Unfettered [From 42-400]

"Like a barge through thick ice you can shake loose everything everyone wants to attach to the bicycle and let it always remain unfettered. Our mornings, our bicycles, our lives: they are all under our direct control, and we would be wise to treat them so."

from BA 42-400

There are mornings just like this one, peaceful and deliberate, ad infinitum in every direction, somewhere out there floating like a single piece of paper on the ocean.

If only we are quiet enough to ride up on them and pounce—so as to not let them sail past on their own accord into the dark distance toward Portugal—we will find the life we have for so long wanted to live, but have been afraid to seize because the sea is so deep below us.

The bicycle is being co-opted from all sides by cliché and chicness and marketers, but it will never be tainted entirely if you just ride. Like a barge through thick ice you can shake loose everything everyone wants to attach to the bicycle and let it always remain unfettered. Our mornings, our bicycles, our lives: they are all under our direct control, and we would be wise to treat them so.

Beer stashed 17 miles from downtown. 15 humans, 1 dog in a trailer. Whiskey in flasks! Gravel roads. Hills and sweat and setting sun. Get to an empty field in the middle of nowhere. Wow. Ride north in the dark till Waverly.

Sorry: this much fun is hard to describe.