Listen to this poem using the player above.

I wrote a lot of poetry during my recent trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee. One of the poems was inspired by meeting bicycle adventurer Joe “Metal Cowboy” Kurmaskie, and reading his first book, Metal Cowboy: Ten Years Further Down the Road Less Pedaled.

With Joe Kurmaskie in Chattanooga, TN. Photo by Lois Chaplin.

Idaho
for Joe Kurmaskie

on this rainy Idaho morning
I give you a name
I tap your destiny
with my white cane

have you reckoned
a thousand miles much?
have you packed a bag
and left all else behind?

with the legs as the only engine
you can hear what is there to hear
the whispering of spirits on the roadside
singing the world into being

Listen to this poem using the player above.

this two-wheeled life

all I could think about
as I sucked in diesel fumes
on 80 East was how much
I’d rather be riding my bike

how it was time to sever
the steel shackles
of my automotive life
to take to two wheels

as my creed, my gospel
my response to every
yelled curse and flung
container of french fries

I would yell “you first!”
when told to get off the road
would carry a lance
to joust with those

who referred to me by its name
and like Quixote before me
I would tilt – not at windmills,
but at the ceaseless turning

of the four-wheeled apocalypse
because there are more kinds of freedom
than choosing the radio station
and more kinds of individuality

than spinning rims and fuzzy dice
I would recapture
that nearly forgotten thrill
of being my own master

not a slave to the poisoners
of the Gulf, the savage
inequality of fossil fuels
they are better returned

to their undersea beds
to lie and sleep
to be forgotten as we zoom
and glide through this two-wheeled life

Those of us in the bicycling community who have way to much free time are known to write “baiku” (bicycle haiku) from time to time. My latest is over at RocBike.com. There are more on that site by various members of Team RocBike. Just type “baiku” in the search box.

Enjoy!

I started commuting by bicycle again today. The Packet Boat (Xtracycle), to be exact. Or maybe not so much commuting as traveling. I don’t really have an office, so my job is more about going to different hotels and other sites where the members of our union work. You can read about my return to pedaling here or here.

To combat this difficulty, I usually ride my bike. This year, I went to get my bike from its place on the front porch to get it ready for riding, given that I hadn’t ridden it in months.

It wasn’t there. So I went to the back yard to look for it. I knew Jen had moved things off the porch to clean it. My bike wasn’t there, either.

I must have put it in the basement, I thought. Down into the dank basement I trudged, but no bike.

“Honey, where’s my bike?” I asked, starting to get a little panicked. Within minutes, the truth was evident. My bike was gone. Stolen from our backyard.

We didn’t have the money to replace the bike, so I called my folks and asked if they’d front the money. They agreed, and within a few days I was taking home a new Giant Sedona DX from Towners Bike Shop in Rochester. I rode it every day during the Jazz Fest, relishing the ease with which I navigated in and out of congested streets. I could always find a “parking space” and never needed to spend money on gas.

Then a funny thing happened. At the end of the week, I decided to keep riding. It was working out so well that it seemed foolish to get back in my SUV for my 1.5-mile commute to work. So I kept pedaling. It was a blast. I got from place to place quickly enough to suit me, and slowly enough to see the world. Combined with my new membership at the Y and my new exercise routine, I was getting thinner, stronger, healthier — and happier. Could two wheels make this much of a difference? Apparently so.

Pretty soon, I discovered a bike culture on the Web. With me, there are only two mental gears — apathy and obsession. Cycling quickly turned on the latter brain setting, and I was reading about bikes constantly. Then the Tour de France started, so I read about bicycle racing. Then I found out about Critical Mass, and rode my first CM. Within a few weeks, I was becoming a cyclist.

As with most of my obsessions, a blog soon followed. RocBike.com started as a way to catalog my experiences as a cycling newbie, but it quickly outgrew those limited expectations. I met Adam Durand at Critical Mass, and he quickly jumped on board as a contributor. So did Jack Bradigan Spula, a cyclist, activist and journalist whom I’d known for years. Julie White followed shortly thereafter, and Team RocBike was born.

As it turns out, Rochester has a good bicycle culture for a city that’s cold about 8 months of each year. People started visiting RocBike.com and telling their stories. When I biked around town in my goofy, black-and-white Walz cycling beanie, folks recognized me from the pictures on the site. It was fun, and I felt like part of something larger. Something that could change our city for the better.

Within a couple months, I owned three bikes. My Giant, plus two French-made Motobecane road bikes from the late 70s and early 80s. I started primarily riding the Motobecane Nomade as my commuter because of its light weight and maneuverability — at least compared to the Giant. It was the first time in my life that I’d ridden a bike with drop bars, but I quickly came to like the traditional racing posture, especially after seeing the movie Breaking Away, which has probably sucked a lot of people into bicycling.

Then I discovered the Xtracycle, an attachment that converts just about any bike into an SUB — a Sport Utility Bike. Thanks to my freelance writing for the Island Packet on Hilton Head Island, I was able to buy an Xtracycle. I converted my Giant in October and dubbed it “The Packet Boat” in honor of its funding source.

The Xtracycle has become my primary bike. In fact, both road bikes are in the basement at the moment. I commute with the Packet Boat, shop with it, take my older son to school with it. It’s an amazing piece of technology.

So here I am, five months after I started riding a bike again, and I’m knee-deep in the whole world of cycling. I’m healthier, fitter, happier and more in tune with the world around me. I know my city’s streets better than I did before. I’ve made new friends. I’m re-engaged in the environmental movement in a way I haven’t been for years. All because of a bicycle.

If that isn’t good technology, I don’t know what is.