On Salman Rushdie And "Rolling Coal"

Once again, I am going to invoke the Howard Cosell rule. 

Two weeks ago, Salman Rushdie was attacked while giving a talk in Chautaqua, New York.  I actually wrote a reflection about it on another site, under a nom de plume I've been using.  I didn't mention it on this blog, until now, not because I couldn't relate it to anything else I've been writing here--if you've been following this blog, you know that I can relate almost anything to cycling and my life.  Rather, thinking about his attack was even more difficult than some of the other non-cycling events I've described.

For one thing, he is one of the world's best-known writers.  While my written words probably won't ever have the influence of his, I feel that the attack on him was an attack on me.  No one who is not doing harm to others deserves to have their freedom of expression--whether in the form of a creative work like a novel, the articulation of an idea or simply the way that person moves about in the world--inhibited, disrupted or ceased.  

But, perhaps more importantly, that attack reaffirmed for me that such attacks are not perpetrated by "others."  The young man who stabbed him was born and raised in the US nearly a decade after the Ayatollah Khomieni issued the fatwa calling for Rushdie's assassination.  In other words, although he was radicalized during a visit with his father in Lebanon four years ago, he is as much a domestic terrorist as those who stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021, threatened to kill anyone who certify the election or impeach Donald Trump, plotted to kidnap and execute Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer--and who have murdered abortion providers.  

Oh, and I would put anyone who tries to negate the self-agency, let alone equality, of women and LGBTQIA people, in the same category.  Yes, I include the Supreme Court justices who voted to strike down Roe v Wade.  I am not a legal scholar, gender theorist or theologian, so please forgive me if I fail to understand the difference, in kind or in degree, of denying a novelist the right to use his language and creative powers, or a woman to do as she sees fit with her body, as they see fit.  

Call me paranoid or alarmist if you like, but I don't think it's a very long or particularly slippery slope from telling a woman or girl that she can't terminate a pregnancy to telling someone like me that I couldn't  access, not only medical procedures that have helped my body reflect my gender identity, but also the therapy, counseling and other support that have helped me not only to recover from the pain and trauma of living an inauthentic life, but also to use, and even treasure, the lessons and moments of joy I experienced along the way.

Or, for that matter, if a government can mandate--or radicalized mobs, whether they are based in Kansas or Kandahar, can intimidate--women and girls away from bodily autonomy, how far is it, really, from a ruler who doesn't allow women or girls to travel without male chaperones, or to ride a bicycle or drive a car at all? Does it really matter whether the ones who legislate or intimidate people from freely moving about in the way they choose, whether to get to work or school or for pleasure, have been elected to their offices, ascended to their thrones by birthright or take over the public space and discourse through aggressive displays of symbols like flags or by "rolling coal" with their SUVs and pickup trucks on steroids that take up the entire width of a roadway, including its shoulder?

Now, some of you think might be that I've stretched things a bit by comparing the attack on Salman Rushdie or the Supreme Court striking down Roe v Wade to the intimidation or harassment of cyclists.  But for me, at least, they are all personal and come from the same impulses: those of people who simply can't face a world that's changing.

Blame The Bicycle

For the half-century or so that I've been a dedicated cyclist, every few years, new life has been breathed into a long-discredited claim.  The only difference was that back in the day, the oxygen for the myth came from word of mouth, print media and, less often, radio and television.  These days, like almost every other false rumor, it's spread through the "air" of the online world, specifically social media.

What is that claim? Cycling causes male infertility.  Fortunately, every time it's echoed, someone who knows way more than whoever started or resurrected the story shoots it down.  To my knowledge, no study confirming a link between a man's cycling and his inability to produce progeny has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet or any other peer-reviewed journal.

Interestingly, such a connection is not the most ludicrous one ever made with cycling.  As I've mentioned in an early post, the pseudo-phenomenon of "bicycle face" was reported (in women, of course) during the "bike boom" of the 1890's.  Around that time, bicycling was also blamed for a decline in marriage because "the young men go off on their wheels and leave the young ladies to themselves."

In that vein, another columnist wondered "What does Juliet care for a sofa built for two when Romeo has his tandem?" in blaming bicycles for a decline in furniture sales.  If IKEA had known that, would they have sold bicycles, if only briefly?

(IKEA ceased selling the bikes because some of the belt drives--which substituted for chains--snapped, resulting in rider injuries.  The company said they couldn't find a way to remedy the problem and recalled all of the bikes sold in the US.)

A List of Things People Blamed on Bicycles

🧵

— Paul Fairie (@paulisci) August 22, 2022

It seems that cycling was linked to an increase in appendicitis. The doctor who made the connection noticed only a coincidental rise in the disease and cycling.  He didn't offer a cause-and-effect explanation, so I am guessing that he, with all of his training, missed something that I--who haven't taken a science class since Donna Summer did her version of MacArthur Park (as if we needed a cover of that song!)--understand:  Correlation does not equal causation.

Oh, and cycling has also been implicated in--are you ready for this?--women smoking.  Of course, that claim was made in England, decades before the US Surgeon General's warning on the dangers of smoking.  We've all seen that famous image of 1920s Tour de France riders taking a smoke break:  at the time, it was commonly believed that puffing on Gauloises or Gitanes (or Marlboros) "opened up the lungs."  Also, at the time of the "cycling causes women to smoke" claim was made, in much of "polite" society, "proper" and "Christian" ladies didn't drink, show their ankles, swear--or smoke or ride bikes.  

(The last dedicated cyclist whom I saw smoking was a guy I met when I was working at American Youth Hostels. Any time we were about to climb a hill, he stopped to smoke.  He claimed that it made the ride up easier.  And it seemed that when we stopped at a deli or cafe, he'd order its most unhealthy sandwich or dish and wash it down with the drink containing the most sugar.)

Of course, given what I've said about blaming women smoking on cycling, it's no surprise that cycling has been blamed for mental illnesses and moral decay--"the erosion of the Christian family," as an example.

Do you know of any other personal or societal maladies that have been blamed on bicycling?

A Bicycle: A Memory Of His Father

Thomas Avenia is often credited, along with a few other people, with keeping the flame of adult cycling alive during its "Dark Ages."  He is also credited, again with a few others, of stoking that flame into the Bike Boom that began in the late 1960s.  Among other things, he--who rode in the six-day races and the Tour of Somerville--was one of the first importers of Campagnolo components, Frejus bicycles and other high-end gear from Europe.

He had a shop in an Italian enclave of East Harlem, New York until the 1980s, when he moved to Stony Point, just south of Bear Mountain in New York state.  I passed that shop a few times and stopped to hear his stories of racing, his old shop, his wife who died half a century earlier and his thoughts about politics and history.  

He lived well into his 90s.  After he died, his grandchildren took over his shop and moved it again--to Haverstraw, a town a few miles down the Hudson River.  One thing I recall about that shop was its "shrine" to Tom, which included the Frejus track bike--with a Mafac front brake--he rode.  To my knowledge, the grandkids didn't ride it:  For one thing they, like most young riders of the time, were mountain bike enthusiasts.  But I think they understood what that bike meant to their grandfather--and people like me, who understand that he is one reason why we have anything that resembles a bicycle culture in some parts of the United States.

Since then, I've wondered how many bicycles have been preserved as momentos, monuments or shrines to their owners.  While Tom's grandkids didn't ride his bike mainly because they rode mountain bikes, I can't help but to think that they saw his Frejus as a kind of relic to be treated with reverence.  When an avid cyclist or collector leaves a bike or a collection behind, what does it mean to whoever receives it?

For a 15-year-old boy in Rochester, Minnesota, the orange-and-black Scott Spark SC 900 bike was not only fun to ride; it was a way he re-connected with his father, who rode and passed it on to him.  Karl Vielhaber passed away on the 13th from a brain tumor that was diagnosed less than a year earlier.  He, his wife Jennifer and kids moved to Rochester from Wisconsin to be closer to the Mayo Clinic.

Last week, she went into their garage, only to discover that the bike was gone.  That meant, not only that the bike was stolen, but that someone had entered the family's property uninvited.

Still, Jennifer insists that if the bike is returned, she will not press charges. Send information to: findkarlsbike@gmail.com.)   She wants, not only the machine itself, but the memories--which include his joy in riding it--it represents for her and her kid.