Geared Up

But not everyone is wedded to the car. Some use it to drive out to the countryside in order to ride. Others are gearheads who fall in love with every latest bike innovation; or eco-freaks who detest cars; or those shredders of mountain terrain, the off-road recreationers; or samurai couriers; or sleek, Lycra-sheathed road racers; or hybrid aficionados; or advocates knocking on city hall doors, protesting the bike’s lowly status in the transportation hierarchy; or those polyamorous swingers of sport, the triathletes. Or simply speed demons: on a bike, you feel the acceleration, not like in cars these days, which are smooth and quiet, and where the difference between 50 and 80 or, on the highway, between 100 and 140, is observed on the dashboard rather than felt in the gut. I’ve often wondered where I fit in.

I ride to work, the dvd shop, the fruit and vegetable stand, the theatre, the mall, a gig, the bar, the bank machine. It seems the practical, economical thing to do. I’m not against cars. I own one — a beat-up 1991 Buick Regal my dad sold me at a price only a parent would set — but I prefer not to use it. I didn’t bother learning to drive until I was twenty-three.

I started riding to school in grade two. While my high school classmates parked their rides in the lot, I locked my ten-speed to a post. After grade thirteen, I mailed my Chiorda to Banff. I rode it through an undergraduate degree in Calgary, weather permitting. Then, during my second year of graduate school at Waterloo, a woman driving a compact delivered a right hook. That’s when a car zooms ahead of you, then slows down and hangs a right, unaware of your velocity. I bounced off her passenger door, and typed my master’s thesis with a broken right hand. Now I pedal from my home near High Park to work at Ryerson University downtown. Except in snowstorms, it takes about twenty-five minutes.

Without the bike, maybe I’d be less ponderous, wouldn’t have two degrees in philosophy, would’ve made good on my childhood fantasies of owning a hot car like Steve McQueen’s green Mustang in Bullitt, I think. But I didn’t, and I’m happy with the level of freedom (and speed) my bike affords me. The novelist Henry Miller considered his bike his best friend. “I could rely on it,” he wrote, “which is more than I could say about my buddies.” Maybe I’m like him; maybe that’s just pretentious, if not ponderous.

It turns out I’m not part of any visible biking subculture. Rather, I’m part of a culture hidden in broad daylight: a utilitarian rider, according to a recent academic taxonomy of Canadian cycling types. Unfortunately, even with new bike lanes coming on stream, Canadian cities aren’t built for riders, utilitarian or otherwise. We manage by slipping through the cracks in the urban bustle, finding the seam, whether through a traffic jam or in a designated lane. Still, the act of riding encases us in a protective fantasy. With one push of the pedal, the rider is bombing around the neighbourhood — ignoring the dull parade of adult duties, full of youthful optimism, insulated from the stultifying conformity of public transportation, the headaches of car ownership, the myriad rules awaiting any adult who steps outside the front door. On a bike, each directional choice is active, not passive, and something forbidden nearly always lies beneath. Each decision creates the possibility of finding the next secret route, riding the wrong way, negotiating a sidewalk, or slithering between cars jammed in like sardines, waiting for the go signal. And there is danger. If Icarus’s tragic flaw was flying too close to the sun, the rider’s is brushing too close to a car.

For all the chances riding creates to break society’s countless rules — and infuriate drivers — there is a sense of beauty and formalism to it. Even at high speed, riding is ruminative, allowing for brain activity not possible when hoofing around a track, flailing sweat from a running machine, or in the confines of a four-wheeled exoskeleton. Bikes don’t fit into society’s grand scheme of civility. They are everywhere and nowhere, attach themselves to fences and posts, don’t pay taxes or obey the rules of the road. To ride is to transcend quotidian reality, but also to manage the fear of getting hit. On this, the rider’s life depends.


the thirteenth rider

November 14, 1992, a sunny, brisk Saturday morning, around 10 a.m., and thirteen members of the London Centennial Wheelers cycling club pass through Delaware, Ontario. They hang a right out of town and remain on Highway 2, falling once again into a tight double-file formation. The route is a club favourite. They’ll most likely head to Mount Brydges, cutting north across Regional Road 81, and stop at the Korner Kafe family restaurant. They may wolf down eggs and coffee before passing through Komoka. Eventually, the seventy-four-kilometre run will wind through Springbank Park in southwest London, where the club hosts its prestigious Springbank Road Races each May. The event has been won by Steve Bauer and Jocelyn Lovell, among other cycling luminaries.

The club congregates at Victoria Park in London every Saturday morning, usually at 8 a.m. (an hour later in the fall). Sometimes they ride in two groups. One of the riders, renowned artist Greg Curnoe, nicknames them “the Hammerheads” and “the Loquacious.” Hammerheads are competitive, maintaining a touring speed of thirty-five kilometres an hour — not quite road-racing speed, but a tough pace nonetheless. The Loquacious group cruises at just under thirty kilometres an hour and indulges in lively debate, something the contrarian and opinionated Curnoe loves.

This time around, there is only one peloton, or platoon of riders. Even though the temperature struggles to attain the freezing mark, a few wear little more than their official club jerseys. Curnoe’s chosen colour scheme — bright yellow with green, orange, and grey stripes — was inspired by his love of reggae. The back riders take advantage of the slipstream the peloton creates. Curnoe, who rode lead until Delaware, drops to the rear and takes a break.

About 300 metres beyond the Highway 402 overpass, the two-lane road cuts across a farm country panorama. Ahead is an elongated incline that requires extra exertion. The landscape to the south gives way to pasture, but the grasslands are submerged in a metre of water and look like a small lake. The riders have never seen such massive flooding here before. The dilapidated, weather-beaten grey barn up ahead appears to be floating on a bright reflection.

As the Wheelers approach the barn, Roger Williams exits onto Highway 2 from Barrie and heads west in his pickup truck. He accelerates to a cruising speed of around eighty kilometres an hour and comes upon the Magritte-style vision of the floating barn. He can’t take his eyes off it.

Thud! Something hits the truck. Smacks the windshield. Shatters the reinforced glass.

The windshield holds together but turns opaque, and Williams can’t see.

Thud! Another smack on the windshield.