’re out to get you, whether by intent or ignorance, and it’s only by your own prescience, skill, lightning-quick reactions and agility that you’ll make it through with the Hi-Score. It’s skating the thin edge between maximum speed and recklessness.
That just doesn’t happen on training rides or those leisurely Sunday pootles round the coast stopping occasionally for a coffee and a flapjack. There’s nothing that puts a grin on my face quite like running down a congested mass of fuming cars and fuming drivers, baking in their own juices on a hot summer’s day. Traffic-jamming is doing the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs — in the Really Real World where the hatstands live.
There wasn’t any traffic jamming on yesterday’s ride. The levels of traffic in Perth were minimal and by the time I got back to Kirkcaldy the rush hour was over. At the same time, however, I took the most direct route: the same route I would take in the car. And that’s the key thing for me to consider a ride utility cycling. It’s about riding to get from A to B and not being diverted round a 6 mile loop just to avoid a particular junction or make the distance up to a nice round number.
I need to ride to work more. I miss it.
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Singularity
~something that is singular as (a) a separate unit, or (b) unusual or distinctive manner or behavior; PECULIARITY;
~the quality or state of being singular;
~a point at which the derivative of a given function of a complex variable does not exist but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists;
~a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole. Sight
