Imagine There's A White Bicycle

In a terrible irony, John Lennon was murdered the day after Pearl Harbor Day.

That was 41 years ago today.  I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that it shook some of us in the way that the "surprise" attack roused Americans and the world. 

In another terrible irony, the man responsible for "Imagine" and other songs calling for peace and unity was cut down by a lone gunman who claimed to be inspired by a fictional character who probably would have listened to Lennon's (and the Beatles') music and probably wouldn't have committed violence simply because he turned all of his anger inward.

(Of course, Lennon's murder points up to one of the ways in which the US gets things backwards.  In other countries, everyone has access to health care--which includes mental health services-- but very few people who aren't police officers or military personnel have access to firearms.)

Anyway, apart from his music and being married to the woman blamed for the breakup of the Beatles (I think she was a catalyst, not a cause), he and she were known for their "bed-ins" for peace.  At their second, in Amsterdam, they were given a white bike that was part of the Provo plan. 

 

Think of Provo as a kind of Dutch proto-Occupy Wall Street:  It began as a counter-culture movement during the mid-1960s.  It had a cultural wing,  which staged "happenings" and an activist wing that provoked (hence the name) the police through non-violent means. 

There was also a political faction that actually won a seat on Amsterdam's city council and had a number of goals to make their city and country more liveable and what we would now call "green." Those goals included the closing of central Amsterdam to motorized traffic.  That, of course, is probably Provo's most recognizable and lasting legacy:  One could say that the "White Bicycle" plan set the Dutch capital on its path to becoming the cycling haven it is today.

That, I believe, is something of which John Lennon would have approved.

It Wasn’t His Fault

 When I was a Manhattan bike messenger, I sluiced through taxis, delivery trucks, buses and pedestrians with craned necks. 

But I had nothing on this courier:

The photo is fabricated, but it symbolizes a real story:  A Japanese-American bicycle messenger pedaled through the attack on Pearl Harbor with a message for General Walter Short, who was in charge of defending it.

The message?  A warning of an attack.

Japan had intended to issue a declaration of war half an hour before the attack.  The US Army had already decrypted the message the evening before, and had dispatched alerts to all Pacific-area commands. But communication problems delayed receipt of the warning in Honolulu.

Meanwhile, bureaucrats in the Japanese embassy were slow in decoding, typing and delivering the formal message to Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

The result is, of course, the “surprise “ attack.  And the bike messenger, who was sent out some time after 7:30 local time, when the warning arrived, was caught in the rain of bombs and bullets at 7:55 am.  Two hours later, he arrived, with the message.

Richard Masoner wryly wonders whether that messenger received a tip for his troubles. He certainly deserved it:  I got tips for much less!

P.S. Today is the 80th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. There are very few remaining survivors. This may well be their last opportunity to collectively commemorate the event.

(Photo from Richard Masoner’s blog, Cyclelicious.)

The Fall

 When you ride for more than a couple of decades you realize that there's no idea so ridiculous, no "innovation" so pointless or "improvement" so useless that someone won't revive it, oh, about every decade or so.

Also, you hear the same alarms about the terrible things cycling will do to you.  The only difference between now and the 1970s, when I first became a dedicated rider, is that those rumors and urban legends, and all of that junk science, can now be found on the Internet, whereas back in the day, we got it through word-of-mouth or from questionable publications. 

One of those stories is about all of the male cyclists who've become infertile, or simply have lower sperm counts, supposedly because of cycling.  Germaine Greer once repeated that bit of nonsense in one of her screeds.  Now, I've known more than a few male cyclists, including current and former riding partners, who have had multiple children.  So have many members of the pro peloton.

What about cycling could render a man incapable of replicating himself?  Usually, the saddles are blamed; a few have even cited the motion of cycling.  I think a more likely cause in low population growth in some countries might be those massive shift levers mounted on the top tubes of "muscle" bikes like the 1960s-1970s Schwinn Krate  or on the stems of many Bike Boom-era ten-speeds.  Even those, however, might have played an extremely minor role in less-than-replacement birth rates. 

Could this be the cause?

Now, I know that fall must have been painful for the young man. But I have to wonder which pain was worse:  that of the impact or of having his accident broadcast all over his nation.