After This, How Difficult Can His Classes Be?

 How should an educational institution be judged?

Some argue that the famous--or infamous--alumni tell you what you need to know.  So, then, what do we make of Whittier College, who graduated one Richard M. Nixon?  Or Eureka College, who granted a degree to a fellow name Ronald Reagan?

Then there is the Wharton School.  It's the business college of the University of Pennsylvania*--an Ivy League institution. It includes, no doubt, any number of alumni who have succeeded in corporate and related fields.  On the other hand, its most famous degree-holder is yet another ex- (and I hope he remains so!) President:  the self-described "very stable genius."

Then again, some might argue that a more fair barometer of an institution's quality is its current students.  A Wharton sophomore I'm about to mention has accomplished things that aren't directly to the world of mergers, acquisitions and such.  But he might be able to parlay his exploits into influence in marketing, advertising or other areas--or a career as a motivational speaker.

Never mind that he's run marathons under extreme conditions or crossed the United States on a bicycle he bought for $300 on Craigslist.  He has accomplished something that perhaps no other cyclist has achieved.

And he did it on a real bicycle, not an eBike or one with any other form of mechanical assistance.

Ryan Torres, on campus with the bike he rode up Ojos del Salado.  Image from Wharton Stories.

 

As if it weren't enough that Ryan Torres pedaled across the driest--and one of the hottest--places on Earth, he capped it off by making the highest known climb on a bicycle.

Parts of Chile's Atacama Desert, in addition to experiencing heat rivaling that of India and the Arabian deserts, have never recorded any precipitation.   It abuts the Pun se Atacama, a high plateau that's part of the High Andes mountain range. (If you know anything about high plateaus, they tend to be dry:  something I discovered in Colorado.)  The "crown" of it, if you will, is Ojos del Salado, a dormant volcano whose peak rises 6893 meters (22569 feet) above sea level on the Chile-Argentina border.**  In other words, it's higher than the highest peaks in most of the world's other mountain ranges.  But, unlike those other summits, it doesn't have a glacier or snowcap because it's so dry.

Torres began his ride through the desert with Leo Teneblat, his friend and fellow endurance athlete. They'd planned to scale Ojos together, but Teneblat had to drop out due to a medical emergency before Torres reached the base at the summit.  That makes an already seemingly-impossible ride even more incredible.

Now, I know Wharton is primarily a business school.  But I have to ask:  Does his ride get Ryan Torres credits toward his degree?  If it doesn't, well, it's quite the line to include on his resume!

*--Someone who flunked out of U Penn is even more famous than most people who graduated from it.  I'm talking about Candice Bergen!

**--Interestingly, Ojos is not the only tall mountain to  tower above borders:  Mont Blanc straddles France and Italy and Mount Everest abuts Nepal and Tibet.

For A Professor, Comic Relief From Bicycle Face

One of my graduate school professors said, "If you can't say it in English, say it in French.  If French doesn't work, go to German.  If you still can't say what you're trying to say, try Latin. If that fails, there's always ancient Greek."

Well, I could follow his advice only partway:  Although my French was, and is, good, I had reading, but not conversational or writing, ability in Latin.  And I only knew all the German I learned in one semester and while biking through the country, just as I know a few words of Greek acquired just before, and during, my most recent trip.  (I wonder, though, how much Socrates' Greek was like the language I butchered in the marketplaces of Milos and cafes of Thissio.

I got to thinking about my old professor's advice when I heard about another professor--Louis Vivanco, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Vermont.  His specialty is the anthropology of environmental movements, and he had a particular interest in cycling.  So, not surprisingly, he spent a lot of time looking at old newspaper articles about the "maladies" that afflicted early cyclists in Vermont, and other places.  There were warnings about "bicycle face," a mask into which a cyclist's face contorted itself,  as well as explanations about "cyclist's neuralgia," a condition that manifested itself with, among other symptoms, shriveling penises in men and "spinsterhood" (oh, my!) in women. 

He wanted to present his findings to a wider audience.  That brought him to a crisis:  He realized that an academic paper could not do them justice.  For a researcher like him, that's akin to a writer learning that words don't do justice to anything  (You mean they don't!) or a mathematician realizing that numbers can't express the relationships he or she is trying to elucidate.

His "crisis", if you will, came to a head while he attended a symposium on comics in academia.  At the end of a lecture, he went up to the presenting professor and asked "How can I do this myself?"

That professor's advice:  "Go get yourself an illustrator."

Such advice is sound, except for one problem which I, as an educator, can relate to:  Vivanco couldn't afford to hire such a professional.  So, he decided to "give it a shot" and draw the illustrations himself.  "I try to be kind an idiot savant:  I look at art and books and comics and then I do my best to reproduce what I see."

That work has led to comics about cycling throughout history, and in the present. They illustrate, if you will, much about the way larger society related to cycling and cyclists.  Today we lobby for better cycling infrastructure, or to get any such infrastructure at all.  So did cyclists 120 to 130 years ago, in Vermont and other places.  The difference, as Vivanco points out, is that because bicycles were far more expensive in relation to people's incomes than they are now, cyclists tended to be well-off and well-connected, and therefore had connections to leaders or power-brokers, if they weren't those leaders or power-brokers themselves.  Thus,  cycling clubs in places like Brattleboro and even larger cities were part of the political establishment and were quite effective in getting safer roads and other amenities.  Today, in contrast, cyclists are, in most places, organizing and lobbying as outsiders looking in at the lawmakers and institutions they're trying to influence.

From what Professor Vivanco says, media like comics are a way to help open the doors by making information more available to non-specialists.  He points out something I know very well:  Academic discourse has a language and culture all of its own and, because they are learned by relatively few people, reach very few people.  The same could be said for any number of professions related to urban planning and policy-making, such as law, engineering and environmental psychology.  Comics and other graphic media can also help people who are not specialists--and busy professionals who don't have the time or inclination to read lengthy tomes or ponderous articles on topics outside of their fields--to better understand how the struggle to get better conditions for cyclists is related to other efforts to make cities and other environments more livable and sustainable. 

Most important, perhaps, comics like Professor Vivanco's can show how demands for better air quality and bike lanes are not new, and are not battles that can be won today and forgotten tomorrow.

I'll close by saying that I like Vivanco's drawings:  They remind me of the work of Rick Morrall, who did the illustrations for Tom Cuthbertson's bike-related writings.  At least, I think that's what Morrall's work would look like if Bike Tripping  had been published in 1892 instead of 1972.