Wild Cycling

The wild in the title does not refer to dodging in and out of traffic like a barracuda on crack, but rather opposing the conventional modes of what cycling has become in the bespectacled society, i.e not buying into the fashion apparatus, or the over-securitized one that sees people wearing hi-viz jackets and helmets at all times. As I've said before, these measures, though it may appear counter-intuitive, actually work against you and the planet that we seek to conjoin with. 

The commercial aspects of cycling have gone stratospheric, and I cringe at the clobber out there that does not just cost a fortune for what it is, but which freely advertises corporate brands for which you are not paid. As for helmets, they are just a big con, another turn of the screw that seeks to hermetically seal you behind stuff you do not need. 

Wild cycling, then, is questioning these conventions that serve to package cycling into just another commercial activity, and remembering really what cycling is all about. The 'wild' refers to the thinking behind cycling, not so much to the moving.

If this blog has been about anything, it has been about moving under your own steam, and flying with your own wings. And being responsible. The wheels are your wings. And this is your opportunity to soar and see, and respond. But the more wrapped up you are behind societal pressures, the more you buy into the lure of capitalism that seeks to dislocate and distance you from where you are. And if you don't know where you are, then you really are in trouble.

Yet, we live in a thoroughly domesticated and spoilt society. Globalization has urged us to disregard the local and the familiar in favour of the exotic and the far. We would sooner travel around Asia than our very own country, because of this removal. Cycling (as do most activities and lesiure pursuits) becomes a sport or a weekend activity to help us recover from the week. As such, it is decorated with the usual capitalist paraphernalia: clothing, accessories, gadgets and gizmos... that further remove us from where we are and exacerbate our growing dislocation.

The locomotive and the local are not separate. Wherever we move underneath our own steam, that place is local. It belongs to us as we belong  to it. There is a solidarity here, and a synergy, that reveals environment and organism to be one. We have not allowed our selves to be usurped by a machine that not only divests us of our own potential synergies with our environment, but which pollutes that environment with chemicals and noise, and a general overbearing menace writ large through the scars across our fine lands in the form of carraigeways and motorways.

I guess then this is the crucial difference between what I call wild cycling and the domesticated variety. Wild cycling will help you see cycling as a Way.... not just as a 'means'. The incorporation of cycling into the body at a fundamental level helps one to fly. With the bicycle, as with walking, the feet and one's own propulsion systems, are at the core of our efforts. This not only lessens our impact upon the earth but actually starts to entwine us within it. As impact becomes embrace, the earth and the self become one. Not so for those who have allowed their minds to be domesticated by conventions, and who readily seek out the car as the first port of call for all journeys.

If I have learned anything from 'Life' it is that the natural engine should take precedence over the mechanical engine, and that it is the path of most resistance that leads one to enlightenment.

The wild flower of the hills...

To the Sea: Paisley Canal to Gourock

There's nothing quite like a late winter cycle down to the sea from the city. Especially if it's a beautiful sunny day!

I often think when writing these posts, that the words are perhaps extraneous to the pictures. That the pictures tell all...

Well, let's see....

Bike & Hike : Barrhead to Cessnock via Neilston & Duncarnock Mount

No sooner than I have my new bicycle than I'm off into the hills. Yesterday, I braved the braes of Kilpatrick, today a little more strenuous with a cycle from Barrhead to my gaff in Cessnock via Neilston and a hike up the north face of Duncarnock Mount.

 Follow the red line from Barrhead and then take the orange line towards Neilston...

Way back down into the city is almost entirely through a green corridor passing through 2 country parks and 2 golf courses...

It is the first time I have approached the Mount from this side. Previously I had come from the south and Craigton Farm, but the last time I tried that I found it a bit trying as the farm entrance is a complete mess and it's kind of a longish way round compared to this way.

At any rate, it's an impeccable day in late January, full sunshine, not so much wind, and beautiful blue skies. The approach to the mount is simple enough following the old Gateside Road from Barrhead train station up and down (and up again) to Neilston. From Neilston, we pass its train station and duck into the Old Kirkton Road from where we have spectacular views of the valley to the north and below.

 

 Neilston Pad from the base of Duncarnock Mount.

A little hazy to be sure, but some view nonetheless...

Approaching via Duncarnock Dam. It may look a bit deceiving from here, as in it's miles away or too high, but it's a trick of the eye. From here, it only takes about twenty minutes to walk to the base and get to the top via a sort of well-trampled earthen staircase. This way is short and steep but quick, whereas the Craigton Farm route is longer and flatter, and obviously a lot slower.

Winter Scene. This is where I park my bike before setting off on foot.

On the way back down via Dams & Darnley Country Park, I saw this imaginative use of the litter that peppers this area.

Nipping through a deserted Cowglen Golf Course I saw these two guys enjoying the emptiness...

And then through Pollok Golf Course into Pollok Country Park I saw these two guys coming up the river...


And to think I could've spent the day cooped up inside staring at screens....

New Bike New World

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having a new bike.

Marcel Proust

I think Proust actually said 'new eyes', but for me wheels are eyes, especially if they're powered by your own vital dynamo.

Seeing is a function, after all, of moving. In fact, one might even say that seeing is moving.

At any rate, we are now with bicycle again. I forked out for the same size wheels (29" are so much better for what I do) and same bike (Trek X-Caliber). All I need to do now is get a new saddle and pedals (the saddles and pedals they put on these new bikes are terrible!) and we're back. 

The new bike on the Esplanade at Greenock.

The No-Cycle Cycle: On the Way to Buzzard Mountain

You are always cycling even when you're not on a bicycle...

Which is probably just as well seen as I'm still without bike...

The Hanging Wood

At any rate, from where I live in Ibrox-Cessnock it's no problem at all to get into the Kilpatrick Braes and Hills even without a bike. It takes all of 30 minutes to find myself suddenly surrounded by sea sky and soil, as opposed to sewers, pylons and concrete. Not that I find the city so abominable, but I do find it essential to tap in to real Culture now and then, the sort of culture that nourishes existential and eco-minded growth, that enables a spacious mind and body, that attunes the self to the all...

Where the hills are a place of inter-being (the small self dissipates for there is nothing to reflect it back), the city is emphatically a place of ego and (small) self-centred action.

In terms of spiritual cleansing (an essential task in a world beset by pollution, physical, existential and otherwise), one could do a lot worse than going for a solitary walk (or cycle) in the hills. Indeed, to be in a city like Glasgow, nestling in a valley surrounded by gentle hills, is to be close to the essence of one's self. 

The small self framed by two blades of grass; the wider self on the other hand cannot be framed since it is both immense and thus immeasurable. A selfie in the great existential sense would thus be impossible.

Angelomorphosis amidst the Braes....

A day when you re-cognize your own birdhood, where you inhale the vastness of space open to you, where you can see the sea and the city, is never a day wasted.

The inimitable Scots pine, the Clyde estuary, and in the distance the peak of Corlic Hill above Greenock.

And so it is, a ninety minute ramble in the hills, a ten minute train ride to Yoker, another ten minutes to walk down to the little ferry, and from there, crossing the Ganges, everything is timeless....

Cycling without cycling.... !

26 Cyclists

I love that Glasgow only has 26 cyclists... ;)

When I cycled abroad in cities like Amsterdam and Warsaw, Berlin and Paris, you could not move for cyclists. Cyclist rage was all the rage. In Glasgow, it's the opposite. When you see another cyclist, like a hill-walker seeing another kindred spirit amidst the misty hills, you naturally gravitate towards them, even if that gravity is simply a nod of the head or a swivel of the eyeball...

Maybe it's the hills, Glasgow's glacial past, that keeps them away, keeps them in their tin machines. It's a good thing in my opinion. In the spirit of the Japanese poet Kaneko Mitsuharu whose poem 'Opposition' holds a special place in my soul: to oppose is the only fine thing in life. To oppose is to live. To oppose is to get a grip on the very self.

As soon as everyone starts cycling, I'm going start driving again ;)

Faces

It's really only until you try drawing a face that you realise just what a marvellous enterprise it is. Last year, about this time, I began drawing animal faces, specifically birds, but not with any great detail. This year those 'animal faces' are specifically human...

I recall Picasso writing somewhere that he was always amazed at how a tiny line could express the character of a person. I would go one far and say that I am amazed at how a mere dot can convey not just an expression on someone's face (or indeed a  whole face in itself) but, if you look at with the necessary imaginary distance in between, a galaxy, or if you could sufficiently remove yourself from 'it', the very universe itself. Now isn't that something magic? Or. at the very least, something to perk your curiosity?