FLCC
Home Page

In the State of Grace

 Robert Hill

 If the Puritan mind can be characterized as one that finds positive pleasure in the stern self-denial of comfort, a mind in which the hedonistic calculus turns up negative numbers, then the wintertime cycle commuter is doubtless in the purest state of grace — a person either specially demented or specially blest in the way village idiots were once thought specially blest.

 There simply is no convincing rationale in the innermost dialogue of the self with the self which can explain or justify continuing to ride a bicycle through November and into the evil murk of January where no light is given to shine and no flame sent to warm us. Even less can you explain this persistence to another, who may be even unoffically assessing your mental competence.

 Sure, there is the old exercise ploy "Well, I’m just doing it to stay fit," you mutter sheepishly. But if that’s what you’re really doing, there are far more enjoyable, effective, and less dangerous ways to stay fit even if you insist on being out of doors for your exercise — skiing or snowshoing being the usual route to outdoor winter fitness. Except for downhill skiing, which requires optimal conditions of its own, you aren’t propelling yourself fast enough on skis or snowshoes through the muck to counteract the thermogenerative effects of good cardiovascular exercise.

 And when you’re skiing you’re doing it on good clean snow — if there’s mud or water or anything suspicious, you go around it. Your behavior remains in these respects generally reasonable and no one thinks twice about all this. In fact, they tend to believe your explanations even if it’s only to give you the benefit of the doubt.

 Bicycle commuting is a slightly different proposition, however, because even if it’s exercise of sorts it’s not merely exercise. It has besides the practical effect of getting you from one place to another. So it is generally performed under the necessity of having to go somewhere whether you wish to or not, and here is where you can always squeeze in the Green argument.

 Now if you really do it because you don’t own a car, you are more liable to be the object of moral censure than one of a morbid psychiatric curiosity. But if your spouse drives the car to work at the same establishment where you cycle in to work, you are liable to be thought both psychologically morbid and morally bankrupt. Moreover, under these circumstances you are not Green and can’t make the environmental claim that you are lowering the daily quotas of hydrocarbon emissions.

 Here it is in a nutshell — you are compelled to arise earlier than those who drive from similar distances might find necessary, so it is pitch dark when you get up and not much lighter when you set off. You use lights on your bicycle at that hour if you are smart so that motorists, most of whom do in fact live at alarmingly similar distances from your daily destination, can ask themselves, what the hell is that up ahead there?

 In one direction or the other, and sometimes in both, you are riding into the wind. In this wind, on good days, there are driving droplets of rain. On worse days these droplets are sleet. You feel them distinctly. Distinctly.

 Underneath you is slush. If it weren’t slush, it would be ice. Take your pick. (And take your choice.) But when it is slush, it is so because it has been mixed with salt. Your bicycle is probably steel, at least in many of its vital working components. I leave the implications to the reader.

 And when you have finally gone through all this, arrived wet, flushed, warm under your solid rubber rain suit and numb in your extremities, the final insult dawns — no matter how well exercised or environmentally responsible you may be, you are, after all, just at work.

 You must surely be in a state of grace. Otherwise you could explain this to me.