Posting to Immaculate Contraptions may be the only thing that has been less active than my cycling life since I started work as a full-time hospice chaplain.  But no more.  The training schedule has been updated, and the motivation to get back on track physically and mentally couldn’t be higher.  So away we go, off on a new round of cycling adventures!

Stay tuned, and of course, don’t forget to:  Ride smart, stay safe, have fun!

Sincerely,

DJcontraption

A story about mindset:

So, I’m doing my elaborate workday ride routine:  ride from work to home, hook up the trailer, roll  a couple miles down the road to the daycare to get Ro-Ro, ride back up to the office, feed Rohan, pack up the trailer and the bike in the car, and then get the wife–the way I do things to fit some riding in.  But back to the story:  I’m coming up Ardee toward Gallatin (for those with Nashville acumen), at the end of what is about the most back-roads way to my house.  In other words, I’m not in high-speed commute mode (though maybe I should have been, because I ended up being late to pick up the Ro. Ah well).

As I’m coming to the top of this gradual rise, a city bus passes me, a bit close but perhaps better than most Metro buses, which seem to be on a mission usually to snag as many messenger bags, saddlebags, and whatever else they can clock with a big side-view mirror.  This driver gives me a generous two feet, and maybe was pushing three.  Kudos to him.

The only problem was that he was doing that at the crest of the hill (poor visibility) that has a curve (even poorer visibility) and, as it so happens, a pick-up truck was coming from the other direction.  The driver of the truck, though, had to slow the progress of her journey to move way over to the outside of her lane and slow down to get out of the way of the bus–the driver of which had made a number of simultaneous bad decisions.

Of course, it being a bus, it did so to only go another 150 yards down the road to stop at a bus stop.  So, I took the opportunity to have a chat with the driver.

Rolling up to his side of the bus, I stop next to his window, where I can see he’s been eying me coming up the side.  We look at each other for a second, and then I say, very calmly:

Me:  “Really?  In the middle of an uphill turn, with bad visibility, and oncoming traffic, you decide to pass me?”

Driver:  “I didn’t get in their way.”

Me:  “Come on now; I was right behind you.  I could see everything.  She had to slow down and swerve.  Wouldn’t it have been safer to just wait?”

Driver:  “I gave you room.”

Me:  “Look, it’s not about that.  I’ve had a number of near-misses with city buses because they don’t give any room at all, or like now, they take a bunch of risks to get around me.  Two seconds, that’s all:  two seconds more, and you would have been over the hill, through the curve, and you and your passengers would have been safer [ed. I made sure to lead with that, wanting to emphasize that it really wasn't just about me], I would have been safer, the driver in the other lane would have been safer, even the people behind you would have been too.  Two seconds–that’s all that would have taken.”

[Traffic's building up now, so I start to clip in.  As I pull away, I hear:]

Driver:  “I hear you sir; but I gave you three feet.”

Me:  [yelling back toward the bus] “You don’t get it.  That’s not the only consideration.”

And there you have it.  A fine example of what I’m sure goes through a lot of drivers’ minds, be they behind the wheel of a city bus or their lil ol’ Fit:  if I obey this one rule, then I’m doing what I should.

Since when does that fly?  When you’ve got the broken yellow line giving you the okay to pass on some back road in the car, do you still pass when there’s a car coming zipping along in the other direction?  I would say I doubt it, but instead, I’ll just say I hope not.

I’m preaching to the choir, I know (consider it a danger of my profession), but let me put this in a simple, straight-forward way: 

When on the road–in a car, bike, moped, truck, bus, whathaveyou–there are multiple rules and laws with which one must comply SIMULTANEOUSLY. 

Obeying one doesn’t mean you get to chuck the rest out of the window.  Thank goodness I hadn’t picked up the Ro yet.

Outside of that, though, today was great.  Good ride home, and the Ro had fun on the ride back up to the hospitals.

Though I’m saving up steam for a later rant about how so many pedestrians and cyclists also forget the basics of sharing a roadway that a greenway is about the most sketchy place to ride, ever.  Especially with a trailer.

Lest I forget, always remember to:

Ride smart, stay safe, have fun.

DAJ

P.S.  Next post gets away from cycling stuff.  I had grand plans to alternate between subjects, but I’ve been mulling some stuff over–thinking about soma (and no, not the bike brand), illness, language, treatment, racing ahead of ourselves, and blahblahblah.  In other words, one of those other realms of life that keeps my brain racing.  DAJ

First created in 1991, tubes replaced in ’94 and repainted, stolen in ’95, recovered in ’96, tubes artfully filled in (i.e. 3M Bondo) and repainted the same year, then off a car at ridiculous speeds, rebuilt, unbuilt, and ready to go around one more time:  the Landshark Dirtshark.  It’s apocalypse ’91, revisited.  Or with P.E. still in mind, this time around (just like the last time ’round), the revolution will be un-motorized.

Wow, that’s almost too agit-prop, one-skinny-jean-leg-rolled-up, poorly-pieced-together-”track”-bike, urban-edgy- white-kid sounding, for me to even believe I wrote it down.

Still true, though . . .

DAJ

P.S.  Mark your calendars:  the Have a Hart Cyclocross Class has laid claim to 11.Oct.2009.  Swap meet, skills clinic, and all-around fun scheduled for the day before.  I’ll be getting a site up on the .com soon.  In the meantime, set your training calendars to anaerobic endurance; you’ll need it!  DAJ

 A generous colleague and friend, D.J. (with initials like those, how he could he not be?), once gifted me during my days of recovery from a recently passed surgery, a collection of poetry by Denise Levertov.  Culling from a wide range of her previously published work, Levertov assembled a group of religiously-minded poems meant really as an occasional book–something one would pick up to read a poem or two when wanting or needing that type of aesthetic voice, but not a collection she saw necessarily as a cohesive whole.

Over the time since I’ve received the book (titled The Stream & the Sapphire ), I’ve done just that:  two poems here, another there.  I can’t say that my fascinations and concerns (more on those, to be sure, at some point in the future) neatly parallel with Levertov’s, but her wonderment and journey of–toward? about?–faith certainly shine through each of the poems I’ve read.

As some may know, I currently work–and learn–as a chaplain resident at a VA hospital.  With this environment invariably come memories of my own medical center stays; happily, though, one of them is the visit of D.J. and receiving Levertov’s small collection.

I take this opportunity, then, to thank D.J. for the kindness of that gesture and to copy one of Levertov’s poems here:

Of Being

I know this happiness

is provisional:

                               the looming presences–

                               great suffering, great fear—

                                withdraw only

                                into peripheral vision:

                but ineluctable this shimmering

                of wind in the blue leaves:

                the flood of stillness

                widening the lake of sky:

                this need to dance,

                this need to kneel:

                                                      this mystery:

Thank you, Dan.  Your gift of self and verse continues to serve its purpose.

DAJ

Without further delay, I present the first patently cycling-related post of this blog (photos of Ro-Ro on his Skuut notwithstanding):

I walked all over the land I hope to use for a cyclocross race–really, event weekend–this coming fall.  The photo above gives a beauty-shot peek of the locale at dusk.  Purty, ain’t it?  Brutal, though, describes any course laid out here:  up, really up, down, really down, camber, zig-zag, labyrinth, and maybe a custom bridge so the course can figure 8.

Sigh, it can’t happen soon enough . . . let’s hope it all continues to fall into place.

DAJ

KJ (my S.O.) does not enjoy weekends.  Yes, you heard right, and yes, it’s a long story.  That generally means that Friday night through Monday morning are a practice in patience and perseverance. 

Once again, a Ro-Ro photo (ha!) aptly captures the internal mood state.  (And on a side note, I’ll say that generally he gets along with Jas, but he hadn’t had breakfast yet, and was not quite ready for social interaction.  A boy after my own heart.).

DAJ

So, road trip #1 of 2 coming up.  Ro-ro has quickly taken and ensconced himself in his new fortress of solitude.

I’m still looking, and longing, for mine.

DAJ

I only wish that the strain I feel myself under was generated by picking amongst novelties.  But alas, such is not the case.

After Ro-Ro picked up the truck, I could tell–even from the back of him–that he was asking himself, “Okay, what do I do now?” 

My sentiments exactly.

DAJ

Unless wordpress randomly brought you to this page, chances are you typed immaculatecontraptions.org .  Don’t worry, you’re in the right place.  The .org will henceforth be this blog, while the .com will remain the woefully out-of-date site that’s been up for years.

More to come, but it’s late already.

DAJ