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A Cyclist's Search For Meaning January 2, 2005. Druber was noodling out of town on a day that only an idiot or a Belgian would be riding. It was 45 degrees and drizzling. Nothing serious about a ride in these conditions, the choice to be on the wet sloppy pavement was simply the lesser of two evils when weighed against two hours on a trainer in the garage. Ahead in the fog, Druber was able to make out the figure of a similarly bent cyclist. Druber could tell by the way the figure bobbed and lurched on the saddle; he/she was a Fredder from the local club out for a spin. As he pulled even, Druber didn't recognize the stranger. Not that it's unusual. Druber doesn't typically ride with groups and when he does, he doesn't generally remember faces behind sunglasses and helmets anyway. Druber was once introduced in Saint Louis to a bike racer he didn't recognize, holding a 20 minute conversation with him, not once mentioning his name or asking for it due to the discomfiting sense that he should have known who it was. Druber found out later that he and the rider had been teammates for the past 6 months. So it goes. Druber passed the lone rider; the man jumped on Druber's wheel and asked if he could tag along. Sure. "Where you Heading?" "Not sure." "Mind if I grab your wheel?" Druber remembers thinking this would be fine if you promise not to speak. "Yeah, I'll be riding tempo so if you don't mind the spray off my back wheel in your face, that's cool with me." "It's better than this headwind." "Suit yourself." Status Quo held for the next 20 minutes as we wound our way South and West into the wind. The only conversation was directional - "Left" or "Right". Druber had almost forgotten about the stranger when the silence of the ride was broken, with "You know cycling is a metaphor for life." "Oh for fuck sake" Druber thought. Not another one! I run across the only person on all of these empty miles of God forsaken slop covered roads and he's a BYCYCLING Magazine subscriber. Great." What Druber said was "Really?" "Yeah, you see…" He began an earnest and thoughtful soliloquy, sounding very every bit as passionate as Virginia Madsen describing why she loves wine in the film Sideways - "A bottle of wine is a living thing." However, at that point Druber had mentally put his hands over his ears and was repeating LALALALALALALALA over and over again. Through the wind and white noise Druber was trying to create in his mind, he heard snippets of philosophical psychobabble, song lyrics, quotes from books and other nonsense. "Time to trade in our dreams on some wheels" LALALALA. "Struggle, Conflict, Triumph" LALALALALALALALA "Sometimes you're a windshield, sometimes you're a bug" LALALALALALALALALALA. "Begin with the end in mind." LALALALALALALALALALA "I always thought that I'd see you one more time again." Druber began to dream of shoulder checking the philosopher into the ditch. In his prescient work, Man's Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl wrote "We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value; and (3) by suffering." Further Frankl writes "What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment." The Meaning of Druber's life at that given moment became crystal clear. His whole life's purpose became to apply extreme pressure on the pedals and ride away from this moron who was taking a bike ride in the cold mist far too seriously. "I think I'll do some intervals." Thus Druber rode away down the road, snapping the elastic of the draft at 25 per in a crosswind. I'm assuming Frankl wasn't speaking of lactic acid burn when he suggested meaning for life can be found in suffering. He was in a Nazi concentration camp nearly starving to death. At that point in his life he was reduced to thinking half a crust of stale bread was a slice of heaven on earth. Nor would I imagine anyone who had a bazillion tons of water crashing down on them while spending Christmas vacation in a tropical paradise was thinking, "This reminds me that time I got dropped from the paceline at RAGBRAI." Anyone care to compare a time trial with having the four walls of your mud hut come crashing down around your when a bomb meant for a military target lands in your front yard killing your 3 year old daughter? Nothing in a bike race particularly reminds me of the mother of my children attempting to ruin me financially after 14 years of marriage came to an end. I shudder to think that the meaning of life can be found in a chaffing ass and hemorrhoids. Cycling is not a metaphor for life. At best it's an escape, like a hallucinogenic drug. Just as Timothy Leary was proven to be a utterly daffy when he taught that LSD was a way to expand our consciousness of life, those who believe riding a bike or fly fishing for that matter is a way to understand the inner workings of life are bound for disappointment. Cycling isn't about life; it's just something living people do. Especially in China, where it's the most common form of transportation, still. I sent my son off to Germany on December 28th. He is studying international business as a Finance/Economics major at IL State University. He'll be in Paderborn, Germany until July 28. His escort, who is to show him around the town and help him locate his housing and familiarize himself with the campus, is another foreign student, from Belgium. Her name is Amke. I told Nate (my son) to drop a few names. Merckx, Van Petegem, Museeuw, Vandenbrouke. She didn't recognize any of the names but did mention that her Grandfather in Gent is a fan and knows all of the names of the "men who can drive fast on two wheels." I thought this was a funny way of putting it. Also provides some perspective. We assume that anyone in Europe is cycling mad, especially the Belgians. As it turns out, this Belgian is more interested in rap music and dancing than cycling. I wonder if she believes dancing is a metaphor for life? The rational mind doesn't attempt to read something significant into the mundane. Religions are founded on such nonsense. More often than not, the attempt to read significance into cycling is a veiled attempt to justify spending thousands of dollars on toys as an adult -Tens of thousands if you live in Santa Barbara or Orange Counties. We burn through on line bike stores, local bike shops and catalogues like manic It Girls on Park Avenue spending spree. Why can't people just do something because it's fun? But these $1400 wheels will help me ascend to a higher plane of existence. I'll be at peace when I don't get shelled from the Saturday group ride. Just imagine how much better of a husband I'll be if I'm self actualized." "What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him." Viktor Frankl. Frankl wasn't full of shit when he wrote this, I just don't think he had bike racing in mind when he wrote it. Happy New Year.
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