I have a really stiff aluminum frame on my bike, so when I go over bumps its really uncomfortable. Much more than the old flexible steel-framed bikes, or the newfangled expensive carbon-fiber frames. So I’m always looking for smooth paths – especially on my way to work & back, where there is a lot of poorly maintained pavement.
There’s one spot along the route (the Route 50 service road in Arlington) where the pavement is especially bad. This winter, I started riding home after dark, and riding through this patch, when I couldn’t actually see the pavement clearly*, I discovered that by curving off to the right through this patch, I got a much smoother ride. I discovered this in the dark, when I couldn’t actually see the pavement; in the daylight, the whole width of the road looks equally horrendous, and if I wasn’t riding in the dark, I never would have discovered that there was actually a path through the road that, while it looked just as cracked and torn up as the rest, was actually far smoother on the tires. Ironically, by being in a sense blinded, I actually discovered far more about the road.
This is a perfect metaphor for some really deep things in life. (Of course you can work out what they are on your own, what fun would it be for me to spell them out?)
(*BTW when I ride at night I use lights – a lot of them, I’m lit up like a Christmas tree actually – but mostly to be seen; this spot is nearly the only one on my route where surrounding streetlights don’t provide enough light for me to see the road clearly).
Comments