Dave Moulton writes:

Pro-cycling change is happening all over the US, and I believe it is partly because of this change that the non cycling public is kicking against it; people don’t like change.

This is probably true but I think it's more than just fear of change driving anti-bike hatred. I think there's an element of cognitive dissonance or outright denial. No one thinks oil is getting cheaper; consider then that our prosperity is built entirely upon it. It's scary to confront the likelihood that our Happy Days are limited. We are entering a future where everything but physical labor will get more expensive; any contraption that makes physical labor more productive (e.g. bikes), will serve us well in that future.

Big issues like energy aside, there's a personal aspect of cognitive dissonance: living a bikey lifestyle is cheaper, easier, happier and healthier. My commute is a bike ride through the woods. It costs nothing and makes me skinnier. I have a stronger heart than men half my age, despite a steady diet of donuts and beer.

I've run the numbers on this many times. By maintaining only one car my family saves about $6000/year. I burn 2500-3000 extra calories a week. And it's fun.

From my perspective, the only reason everyone doesn't live like this is because they are cognitively blocked from imagining the possibility. I'm not athletic or tough or outdoorsy. I just ride my bike to work. I've been told to my face that my lifestyle is impossible. Impossible! How then do I live it?

If I saw someone just like me living a better life for less money ... how would that make me feel?

Update, 1:15 pm PDT

Obviously not everyone can ride their bike everywhere all the time; some people have physical conditions that prevent them from doing so.

I also don’t mean to imply that non-bikey people are lazy; for the record I think all people are lazy, just in different ways. (For example: one of the reasons I ride bikes everywhere is because they are much easier to maintain than cars. I’m really lazy about getting our car serviced.)

I honestly believe that more people would ride their bikes more often, but fail to imagine their own lives ordered in such a way that it’s easy, convenient, or pleasant.

Iris Elizabeth Souders, born July 11, 2010. 7lbs, 6oz. 20" long. Ten fingers, ten toes, a full head of hair.

Jenny & Iris are sleeping, Orion is out with Grandma Ellen, I finally got five hours sleep. Some random thoughts in this short pause.

This labor was completely. Different. Than last time. Saturday I said to Jenny, "that baby's coming tonight." But we went about a mostly-usual Saturday, except I insisted on running errands and watching Orion all day. (Sidebar: we went bike riding and he actually rode his bike. Like both feet off the ground. This no-pedals thing works.) I gave O his bath and put him to bed as usual, which in our case means we fall asleep together in his bed and then about an hour later I creep downstairs. But Jenny woke me early in his bed: "I'm having contractions." There was nothing tenative about it, they were hitting hard and close together.

With Orion, the first inkling was her water breaking, followed by 15 hours of sloooowly building labor, ending with a teriffying rush into surgery.

With Iris, there was barely time to think; so somehow more focused and lucid. Jenny couldn't sit in the car, her pain was too great. She kind of crouched over the infant seat in back while I drove exactly the speed limit to OHSU. Her first words at the ER were: "get me an epidural."

Of course, they can't just shoot opiates into the spinal fluid of any random person who walks into the ER. It took maybe 90 minutes to get the epidural, by which point she was probably fully dilated and within an hour she started pushing.

As luck would have it, Jenny's usual Ob-Gyn was on call that night. So we had one doctor (OUR doctor, importantly) and one nurse for the entire experience. It was significantly less terrifying. Orion's arrival spanned two shift changes; that experience was attended by a parade of strangers.

But as with her brother, baby Iris presented backward and Jenny (despite pushing with an intensity that impressed even the seasoned L & D nurse) couldn't get her past the final curve. And, as with Orion, Iris' heartrate spiked and she started to show signs of distress. Jenny, very lucidly, put forward that Iris was the most important factor in this experience, and she was "open to whatever would be best for her."

The C-section was magnitudes less terrifying than with Orion. Orion's c-section was ordered by a doctor who had just come on rounds, and had dreadful bedside manner. The staff had no idea what to do with me that time and I spent half an hour sitting on a folding chair in scrubs, shaking and near tears. This time, waiting for Jenny's prep, I got kind of bored.

Cesarian deliveries have a kind of mysterious poetry. There's a long sequence of surgery where mom's health is paramount. Staff talk in hushed, professional tones, just like during surgeries on TV. All this happens behind a kind of screen. On the other side is Mom and Dad and the anaethesiologist. In both experiences, our best friend was the anaethesiologist. S/he stands right next to mom's head during the delivery and can narrate what's happening if Dad's too squeamish to watch. I tried.

Then with a sudden rush of activity the baby emerges. She is perfectly shaped, shiny purple and screaming, covered with cheese and ectoplasm. A being from another world. The pediatricians and nurses put her on a warming table and start doing Apgars or whatever.

Because the mother is immobile, fathers are extra-important during a c-section. We have to be comforting. We help wash off the cheese and ectoplasm. We get to hold the baby first, and give her to mom. We go from being well-intentioned supercargo to vital team members.

36 hours with Iris and I realize kids are all different. They come out different. Based on a sample size of 1 I used to say things "babies are like this" or "newborns are like that." It's really clear that "Orion was like this" and "Orion was like that." Iris is different.

Where Orion struggled to eat, Iris won't stop. Orion barely reacted to the world, Iris shows a keen interest in anything near her face. Where Orion cried, unprovoked and inconsolable, Iris only cries when something bugs her and shuts up when it stops. Where Orion slept fitfully for 20 or 30 minute periods, we have have to wake up Iris to eat. Where Orion liked tight swaddling and lying on his back, Iris likes her hands near her face, and sleeping on Jenny's chest. Where Orion could barely lift his arms, Iris can move her head (!) and kick off her socks. (She is, in fact, very strong).

The corollary here is kind of keen too. As a newborn, Orion was fussy and collicky, fragile and indifferent to people. But as a toddler he's adventurous and empathetic, rugged and outgoing. Kids come out different but they don't end up the way they come out I guess. He was a "difficult newborn" but he's an "easy toddler." Iris might be the other way around, or a totally different configuration, who knows? One day isn't very long to know a person.

So I did something really extreme. I took all the cyclometers off my bikes. Lemme ’splain.

I’ve been going a little nuts lately. Like “sudden flashes of violent emotion” nuts. Waiting for our little girl to hurry up and get born is making me crazy. Not just the waiting but a kind of mounting pressure that I will shortly be the sole breadwinner for a family of four.

But I can’t entirely blame that, although I certainly feel a little buried by my life lately.

I have dozens of “projects” hanging around: bike “training” of dubious necessity; bicycle improvement projects; web stuff I want to build & learn; work projects that have no ROI but enormous future-proofing potential; home improvement stuff; landscaping stuff. Projects. But I’m not 24 any more, hell I’m not 34 any more. My energy for “projects” is nil.

But it isn’t entirely a lack-of-energy thing either, although I sleep never and have free time less. (By way of illustration: I have more time to take showers at work than at home.)

The thing of it is, I have goals and hopes and aspirations. Lots of them: big (“new backyard”), small (“paint backdoor“), vague (“learn more Django”), specific (“ride bike 100mi/wk.”). When I have a hope or a goal: I’m stretching to attain. There’s a gap between the state I’m in and the state I wish I were in. It’s this gap that’s really driving me nuts; it has always driven me nuts. Difference is, when I was 24 (or 34!) I could turn that nuts energy into action, and get stuff done. When I was 24 it drove me to learn and build web things. When I was 34 it drove me (us, rather) to move to China and learn Chinese.

That I never actually finished these projects is immaterial. It felt good to have them going, to make progress, to aspire to something. But these days the weight of obligation — a wife and dog and kids and mortgage to feed — pretty much nullifies the energy overage I could always tap for projects.

The Buddha’s second noble truth is that suffering arises from craving. We suffer in proportion to the amount we desire. I always knew but never understood this; because I desired so little, and because I had surplus ego. Before 2008 or so, my life was pretty much entirely about me. But now I am (and, by extension, my projects are) the least important thing in my life. Ego is now in seriously short supply.

And, to add to the suffering, one of my longtime desires is for a simpler life. But living an uncomplicated life without furniture or a credit score is just capital NOT going to happen (see: wife, kids, dog, mortgage). Think how perverse this is: what I want is nothing and what I have is abundance. Thus I suffer.

Which brings me back to the cyclometers.

Last week I checked out a cyclist’s training manual. I’ve been shopping for GPS/heart-rate monitors. It worried me that some of my mileage is “off the books” — because does a mile count if a cyclometer doesn’t register it? And then there’s the 70 or so bicycle-related blogs and Twitter accounts I read every day. My bike love was finding expression in numbers. This weekend I had a beautiful ride over Parrett Mountain and the Chehelem hills; but I was stressed that it was “short miles” (only 43!) and I was too slow (only 15.9mph!). I had let the desire for attainment overwhelm the joy of riding. If I’m ever going to let go of all that desire, the bikes are a good place to start. Because it should be possible to experience joy (“whee, I’m on a bike!”) without desire (“...but I’m only going 15.9mph!”). Quit counting. Be here now. Obsess less, ride more.

ONE

This morning when I got the trailer loaded up in POURING FRICKING RAIN I thought “today is a ‘tough’ day, not a ‘fun’ day.” Before we even left the driveway I was defeating myself. I started up the street with this totally beat-down attitude, I had to stand on my pedals for the first hill and then Orion shouted “GO DADDY GO!” Suddenly I felt like Superman. Fun and Tough go together, the tougher I am the more fun it is. This was one of the wettest commutes I’ve had all winter and I got to work loving it. But if I hadn’t adjusted my mental state (OK, if Orion hadn’t adjusted it for me), it might have been pure misery. Same bike, same guy, same rain, different mental models.

TWO

Back when I started riding kinda sorta seriously — about eight years ago, and parenthetically my life was a total wreck — I was living in NW PDX. One day I saw Council Crest park on a map and decided to ride my bike there, knowing it was going to be all uphill. Man, was I overmatched. I made it to about Ainsworth school (about halfway up) and had to stop. My clothes were just soaked with sweat, I couldn’t breathe, it was really pathetic. I saw someone else riding up Vista and decided I was gonna lick that hill and I wasn’t gonna push my bike. If I got tired, I was going to stop and take a break until I was cool enough to get on the bike again. So with one more stop (around Patton) and another (maybe somewhere on Greenway?) I made it all the way up. The next time I rode up that hill I stopped only once, maybe around Fairmount? The third time I rode up that hill I didn’t stop until I reached the top. In about 3 weeks I went from zero to hero. Maybe not even a month later I rode my bike solo down the OR coast. You don’t have to be tough to conquer hills, you conquer hills and become tough. And it happens much quicker than you might expect.

THREE

Greg LeMond famously said “it never gets easier, you just go faster.” There’s a metaphor for life right there. From my perspective, it’s easier to add 60 minutes to my commute than to find 60 minutes for yoga. In the summer my 7 mile commute will balloon to 20+ miles. I already have to go work, right? By the same token, I’m not spending money on yoga anymore, and having only one car saves us $6000/yr. So: hills, time, money ... obstacles like that are veils. Once you see through them, they become crucibles. Crucibles wherein you purify your perceptions: of your body, money, time, values, life.

About five years ago, I got a gig out by Tannesborne (about 15mi from where we were living at the time), it didn’t even occur to me not to ride my bike there. One day I drove for some reason, and I couldn’t believe how far it was. 30 minutes in a car felt way longer than an hour on a bike. Somehow riding a bike dilates time for me, I feel like the more I ride the more of it I have.

Orion’s been home sick a few times lately. Because my work schedule is more flexible I’m the one who gets to stay home with him. It’s easy for me to get a little tired of this, especially as Jenny has parent conferences right now so I’m doing extra-long childcare shifts (15 hrs.) with a (slightly) sick kid, and no car.

I lack Jenny’s talent for getting Orion to fall back asleep at naptime so I generally wind up holding him and rocking in the chair while he falls asleep ... and then sitting motionless for [X] minutes while he finishes his nap. Well when this happened about an hour into O’s nap yesterday, [X] turned out to be about 180. That’s a long time to sit pretty much unmoving, upright, with 25 pounds of kid sleeping on your lap. It could get a little boring.

But when this happened yesterday I had the good fortune to receive, at that exact moment, a memory transmitted backward in time from myself in ten or twenty years. Holding my napping toddler son while my legs fall asleep seems painfully boring at the moment it’s happening, but apparently it’ll become one of my favorite memories. And someday I’ll wish more than I can imagine right now to relive that feeling for even a few minutes.