electric bicycles – Little Home In The Valley

We are looking forward to watching the repopulation of the plants in the Black Canyon National Park. Readers will recall that last year there was a significant fire that torched much of the park, and has left us with fewer options on our visits. For instance, the campgrounds are closed, having suffered much damage to structures and campsites. The road down to the canyon floor at East Portal remains closed with no re-opening date set as yet. Concerns about rockslides and mudslides on this steep stretch of highway have kept visitors from having access to the Gunnison River.

But it is the plant life that I am interested in. The Gambel oaks and the serviceberries and the grasses and the lupines and the piñons … what are they going to do this coming Spring? Will they all come back? It’s a hard life for a plant up there, with rocky soil and scant water, even in good times. A story is about to unfold and I am ready to learn from it.

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One for My Baby, by Josh White

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The South Rim of the Black Canyon Nation Park has a single road of about seven miles in length that runs the length of the park. During the cold weather months the road is blocked off from the Visitor Center onward and becomes a cross-country ski trail. Each Spring there is a short period between when the narrow two-lane road is completely free of snow and when it is opened to automobile traffic. If you are lucky and can make it up there during that time, it is a wonderful and dramatic bicycle ride, completely un-bothered by cars. You have the road to yourselves.

You can ride your bikes the rest of the year, of course, but there is little in the way of a shoulder for much of the road, and there are few areas where cars can safely pass you, so they tend to pile up behind your bike and make you nervous. This makes for a lot of getting on and off the highway whenever possible just to let those frustrated drivers get on with their trip.

But that golden window is just about upon us when we have the trifecta of good weather, a dry road, and no cars. Can’t wait.

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Jelly, Jelly, by Josh White

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Robin and I have been using electric bicycles for the past four years, and really enjoy them. I don’t want to overplay the geezer card, but these machines really flatten the hills and enable us to take longer rides than we ordinarily would on non-motorized cycles. They only have two major drawbacks. One is that unless you are able to fork over more than about three grand for a luxo model you will be riding a heavier bike that weighs about 60 pounds or more. The second is that if you really want to cover a lot of ground on your ride you are limited to how far your particular bike will go on the battery’s charge. For the machines that Robin and I are using, the range is around 40 miles, depending on terrain.

The Optibike R22 Everest is presently the e-bike with the longest range, boasting a 300-mile capacity (482 km) via a 3,260Wh dual-battery system. To acquire this technological marvel all you have to do is give the dealer something over $18,900.

I did give it just the briefest consideration but eventually decided against buying one, deciding that it was better for Robin and I to be able to eat.

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Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dyin’ Bed, by Josh White

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Josh White has been a favorite of mine since I was sixteen and first heard him sing One For The Road while I was sitting in my car and gnawing on a bag lunch on the University of Minnesota farm campus. At the time I knew nothing about him and his life, just being entranced by the voice and the guitar. Turns out that he had a fascinating life and played several important roles along the way.

White was in many senses a trailblazer: popular country bluesman in the early 1930s, responsible for introducing a mass white audience to folk-blues in the 1940s, and the first black singer-guitarist to star in Hollywood films and on Broadway. On one hand he was famous for his civil rights songs, which made him a favorite of the Roosevelts, and on the other he was known for his sexy stage persona (a first for a black male artist).

He was the first black singer to give a White House command performance (1941), to perform in previously segregated hotels (1942), to get a million-selling record (“One Meatball”, 1944), and the first to make a solo concert tour of America (1945). He was also the first folk and blues artist to perform in a nightclub, the first to tour internationally, and (along with LeadBelly and Woody Guthrie) the first to be honored with a US postage stamp.

Wikipedia: Josh White

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One Meat Ball, by Josh White

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There is a struggle going on right now between humans trying to do their best and humans doing their worst. The good in us will triumph, I am certain of that, but there will be hardships enough along the way to satisfy the most masochistic. And when those standing for compassion and justice and tolerance once again take the reins those virtues will have their moment for as long as we are willing to fight for them. For as long as we can remember that they are maintained only by constant struggle.

I recall when I first read The Lord of the Rings that at the end there were still bad guys out there, and definite suggestions that they would come out of their hidey-holes one day down the road and mess things up once again. It was part of Tolkien’s genius to see that comfort could be the enemy of vigilance, which always gave evil renewed opportunities.

He didn’t give me the unmitigated hopeful ending that I wanted. It pissed me off. Never mind that this good/evil cycle had already been repeated during my own time on the planet, I wanted the happy ever after. Eventually … but grudgingly … I forgave him for telling me the truth.

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I liked Chris Isaak, even before his video “Wicked Game” came out on VH1 in 1989. He seemed like a good guy, played beautiful guitar and worked with good material. And then Wicked Game came along, and my appreciation of the dramatic possibilities of sand sticking to skin rose to new heights. The video also showed how good a pair of men’s white skivvies could look when worn by the right woman.

Moments like that are why I look back on the MTV era fondly. MTV didn’t invent the music video, but they knew what to do with them and made them the background music for our lives for a few years. And then they stopped showing them and nobody picked up the concept and ran with it after that.

Everything changes. Things arise and things fall. This is the way of the universe. However … I wasn’t done with MTV yet when they quit the scene. It left me with a musicus interruptus sort of feeling.

(Don’t bother looking up that last phrase. It only looks like Latin).

But these creative short films are still out there. You just have to look for them. Being passive and spoon-fed (my favorite approach) doesn’t work as it did in the past. We have to do a little work.

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Note: the dramatic header photograph is not my own, but weakling that I am it was so striking
that I simply couldn’t avoid borrowing it.

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Finally broke out the electric bike. Many, many others with more fortitude than myself have been seen cycling around town since early March, so I am rather late to the party. It’s those chilly breezes that hold me back. But the machine itself needed no encouragement, all I had to do was turn it on and off we went.

Each summer I put about 600 miles on the bike just going to the grocery store and running errands. It replaces the missing second car very nicely. Especially in a country where rain falleth on many fewer days than it did back in South Dakota. Robin and I have panniers to carry stuff on the lighter errands and a Burley Nomad trailer for bigger loads.

We’ve had our Burley trailer for sixteen years now, so I haven’t looked at that market for a long time. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many brands and styles there are to choose from these days. When we picked up ours back in 2009 there might have been three or four brands to choose from, but that limited selection is history.

There are trailers for hauling kids, cargo, dogs, and even stand-up paddleboards. Teensy camper trailers . One-wheelers, two-wheelers, homemade ones … it’s a brave new world out there.

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The presidents of the United States and El Salvador have told us that there is nothing they can do about the innocent man now incarcerated in an El Salvadorean prison.

Do they think that the matter is thus closed? That we will accept this Alice in Wonderland brand of insanity? Are they so dangerously removed from reality?

Who would have thought that we would now have our own version of Los Desaparecidos here in America? If this man is not returned to the United States and freed, we are none of us safe. None of us.

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Mothers of the Disappeared, by U2

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I count myself a lucky man. To have had delivered to my door a problem I can sink my teeth into at this stage of my life. And I have Donald Cluck to thank for it. He has brought fascism home to us, with all of its colorful horrors intact. It is possible that most of the people who voted for him still think he’s a good guy and when the dust settles all will be well. But they are daily being disabused of that quaint notion, because this particular “good guy” has used them to get what he wanted and doesn’t need them any more.

He has taken a functioning economy and thrown it into the Vitamix. Of course there will be a little pain for awhile, he admits, but eventually this will pass and there will be endless possibilities of getting richer ahead of us. What he leaves out is that the pain is to be borne by the 99%, and the increased wealth will go to the 1%. Not a good sound bite, that ending, so he leaves it off.

Like all fascist leaders before him he has employed the tactic of providing us with enemies who are at our doors and who are reaching for our throats. And what an abundance he provides. People of any color other than white. People of any faith other than Christian Nationalism (which isn’t a faith at all). People who won’t do what he tells them when he tells them to do it. People who don’t lick boots or kiss behinds with enough fervor. Facts and truth being inconvenient, he has dispensed with them completely.

So what is my new job? To join with others who see clearly the tragedy unfolding in front of us. To work for the removal of Cluck from office. To work with others to address the injustices and inequalities that allowed someone as unworthy as Cluck to get power in the first place.

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Find the Cost of Freedom, by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

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It was a blue sky day. The temperature was around seventy degrees. The road through the Black Canyon National Park was still closed to automobiles two days ago, while open to bike and foot traffic. Sooooo … I loaded our machines on the rack and off we went.

When we reached the park, we found the road had unfortunately just been opened to cars, but we decided to head out anyway. Shortly thereafter a wind came up, the blue sky disappeared, the temperature dropped 15 degrees, and a light rain set in. When we finally reached the end of the road and our halfway point, we went into the only shelter, an outdoor privy, and stood there for a while to warm up a bit.

The rain finally quit and we returned to the bikes to finish the trip. But, oh what a ride this few miles of highway provides! It’s a narrow two-lane road that twists its way along, with the lip of the dramatic Black Canyon of the Gunnison River just a few yards away much of the time.

Well worth a bit of damp and shiver.

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Ridin’ the Storm Out, by REO Speedwagon

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