Cycling Vacation 6/09

I'm in Western Mass for a wedding this week. After two days of vacation I have 84 miles in. Western Mass is far different than Ohio. In Ohio, those early white power brokers divided up all the land into squares. Square townships, square counties. The roads are based on a grid system. Not so in MASS! The road geography in MA is much more organic.

Solution: Buy a county map book. Have your cousin's son--the groom--help you map out a route to your Aunt's house in Northampton. it's 8 pages of the book: pages 6 and 7, 43 and 44, 72 and 72, and 133 and 135. Don't worry that it's a jigsaw you can't solve on the kitchen table. Just organize your gear, tear the pages from the book, fold the maps in plastic in order, and set off alone for two days of riding to your Aunt's and back. You won't be sorry. You might get lost at the bottom of Harris Mountain Road, but that's okay. You'll find your way.

You'll be much faster on the return trip, now that you kinda know the way. this works in places othe than Massachusetts.

Ride safe, Ride strong,
ride all day long. then go home
and write about it.

The Truing Stand

In a bike shop, the truing stand is a device the mechanic puts a bike wheel on to see how true it is--that is to determine if the wobble is so pronounced that you will not make it home without falling into the gutter.

Is there a way to put our poems on a truing stand? To check them for wobble? To see if you could ride your poem home? Is your poem so true that you could coast no hands down the biggest hill in town and not wipe out? Your poem doesn't want to see you at the table all covered in gravel and road rash.

If a bike wheel is out of true, the mechanic tightens and loosens spokes and then spins the wheel to see how much deviation there is at the point where the calipers meet the rim. What do we do to our poems to accomplish this?

I recommend riding your poem around the countryside and stopping for ice cream somewhere. Let a stranger take your poem for a ride. If they fall right down or say the ride is too rough over the gravel in the parking lot you might want to take your poem back to the shop.

You've probably realized by now that I have a hard time telling the difference between a bike and a poem. It's largely because of the phonetic similarity between the words ride and write. Keep checking back for more riding tips about our poems.