Sometimes A Longer Crank Arm Is Only A Longer Crank Arm...

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

Truer words were never uttered.  (All right, very few truer words were ever uttered.)  Who said them?

The same person who said,

Everywhere I go,  I find that a poet has been there before me.

Hey, I can get with that, too.  Or:

Dreams are most profound when they are the most crazy.

Such a pronouncement is ironic, coming from a man who hated radios and telephones--he would use the latter, but only when absolutely necessary--because of the noise they made.  He even hated music!  He also hated motorcycles, which came out in the middle of his life, for the same reason.

He also hated bicycles, which no one--not even his closest family members and associates--could explain.  He never explained it himself.  However, I think it may have had something to do with his being a control freak, a label attached to him by everybody who knew him.  Or it may have been about his relationship with his son, who was an avid cyclist.

Ahh, father-son conflicts.  Did I hear "Oedipal"?  All right...now, perhaps, you have a clue to whom I'm referring.

Yes, I am talking about none other than Sigmund Freud-- who, if he were alive, would be 160 years old today.

What would he make of the fact that so many cyclists, particularly males, are riding longer cranks these days?  What would he have to say about wheels, and what our choices about spoke patterns--or discs--say about us?

About his hatreds:  Here's one that, perhaps, overshadows the others:

Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake.

What would he make of the current Presidential race?
 

An Argument That Doesn't Hold In Watertown

I have been called "crazy" and worse for riding in cold, rain, snow, sleet and conditions not mentioned in the "postmen's pledge."

I've cycled in colder and other wintrier conditions than the ones we've been experiencing here in New York over the past few days.  Once I even pedaled to work when the temperature was -8F (-22C).

But, I'll concede that I've never cycled in Watertown, NY. I've passed through it once or twice, though not in winter.  Knowing where it is, and having been in (and cycled) some of the surrounding area, I know they get a lot more snow and ice--and colder temperatures--than we get here in the Big Apple.

However, if I were to ride in there today, the mayor would not call me "crazy."  According to Jeffrey Graham, I am worse:  I am insane, criminally so.  He says that those of us who pedal the streets of his fair city in winter are a "clear and present danger."  (Wow!  We must be really powerful if he's comparing us to an erstwhile superpower!) He likens us people who ride in winter to those who text while driving to assert that we should be arrested.

Yes, you read that right.  Even though cyclists don't need anyone to dig or tow them out of snowbanks.  Even if we skid, we don't crash into buildings and cause thousands of dollars worth of damage or kill schoolchildren.  If anything, we're probably at less risk than most drivers because we are--have to be--more attentive to, and prepared for, any conditions we may meet.  

I guess haters have to latch onto something else when they don't have a Bike Share program where they live.

Watertown Mayor Jeffrey Graham:  "They should be arrested."