How I Rode Eight Miles On A Flat Tire.

I admit I am not the kind of guy who spends a lot of time with details. I do not get the oil changed in my car every 3,000 miles like the manual says I should. I do not change the filter on my home air conditioning every 90 days like I am supposed to. I just turn things on and expect them to run. I accept they may not be new anymore and live with poor performance. It makes life interesting.

When my bicycle tire is a little low I figure that is life and it will mean a little extra huffing and puffing on the cranks that is all.

The other morning it was just that. Not only was the tire low but the valve stem was at a slight angle suggesting the inner tube was slipping with the roll of the wheel. I could have taken two minutes and forced the tire forward on the rim to straighten the valve and pump the tire up, or I could just get on with it- which is what I did.

So I started to work on a low tire. BIG MISTAKE! I did not get half way before I knew I was in trouble. The front fork was wobbling back and forth. Looking I saw that the tube had gone flat and the rim was rolling on the rubber tire, which was folding one way and then the other throwing the steering back and forth. The valve stem had completely disappeared; it must have been drawn inside the rim by the friction of the rolling wheel.

I rode slow, very slow, hoping the rubber tire didn't come off of the rim, and because the kind of guy I am I did not carry any tools. When I came to a corner I took the turn at a crawl fearful of having the tire come off and wrap around the forks. The cranks felt like I was peddling up a steep hill all the way, and when I came to a hill I was crawling slower than ever. I worried all the time that the rim or tire was being damaged. I got to work on that flat tire fifteen minutes late.

I had no tire pump and no change for the air pump at the service station, (they all charge fifty cents for air in this town) so, I began the long ride home on the flat tire.I worried about the rim being damaged all the way.  I rode slower than I had since the third grade. I was watching the tire more than the road. My forearms burned with the ache of keeping the wheel straight as the tire wobbled from side to side.

The ride home normally takes forty minutes but this time it was more like an hour and a half which turned my legs into rubber. I went to sears and bought a new inner tube. When I took the tire apart to replace the tube I found the valve stem was completely gone. There was no way it could have been pumped up.

Now every morning I greet the bicycle with the pump in one hand and feel the tires with the other to see if they need any air.

The Conquest Of The Middle Hill

I bicycled to work in the morning and worked a long day on my feet in the mail room printing reports and documents then running all over the building to deliver them. It was a very long day.

I was glad to be off work and was looking forward to getting home. My bike ride was peaceful and relaxing after such a busy day. As I was rolling through a shady neighborhood I heard the familiar sound of pat, pat, pat over my shoulder. It was the footsteps of a jogger who was catching up to me. I was not in the mood for the humiliation of being caught up to by a jogger, so I changed gears and stood on the cranks to give it all I had. As the muscles in my legs groaned in protest the sound of the runner receded away behind me.

With satisfaction I kept the effort up and listened to the sound of the jogger growing faint behind me. My route turned a corner and went a ways to the foot of a small hill. I was tired and eased up a bit- the hill was going to be really hard.

I changed gears to tackle the hill and set my pace for a not too easy conquest when I heard the runner approaching.  Muttering a word I shouldn't have said under my breath I stood on the cranks and gave it all I had left. It must not have been enough because over my shoulder I could still hear the pat, pat, pat, of the approaching athlete. The hill seemed to grow in my mind and become steeper than I ever remember it to be. The pat, pat, pat grew louder, it was no longer behind me but beside me.

I couldn't be overtaken and strained my legs against the cranks while I pulled against the handlebars. I pulled away but only for a moment. I couldn't keep the struggle up, and just slipped into a pace to keep me moving forward but my speed was declining.

The wiry form of the marathoner passed me by. I looked to my right to see who it was that had the strength to pass me while climbing a hill, and saw the white hair and thin form of an old man in his seventies. I shifted into my easiest gear and took it easy the rest of the way.

If you know someone who needs encouragement you should order a copy of Beyond These Dark Lands Are Edges of joy, my book of comfort and hope. You will be glad you did.

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(c)Adron Dozat 9/10/14

What Is The Best Day Of The Week To Ride A Bicycle to Work

I work at a grocery store. Most people get Saturday and Sunday off, but those are the busy days for the grocery store so I work on Saturdays. It is Saturday that I most look forward to riding my bike to work.

Bicycling to work on the week days causes a lot of worry and tension. There is the traffic and the congestion, there are school buses that stop and interfere with the flow of traffic. There are sanitation trucks that smell of trash stopping every few feet to pick up garbage. People are in a reckless hurry to get to work, or to school on time. Cars turn corners without looking as you approach the intersection. Cars so not have room to give you a safe distance as they pass. Kids are everywhere, on the sidewalks, in the intersections, standing in the road waiting for the bus or getting out of a car without looking.

Saturday is different. The schools are closed so the buses are in the yard, the union does not allow the sanitation trucks to run on the weekend, and any one going to the office seem to feel the office is lucky to have them so there is no need to hurry. The kids are gone.

The roads are empty and the cars are few. You have the road mostly to yourself, and can go for blocks without seeing a car; and when you do they pass wide since there is room. The anxiety of watching over your shoulder and checking the mirror is almost gone.

The neighborhoods are quiet; all you can hear are the birds. (I have seen deer on Saturday mornings which one does not see except in the dead of night.)

On Saturdays you can concentrate on biking and not on staying alive; you can take your time since there is less activity to stop you and slow you down, you can look around and enjoy the ride. You say to yourself, "This is what it is all about."

What Can Happen When You Bicycle to Work On County Road 108.

Riding a bicycle to work every day can be wonderful or it can be stinky, I mean really stinky.

Recently my work place had a one day relocation to a church building that was outside town. It was nice for me since it was less than half the distance I normally ride and because it was down a beautiful county road with sheep pastures on one side and shady trees all around.

It was a beautiful day the weather was warm the sky was blue with white clouds drifting idly above. A soft breeze delivered rusty and golden leaves from the rustling branches to the earth. The sheep were busy doing nothing in the field and the farms had the gratified sleepy look of a good harvest. I admired the rolling hills on one side and enjoyed the trees with their cooling shade and autumn colors.

This country road turned out to be a sort of expressway that short cut between two freeways without going through town so there was a lot of traffic. There was no shoulder but being experienced with cars zooming past at freeway speed inches way I just dealt with it and kept on going.

A truck passed belching diesel fumes in a faint black haze. There were other commercial vehicles with thick exhaust escaping at every seam and gasket. The smell made me sick to my stomach.  The harder I tried to get home the harder I was panting and sucking in the poison of angry combustion engines. One vehicle would speed by trying to outrun its exhaust of corrosive carbon gas and another would follow with thick smelling diesel that left a burnt rubber flavor in my mouth. The smell mixed with the acrid odor of burning oil and hot tires to create a stew of stink. I felt that I had wandered into a chemical warfare test zone utterly out of character with the beautiful landscape I was passing through.

Thankfully I turned to the shady suburban road that leads directly home. I wanted to raid my wife's garden of rose petals and shove them crumpled into my nose to try to get the stink out, but instead chose a soapy shower which did wonders.

I was disappointed that a pleasant ride turned rancid but the experience has reminded me of the great need to make alternative choices that will help conserve our world. I am not the victim of the exhaust fumes that day any more than any other day because every day all the residents of my community called planet earth suffer. We should all take a moment and smell the roses but if they are covered with carbon exhaust we can.t and should consider what we can do to conserve God's gift of planet earth.

What Happens When a Bicyclist Stops To Take A Rest On The Lawn.

I bicycled to work but after work I stayed at that end of town so I could volunteer at a youth program at church, and since my employment and church were only a few blocks apart but my home is eight miles away it made sense to just hang around for a couple of hours instead of bicycling home and bicycling back.

So after work I rode over to the church which was locked, I was not surprised since I was over an hour early- and no one ever gets to church that early. I found a nice piece of lawn in the shade at the side of the building where I lay down and lazily watched the clouds drift by. I was able to admire the bright white of the steeple against the blue sky. The mild October breeze cooled the air nicely and blew slowly spinning leaves out of the trees. I even dozed off for a while.

I was thinking about the program at the church and my part. It was nice to take some time and go over my task and consider some of the things I was to do. It was good to take the time and get ready like this and I felt my part in serving would be better off for the time of reflection, meditation, and planning.

Someone coughed in the trees and I turned to look. Under the trees was a family of deer. The mother was guarding the three young from the unwelcome bicyclist. She coughed or barked or maybe both at once and raised her forleg. After a moment's hesitation she stomped it down with a thump on the ground. Clearly an act of aggression, meant to intimidate me and send me and my bicycle on our way. I did not move and watched her repeat this gesture several more times, as she kept her eyes fixed on me. After a few minutes she turned and strode into the trees with her tail flicking as if to say some final word like "You got away with sitting there this time, you might not next time."

Riding a bicycle as a lifestyle causes you to slow down and make choices. If I was driving a car I would have raced home and rushed back later I would have hurried through the day, hurried through my planning and not done as well as I did at our church outreach. Nor would I have had the opportunity to come to terms with one of God's creatures in just the same way.

How Get To Work On Time While Riding a Bicycle

I hate being late to work, I do not want to let bicycling to work become an excuse.  The last thing I want to hear is someone saying something like, "Yea, he is late every day because he bicycles to work. He should get his act together."  What I want to hear is, "Wow!  Can you believe he peddles in every day on a bike and he is here early?"

Well, it was a hard and tiring week, so on Saturday I just couldn't get out of bed; just a few minutes more seemed to whisper in my head. At the last possible minute I jumped out of bed with a silent curse and stumbled into foggy action. I rushed around eating my banana and gathering up my stuff in the dark so as to not wake my family. My shower was barley a rinse, and shaving would just have to happen another day.

Most mornings I put a few drops of oil on the chain but acts of love would have to wait. I kept shoving the key in the lock upside down in my haste until a glance told me to turn it over, when you are in a hurry sometimes the simplest things become so hard. I shoved off across the lawn and down the first grassy decline taking a short cut to the road.

This first road has a meridian down the middle that is a mess with bushes and trees, so it has to be circled; but for no apparent reason the normally deserted street is peppered with passing cars that kept passing at the crossing point forcing me to wait. At last a driver let me cross, and I bounded up the sidewalk on the far side and down a bike path through the public space. It is a narrow twisty path and goes about two tenths of a mile, shifting down I cranked it faster than safe. Crossing three bridges leads to a very steep climb back to a street, it is a very rare day that my heavy Huffy mountain bike can take it but with the momentum and quick gear changing the climb is conquered. The next climb is a fight, it is not long but it is another steep one, slowing me down little by little by the weight of my bike, backpack, lunch, and change of work clothes which grows heaver each yard.

A stroke of luck, or God's mercy, finds me at the top and no cross traffic at what is normally a fast and busy street. Taking advantage of the vacant street I give it all I got for the next mile covering slight inclines and declines. The sun is up now and shining through a mist, almost fog, that hangs in the air. I said thanks to God for the first green light I sailed through, but as I approach the second a lady in a red car looks like she is going to run her red light as I am going through the green. She stops about ten feet into the intersection leaving me a foot of clearance, this made me brake for about ten feet and louse speed; now I had to shift down and back up. With a sigh and a shake of my head I press on.

The next half mile is a decline through suburbs so I give it everything. My legs ache, I am using calories needed to make it through the day. A look at my watch tells me the progress is good, not great, but good. At the bottom of this decline is one of the biggest intersections in the town of Columbia MD with a long red light controlling a high volume of traffic. It is frustrating for me to come to the light after racing downhill and stop to give up momentum and speed to wait three minutes for all the light changes, but today the light was green and I flew threw, keeping my speed.

A half mile and a turn to climb a hill that takes the "safe" road. I always take the safe road even though it is thirty percent longer than the main road; the main road has very high speed, no visibility, no shoulder and many merging points for cars coming off of freeway. The safe road is hilly and winding but I feel I will be alive at the end. Although tired I climb the steep hill and cross to coast downhill. For two miles I give it all I got, over one rolling hill after hill.  About half way and I start a long low grade climb but I am experiencing a second wind, a runner's rush, and checking my watch tells that arriving on time is possible. Topping this hill leads to a long and fast decline. I am going downhill dangerously fast, the cranks are spinning so fast they are almost not engaging the wheel.

At the bottom I have to go up again this time over a freeway overpass that has traffic merging at high speed as they exit the freeway and I am trying to get past or ahead of around them. At my speed I do not have much time for decisions as a car approaches. I take the lead seeing plenty of space for them to yield and stop, since I do technically have the right of way.  My fortune is holding out they wait as I zoom past.

The other side of this overpass is another red light that never seems green for me. I squeal my brakes all the way down the other side. My watch tells me I can still make it to work on time, if only this light would turn green.

Finally I get through the intersection to start the last climb and there is construction on the road. The city is repairing sidewalks and has a crew of workers breaking up concrete, building forms and pouring fresh cement. The man stands in the middle of the road blocking traffic he has a sign that says stop on one side and slow on the other. I stand on peddles and gasp for air to get to him while his sign still says "slow."  I can't afford for him to turn it to "Stop." Crank, and crank, and crank I am getting closer and closer to him; behind him is a line of cars waiting for him to turn the sign for them to pass. Maybe he sees my exhaustion or determination but he holds it for me and I get past the construction.

Seeing the shopping center I work at now gives a little panic of worry about the time. It is just a little higher up the hill, (in a car these never seemed so high). After the last yards a left turn puts me in the parking lot, where a moment later my bike was standing by itself locked up safely at the bike rack. A look at my watch relieves and astonishes me to see that it is four minutes early until my shift. Going through the door I get a "Good morning," from the boss- she has no idea.

Why Do People Call Me The Town Kook?

I have been riding my bicycle to work every day for about three months. You can see my bicycle locked up in front of the grocery store where I work. It is familiar to many who go to the shopping center, most people know it is my bike.

One guy says he always looks for the bicycle when he comes to work. Shoppers come in and say, "I see you are still riding your bike." Some people come to my register and say, "Did you ride to today?" Others say "Did I see you riding a bicycle the other day?" Today one guy said, "Man you are that guy with the bike. I see you all over town. The other day you were way over there!" He held out his hand for me to shake.

Every day I have several conversations about riding bicycles as a serious form of transportation. People have many different responses to what I am doing. To the majority of people I am some kind of non-conformist out of touch kook. Most ask how far I ride every day, I tell them twelve or fifteen depending on the way I go, and they react as if I was running a marathon, (though this is hardly a warm up for a seasoned bicyclist). Some people act like I was the last of the protest movement, because I have a sign on the back of my bike that says,"I refuse to pay that much for gas." (It really does cost too much on a cashier's wages.) Some people applaud my supposed spirit of determination.One day last week I was waiting for a red light as a group of teenage pedestrians crossed the street, one saw me and said to his companions, "There he is, check out the sign on the back of his bike."

I feel like I have a reputation to uphold and if I stopped bicycling to work I would have a hard time answering for it. For example the sign wore out in the rain, so it fell off; I rode without my sign on the back of the bike for about a week, then one day after work I found someone had made a new sign, nicely printed up and laminated and placed it in my bike basket. I had to put it on my bike- I was afraid not to or else I might have let someone down.

Most people are supportive and encouraging; they discuss my bicycle riding with sincere interest and good will. I enjoy meeting different people this way and enjoy the exchanging of views and ideas. The friendships I have made with strangers because of my bicycling has been more rewarding than I could have foreseen, even if some think I am a kook.

Why Is There Always A Red Light At The Bottom of The Hill

It is a cruel law of the universe or a joke of the county road works division to put a stop sign at the bottom of every hill.

It never fails that after you crank up a hill risking a heart attack or heat stroke and you finally get to glide down the other side in the cooling breeze looking forward to the free wheeling ride of coasting for a half mile or more at the bottom you see a stop sign with cross traffic. You squeeze your break levers until the veins in your hands burst and your finger joints dislocate while you hope your break cables can take the strain and that your brake pads don't melt. After you come to a stop often five feet into traffic you have to wobble next to the curve waiting for the light to change or the side traffic to yield. Then without sufficient time to recover you wobble through the intersection still gasping for breath grinding your way through gears. Thinking, "If only I could have kept going on when I had the speed," and looking up before you is a hill which you could have coasted over like a carnival ride if you didn't have to stop.

I do not doubt that some committee in a secret bunker under city hall has a good reason for the stop sign policy, (doubtless out of fear of aliens from Mars invading on Schwinn bicycles). No matter how founded their fears are I feel personally affronted by the practice. Couldn't they have a sign stopping the cross traffic so cars could take a peek to see if there are any semis thundering down the incline and if the way is clear they can dash across the intersection and get on with their travels?

I suspect it is an arrangement with a brother of someone who works at city hall, a brother who paints stop signs and needs a market for them so city hall says "George is a good guy who buys us beer on Fridays and wine on Christmas, so lets give him a little something." and you have stop signs at every corner.

When you have brothers painting stop signs you have no choice but stop at the bottom of every hill or else you will find a four way stop at every drive way across town.  You can't fight city hall because you will never get through all the stop signs to get there.

A Life Saved by Riding my Bike

If I was driving my car to work a life may have been taken from our green planet, but I was cruising along on my old bicycle which gave him time to react.  As I passed through a shady suburb he was standing right in the middle of the street, he was either standing guard in the center of the road or chose to do his morning meditations there. I pressed the brakes and he turned to look at me and his tail gave a sudden twitch. His meditation turned into a spontaneous act of martial arts, he jumped and landed on all fours facing me and jerked his bushy tail again. Next the squirrel took three hops to the left covering as many feet then stopped to flick his tale two more times, (I am sure it is an obscene gesture in civilized squirrel society), he darted to the right five feet and stopped again no doubt to gauge my progress. Turning around he dashed back across my path, scampered up a tree and began to make squirrel barking sounds at me. Since I am an American I only speak one language, and do not understand "squirrelleze." If I did I am sure what he was saying was not polite and I should have been offended.

This Might Have Been The Last Thing He Saw In Life.

I am glad the little squirrel made it back to his home to the tree, and all he experienced was an inconvenient scare.  If I was driving my car I would have regrettably and sadly injured the tiny creature. All of us have collided with some frail living thing at one time or another, it is an inevitable fact of cars. I wondered how many of God's creatures have been sent to premature graves because of my tires and bumpers. I remember a few; one, an old lady's cat, still comes to haunt my dreams from a collision with my tire thirty years ago. I recall that I phoned her to tell her how sorry I was to hit her cat, she cried, and I was depressed for some long time. I remember another time when two birds fluttered down on the road just in front of my truck they disappeared underneath and my mirror revealed a tumbling cloud of feathers.

Bicycling is slower, animals and people have a better opportunity to escape collision. If a bunny is hit by a bicyclist his injury is likely to be a fraction as severe as if he was hit by a two ton car speeding at forty miles an hour.

We are stewards of our planet, and have a moral responsibility to seek ways to lessen the effect of our being here. We are responsible to protect and preserve what God has put here, be it either the living creatures or the inanimate resources of the earth. We each must come to terms with these truths; others may make a different decision but I feel that for me a reasonable response is to take every opportunity to park my car and ride my bicycle.

A squirrel's eye View of a Bicyclist