Anise Swallowtail Caterpillar

Anise Swallowtail in the making.

Crowded

I heard there were some 600 balloons registered for the fiesta. I have not heard exactly how many went up yesterday, nor how many people attended. I did hear that there were some 25,000 cars in the parking lot at some time during the morning.
The morning was perfect, but the afternoon turned into a sand storm with lots of wind, followed by a rain that kept the balloons from doing the evening balloon glow, and then a harder rain during the night, (we had 1 and a half inches in our rain gage) caused a cancellation in this mornings mass ascension. But I heard the this evening the balloon glow was supposed to go. So if you don't like crowds don't go.

Did Not Wearing a Helmet Save Gene Hackman's Life?

film still via the gothamist

As some may know, 81-year-old actor Gene Hackman was hit by a truck while riding his bicycle in Florida last week. As the media has made a point to note again and again and again, Mr. Hackman was not wearing a helmet during the incident. It is now known that Mr. Hackman has survived the collision.



So... Does this mean that not wearing a helmet saved Gene Hackman's life?



Don't answer that, I know what you are going to say: My God, of course not. That would be absurd. What an insane conclusion. Right? Well, don't worry, I agree. Of course the fact that a helmetless cyclist survived a collision does not mean that this favourable outcome resulted from them not having worn a helmet. An accurate way to describe the situation is that the two facts coincided: He was not wearing a helmet, and he survived the collision. As everyone who has studies the scientific method or statistic knows, correlation does not imply causation.



I am glad we are on the same page now about the absurdity of implying that Gene Hackman's lack of helmet saved his life. Because if you agree about this, then surely you will see the double-standard of finding it entirely logical when helmeted cyclists who survive collisions report that wearing a helmet saved their life. It is a powerful emotional argument, but logically, statistically, and scientifically, it is erroneous for the same reasons it would be erroneous to say that not wearing a helmet saved Gene Hackman's life. If a cyclist wears a helmet and they emerge from a collision alive, that implies correlation, not causation.



Bicycle helmets have some protective properties under some conditions, but these properties are limited and do not extend to colliding with moving motor vehicles. Bicycle helmets also have some drawbacks, including their ability to cause rotational injuries. After reading lots and lots and lots of studies (the studies themselves, and not the media's digested, distorted, misquoted and sensetionalised versions of the studies), I believe that the evidence pertaining to bicycle helmet effectiveness is mixed and inconclusive. And this is talking about effectiveness itself, without even delving to the larger, social implications of the helmet debate. We are all scared of getting hurt while riding our bikes, and we would all like there to be a magic device or talisman that makes cycling safe. But it is erroneous and even dangerous to over-attribute protective qualities to the bicycle helmet. Personal accounts of surviving collisions are tremendously affecting, both for the person recounting their experience and for the listener or reader. And I by no means wish to undermine these accounts. But it is also important to recognise that as human beings, we are "wired" to be more susceptible to affecting narratives. Things that are not in fact logical make sense to us under emotionally charged conditions, and "a helmet saved my life" is a textbook example of that.



Be angry at me if you must for the title of this post and the things I write here. But also try to understand my point. Accepting emotional, subjective beliefs as evidence does not actually contribute to safety. It only contributes to a false sense of security, to hysteria, to witch hunts, and to the media now making it a point to state whether a cyclist hit by a motor vehicle was wearing a helmet or not, thus normalising the "blame the victim" mentality in reports of cyclist deaths and injuries. How did we let this happen? That is something we ought to think about very carefully.

The 'Thanking Your Bicycle' Give-Away!

Have you thanked your bicycle lately? Just think of all the wonderful things our velocipedian friends have done for us! Surely they deserve a little thanks?To inspire you, I have prepared a little give-away for the Thanksgiving holiday.



As a small "thank you" to my readers, I will be giving away a hand-knitted"cycling hat" - made especially for the recipient, in their size. The hat will be 100% wool - a soft wool that feels nice against your skin, densely knitted to protect against the wind. The shape is as pictured above and also here. It covers the ears, and can either be worn on its own or (and I am 98% sure about this) will fit under a helmet. The pattern will be stripey - using whatever colours spontaneously come to mind out of what I have available. If the recipient is male, I can make "manly coloured" stripes as well. And if you hate a particular colour, you can request that I not include it. The finishing at the top of the hat is as shown in the picture above. Just a simple, fun and (hopefully) useful hat, custom made for you by me.



If you would like to be considered for the "Thanking Your Bicycle Give-Away," here are the guidelines:

Please write a thank you note to your bicycle in the "Remarks" section of this post.

Description of your bicycle and a links to pictures are a bonus, but not required.

If you have multiple bicycles, multiple entries are eligible. One entry per bicycle.

Entries should be posted between the start of Wednesday, November 24th and the end of Friday, November 26th.

International entriesare eligible from all corners of the world with reliably functional postal systems.

Shipping will be taken care of.

Recipient will be announced Sunday, November 28th.

Thank you for reading Lovely Bicycle, and enjoy!

Swineshead - Riseley - Keysoe - S'head

Led by Barry. With Gordon, Eddie, Maureen and me. Not so cold as Monday, but the wind was cold. Muddy fields made it feel like rather more than the ten miles recorded on my magic machine.









We parked in Swineshead, a pretty village with some very old buildings – cruck-framed? Timbered houses and barns.We walked up the street and took a footpath to the left into a field of sheep, which looked as though they expected something of us – they were to be disappointed.













to be completed

Birthday Presents

The kittens decided to check out my birthday presents.

Still a Lot of Lands to See...

I have been afraid to write about this, because then it would become real... But this morning I've been listening to Joni Mitchell for inspiration, determined to finally do it. So here it is: in the end of March I am going to Death Valley in California for a bit of bicycle riding. Chris Kostman of AdventureCORPS has invited me to a couple of events that he organises: a century ride called the Hell's Gate Hundred, preceded by 5 days of cycling, hiking and yoga that is known asCORPSCamp.




I have never been to Death Valley, or to California before. And these events will be like nothing I've ever done previously. I will probably fail at them terribly, but I want to try anyway. The reason goes back to my trip to Interbike in Las Vegas last September.






I met many interesting people at Interbike. Some were sponsors with whom I've hitherto only had email contact, and Chris Kostman was among them. Describing Chris is a challenge, because "on paper" I knew of him as an athlete (the youngest to complete the Race Across America at age 20, he finished 9th). But when we met in person it was so removed from that, that I had a difficult time even picturing him on a bike. In fact I'd wanted to photograph and write about him back in September, but all the pictures came out looking like a GAP commercial, it was no good! An endurance cyclist since his teenage years, for decades Chris has been racing and competing in endurance events, and was even part of Team Bridgestone in the early '90s. Somewhere down the line he founded AdventureCORPS and now organises well known "ultra-cycling" events such as theFurnace Creek 508, as well as various century and double-century rides and cycling camps.




Reading about these things, as well as Chris's many articles on training and nutrition, one gets the sense that this is a person who lives and breathes sport and spends most of his waking hours training. I was almost nervous to meet him. Would he make me do push-ups as we chatted? Turns out we had a lot to talk about. Chris is alarmingly intelligent, and one of those people who is interested in everything - soaking up knowledge like a sponge and sharing it freely with others. Since I started roadcycling, he has given me valuable advice and has opened up my mind about the place cycling can have in my life.He also sparked my interest in the desert landscape.





Interbike was overwhelmingly hectic, and after taking pictures of bicycles non-stop as I walked around the huge showrooms for hours,I was exhausted. Still, when Chris offered to show me Red Rock Canyon outside Las Vegas on my last day there, I dragged myself out of bed early and, with a migraine and eyes half closed, grabbed my camera bag and made it into his time-traveling car. The only desert I'd seen before had been in the Middle East, and my memories of it were not fond. I expected a version of the same here. As we drove to Red Rock I mostly wanted to get it over with just as a "there, I've seen it" sort of thing.





But my experience proved to be different. I am a very visual person, and normally it is the way a place looks that influences me the most. And Red Rock was certainly striking, with its striped mountains and fields of rocks, cacti and unusual grasses. But that is not what I remember the most, and it's not what got to me. My strongest memory of the place has to do with how the air felt and smelled. It was so weird, I am not sure how to describe it. We got out of the car and immediately I walked 5 steps into the desert and just stood there. It wasn't hot. Or maybe it was, but I didn't notice. The air had a dewy quality to it that was not only unexpected, but nothing like the dewy morning air I am used to in Northern climates. There was a scent to it, too. Very faint and I bet the people who live there no longer notice it, but for me it was new. I think the scent was coming from all the weird little plants, and the overall effect was kind of melony - lightly sweet and refreshing.






Within 5 minutes my headache went away and I no longer felt tired or sleepy. In fact I felt like going on a very long hike or bike ride. This change in energy levels and sense of well-being was so quick and dramatic that it was as if I'd gotten an injection. Crazy. There wasn't much time before I had to get back to Las Vegas, but I walked around taking pictures for as long as I could, for the first time regretting that I could not stay and explore the area longer.





We saw some cyclists in the desert, and I was envious. Riding in that fresh dewy air with the cactus scents and the stripey mountains looming in the distance must be nice. And that is when Chris remarked casually that I should take part in one of the rides he organises - in response to which I, of course, laughed, since it seemed wildly unrealistic. But by the time December rolled around, I'd been cycling like crazy and it changed to seeming only moderately unrealistic. When AdventureCORPS and the Furnace Creek Ranch officially invited me to the March events in Death Valley, I decided to go.





To save myself future embarrassment I've been trying to be non-comittal about classifying myself as a participant vs a photographer/support person. Chris assures me I'll be fine doing the rides, but he must think I am being modest in describing what a poor cyclist I am. Still, I've now registered on BikeReg and everything is settled, so it looks like it's happening.Soma Fabricationswill be loaning me a Smoothie roadbike to test ride while I am in California, which I am excited about as well.



Physically I'm not ready for the Hell's Gate Hundred and the 5 days of cycling that is CORPSCamp. But I keep from hyperventilating by telling myself there isn't really any pressure on me to finish all the rides, and that I can do as little or as much as I feel comfortable with. It will be both scary and interesting to find out how much that is. And of course, I will get to see California. I am nervous and looking forward to it all in equal measure.