The Slow Lane

 It rained all night and all day. The front yard was like a kitchen sponge that just couldn't take in any more water as little lakes formed in the low areas. I could have taken the car to First Saturday Mass. But what's a little rain?

I opened up the garage door and stepped out of the rain into my little space; when we moved into this house nine years ago I had laid vinyl flooring, painted the walls a pale yellow, hung free-cycled cabinets on the studs. It was a nice little room that served no purpose; no one was going to be living in the garage but I did it anyway. Just like the shed two years ago, with the caving in roof and oil stained plywood floor and the world ending and everything. Bought jelly rolls of fiberglass insulation and stacks of 4x8 birch paneling and gave it a Trading Spaces worthy makeover. Installed solar panels, a sink, composting toilet in the framed out back room, counters and futon. My wife refuses to go back there--"The rat bird," she says, that lives in between the walls. I built this for you. Didn't I? For me? I don't know. It doesn't matter. All is vanity. 

My thirties were so...busy. The kids were pop-pop-popping and spaces felt outgrown. I was always pimping out my time. Craigslist runs to Jersey. Lunch-hour writing side hustles. Building this or that thing. Trying to make everything work. Trying to be a good provider. We had good memories--walks with the stroller after dinner in our old 'hood. Drives to the beach when the babies never stopped crying. Thai food at the gun shop. Skin to skin.

I still have a lot of bikes, too many for one person. I can't help myself I suppose. Everybody has a thing. The trendy grey-wood vinyl laminate is curling up now at the edge of the garage where it gets wet underneath, cracking and tearing in some areas. Not as pliable as it used to be. The cabinets and wall paintings are gone. The only thing that remains is an oval portrait of my great grandmother because well why not--she deserves to be remembered, somewhere somehow. It's something, a home among the bikes. 

I was doom-scrolling at the office yesterday and Jordan Peterson was ranting about the 'war on cars' in Toronto: "the bloody bike lanes everywhere and what are you going to do when it's negative twenty degrees out and you're a seventy year old lady with her groceries--its utterly preposterous. The only people who bike from November to March are deluded twenty four year old men who think they've saving the planet with their goddamned bicycles..." And I'm nodding "yaas, yas" he's right, and he is. I didn't buy a car until a year before I got married; once when I was a twenty-four year old man I biked down Kelly Drive to pick up a drafting table at a Staples in Center City and hoisted it on my back, and biked the ten miles back up to Manayunk carrying it while riding one handed on a single-speed up an 8% incline. Normal people don't do such things. I didn't care about saving the planet so much as I liked riding my bike. But I don't want my seventy-six year old mother having to.

And I still do, strangely. I've got a whole cadre of bitties living here in my garage to choose from--a couple of e-bikes, which are great and practical; a sleek drop bar racing bike, a single speed track bike, a mountain bike, and my simple seven-speed cruiser replete with fenders and mustache bars which is my ride of choice this morning. 

It would be easier to drive to Mass, but I need a reason to live during these dark days of winter and so I get my raingear together--a lightweight jacket with a form-fitting hood I sewed years ago, rainpants, mitts, waterpoof shoes (all my shoes are waterproof). Seems like a lot of hassle but it's really just like dressing up your morning oatmeal with salt and dates and butter. And we've dodged a lot of snow the past few years so I'm able to ride almost all year round it feels like. 

When I biked two hundred miles to the hermitage in New York state this past Fall to go on retreat, it was more advantageous to extend the range on my battery to slow it down. Upright bikes are not especially aerodynamic, and racing bikes only marginally more so, so above fifteen miles per hour you expend a disproportionate amount of energy just to overcome wind resistance. So, on an e-bike, it's a matter of economy: you can cover fifty miles on a full charge, with pedaling, at 15 miles per hour, or half of that distance at 20 miles per hour. But since you're body is an engine too, it "pays" to go slower on a regular pedal bike like I was doing this morning. 

And I like how I can work on them, fix anything that goes wrong, myself. It's cheap to maintain--a couple hundred bucks a year, tops. It's something to have that kind of empowerment. There's theoretically nothing to keep me from going from here to there except myself.  

Part of why I wanted to bike in the pissing rain is the same reason I take cold showers. My wife took one before her night-shift this evening to shock herself out of sleep, and said "I don't know how you do this every morning." The truth is, I don't know either. But everything is a choice really. I can choose to go back to bed, or turn the showerhandle to H. But I don't. Some days I drive to where I need to be, but today I wanted to kill myself a little so I made a different choice. 

When I rolled out my cruiser with the mustache bars out the driveway in the pelting rain, I gave myself plenty of time to cover the ten miles to church. On an ebike it's easier to dress because you're not working your body as hard--the battery and motor does it for you. Less work=no sweat. But I wanted to work this morning to give me something to live for, and that means with rain gear the danger of getting sweaty. A good way to do that is to slow down and just take your time. And that's a nice thing about the bike over the car anyway--slowing down. It's crazy when I look at a map seeing some of the routes I've traveled over the years on two wheels, crazy distances. But it's just mile by mile, stroke by stroke. They fall by the wayside like the years, like the cherry petals that will soon fall along Kelly Drive.

I'll be forty-four next week. I've spent a lot of time on the living room couch the past couple months by the big bay window. I don't read. I don't do much of anything; Not 'optimizing'. Anti-hustle. Naps and staring at the ceiling. When I slip into the confessional this morning I confess to sloth, laziness, acedia. But is it? What if I'm just slowing down, riding in the slow lane and realizing all is vanity and chasing after wind? I've heard it said that King Solomon wrote Song of Songs in his youth, Proverbs in his middle years, and Ecclesiastes near the end of his life. This makes sense. Song of Songs is passionate, poetic, erotic, full of youth and vigor. Proverbs is a solid compilation of practical wisdom concerned with the nuts and bolts of living. And Ecclesiastes is the legacy capstone of the wisest man who ever lived and has experienced everything life has to offer and realizes in the end that it is all completely meaningless.

I'm not trying to save the planet by riding by bike. This world is going to burn whether I ride a bike or drive a car or lie on the couch or make an extra grand or play with my kids or spend time in the garage monkeying around with my mistresses. Nobody's saving anything. We're spending our time and years in the fast lane fooling ourselves we're doing something noble, burning the engine fighting the wind. It's a slow burn at twilight. 

The funny thing about the ride to church--once I was wet, I couldn't get much wetter. So you just kind of lean into and accept it. Like stepping into the shower stall when you want to die and turning the handle to straight "C" and then stepping out a man awake, alive. Because I had fenders and some fitting clothing, I wasn't miserable, and because I was taking my time, I wasn't sweating. It was, dare I say, pleasant. No one else was out on a bike, of course--because it's an utterly preposterous thing to do. And yet there I was. Stroke by stroke, mile by slow mile.     

Pack Light, Pilgrim. You’re Not Staying

A couple weeks ago my wife and I decided to take a trip to get away for a few days. We wanted someplace warm(er), cultural but down to earth, historically Catholic, and walkable. We settled on New Orleans, and part of that was due to finding ridiculously cheap direct flights there. Because it was a budget airline, they nickel and dime you to death to turn a profit. But you can beat them at their own game if you let them choose your seats, decline the peanuts, and don’t check luggage. They even charge for carry-ones, so we opted to simply try to fit everything in the allowed “personal item”(a children’s backpack, laptop bag, purse, etc). 

My wife being agreeably awesome, and me being having minimalist tendencies, we approached the constraint as a challenge. When we boarded with our one children’s backpack and one messenger bag, we were able to simply place them under the seat in front of us.

Upon arrival in New Orleans we grabbed some glossy paper tourist maps of the city before exiting the terminal. I don’t like being one hundred percent dependent on my phone or gps, and so we studied the maps while waiting for local $1.25 express bus to the central business district instead of opting for a $50 Uber. But we wouldn’t have been able to do that with a lot of luggage.

We ended up getting off near a homeless underpass encampment, and because some faulty directions from a local guy on a bike got us a little turned around, we missed our bus transfer by a couple minutes. The surroundings were a little sketchy so rather than wait for the next bus we ended up walking the mile to our apartment, which got nicer and more iconic the farther out from the CBD we got. We traversed cobbled streets, passing by the local soup kitchen, and met a woman from France also looking for the 91, whom we directed to th next stop. Walking was easy because our packs were very light and manageable. And because we have been fasting every day during Lent, we didn’t feel like we were slaves to an eating schedule, which helped with versatility.

It’s not hard to accumulate “stuff”—it’s like the law of entropy: the longer you live, the more intentional you have to be about paring down. There are some downsides (typing this blog post on my phone, for instance) but they are offset by the versatility and freedom that comes with simplicity.

It forces you to be somewhat resourceful and less novel. To fit everything, I melted my deodorant into an empty (washed) glue stick tube, reused a slim hotel shampoo bottle (again, washed out) with toothpaste, and brought a small square of peppermint Castile soap that doubles as shampoo, body wash, and hand washing laundry if needed. 

I had planned to just wear variations of the merino wool t-shirt, polo, and long sleeve depending on the temperature (you can literally wear merino wool for weeks without it smelling or needing to be washed). I wore them all on the plane anyway, and my bag was only half full.

There are a few biblical examples of not being too bogged down. David eschews Saul’s armor and weaponry because they were cumbersome and he wasn’t used to them (1 Sam 17:29), opting instead for a simple sling and stones to go against Goliath. Our Lord tells the disciples when they go out not to take a bag, sandals, staff or extra tunic (Mt 10:10).

I’ve traveled a lot solo, but I like traveling now with my wife, as she’s a great companion. Two are better than one, “because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone?” (Ecc 4:9-12)

The apartment we are staying in is nice: clean and simple, spacious, and a refreshing change from home. But we’re not staying long, of course. There is something to be said for laying roots, and establishing yourself in a community.. It’s hard being a traveler, a foreigner, sometimes, with nowhere to permanently lay your head, as our Lord said. You’ll never be a “local” here on earth, because our true home is in Heaven.

But it reminds me of the story I heard of an American tourist who visited the 19th century Polish rabbi, Hofetz Chaim. Astonished to see that the rabbi's home was only a simple room filled with books, plus a table and a bench, the tourist asked, "Rabbi, where is your furniture?"

"Where is yours?" Replied the rabbi.

"Mine?" Asked the puzzled American. "But I'm a visitor here. I'm only passing through."

"So am I," said Hofetz Chaim.