How Long Would It Take You To Ride To The Moon?

As a teenager, I followed the journey of John Rakowski, who rode his bicycle around the globe.  In all, it took him three years to pedal through every continent except Antarctica.

Up to that time, one other journey so captured my imagination:  the Apollo 11 flight.  Exactly fifty years ago on this date, Neil Armstrong alighted from the space capsule and became the first human to set foot on the moon.

I must say, though, that the moon landing didn't sustain my interest in the same way Rakowski's trip did, mainly because the trip from Cape Canaveral to the lunar surface took only four days, and a few days later, Armstrong and fellow astronauts Buzz Aldrin (who followed in Armstrong's steps) and Michael Collins returned. 

Moreover, you couldn't escape (even if you wanted to) seeing or hearing about Apollo 11:  literally everything else, from Bewitched to ballgames, was pre-empted for moment-by-moment coverage of the event.  It really took no effort to follow the moon mission.  On the other hand, the only news, it seemed, you could get about Rakowski's trip was his serialized accounts in Bicycling!, which came out every month.

I mention him and the astronauts today because of an interesting Wired article.  Rhett Allain is a physicist who can actually explain his work in terms that folks like me can understand.  Heck, he's even entertaining.  But what makes his article so wonderful is that he takes a seemingly idle question (which, I admit, I have pondered) and answers it in a way that makes the process of scientific research comprehensible and fascinating while showing its complexities.

The question is this:  How long would it take to ride a bicycle to the moon?  The short answer is 267 days, but that assumes that the cyclist weighs 75 kg (165 pounds) and puts out the same amount of energy as a Tour de France cyclist would--for 24 hours a day.  He acknowledges that such a combination of factors is impossible, and that other things come into play, such as what sort of cable or other contraption would serve as the rider's route between worlds and a bicycle capable of being ridden on it.

One thing that's great about Dr. Allain's article is that it reveals just how complicated a task it was to land humans on the moon, and why accomplishing it little more than six years after JFK's proclamation was nothing short of miraculous.

It Was Always The Future--Until Now?

A sportswriter once joked that soccer (what the rest of the world calls football) will always be the sport of the future in America.

And an economist once said, only half in-jest, that Brazil will always be the country of the future.

Likewise, back in the '70's Bike Boom, bicycles were being touted as the "transportation of the future."  Around 1979 (the time of the second American "gas crisis") I saw, in a shop window, a touring bike with a sign hanging from it proclaiming it "the RV (recreational vehicle) of the '80's."

Then, of course, Ronald Reagan was elected and put the kibosh on anything--except nuclear power--that might've reduced this country's dependence on fossil fuels.

Through the '80's and '90's, bicycle sales in the US basically flatlined, with a few upticks in the middle of each decade.  Anecdotally, I don't recall seeing many more cyclists on the road in the late '90's than I saw around 1983, when I first moved back to New York.  When I was mountain biking in the mid- and late '90's, I would sometimes see new faces on the trails, but they never seemed to do any other kind of cycling.  I wonder how many of them still ride.

I got to thinking about these phenomena after I came across Clive Thompson's article in Wired. "The Vehicle of the Future Has Two Wheels, Handlebars and is a Bike," exclaims the title.   I checked my cynicism at the door and read it.  He made one really interesting point:  The same technologies that are bringing us driverless cars and other things that seemed like the stuff of science fiction not so long ago are bringing us back to a reliable technology that's more than a century old, i.e., the bicycle.

Photo by Noah Berger

One of the main drivers, if you will, of that would-be trend is bike-sharing programs.  As he pointed out, they were tried way back in the '60's but, with no way to track the location of the bikes, the programs quickly died.  When the first of the modern share programs started just over a decade ago, the technology that gave rise to "smart" phones and their apps made it possible to track bikes--and, in the early programs, to create docks where bicycles could be secured.  Newer programs are, of course, dockless because they rely on another technology--phone apps.

Thompson didn't intend any pun when he said that to see the future, we don't have to re-invent the wheel.  And I don't mean a pun when I say that perhaps technology is bringing us full circle.

Bicycles just might be the transportation of the future--right now.

A Straightforward Oxymoron?

The first time you saw or heard the word "oxymoron", what did you think?

Perhaps it's indicative of the time in my life when I learned it that I thought about a stupid kid with zits.  Back then, a product for treating acne that had "Oxy" in its name had recently been introduced.  Is that product still being made?

Anyway, being the sort of person who remembers examples better than abstract definitions, whenever I heard the word "oxymoron", I would think of "military intelligence", "dietetic candy", "authentic reproduction" and "business ethics".  Oh, and there was a sign I saw in a supermarket:  "Fresh frozen jumbo baby shrimp."

Here's another one to add to the list:  a riderless bicycle.   

From Wired.com

Now, such a thing may be plausible, at least in an etymological or epistemological sense.  (I teach college. I have to use words like those at least once a year.  There, I got it over with!)  After all, a bicycle is nothing more than a vehicle with two wheels.  So, I suppose, one could have a bicycle without a rider.  Of course, I have to ask:  Why?

Well, someone seems to have a reason:  research.  Yes, you can get away with inventing practically anything for research purposes. But I think this project may have practical applications:  The riderless bicycle's creators are trying to learn more about gyroscopic forces and what keeps wheeled vehicles stable.

Maybe one day, if I have money to burn, I'll buy one of those bicycles for someone whom I tried, and failed, to turn into a cyclist!