Two balanced cobwebs of steel.
Perpendicular feature in rotating motion.
Human mechanics of direction versus gravity.
If you guessed a bicycle, then good on you!
The road was blocked for several miles making way for a Sunday of leisure. Hundreds of families, businessmen, teenagers, and serious cyclists alike participated in the phenomenon of the human-propelled machine. The graceful flow of bicycle traffic versus the rushed and chaotic automobile traffic was quite a sight to see! Participating in the automobile traffic was almost painful because I wanted to become one with the traffic, directing as I pleased rather than being carted around in a touring bus. I wanted the bicycle to conduct a jolting sense of oneness with the rickety pavement.
Every Sunday Quito encourages this communal participation, and I was intrigued.
Mark Twain's Taming the Bicycle comes to mind, and if you won't make time to read the incredibly simple essay that is very much worth the read, I've included excerpts that will draw you click on the link and read it in full anyways.
"There are those who
imagine
that the unlucky accidents of life--life's "experiences"--are in
some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never
knew one of them to happen twice. They always change off and
swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side. If
personal experience can be worth anything as an education, it
wouldn't seem likely that you could trip Methuselah; and yet if
that old person could come back here it is more that likely that
one of the first things he would do would be to take hold of one
of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot. Now
the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask
somebody whether it was a good thing to take hold of. But that
would not suit him; he would be one of the self-taught kind that
go by experience; he would want to examine for himself. And he
would find, for his instruction, that the coiled patriarch shuns
theelectric wire ; and it would be
useful to him, too, and would
leave his education in quite a complete and rounded-out
condition, till he should come again, some day, and go to
bouncing a dynamite-can around to find out what was in it."
"But we wander from the point. However, get a teacher; it
saves much time and Pond's Extract."
that the unlucky accidents of life--life's "experiences"--are in
some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never
knew one of them to happen twice. They always change off and
swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side. If
personal experience can be worth anything as an education, it
wouldn't seem likely that you could trip Methuselah; and yet if
that old person could come back here it is more that likely that
one of the first things he would do would be to take hold of one
of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot. Now
the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask
somebody whether it was a good thing to take hold of. But that
would not suit him; he would be one of the self-taught kind that
go by experience; he would want to examine for himself. And he
would find, for his instruction, that the coiled patriarch shuns
the
leave his education in quite a complete and rounded-out
condition, till he should come again, some day, and go to
bouncing a dynamite-can around to find out what was in it."
"But we wander from the point. However, get a teacher; it
saves much time and Pond's Extract."
"...and I started out
alone to seek adventures.
You don't really have to seek them--that is nothing but a phrase
--they come to you."
You don't really have to seek them--that is nothing but a phrase
--they come to you."
"Get a bicycle. You
will not regret it, if you live."
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