Cyclokairos

Wireless electronic derailleurs. Ugly. Modern cranksets. Ugly. Fat forks to accommodate the breaking force being so close to the hub. Ugly. Full suspension mountain bikes. Ugly. Add a motor and are they even bicycles? In fact, forget the motor and they still look closer to a motorbike.

The Black Bike has a modern crankset and disc brakes, but with mechanical shifting, at least the rear derailleur is somewhat respectable (although being black its fade into just an outline). It tends to ugly – with so many parts being bigger, being wider than is necessary, it has a lack of elegance. And its heft doesn’t half make the going feel tough at times. Particularly recently, but it’s not the bike, it’s the legs – and with intermittent riding this last month or so, what do I expect? But the reality is that a laden touring bike, or a battered-back-lane cruiser, is its best guise, not a bike for spritely riding. 

What has happened to elegance? The roads are increasingly populated with hatchback-on-steroids SUVs with brutalistic grills – I’ve yet to see a good looking one. The wrists of the drivers, adorned with equally brutal watches. Big is king. A demonstration of wealth, power, importance?

The watch I wear, 60 years old and counting – still works faultlessly. Bought by my dad when he was 21, passed on when I was 21. Sentimental attachment but its elegance so much of its appeal. 

Big is beautiful wasn’t always the prevailing trend. I watched the TV show ‘Ripley’ earlier this year. Sumptuous in the elegance of the lives portrayed – 1950s Italy? No massive watches, no massive cars. Okay, that apartment in Rome was massive, but nothing brutal about its contents.

The closest I have to an elegant bike – The Purple One (that is also white)? The Green One? I’m not quite convinced by the colour of the former. I picked it up on sale, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone for that colour. Take all the bits off it and put them on a bronzey green Rivendell Sam Hillborne, and you have a truly refined bike. The Green Bike has grace. Perhaps the only thing I would change cannot be changed without it being a different bike – the frame. One that is larger would mean less stem on show – too periscopic presently.

Blame the anticyclonic gloom – seemingly weeks of cloud. Blame chancing upon the opening line of Beckett’s Murphy “The Sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new”. Blame the school librarian, Mrs Walker (does she know something?), for handing me a copy of Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, a quote at its start from that seemingly out of place kernel of nihilistic wisdom, Ecclesiastes (surely an influence on Beckett?): “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun”. That text, peppered with the word meaningless. But potentially a mistake in the translation of the Hebrew word hevel (smoke, vapour). Lack of clear meaning a better interpretation – in the thick of it, vision clouded, try to grasp it, the fingers close in on nothing. Whatever the case, the author had a god to provide meaning beyond the material world of unclear meaning. In lacking one? Somewhere out there, outside, in nature. Difficult to describe, not ineffable, just my lack of articulation. But it is there, I read it in Richard Powers’ The Overstory.

And out there I went. The murk gone – snow and sub-zero nights, blue sky by day. The Black Bike making sense. A bike to pick steady lines along icy lanes. Skeletons of oak, beech, lime, and ash. There’s something in their presence. But how to describe?