The Window onto the World

The sun came out this morning for only the second time this month. I did similarly. Are we not all suns after all, stars that radiate and glow? And so I headed through Pollok Country Park to Pollokshaws train station where I was going to catch the train to Barrhead. But it was cancelled and so being the shamanic cyclist that I am I thought for a moment and headed over to Muirend for the train up to Neilston. It's only a few stops but it is emphatically uphill, and what a view as you approach the terminus. A widescreen window onto the world!

The lovely and peaceful island of Muirend train station. Maybe one day I'll put a book together on Glasgow's idyllic train stations...

Between Patterton and Neilston you have the most exquisite vista onto the Glasgow strath.

From Duncarnock Mount

Duncarnock Mount

Up and Over

There are so many hills in Glasgow and around its periphery (that's what valleys do) that it's not difficult to go 'up and over'. The trick is to find an up and over with a good approach (for me that means about 6-10 miles of flattish car-free path). This means that you are warmed up before you tackle the climb, your limbs are loose and your mind awake. Then I get off the bike and walk! Or 'hike' as the case may be.

Today it was the great tap-route Paisley Canal to Bridge of Weir and then up and over to Kilbarchan and back to Paisley. It's a great release and a great 'feeder' as all tap-roots are. It releases you from your hitherto egofied self whilst feeding you full of freshness and renewal. As far as this is concerned, Glasgow with its myriad hills, outer braes and fells, is a wild cyclist's dream. And if you go up and over as regularly as I do (three times a week), and allow that healing/renewal/freshness to have its way, the wild cyclist soon becomes a cycling saint.

The cycling saint complete with halo ;)

No Arms & One Leg

There are few stories as inspiring as the story of Jose Florian, a former Columbian soldier, who had his arms and a leg blown off by a bomb, and became as a consequence of this and the help and support of so many a paralympic champion and superhero of Columbia. In his own words Florian said:

"In Colombia, people with amputations are called mochos. When I started cycling, I said to myself that if we have heroes like Superman or Batman, why can't I be Mochoman?"

Already an accomplished swimmer and cyclist, Florian calls the bomb that nearly killed him "a gift of life and my second birth".

But I think it's not the bomb but the bicycle that gave him that possibility of renewal. That, and the many people who have tirelessly worked to help him get on it.

Corkerhill to Langbank

 

Ok, so that's us in Paisley and already we've been through the bucolic, the riverine, and the pastoral. The natural spaces between Corkerhill and Paisley are wonderful. There is the White Cart Water at Mosspark running all the way to Paisley and beyond. Here, there is also the wooded Corker hill backlit by the late autumn sun. There is Crookston Castle in there somehwhere too, a 14th century tower house with exceptional views from its turret. Then there are the morning fields of Bathgo Hill, Leverndale Tower, Rosshall Park and its redwoods, Bull Wood and Jenny's Well. We even have some art deco housing too to admire near Hawkhead. All in all, a beautiful path to cycle, which I had almost forgotten because normally I jump the little train from Dumbreck to Paisley Canal (and thus miss out on all this wonder). At any rate, this morning, the train halted at Corkerhill claiming a points problem and would go no further. So, an opportuniity arose...

Approaching Kilmacolm...

Kilmacolm

Cutting up the back road behind Kilmacolm and down to Finlaystone Park which you can then cycle through and out onto the path alongside the motorway which will take you to Langbank train station.

At Langbank train station, finally, they've replaced the decrepit ash tennis court. 

Let Your Legs Breathe!

I once wrote a poem that included the line 'the eyes breathe'. And they do, believe it or not. In fact, the whole body breathes, but you'll only notice this when you start disrobing and taking off the 'proofs' and fancy clothes that prevent you from feeling. Once you get out into the land nakedly you begin to notice strange things about the body. The eyes breathe, the face breathes, the legs breathe. Yet, today, this balmy mid-November morning, I see too many cyclists with long trousers on. I made this mistake myself the other day but realised my error at the train station whereupon I took my trousers off (I had shorts on underneath!). You really feel the difference. It's as if you suddenly have more power inside you because of your nakedness and thus your 'elemental and earthy conviviality'. Trousers are handcuffs for your legs as well as anaesthetizers. Unless it falls below five degrees you should never ever wear them, because legs, like the face, need to breathe.

Biking While Beligerent

This is the summons Alec Baldwin got way back in 2014 when caught cycling the wrong way down a New York street. When officers stopped him and asked him for ID he said he had left it at home whilst asking them if they knew who he was. Instead of answering, they slapped a pair of handcuffs on him for being beligerent and swearing. And I thought, wait till they get a load of me. 

When A Cyclist Indicates When There's No-one Around Does It Still Make A Sound?

You know what I mean. You've done it yourself in a car, indicated when there's no-one around. It should be illegal, should it not? For it says that you're not paying attention to what is around you. Or that you are on auto-pilot, and just do things automatically without thinking.

I just saw a cyclist from my fourth floor window cycling down my empty street indicating left just before he turned into the empty road. The point is not my grumpiness at all things unnecessary but that indicating when there's no-one about demonstrates a brain-wash that mimics similar brain-washes in our wasteful and largely unnecessary society. Automated behaviour mimics the machine and the mechanic, because the machine cannot think. And now I see a cyclist, whose whole raison d'etre is to be aware and to see/hear his circumstances behaving like a dumb car driver (who has more of an excuse because of blind spots and the fact that they cannot hear their surroundings as a cyclist can). Cyclists who seal their ears up with the echo chamber are no better than car drivers at the end of the day. It's like an owl who wears ear plugs voluntarily. In other words, there's some serious brain damage going on. 

So, if you see them, do not indicate, just steer well clear.

The $50K Strait-Jacket

When I slid past this very expensive SUV today stranded at the traffic lights and behind another car, I simply saw the animal in a strait-jacket, albeit a very expensive strait-jacket, that could not fight back against the potential attacker. Except this two-wheeled attacker was not so much attacker as attackee whose life had been endangered just a few seconds beforehand by said SUV and his 'must overtake bicycle' inattentional blindness. As such, it wasn't just my life he endangered, but the oncoming traffic too whose lane he had to occupy for several seconds as he struggled to overtake an already speeding bicycle. So, when I came upon him at the traffic lights, I bitch-slapped him and removed his passenger wing mirror in a moment of Wing-chun beauty. Naturally, being in a strait-jacket, the only thing he could do was honk and fume. And I thought to myself not just what a wonderful world it is when Goliath gets his comeuppance but what a fool you must be to actually buy and wear a strait-jacket no matter how much it costs.

Your Bike Language

We've all heard of body language but what about bike language? Bike language as the language of the body plus bicycle. What does your bike-language say to predators like car drivers? Does it say: Come close, perhaps even hit me, because, look, I'm cycling in at the kerb, I'm wearing safety gear, I'm not using my voice, and I'm not wobbling about? Or does your bike language, like my bike language, roar and shout at potential predators, by behaving accordingly. By not hugging the kerb, by not wearing protective and hi-viz gear, by not cycling straight, and by using my voice a lot. In other words, by being wild. 

What does your bike language say about you? 

Five Million Push-Downs

Your push-ups ain't worth squat if you don't combine it with the push-down. Where push-ups strengthen your core and your upper body the push-down strengthens your heart, your overall cardiovascular system, and your lower body. The push-down in other words comes before the push-up, because if your upper body cannot be lifted by your legs you're in trouble. At any rate, the push-down is of course the pedalling. And so today, au velo, I wondered at how many push-downs I do on an average 'pastoral excursion', and at how many push-downs I may have done in my whole life. I figured five thousand push-downs wouldn't be amiss on an average outing, perhaps more. And then in my total cycling life I may have completed millions of push-downs. But the numbers don't really matter. What matters is the pedalling. And not so much the pushing down but the pushing of your self upwards towards paradise through engaging your own internal engines.

Falling on Your Arse

I don't know how stunt people do it. I really don't. They must have some sort of death wish or something, because it's never a laughing matter 'falling on your arse' or as some prefer to call it 'crashing with style'. There certainly wasn't much style today when I body-slammed a little blue Scottish Gas van whose young overweight driver charged into a roundabout I was haring across. The result had me slamming into his flank whereupon I upended myself and landed on my arse. But I didn't 'land' did I? Chance would have been a fine thing. Instead, I hit the paved road and the tarmac which is not the land. This time I cycled away unbroken though somewhat bruised and accordioned. And I thought to myself: how on Earth do stunt people do it? And then I realised: lots of padding, and by falling on surfaces with give. And, accordingly, by never ever falling on an unforgiving surface like concrete.

Oh, and by the way, if you think I came worse off, you should've seen the van. 

Missing Cat

Up here, cycling through the plateau of nothingness, I saw the note attached to a fencepost, and I almost handed myself in.

The Wild Workout

Wild cycling is a natural workout, a workout like the wild animals workout. Not just in the cardio and cycling/hiking, but in the lifting of the bike over farm gates, and the primal walking through unstandardized (wild) landscapes. This workout works out the mind as well as the body, for they are inseparable. This working out works out the toxins that have infected you down there in the city until you are pure. This purity comes from a 'pouring of the self back into its self and the untamed land'. It comes from the elements and from simply being out 'in the open' and 'in the air'. The universe and the wild itself is a 'pouring of oneness' where everything lives together in Life. When this oneness is no longer poured into Life but into a closet that stifles Life it is no longer the universe that is being poured but an intoxicant. One then becomes intoxicated with one's ego, instead of being amazed at one's universe.

David & Goliath

 It's like that bit in the film where our child hero (moi) scurries into a drainpipe only to have the monster's hand follow her in and chase her until the hand - this clawing claw - is forcibly stopped by its own shoulder. That's what happened to the wild cyclist this morning in that great game called 'Life'. I overtook a monster (a big black Range Rover SUV) as the lights changed, and he did not like it. He pumped his horn to let me know this thus giving me the satisfaction that another elite pollutant had been summarily put in its place. He then hared it after me in spite of endangering other vehicles and pedestrians paying more attention to me (for no more than overtaking him) than he was to the lights at the pedestrian crossing a hundred metres in front of us. No sooner has he passed me than he has to slam his brakes on almost ploughing into the queue of cars at the aforementioned crossing. Naturally, I don't stop (only the stupid stop). As I pass his now stationary vehicle, I hold my right hand out to give his big chunky passenger-side wing mirror a 'wild hand-shake'. The thump is a sound of beauty as its slams off the side window and chassis. I revel in the moment as I sweep through the now green traffic lights, because I know where I'm going. In other words, I know my territory as the wild animal knows its territory. And so I hang a left knowing fine well Goliath is right behind me, fuming. I turn round to see him swing round the corner and race towards me (like a raging idiot with tunnel vision), but I've got another corner I'm about to take  (that leads into a pub car park), at the end of which is a gateway that opens onto the Sustrans cycle path. I make it through the gate just as this bellowing beast reaches me. For a moment I thought he was just going to crash through the gate but that would have meant engaging the brick wall behind it. As I made a ninmety degree turn right onto the path he reversed and roared through the car park in my direction. But the car park has a ten foot wire fence all around it. And so as he reaches the fence and stops he gets out and screams blue murder. But by that time, I'm gone. And I think to myself: this is the pinnacle of wild cycling, putting a beast in its place, and thus worth a full fifty points (the new maximum) in the wild cycling game.

I'm turning left from the main road up by the dry cleaners into this road and haring it downhill before turning left into this pub car park...

He pulled up just short of hitting the wall as I swung a hard left onto the Sustrans cycle path.... leaving him in tatters screaming at the top of his voice....

Another satisfied customer!

The Magic Hours

The wild cyclist exists outside of the normal temporal zone of mere mortals. This is because the wild (cyclist) inhabits life and thus renders it alive. Modern man no longer inhabits life because he has abandoned the wild. And so he becomes mortal, a mortal who is, furthermore, more concerned with time and death than with growth and life. Man thus inhabits a temporal zone that conforms to his newly skewed perspective on life. He believes life to end and thus times his living. The wild cyclist never times life because the wild (or life) can never be never temporal. Eternity is not temporary. Nor is Life. It is like this that the wild cyclist lives by not conforming to a temporal realm that ushers in an industrial system of being that removes the animal from itself. The wild cyclist, rather, inhabits the 'magic hours' and those hours of 'magic', magic from Old Norse magn, power or might, ultimately from the proto-Indo-European root magh- 'to be able, to have power'. This is what happens when you start sourcing your own. Whether that own is your own locomotive powers, your own locating and foraging powers, or your own receiving-perceiving powers, it doesn't really matter. What matters is the original sourcing where one originates life itself by engaging it as Nature intended, not through the machine and the destruction of the wild but through the heart and mind and an embracing of the wild. This aboriginal sourcing and originating leads one back into the cosmos ab origine. One perceives and receives magic everywhere because one now inhabits life and not death. One becomes powerful in one's reception-perception. One no longer inhabits time like man does. One inhabits, rather, the magic hours. And the sorceror within re-awakens. 

Big Mouth Strikes Again: The Art of Swallowing Flies

At least, I hope it was a fly. When it hit the back of my gullett at 60mph (our combined speeds, me flying that way, it flying this way) i thought it was a sting and therefore a bee or a wasp. Yet, this had happened to me once before and I knew that the impact itself of a solid object on a tender surface could feel like a sting. At any rate, last time I coughed the poor little blighter up (what a 'buzzkill' that was!), but this time, in spite of my best efforts, nothing surfaced, except for a mild panic. There was no anaphylactic shock however, my airwaves were still open, I guess it was a fly. Thank God because the idea of performing an auto-tracheotomy on a country lane in the middle of nowhere did not fill me with enthusiasm. And so I downed the rest of my water, shook my (now shower) head, and got back in the saddle. With big mouth now emphatically closed.

Up Behind Barrhead

 What a route! What a root!

Do this often enough and you'll tap into the Earth like a tree. And tree is truth in the Druid tongue, so go figure!

From Barrhead train station take the gateside road for about two hundred metres before veering onto the Hillside Road on the left. You can't miss it. It's the steepest 'street' in Scotland! 800yds later and you're a different person. Take the farm path to the top of the hill just beside the golf course. Then, scoot across a couple of fields to the kissing tree. It's all downhill from here to Paisley Canal train station. But wait awhile. There is spirit up here. Gather it before you leave.

Mr. Motivator: Terry-Thomas

Mr. Motivator is not some spandex-wielding action man doing a hundred squats a minute but a wheelchair-bound, dribbling and drooling, goggle-eyed invalid who cannot do anything for himself any longer and who needs constant attention like a baby. This is your Mr. Motivator, that moves you off your fat ass and gets you moving: this image not of your death (death is nothing) but of your impending decrepitude if you don't look after your body. All anguish and suffering derives from neglect of the essential. That 'essential' is your body, is what you put in that body, and how you move that body. You are not just what and how you eat, you are how you move. When you neglect this 'how' you also neglect your own spirit and it's this spirit that guides your mind which then advises the body. The other day I came across an old Thames Valley news item on the once famous Englishman Terry-Thomas. He was the bumbling Brit with the mobile eyebrows and gap-toothed mouth who starred in such notable films as It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. The article showed him with a few months to live dying from Parkinson's disease. He was unrecognisable as the smiling bumbling fool he had once made his name with. He was also skint and 'living' (actually dying) in a shoddy little bedsit in Surrey being looked after by his loving wife. The scene was grim and it was a far cry from the extravagant Beverly Hills and Balearic island lifestyle he once led. This is the image you look at when you just can't be bothered engaging your engines. The code of the Samurai, the Bushido, states that every samurai warrior should meditate upon death daily, and being ripped apart by the enemy. Mikey's code states similarly, though with one or two minor adjustments: that one should meditate upon decrepitude daily by looking at the last days of Terry-Thomas. It's like a picture of Christ for the inverted.

Baffled

Occasionally, when I'm up in the hills I hear the most god awaful sound coming from down below. No, it's not an eruption of one of Glasgow's volcanic plugs, or a tsunami coming in along the Clyde, but a motorbike (with moron). I wonder when I hear this roar firstly why it is legal (!!!), and secondly of the tye of person that buys these machines (whilst removing the baffler).

A video shown by the BBC some time back showed that a single noisy bike travelling across the city of Paris disturbs more than 11,000 people on its trip. 

So, today, I had a chance to get some payback. Some moron outside my living room window (my top floor living room window) decided in the interests of noising up the neighbours to roar his petite little yellow scooter. I was in the kitchen on the other side of the building but it didn't stop me from jumping and thinking that there was an earthquake going on. I went to the window to see a guy on his scooter taking his time to put his gloves on etc. He was a delivery guy who was obviously delivering something. And he knew what he was doing. I saw about three other curtains move from neighbouring flats, so it wasn't just my hyper acute hearing at work. He saw me looking down with the evil eye, and so he revved his engine and waved. So I went back into the kitchen and took an egg out of the fridge. Just as he was taking off I aimed it at his front wheel. It smashed beautifully on the ground just in front of him. Perfect! He stopped on the corner, got off his little moped, and did a little dance with his phone. 

Direct action! It's the only way to deal with these morons.

And never underestimate the power of a projectile egg ;)

Bucolic

I recall when teaching for the British Council, Warsaw, in one of my advanced English classes, a girl who thanked me because she had learned a new word that day, which I had spoken earlier in the class, that of 'bucolic'. It was the way she said it, as if that had been the only thing she had learned, and yet she was beaming as if she had just found an uncut diamond lying on the classroom floor. 

She repeated the word to me - bucolic, and I smiled, as I had not long learned it myself. It is a marvellous word, is it not? And yet, I never really knew what it meant until I looked it up today and saw that it meant 'shepherd' or 'herdsman'. It derives from Greek boukolikos "pastoral, rustic," from boukolos "cowherd, herdsman," from bous "cow" + -kolos "tending," related to Latin colere "to till (the ground), cultivate, dwell, inhabit". The bucolic then becomes a form of culture and cultivation, where the shepherd leads his self (out of its cocoon).

Indeed, the Scots Gaelic, buchaille, is a mountain in Glencoe that I ascended with my brother Patrick years ago. The buchaille is the herdsman for it leads all others not as wise, not as wily, not as wild. It seems fitting then that as a teacher I should use the word.

Bunching up & The Peloton

The wild cyclist never bunches up into a peloton because he never rides with anyone else least of all a peloton. If the wild cyclist does ride with others then they do as the great migrators do and 'fly in formation'. Yet, flying in a formation on what could well be a dodgy road full of speeding cars can be dangerous. So, the wild cyclist rarely shares his way with predators and 'machines of prey'. There is always a quieter way. Trouble with road cyclists (and human billboards) is that they are beset by speed and distance, and measurement. They are car drivers in other words on bicycles. Which means they behave like car drivers. Which means they 'bunch up' so that they even resemble a car when cycling. The wild cyclist by contrast is a walker on a bicycle. Which means that they behave (and even sometimes look) like a wild animal.

Battle Mode

 BATTLE MODE

The warrior dares to face the only war that is worthwhile: the battle for awareness.

Carlos Castaneda

Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

Carlos Castaneda

I heard a woman cyclist the other day refer to cycling as 'getting into battle mode'. Naturally, she was sharing the road with cars that encouraged this mode of cycling and this battle-ready attitude. As a wild cyclist I have only one mode on my control panel, that of awareness. The dial is pointed to it constantly. To be sure, I am battle-ready, always, but this readiness emerges not out of fear but out of awareness, and heart. Thus, it is awareness that is the real battle. And if you're still sharing your path with cars then maybe you should consider wild cycling as an alternative. That doesn't necessarily mean cycling on pavements but being aware of alternative routes that are safe and (relatively) car-free. After all, the wild cyclist is a true warrior (whose battle is with awareness) and will always choose a path with heart before anything else. As Castaneda writes: 

A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart and  follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs.

Cars Parked on Pavements

Scotland is a special country full of special people. Sometimes this speciality is unavoidable as in when these special people park their special little cars on pavements. As a wild cyclist I often use certain pavements as some roads are just too hairy. I always announce my presence to walkers and pedestrians by voice and/or bell if need be and never have any problems. Except that is when I encounter a car or a van as I did the other day on a pavement right outside my home. Workers (overweight and unhealthy) have a habit of parking on  the wide pavements to save them having to carry tools too far. This means that the access ramp for mobility scooters, wheelchairs, the elderly, and the hard of seeing, is blocked. The group Living Streets has tirelessly campaigned for over ten years to stop this disrespectful behaviour from happening. And they succeeded, God bless them. But it won't stop the law from being implemented until 2023. Which kind of makes you think, who do our cities actually belong to: to its citizens and the people living and working on the frontline, or to the politicians living in their big houses surrounded by their big gates and fences, on their big hills, in the rareified airs? 

Back Track to the Bucolic

This is the finest line I have ever travelled, this little line between Glasgow Central and Paisley Canal, the back track to the bucolic. Not only is it a corridor of a million trees but it has some superb views of the landscape that separates the two cities. And then, if you're like me and jump the train at Dumbreck, a wonderful little platform that no-one uses, you'll find an empty train (most people going to Paisley from Glasgow take the other, less bucolic, line via Cardonald etc.) to sit on with your own bike storage, toilet and coffee table, not to mention those widescreen windows onto the world. It's like your own private TGV. It's amazing. And I ply it regularly down to Paisley Canal where the platform transforms into a cycle path. Talk about your own teleport into the country. You don't have to live in the country when you're privy to such secrets. Because you're already there.

Electric Bikes

 

Electric bikes, where do I start? With car drivers who fancy cycling perhaps? Or with people who think they can cheat their own bodies by pretending to cycle? I'm not a fan in case you didn't notice. Indeed, you should have noticed because that's all I whine on about, is it not, the act of being carried by an energy source that is not your own and which does not arise naturally (like the wind or the wave) but has to be 'manufactured' artificially at great cost to the Earth. Resourcefulness is not about finding a machine that can carry you across the land but about originating your own power source. This means moving without the aid of crutches or prams. But people don't want to put the hard work in anymore. Capitalism and progress has taught them about cheating Nature and about the easy life. This means that people who have been made and fashioned under capitalism will always seek out the easy option, which means car and pram. Ok, so you pedal a little, but what the electric bike avoids is the hard part that edifies the cyclist: cycling into a headwind, and cycling uphill. This is when the electric motor gets automatically switched on. This destroys not just the act of cycling but the act of cycling Glasgow. In fact, it annihilates the hill-strewn hollow that Glasgow is, does it not? As far as this is concerned, electric bikes are much more dangerous than they look.

The Power of Shout

To shout is to shoot and throw out the voice. It is also, if you've ever listened to politicians bickering, to shit. But the wild cyclist doesn't shit like politicians. The wild cyclist shouts as in banging those ear drums that need to be banged. The shout resonates. The shout is actually the lion roaring. It is a spontaneous and natural reaction to being threatened. To the great sedated however the shout is against the tranquilizing protocols that they run on. The shout upsets their dominating and rapacious worldview. And car-drivers never like to be reminded that their shitting all over the Earth, and that they, along with their rapacious pollutive behaviour, are part of the problem. For a cyclist to shout at a car driver (when said car driver attempts a manoeuvre that de-serves the shout) or a dog-walker for using a five metre leash that screams 'I don't care about anyone other than myself' is a conscientious act. It re-minds people that their behaviour is not acceptable and that they'll get 'shot' when it occurs in my vicinity. It reminds people also that there are others out here that do not subscribe to the rapacious and prammed (eco-existentially deported) worldview. To shout, then, is to shame those needing to be shamed. And let's face it, car drivers and dog-walkers, as those who like to pollute, disembody, and dominate, as those who do not even know what they're doing anymore, need the shaming.

The Infollowability of the Cyclist

This is another reason to cycle. No-one can follow you. Why? Because everyone else drives (is prammed by a pollutant), and cars (toxic boxes), in case you haven't realised already, are not bicycles. They do not  possess their slender lightweight form and thus cannot mount kerbs, do instant u-turns, or nip through tight lanes and pathways. The car is thus a dud when it comes to agility and nimbleness. It is also, because of its uselessness at following (and thus tracking), a dud as a hunter, which means it is also a dud as a wild animal. And if you're not a wild animal, what the hell are you?

Backing Your Bike: The Portage

For the wild cyclist, opportunity abounds. Nothing can stop the wild animal from crossing a landscape no matter how high their fences and barriers. This is because the wild cyclist is wild and does not conform to the dangerous domesticity and obedience that most people are embroiled in. The wild cyclist moreover, such is his depth of local territorial knowledge, knows of portals and portages which can propel him into another realm. Every watery landscape has portages. In Gaelic this portage is called a 'tarbert' and all around Scotland there are several places that refer to this directly. This means that in the past Vikings had lifted their longboats, Fitzcarraldo-like, over the dry land that lay between two bodies of water. With the wild cyclist as opposed to the wild Viking, the  boat is the bike and the bodies of water are paths and cyclable terrain. This is part of the reason why the wild cyclist (and Viking) is wild: because no barrier can stop him, not waterlessness for a boat nor landlessness for a bike. To be sure, I have carried my bike across and through rivers and streams, but I have also backed my bike across boggy moorland and spongy terrains. Here, I am not just carrying my bike but backing it as in, literally, throwing it on my back, but also as in reciprocating the generosity of said bike: it carries me, so surely I should return the favour once in a while by carrying it. This is one of the defining characteristics of the wild cyclist: that he is not compelled to always cycle but to employ a wide variety of movements (that, together, constitute the 'opera'). In a healthy universe where opposites no longer oppose but conjoin, the not cycling is all part of the cycling, is it not?

Mr Benn's Stage Door

Imagine you lived in a city that had a 'stage door' that opened up straight into space. Imagine living in London, and going through this door and ending up in full country. It would be a miracle right? Yet, in Glasgow and Paisley, two cities that I ply between regularly, we have those doors into the infinite. They're called canal towpaths and sustrans cycleways and they reach, like God's green fingers themselves, right into the very heart of both cities. So, when I arrived at Paisley Canal by train this morning, Mr Benn's stage door was actually on the platform. And when I passed through it, cycling through a bucolic overgrown corridor of wildflowers several kilometres long, I emerged into full country. And became not someone different, as in some fantastical character in a costume, but, cleansed of the claptrap of the city, who I have always been.

The Seaside

This morning on the train a mother and her child going to the seaside. And it is the seaside down here at Cardross, Craigendoran, and Helensburgh. All it takes is thirty minutes on the train to get to Cardross from Partick. And the view from the window is spectacular: the hills, the ever-widening estuary, the massive Erskine suspension bridge, Bowling harbour with its sunken ships, the sands, etc etc. And then, in no time at all, you are at Cardross station which is practically on the beach. The smell alone of seaweed and sea should remind you of holidays as a child. It is a spectacular moment getting off the train at Cardross and cycling up to the main road. Turning right and heading past the golf club and the bombed out church we turn left into Carman Road, a beautiful moor road that takes us up through some wonderful sun-dapple and some wonderful trees. At the top, Carman Hill is waiting for us, so I tie the hoss up and set off on foot for the humble summit. And then there is the way back, down the road to Renton and along the wonderful sustrans path to Dumbarton and its seagulls. Here you can see some sights or just continue along the path towards Bowling, Kilpatrick, Dalmuir... and eventually Partick (where we started). Or you can just jump a train at any one of these stations along the way harvesting those endorphins that you have just 'grown'. No year should ever be complete without a trip to the seaside. 

Catcalling Car Drivers

Whilst on my bicycle I have never been shouted at for looking beautiful. Sure, I have been shouted at, but not for that. So, I don't really understand what it must be like to be a woman (a beautiful woman no less) on a bicycle being harrassed by ogling car drivers. But I have a good imagination so I can imagine. And it would irritate me, (this is not a one off event sadly), to the point where I might have to catch up with said car driver and give them a piece of my mind. Which is what one woman did the other day when a passing landrover driver made some crude remark about her cycling. She caught up with the corpulent oaf, took her camera out, and gave him a piece of her mind. Yet, when asked to repeat the remark he did so quite the thing from the safety of his carapace. Which is why when I give car drivers a piece of my mind, it usually involves a detached wing mirror. Don't lower yourself to their level. Never stop. Just keep on moving. Just keep on breathing. And while you're at it, take that wing mirror with you.

The Bus Driver Who Thought He Was On A Bicycle

I've seen a lot of things from the seat of my bicycle. This is the beauty of cycling: seeing and hearing, and being out in the open. It makes people who are not out in the open, who are not seeing and hearing (anything except their own noise and pollution), extremely jealous. This is the real reason why car drivers and their ilk get irritated at cyclists. Because they realise if only subconsciously, in the face of the freedom a cyclist demonstrates, that they are slaves to a filth and unfreedom that puts them in a gas chamber that then carries them across the now paved and vivisectioned land. They also realise, car-drivers, confronted by the fluency of the cyclist, that they are slaves to stopping (and thus stupidity) and the dreaded red light. This is because they have divested their selves of their heart and body, and allowed a pollutant to stretcher it as if it were dead. And of course when you welcome the attributes of death into your bodymind you welcome death itself. Which is why they have to follow the rules so strictly. Because they are not really alive (awake or aware), and this lack of aliveness confers a blindness upon the bodymind. Which is why they have to stop all the time: to get their bearings like a blind person. And this annoys them. So much so that in certain cases, like the McGill's 21 bus to Erskine the other day, the driver decides to take off when the light is still red, simply to prevent me (whom he has caught sight of in his rear view mirror) from overtaking his stationary vehicle and propping myself, as the cycle stencil at the traffic lights indicates, at the head of the queue. This is a dangerous thing to do when you're on a main road in an articulated bus with passengers in your care. You are not a bicycle with all the sensory openness and lack of baggage that cycling entails. But maybe, this bus driver has spent too long in his toxic cockpit, abandoning his heart to a filthy machine, slowly falling asleep cognitively as well as physically and spiritually. All the more reason perhaps to dream of being a bicycle.

The Stupidity Olympics

Panta Rhei You really have to make an effort to be this stupid, to be this stupefied. I am of course talking about the plague of phone-starers I encounter whilst out cycling. It seems that people just cannot leave this thing alone, that they are indeed addicted to this device and what it does to their brains. And this may well be the crux of the matter: that phone-staring as a form of stupefaction and thus stopping (of the natural flow of brain) is actually a pernicious and extremely addictive drug. Indeed, the whole point of a drug is to mesmerize and 'stop' that which has been causing you pain or anguish. As far as this is concerned the modern internetted phone is to the mind what the car is to the body. Where the car prevents the heart from engaging and the body from bodying, the phone prevents the mind from engaging (as undistracted conscious awareness) and from minding. The mind, like the stretchered body, thus deteriorates as it is mesmerized and carried by others. It is like this that mindlessness and dementia soon become par for the course. Phone-staring however is not the only stopping-stupefying device around. Society, under capitalism, is replete with stopping devices and behaviours that halt your conscious awareness and thus mesmerize. Sitting in front of a TV for example is a great example of stopping and being stupefied simultaneously. Car-drivers need only look at a red-light to realise how much they have compromised the natural flow of things. Meat-eaters, similarly, are stopped through indulgence (and the mesmerism of 'taste') if not the actual meat itself which plays havoc with the brain, the digestive system and the body in general. Then we have the mesmerism of fashion and its ability to stop the aboriginal self in its tracks, not to mention the mesmerism of adverts, movies, music, and western culture in general. So, we're up against it in a society and economic model that seeks to get you to consume (the non-essential) through mesmerising you first. This is what mesmerism is, essentially: a form of stopping (of the flow of conscious awareness) by highlighting a peculiar and particular 'object', and thus the stupefaction of mind. It is here, in this gap between Being, where stupidity manifests itself.

Life & Death

Life is spontaneity and response. It is self-renewal and self-cleansing. Life serves Nature and Nature serves Life. If you do not serve Nature, if you do not submit to Nature's imperatives, then you are a servant not of Nature (and thus your Self) but a slave to the anti-natural, the industrial, and the filthy. That means you are not spontaneous or responsive, that you are neither self-renewing or self-cleansing. Which means you're getting old (and dying), not living.

Dying for a Living

It pains me to see the bomb-suited and helmetted on a beautifully warm spring day like this. Construction workers have a hard time of it dressed in all that gear driving their little tonka trucks. I say this as I cycle past the idyllic little village of Brookfield where they are finally tearing down a dilapidated old garage. I see fat men in orange jump suits, fat men in helmets, fat men in tonka trucks. Fat men, moreover, whose almost blue skin suggests they have been raised in a dungeon and have never actually seen the light of day except through the filter of the bombsuit, the helmet, and the truck windscreen. I think to myself if that's what their bodies look like God help their minds. As I cycle onwards into the fresh bucolic countryside, I am aware that I am working too, pumping these pedals, propelling forwards under my own steam. Yet, my work and their work could not be more different. On the one hand you have the self-renewing self-cleansing power of the natural and aboriginal - the locomotive kinetic body - whilst on the other you have the self-depleting power of the outsourced body relying on power tools (that defile the environment) and a spurious 'technology' that weakens the body and renders it progressively unclean. So, whilst both activities may be seen as work, only one of them really is. Work, that is, as a natural self-cleansing activity that edifies and grows, and demands your attention, your muscles, and your presence. In the natural indigenous locomotive realm, it is better to work naturally and aboriginally for nothing than to toil at a task that depletes you, for millions.

The Myth of Sisyphus

The myth of Sisyphus was that he pushed a 'boulder' to the top of that hill when all along it was just his bicycle.

The Haircut & The Convertible

I recall many moons ago reading (and chortling at) the tales of a Glaswegian bus driver in The Blood Bus, about the various encounters he had with Glasgow's bus-riding brigade. Well, just call me The Blood Bike not just because it's the best way to get your blood moving but also because like the blood bus driver anyone that behaves like a moron on my watch woe betide them. Like the haircut driving his fancy black convertible at top speed through the pastoral country lanes of East Renfrewshire this morning. The wild cyclist does not tolerate such behaviour especially when they refuse to slow down when they see you approaching. These roads up here are unmarked for the most part and not much bigger than a single track road so when I see muppets hairing it towards me I do something that only a dedicated wild cyclist practitioner should do, that is, pull out into the middle of the road, preventing him from passing you and thereby forcing him to slow down. Call it my pastoral duty. So when I did today, this particular haircut (he looked like a football star out for his morning coiffeure) presumably thought I wanted his autograph or something because he slowed down with a smile. Maybe he thought I recognised the car. But when the penny dropped (I never stopped but continued onwards past his haircut and, by now, almost stationary vehicle) and he realised I was simply forcing him to slow down, it was too late. The wide awake cyclist had put the half-witted car driver in his place once again. And for that, he claimed twenty five points in the wild cycling game, (and another ten for getting the haircut to holler what cannot be printed here).

Stopping & Stopidity

To stop is to be stupid. To stop is to become a stopper, not a 'gob-stopper', but a 'life-stopper', an 'aliveness-stopper', a 'flow-stopper'. To stop is to be stupid. It's that simple. Look at the words. They're almost the same. And yet.

Etymologically, the word stop derives from vulgar Latin stuppare, to stop or stuff with tow or oakum, from Latin stuppa, 'coarse part of flax, tow'. This tow was used to make plugs that could then be used to seal leaks, to stop up drainage, to close eardrums.

This may explain why car drivers are so dumb, and why (wild) cyclists and walkers by contrast are so ingenious and alive in comparison, because of stopping and not stopping (otherwise known as flowing). The car driver stops where the wild cyclist/walker flows. One is thus cosmic whilst the other is anti-cosmic.

This anti-cosmos manifests itself in a loss of original continuity. To be sure, animals and the wild often come to a standstill - forests have been known to freeze - but they never stop flowing beneath this seeming stasis. Man, on the other hand, because he has aligned his self with the industrial, and with the machine, stops. This is your clue to 'Technology' and what is true techne-logos : the capacity and capability to continue flowing in spite of breakdowns. This is how you find out if your technology is true technology or false technology: true technology never stops, it never breaks down, it never conks out. Sure, it can have the odd mishap, say in the instance of a broken arm or a lost eye, but that mishap begins mending itself and regenerating immediately. If it can't regenerate then other organs will compensate for this. And if it can't compensate it will reconfigure. This is the essence of technology: always going and accordingly, never stopping.

To stop is to be stupid.

Skylark Dial-Up

No, it's not Vaughn Williams' old internet service provider, but the sound of the animal, in this case the skylark, connecting with the universe. If you listen to this wonderful little bird you might think as I did this morning, up atop the Kilpatrick Braes, that it's your old NTL dial-up modem going mental. That, or your ZX Spectrum loading another overworked TDK D-90 cassette. But is that not what this little guy is doing: loading? In the form of downloading, uploading, breathing, and communicating. Is not the skylark, like every other creature on this planet, a 'modem' that facilitates a connection to an 'internet' and a cosmic web? Is not their song then the act of dialing up to the web? Which begs the question: should we not all, humans especially, be learning to sing as these skylarks do, communicating only the essential through our own technology? And dialling up to the great web of Life, skylark-like?

Into the Wilderness

Glasgow is fortunate in many respects in being a valley. This means of course that there are hills on all sides, hills that due to their awkward misshapen nature are difficult to build on. And where there is an absence of buildings there is generally a profusion of Nature and of wilderness. Take this morning for example, jumping with bike onto the 11.14 to Milngavie from Partick. Arriving at Milngavie at 11.30 I head up to Mugdock village a couple of miles away (and, more importantly, a couple of hundred metres up). It's a great start that opens up the valves so by the time you're up in Mugdock you might as well be flying for that ecstatic release that hill-cycing enables. And we are flying because it's all downhill along the Old Mugdock Road down to Strathblane. Here, we avoid the main road and take the path that leads round behind the road beside the Blane Water. To the left we have the precipitous Cuilt Brae and its woods and to the right we have the great mesa of the Campsie Fells and the Strathblane Hills. We are within a valley within a valley. In short, we are in the wilderness if you can excuse the odd visual of Blanefield's housing. Exiting onto the Blanefield Road, we rise with the land up again towards Carbeth where we join the WHW and head towards Mugdock Wood. Down and through the wood we are ejected onto the road we started on. Another five minutes and we're back at the train station. I haven't rushed or hurried at all during my cycle, quite the opposite, I got off two or three times to walk. I feel as if I have been injected with a serum that immunizes me against the horseshit down there in the city. I almost float as I get onto the train. The journey took 70 minutes, the train both ways half an hour. So, there you have it, in the space of a shit film, a trip into the wilderness and back. There ain't many major cities that can boast such sanctifying and savage proximity.

 

 

 

The red dotted path near coffee stain at top of map is the one to take instead of the main roadto Blanefield. When you come down the Old Mugdock Road you will see the Co-op at the bottom. Turn left (not right) at the junction and this will take you onto the red dotted path which will deposit you onto the Blanefield Road without so much as a car in sight.

Buzzkill

I stumbled upon Sylvester Stallone the other day working out isometrically. This means at the age of seventy five he has finally come round to the idea that lifting weights is not entirely a good thing for the bones and joints. Things start seizing up when you get old he says as if we didn't know. At any rate, the Italian stallion is a figure to behold midway through his eighth decade here on Earth. He now works out with rubber bands (by the looks of it on the coast in front of the ocean), stretching his way to fitness and health. 'Boredom is a buzzkill' he says when referring to gyms and the repetitive act of weightlifting or treadmilling. Which is why I cycle round the strath, and gave up gyms about ten years ago. Because when you're out in the open naturally, the exercise never seems like exercise, it never imposes itself upon you like it does in a gym. Wild cycling means you're fluid and always going somewhere in the open which means you never focus on the exercise itself. There are other things that require your attention other than  the size of your biceps. Nature enters the fray, whether it be the spray off the ocean, or that kestrel over there that thinks it can outfly me. The wind, the rain, the cloud cover, the sun, are all also present. Naturally. The variety of topography is also felt as one cycles through it. There is real diversity in the open. The buzzkill thus never enters. Boredom has never reared its head in the forty odd years that I've been on my bicycle. Which means my buzz has never been killed. And the buzz, as all wild animals will tell you, is everything.  

 

 

Ecstasy in the Snow

It doesn't take long to get up into the beyond. About half an hour from where I live in Cessnock with bike and train (to Kilpatrick). And that train is simply wonderful for its emptiness, its comfort, and its rapidity. This morning it was the 11.19 Helensburgh Express which deposited me at Dalmuir some ten minutes later having bulleted through the suburbs without me even noticing them. Ten minutes on a train is just enough to get the flask out and enjoy some of that hot lava java. Passing Clydebank I see a couple of rooftop pigeons flying and fluttering, and I realise (as I do every time I see wild animals) that ecstasy is your natural aboriginal condition. Man, having closetted his consciousness, has relieved his self of that natural ecstasy and has to go in search for it instead. The pigeons by contrast have never sold their selves out therefore they inhabit ecstasy. Man no longer moves but is carried (by machines and ideologies) and is thus de-ecstasized. His consciouness becomes removed from its natural condition, that of ecstasy, because he himself (his body and mind) has been re-moved. The pigeons on the other hand have not been removed from anything least of all their own aboriginal operating system. And so they inhabit ecstasy. And it was this fleeting ecstasy that I saw when I saw these two pigeons at Clydebank. Moreover, about half an hour later, having braved the 'hard to kill hill', I myself became a pigeon.