Scientists like to draw a distinction between the theory of science and its practical application, and with good reason. There’s a meaningful difference between believing your car gets good enough mileage to make to the truck stop 50 miles away while the idiot light glows and knowing that the lack of headwind and flat terrain guarantees you’ll make it. This latter understanding—applied science—is often referred to as pragmatism.
I’m in the midst of driving cross country. My ability to move my mother’s estate forward toward resolution has come to an end, and in a heartbreaking manner. The upshot is that even as I’m headed home, I want nothing so much as my community around me. Last night I stopped in Denver and stayed with Bill and Sam Cass. Bill’s name will be familiar from the previous occasions when I’ve featured his work on the site and in T-shirts we’ve sold.
At some point the conversation turned to crazy situations we’ve found ourselves in and the ways that cycling has given us skills that enabled us to escape dangerous circumstances without consequences.
The event I continue to play back in my head happened late one night as I was driving the 110 in South Los Angeles. I was on my way home and out of the corner of my eye I saw something sailing through the air toward my car and it struck the windshield in the lower right corner, bounced, struck the windshield a second time, then struck the hood before bounding off toward another car.
The impact force caused the corner of the windshield to cave in and the car to fill with a kind of glass dust. The entire event took less than two seconds. I’m still not sure what hit my car. At the time I thought it might be an alternator.
Here’s where this intersects my cycling life: I maintained my car’s line, staying between the lane lines despite what happened. It’s not a stretch to say my bike-handling skills saved my life. How do I know that? There were cars on both sides of me; had my line deviated (understandably), I’d have hit one, if not both, vehicles.
Bill related a story about being on a highway when a couple of trucks spun out after their drivers lost control. As he described the trucks doing their pirouettes, I was able to visualize the opposing spins and the gap that grew between the two vehicles. I didn’t need him to tell me that he waited until the timing was right and then shot between the two vehicles just before the impending crash closed the freeway to everyone behind him.
It’s curious how cycling will teach you that where a crash begins and where a crash ends are often two different locations, and how that knowledge will inform your ability to escape sure destruction. Neither Denver nor rural Utah (tonight’s stop) signal the beginning or ending of this disaster. They are merely points in between.
Cycling has convinced me that the best way to see a new landscape is from the seat of a bike, which is to say that when my Paceline cohost Lori—she and her husband Jeff are my hosts tonight—invited me to join her for a ride tomorrow morning, everything in my being knew that would be the perfect way to see this corner of Utah. It’s also true that cycling taught me how to know when I’m too cooked to ride any more and it’s time to head home. I haven’t ridden in a week, but cooked is cooked. I need to head home.