Standing Against The Current

How did it get there?  

People have asked that question about Stonehenge, the Easter Island Moai and the Newport Tower for ages. The answer(s) seem as elusive as ever, even with the technology and research methods that have developed over the years.

Turns out, a structure or object doesn’t have to stay in one place for as long as the aforementioned monuments in order for its origins to be forgotten—or never known in the first place.

Such is the case with the “bicycle log” in the Missouri River near Great Falls, Montana.

KRTV reporter Quentin Shores (You can’t make this stuff up!) tried to unravel the mystery. First he went to the police.  Then he looked at Facebook and asked around town. After all of his sleuthing, he has no more an answers than I have.

A few people, naturally, suggested aliens. (Trained linguists and anthropologists have offered a similar explanation for Basque language and culture, which are completely unrelated to those around them.) Others have suggested it might be an art installation.  I could believe that, but I wonder why no one has taken credit (or blame) for it.

As he mentioned, it could simplify have been a prank. Perhaps someone put it there just to keep people guessing, just as James Joyce admitted that he filled Finnegan’s Wake with so many enigmas and puzzles to “keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant.”

Whatever the story behind the “bicycle log,” it’s fair to wonder how long it will be there. After all, the river’s current could erode or sweep it away. Or some official could deem it a hazard and order it removed. Personally, I hope it stays there a long time to confound and inspire generations.

 

They Told Me There’d Be Days—Weeks—Like This

 When you’re young, people in midlife tell you about things you dismiss as “old people stuff.” They include what most grown-ups do: work mundane jobs, pay bills and navigate adult relationships, including those with the family you’re born into or create.  

Then there are the changes in your body.  Dieting and exercising but still gaining weight? Hair growing in places you didn’t know it could—or falling off the places you want to keep it? And discovering you need glasses to read books and menus?

Then there are those “mysterious aches and pains.” You know, when a limb, joint or some other part of your body hurts for no apparent reason. Did I land too hard when I stepped off a curb? Reach for something without using a step-stool or ladder? Put too much weight on one side when I got out of bed? Bump into something a little harder than I thought I did? Or is some injury I brushed off decades ago coming back to nag  me?

Of course, my cycling always gets the benefit of the doubt. I never want to blame it for any of my aches and pains, especially since it’s accounted for most of my physical conditioning and, along with my cats, nearly all of my mental health.

So what, exactly, caused that ache in and around my left ankle:  the one that’s kept me off my bike for most of this week?

I can live with mysteries about the big questions:  you know, the meaning of life, whether there’s anything after this one and why JFK, RFK, Martin, Malcolm and John were murdered. (Actually, I know who…wait, is that a sniper on the roof?!) But, dammit, I want to know why my body develops more glitches than my workplace IT system or breaks down like a Yugo when I think I’m doing everything right.

They warned me there’d be days—weeks—like this. But they never told me why, except that it’s part of “getting older.”  But as a wise old philosopher said, “I ain’t dead yet”: I am in midlife.  And I want to keep on cycling.

The Ghost of Bicycle Larry

 For today, the Day of the Dead, there’s nothing like a good, spooky mystery.

While Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King and others have written many spine-tingling tales, there is no shortage of real-life accounts of the scary and unexplainable (or yet-to—be-explained.)

Take Lawrence Farrell, a.K.a., Bicycle Larry—as an example. Fittingly enough, he lived—and perhaps died—in Maine, King’s home state.

Locals remember him as a friendly, if eccentric, presence. When people last remember seeing him, he was living with someone more menacing—Norris Perry, a.k.a. Lonesome Loon—in a trailer at the top of the Narrow Gauge Trail, near Windsor. 

As the name implies, the trail was a railroad route. It led to a Veterans’ Administration hospital and some locals say they hear the mournful cries of long-lost pass, especially at night during this time of year.

Anyway, Bicycle Larry was last seen in late October 2004. He didn’t collect his Social Security check the following month, or any time thereafter. Before taking his own life that Dece, Lonesome Loon left his sister a voicemail in which he confessed to killing Larry and disposing of his body by a brook behind the trailer.

Given the rugged terrain and long, harsh Maine winter, authorities couldn’t search in earnest until Spring. Neither Larry nor his bike have been found.

During the intervening twenty-one years, some have reported seeing a “spectral presence” of Bicycle Larry riding along the Narrow Gauge Trail—especially at this time of year.

Mid-Life Cycling Mysteries

I've been cycling for a long time.  Well, at least, I've been riding for longer than most people, though the current shape of my body might belie that. Still, even after more than three decades of riding even when I had no logical reason for doing so, there are still some things I can't explain.


Here's one of them:  In spite of my advancing age and declining strength, my past few rides--whether commutes or pleasure rides--have been faster and smoother than I expected them to be.  Now, what I am saying is completely unscientific: I am saying them mainly on the basis of having finished the rides I took in less time than I anticipated, or than I would normally take to do them.  And this has happened without any effort on my part to make to make "better" (i.e., faster) time.


What's more, I have noticed this on riding three of my four bikes:  Arielle, Tosca and Vera.  I guess if I want to make a really valid claim, I have to take Helene out, too. (It's been a month or so since I've ridden her.  I can rationalize it this way:  For the rides on which I would have taken Helene, I rode Vera in order to fine-tune her.)  But if I were to ride her with the intention of testing this hypothesis, it would sort of invalidate what I'm saying, wouldn't  it?


On the other hand, there have been times in my life when I was in much better shape than I'm in now, yet the rides were slower and more arduous than the past few have been.  


Have you, dear readers, experienced anything like what I've described?  If so, can you account for it in some way?