I've been a cyclist, now, for over 60 years - it seems unreal.
However, despite the ranting of both motorists and hard core (or is it corpse - take your pick!) cyclists, I find it difficult to be angry at all other road users. Why? Well, I suppose the best way to describe it is that old quote from Pogo "We have seen the enemy, and he is us."
The other way to describe it is this: I'm NOT a "cyclist" (some sort of strange sub-species of H. sapiens) I AM a driver - who has, and still does, spend a significant amount of his driving time on two-wheels, entirely self-powered.
There's a real difference. I do not view the driver of that car or truck as my foe - to be feared, to be bested, and to be screwed over at every possible chance. I see him (and this includes HER, always) as just someone like myself, busy doing what I'm doing - getting from here to there as best he can - for whatever reason. I do not, as a rule, cycle for exercise - even though I do rejoice in the exercise I get from cycling. I DO enjoy the experience - the successful surmounting of hills, the effort of working into the teeth of the wind, as well as the avoidance of all the obstacles in my way - cars, trucks, busses, pedestrians, dogs, holes in the road, slick steel plates or manhole castings, even the slippery swathes of traffic paint meant to show me where it is safe to ride. No - it's not really safer on that swath of green paint, in damp weather - it's an invitation to a slippery fall, if you are not careful. It's just that this is a "safe area", where motorists are not supposed to attempt to hit you. Yet cycling, for me, is not about any of that - it's about getting to my destination, as quickly, as easily as I can - for the least cost - at least as I see it.
Let me wander back in history. Imagine a boy - barely ten years old, and rather small for his age - living in a farm-house three miles (or 5 Kms - about the same) from the village, and at least a kilometer from any possible playmate. Get a "lift" over to a friend's house? Not a chance. All the others around us were working farm families - with more important things to do than cater to the whims of small boys. Dad worked in the city - a good hour's drive away - and Mom never did master driving - a badly smashed left ankle as a child made mastering a clutch too difficult. Perhaps Dad was a bit too doctrinaire about the use of automatic transmissions- but maybe not. They were not very effective, in those days. No - the only way I was going anywhere, except with the family on weekends, was either on foot, or on that bike. Once I mastered the basics (I could actually ride a straight line, and didn't fall off every couple of hundred feet.) the bike won out, hands down. I could go any where, at three times the speed of walking, or better. On foot, going in to the village would take most of an hour (trudge, trudge, trudge) while the bike took only about fifteen to twenty minutes - a huge improvement.
What did it matter that I might have to walk up a couple of hills - at first - or that there was little room for me to meet a car, and I might have to stop - I could GO!
Of course, muscles soon grew with use, stamina improved, and I learned how to navigate the windrows of loose, coarse gravel on either side of the beaten tracks. No more stopping for cars - I just rode on.
Here, obviously, is where the love of cycling first bloomed. A few years later, now living in the city, I became even more comfortable with cars around me - and realized that, if I behaved as the drivers did - stopped for stops, stayed to the right as a rule, signaled my turns, and so forth, I'd be accepted. It was fairly simple.
Those were, truly, the "good old days", a time when most drivers had, themselves, of necessity, used bikes beyond childhood. Who could afford a car in the depression era? Not that many. Who could afford to drive everywhere during the war? Very few. So most drivers were comfortable with bikes around them - having had to bike in traffic themselves. Eventually, I turned sixteen - the desired age of all teens, and could get "real wheels". As I started my driver's lessons (eager enough to learn properly, I was prepared to pay, out of my own pocket. It never occurred to me to ask for assistance) I soon realized that I only had half the business to learn - that of controlling the car (Ease the clutch in until the engine starts to slow, then flip the right foot from brake to gas, simultaneously easing up the clutch enough to prevent the car rolling backward down the hill. Damn! Stalled it! Neutral, brake on, restart, wait for the light to change, try again. Damn! - repeat the scenario until you DO get it.) I already knew about traffic, and what to look for - and realized that the faster you go, the farther ahead you had to look. Suddenly, as never before, I saw cycling as "just another form of driving", and set out to act that way. Why should I be afraid of traffic? I WAS traffic!
Of course, it took time - far more than I'm completely happy to admit to - to realize the full inwardness of this. However, it did make it possible for me to accept the fact that we were not flush enough to afford a second car, and keep on riding - now just a form of driving - all through my teens.
Let's skip about a decade, to the late sixties. Better paid jobs allowed me to become a car-owner - but I found the habits of the past were still too engrained. I actually LIKED cycling. Part of it was the fact that I now lived on the Wet Coast of Canada, where the weather made it possible to ride in reasonable comfort 14 months of the year. Contrast this with April icy roads in the Ottawa valley - where the winter had been far too long already. Another part of it lay in the parsimony with which I'd grown up - driving a car - fun as it is - costs MONEY, and I was a "Starving Student". Bikes paid no parking fees, cost no gasoline, nor did I need to pay for "Proof of Financial Responsibility". In a big city, like Vancouver, it was not that much slower than a car - particularly if traffic was heavy. Besides, I didn't need to go to a Gym to maintain fitness. So I rode, and get even better at dealing with traffic.
The bulk of the 70's was spent in a small outport at the north end of Vancouver Island - only sporadically connected with the rest of the world. Roads that were scarce-improved logging trails, a fairly strongly vertical topography, and the distances involved, rather left cycling as a thing I once "did". But then, a change of employment moved us (now four) to Victoria. If possible, I was determined to live where I could easily commute by bike. I wished to avoid the expense of becoming a multi-car owner - particularly if one were used almost entirely to get me to and from work, and that was all. I succeeded, and almost immediately after moving, bought a bike, and began to ride. In a funny way, it was as if the previous decade had not occurred - all my traffic skills were there, and in good shape.
Over the last four or five years, I will admit, the eagerness with which I ventured out into winter rains, just to get to work, has waned. I no longer refuse to see the comfort of using a car in such weather. However, the skills that had me riding are still there, and the sheer pleasure of hustling along, under my own steam, still stirs.
Perhaps I'm selfish - but I don't wish everyone were out there with me. There's no sense in which I want to see others "suffer" as I did (but did I?), nor any notion that I am, for some reason "Better" than all these. I just accept the quiet pleasure that I can still do what gave me such a thrill sixty years ago - and that it IS, still, just as much fun as it was, then. So, when I can, I concentrate on teaching others my few skills, my attitude towards the road, and everyone on it. Right now, I'm working on a couple of grandchildren, who bid fair to be as much pleased with the thrill of independence of movement as I was. The world has changed - but it also seems to have come, almost, in a full cycle. Where, in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, cyclists were seen as something to brush off the road, and were feared, because most drivers hadn't a clue what they were going to do, we have come back, now, to a world where cyclists are seen - more or less - as simply part of traffic, and are rated on their merits, as we do other drivers. The world has become, once again, almost safe for us. That, if nothing else, is a matter of real satisfaction.
Friday, 17 April 2015
Monday, 27 January 2014
The Lessons of History
I picked up, this past week, a history of King Philip's War - that little-known, much misremembered rising in New England in the 1670's - a scant half century after the arrivals of the Pilgrims, and their supposedly idyllic relations with the Whampoags, learning how to survive in the very different climate of new England. The result of this rising, and the police action of the New England settlers was to virtually eliminate all the local natives, and do much to set the tone for the actions of New Englanders, and all Americans since then, when faced with opposition by outsiders.
Nathaniel Philbrick, in Mayflower, (Viking/Penguin, 2006) writes, as any good historian does, from a slant. Why? Simply because all historians MUST have an angle, an outlook, a reason to write, to tell this particular tale, whether it be, like the late Sir Winston Churchill, at least in part, to validate his own decisions made in the politics of the time, to advance a particular political agenda, or to attempt to make internal sense of the events on the author's lifetime, in light of older history. I first became aware of this, back in the early 1960's, when I devoured CV Wedgewood's opus The Thirty Years War while away from home on a summer job. It was quite apparent that the horrors suffered throughout the Germanies (remember, there was no such unified state, then) over those three decades resonated with her own experiences in England, up to the outbreak of the second World War.
If anything, the horrors in that war, particularly the Holocaust, Hitler's "Final Solution" of the Jewish Problem, find deep antecedents in that time.
She claimed, in her preface to the post-war edition, that any serious historian MUST be a moralist, as well as a relater of facts. I tend to agree - if we do not have a reason, all we have is a dry list of "facts', which may, or may not have relevance or coherence. nor is it enough to tell the reader to draw his own conclusions - for if MY bias is not the same as the writer's, my conclusions, my understanding, will be quite at variance with his, and I will not be compelled to think, however shallowly, about why his, or my, bias should be right - or that we might, just possibly, both be wrong. No, the writer must have his own interpretation, and must not be shy about drawing the conclusions that the facts, and his understanding, lead him to.
So - what has this to do with Philbrick's Mayflower? Quite simply, it is this: that the Pilgrims, and the Puritans, harried out of England in their objection to the policies of King Charles I, and his spiritual advisor, William Laud (both of them, by the bye, far closer in spirituality to the Dissenters they tried to compel into conforming to the uses of the Church of England, than either side would admit was so) were so closed-minded, so God-stricken, that it took great hardship - starvation, freezing, and the loss of many of their companies, to make them aware that things were NOT as they'd left behind, that this climate required a real change of living habits, of diet. At the same time, their motives for planting themselves out here, far from home (A west-bound crossing of six weeks was fast! Many were far longer, if they made it at all.) was not just the chance to live a Godly life (as they thought) far from the interference of Laud and the King, but also a chance to better themselves, to get rich, in the only form of wealth that really counted - land. In part, this was aided by circumstance. In the first decades of the 17th century, New England was swept by disease, am plague, accidentally brought by the European fishermen who'd found the rich resources of this coast, where Arctic and Gulf currents mix foods, and fish, long untouched, throve mightily. These visitors, Cornish, Breton, French, Basque, Portuguese, were all of them immune to the stock illnesses of Europe, including its latest acquisition, the Plague. The American natives, however, had never been exposed before, and the results were disastrous. In the three years just before the arrival of the Pilgrims, up to 90% of the native population were wiped out.
It looked, seemed, as if there were no people here, yet there was evidence that they had been, not long before, and that they'd cultivated land for crops. When the arriving English did meet the remnants of the natives, neither quite knew what to do, how to act. It took a decision of courage from one native leader, Massasoit, to start a process of accommodation.
Yet still, as the record bares out, the English engaged in distinctly sharp practice in getting their way - title to lands - for as chap a price as they could. A generation or so later, by the 1670's, this near-theft, and the unconscionable harrying of natives had not stopped, but rather increased (Families were large, and America, in general, far healthier than Europe) Even attempts by the natives to learn the ways of these settlers (and learn, they did, and soon discovered that they could use the white man's technology as well as the English) brought them no peace. They were distrusted as different, foreign (this, by newcomers!) and inherently deceitful - and this mainly from the intolerable pressure put upon them by the English to sell off their land, and get out.
The notion that the only good Indian (or rebel, or gook, or Arab - strange how the syllogism persists, even when the object changes) was a dead one, took firm root in this time. Consequently, when a rising of one small people - King Philip's Pocassets (Philip was a younger son of Massasoit, of fifty years previously) - erupted, the settlers all believed that this was a general rising of ALL Indians, and if it wasn't, it would be better to deport, or kill, even those who were not involved. This, of course, virtually guaranteed that even the least willing to revolt would do so - if only in an attempt to save their lives, their homes and families, their livelihood. The result was virtually a foregone conclusion - there were too few warriors, too many settlers for anything else to occur.
It was a sad start to the founding of America, but it helps to explain, I think, the obsession with weapons in the United States. This visceral fear of weakness, of Indian attack, must lie buried deep at the roots of their need to be armed at all times, even if it is quite forgotten, and overlain with misunderstood shibboleths about the "right to bear arms". The other thing I draw from this tale is that, over the last - virtually four hundred years, now - Americans - particularly their military leadership, have learned nothing about how to relate to smaller peoples, even those we profess to wish to aid.
The attitude then, as now, is: "Do it MY way - if not, I'll make you do it." When attempts at coercion fail (as the English should have learned in Scotland and France in the 13th to 15th centuries, and never did learn in Ireland) then other ways of getting co-operation must be tried, and one of the first must be real respect and acceptance. The typical response, though, is coercion until somebody kicks, at which point our historic paranoia kicks in, and the only thing we can do is attempt to wipe out everyone, even those we came to assist.
This is not to say that Americans are evil. They are merely human, like everyone else on this planet. Not can I possibly claim that all others have done better. We have only to look at the mess that is Ireland, or Palestine/Israel, at the recurring genocides in Africa. In fact, anywhere we look, we see that we do not treat our neighbours well - least of all those whose goods (resources?) or land we covet. I come away from this volume, not with disgust - there were, even then, fair, honest, just men and women, on both sides - but with a better appreciation of why my neighbours are what they are.
Understanding is central to seeing both sides of the person looked at.
Nathaniel Philbrick, in Mayflower, (Viking/Penguin, 2006) writes, as any good historian does, from a slant. Why? Simply because all historians MUST have an angle, an outlook, a reason to write, to tell this particular tale, whether it be, like the late Sir Winston Churchill, at least in part, to validate his own decisions made in the politics of the time, to advance a particular political agenda, or to attempt to make internal sense of the events on the author's lifetime, in light of older history. I first became aware of this, back in the early 1960's, when I devoured CV Wedgewood's opus The Thirty Years War while away from home on a summer job. It was quite apparent that the horrors suffered throughout the Germanies (remember, there was no such unified state, then) over those three decades resonated with her own experiences in England, up to the outbreak of the second World War.
If anything, the horrors in that war, particularly the Holocaust, Hitler's "Final Solution" of the Jewish Problem, find deep antecedents in that time.
She claimed, in her preface to the post-war edition, that any serious historian MUST be a moralist, as well as a relater of facts. I tend to agree - if we do not have a reason, all we have is a dry list of "facts', which may, or may not have relevance or coherence. nor is it enough to tell the reader to draw his own conclusions - for if MY bias is not the same as the writer's, my conclusions, my understanding, will be quite at variance with his, and I will not be compelled to think, however shallowly, about why his, or my, bias should be right - or that we might, just possibly, both be wrong. No, the writer must have his own interpretation, and must not be shy about drawing the conclusions that the facts, and his understanding, lead him to.
So - what has this to do with Philbrick's Mayflower? Quite simply, it is this: that the Pilgrims, and the Puritans, harried out of England in their objection to the policies of King Charles I, and his spiritual advisor, William Laud (both of them, by the bye, far closer in spirituality to the Dissenters they tried to compel into conforming to the uses of the Church of England, than either side would admit was so) were so closed-minded, so God-stricken, that it took great hardship - starvation, freezing, and the loss of many of their companies, to make them aware that things were NOT as they'd left behind, that this climate required a real change of living habits, of diet. At the same time, their motives for planting themselves out here, far from home (A west-bound crossing of six weeks was fast! Many were far longer, if they made it at all.) was not just the chance to live a Godly life (as they thought) far from the interference of Laud and the King, but also a chance to better themselves, to get rich, in the only form of wealth that really counted - land. In part, this was aided by circumstance. In the first decades of the 17th century, New England was swept by disease, am plague, accidentally brought by the European fishermen who'd found the rich resources of this coast, where Arctic and Gulf currents mix foods, and fish, long untouched, throve mightily. These visitors, Cornish, Breton, French, Basque, Portuguese, were all of them immune to the stock illnesses of Europe, including its latest acquisition, the Plague. The American natives, however, had never been exposed before, and the results were disastrous. In the three years just before the arrival of the Pilgrims, up to 90% of the native population were wiped out.
It looked, seemed, as if there were no people here, yet there was evidence that they had been, not long before, and that they'd cultivated land for crops. When the arriving English did meet the remnants of the natives, neither quite knew what to do, how to act. It took a decision of courage from one native leader, Massasoit, to start a process of accommodation.
Yet still, as the record bares out, the English engaged in distinctly sharp practice in getting their way - title to lands - for as chap a price as they could. A generation or so later, by the 1670's, this near-theft, and the unconscionable harrying of natives had not stopped, but rather increased (Families were large, and America, in general, far healthier than Europe) Even attempts by the natives to learn the ways of these settlers (and learn, they did, and soon discovered that they could use the white man's technology as well as the English) brought them no peace. They were distrusted as different, foreign (this, by newcomers!) and inherently deceitful - and this mainly from the intolerable pressure put upon them by the English to sell off their land, and get out.
The notion that the only good Indian (or rebel, or gook, or Arab - strange how the syllogism persists, even when the object changes) was a dead one, took firm root in this time. Consequently, when a rising of one small people - King Philip's Pocassets (Philip was a younger son of Massasoit, of fifty years previously) - erupted, the settlers all believed that this was a general rising of ALL Indians, and if it wasn't, it would be better to deport, or kill, even those who were not involved. This, of course, virtually guaranteed that even the least willing to revolt would do so - if only in an attempt to save their lives, their homes and families, their livelihood. The result was virtually a foregone conclusion - there were too few warriors, too many settlers for anything else to occur.
It was a sad start to the founding of America, but it helps to explain, I think, the obsession with weapons in the United States. This visceral fear of weakness, of Indian attack, must lie buried deep at the roots of their need to be armed at all times, even if it is quite forgotten, and overlain with misunderstood shibboleths about the "right to bear arms". The other thing I draw from this tale is that, over the last - virtually four hundred years, now - Americans - particularly their military leadership, have learned nothing about how to relate to smaller peoples, even those we profess to wish to aid.
The attitude then, as now, is: "Do it MY way - if not, I'll make you do it." When attempts at coercion fail (as the English should have learned in Scotland and France in the 13th to 15th centuries, and never did learn in Ireland) then other ways of getting co-operation must be tried, and one of the first must be real respect and acceptance. The typical response, though, is coercion until somebody kicks, at which point our historic paranoia kicks in, and the only thing we can do is attempt to wipe out everyone, even those we came to assist.
This is not to say that Americans are evil. They are merely human, like everyone else on this planet. Not can I possibly claim that all others have done better. We have only to look at the mess that is Ireland, or Palestine/Israel, at the recurring genocides in Africa. In fact, anywhere we look, we see that we do not treat our neighbours well - least of all those whose goods (resources?) or land we covet. I come away from this volume, not with disgust - there were, even then, fair, honest, just men and women, on both sides - but with a better appreciation of why my neighbours are what they are.
Understanding is central to seeing both sides of the person looked at.
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