My recent comparison of my problem solving approach to a helmet football position made me think back to this post where I described my different cycling strategies in the context of those same positions. I looked back at that post and pulled together the following notes.
First things…
I posted this four days before Superbowl Sunday, which says an awful lot about how I thought my readers were interacting with TOA. The idea that a post related to helmet football would be the best use of space reserved for 'Tales of Two Cities' is the twisted logic of the pregame show for the pregame show, not for a tiny operation at the fringes of the dark web.
I remember using this approach for quite a while, perhaps the first two or three years. Over time, I got away from 'timely' posts. There’s no problem with posting something America-related on July 4, it’s just that if I were to come up with a recipe for bad writing, I would include ‘committing to a bad idea’ right at the top of the ingredients list. If you have nothing to say about trees, don’t decide in advance to write about foliage for Arbor Day.
Life notes
The helmet football game didn't turn out to be very memorable (my opinion). However, if my memory serves me correctly, it was just one year prior that I took my first early AM hospice volunteer shift. I enjoyed Sunday 8-10AM slot during the few months I held the responsibility. In particular, I remember the perfect stillness throughout the bike ride north, a silent and sleeping Cambridge being slowly brought to life under the cold sun, a scene I’d never witnessed during the year I lived in Central Square.
I gave up the shift when I admitted something important to myself – I’m not a morning person. I was confused about this for many years because I long considered myself a morning person due to my capacity for waking up early and being productive. But a closer examination of my 'accomplishments' reveals a list of straightforward tasks like running a middle distance, doing household chores, or writing out books notes. In other words, I could wake up to do admin. Tasks involving creativity, handling interruptions, or working with other people – in other words, anything important or challenging – have always better suited me later on in the day. I suspect my peak productivity zone is from 11AM – 7PM, the range perhaps moving a couple hours earlier if I woke up with the sun.
Best lines
OK, enough about me, let’s look at the post, here are my favorite lines:
An inexperienced quarterback forced to scan the entire field looks a lot like yours truly trying to sort out the intersection in Porter Square. By cutting down the field of vision in half, there is less to worry about and safe decisions are easier to make for bikers - or quarterbacks - of any experience level.
Porter Square made some significant changes over the past two years that have invalidated this analogy. These days, you essentially get a police escort through the intersection if you are patient enough to wait for the lights. The only remaining obstacle (not surprisingly) is jaywalking.
In summary, a good bike rider never passes on the right and is always ready to stop.
Nice and simple, this should be posted on the handlebars of every bike.
Are any fellows riders lurching out into the intersection, doing that weird thing where they move their legs back and forth on the pedals, as if the very act of touching the pavement with their foot would immediately cause a lightning bolt to strike them square on the forehead?
I think we've all seen this? It's like when I was eight (or twelve) I used to jump from stone to stone on a sidewalk, engrossed in an imagination that had turned the cracks into lava.
It is true in most of these cases that the bike rider has the right of way but I'm not sure if anyone hanging out up there by the pearly gates is going to be very interested.
This might be Newton's 5th Law, if he lived in Cambridge - an object powered by fossil fuels can temporarily exert a force on a bicycle if it turns left directly in front of the oncoming bike, forcing it to a frustrating yet necessary stop.
Cringe mode
And on the other side, here are some snippets I’d like to revise or remove:
You know what, reader? Sometimes, it just doesn't happen. The rooster forgets to crow, the bread fails to rise, the belt refuses to buckle, and life just goes on, whether your pants are on or not.
See note above about what happens when you commit to a gimmick for your post.
The move here is to hit the car first. Crashing into a visible car or a door is preferred to being hit from behind by a fast-moving threat. If the rider controls the collision, there is little risk of being thrown into the street and being dragged underneath a moving car. The best way to do it is to get low, if possible, to lower the risk of flipping over, and aim for the back end of the vehicle if possible to limit exposure to the wheels.
I kind of still believe this, but posting an untested thought among other pieces of grounded advice was irresponsible. Luckily, no one reads TOA.
Final thought
This was a decent post, I’m happy with how the playful slant softened some serious ideas and broadly speaking I like the gimmick. The challenges weren’t surprising, given how many position there are in helmet football length was always a concern and as usual I could have done more to cut down the final product. The main lesson from this post is that gimmicks force a certain conformity and therefore unless I really want to write about every position, I should probably explore other ways to express the same ideas.
Overall TOA ranking - 65th percentile
