Wind In His Hair - A Bike Lane Prophet Cycles The Great Outdoors, Dopey And Without A Clue

Doug Burnett was an ordinary man - born and raised in a coal town to a pharmacist father and a second grade teacher mother, he was well-behaved, dutiful, and an obedient student.  He couldn't make heads or tails of anything past arithmetic, so he repeated a grade or two, but since there was nowhere else to put him, he moved up and out, and one day found himself at Montgomery College, MK as it was known because of the fourth-grade level of its students. 

The college was a congenial place where there were no unrealistic expectations about Harvard or academic excellence, just a pleasant holding pen for those who would never make a mark, but would just fit in nicely. 

Doug muddled through his two years - MK was a junior college - and was anxious to get on with life, but he had no idea about what or how, so he took a job as a stock-and-errand boy at his father's pharmacy in Chillicothe, cleaned dusty bottles of chloroform and peptides in the storage room, waited on the occasional customer, and had no more ambition than a split-level, a wife, and two children.

Circumstances being what they can be, capricious and unpredictable, Doug found himself in Washington, DC thanks to a chance meeting with the representative for the Second Congressional District of Ohio.

Now, Doug was not a youth of any pretense, and had no thoughts about democracy, contribution, or investment; but when approached by the august member of Congress who invited him to join his staff as an intern, he readily agreed. 

He had no idea whatsoever what the job entailed let alone the role or importance of a member of Congress, but he had been brought up to respect his elders, so acceptance was simply the only right thing to do. 

He had been singled out not because of his intelligence, political savvy, or social appeal, but because he was a working class voter from the eastern half of the Congressman's district and would do well as a poster boy for his rural poor constituents. 

 

Doug was a faithful amanuensis, little more; and when the Congressman finally retired, Doug found himself out of a job.  With few qualifications but willing and able; but with a good recommendation, he joined Scientists For Social Responsibility, a non-profit group organized around 'planet health' a catch-all ethos which gave them cover to advocate for environmental protection, climate change, and social responsibility. 

Doug understood none of the ideas proposed, but was happy to do good; and was a loyal and hardworking member of the team.  

One of the propositions of the group was to encourage dedicated bike lanes in urban areas.  Cars were polluting interlopers and their rampaging takeover of roads and highways needed to be stopped.  Scientists for Social Responsibility intended to be at the forefront of the biking New Age, and Doug, coming as he did from a rural, undulating, bike-perfect region, was asked to be a part of the Bikes Are Our Future team. 

They bought him a bike, took him with them on casual rides on the C&O towpath, and urged him to go farther up the trail to the Cumberland Gap. 

He had only ridden a fat-tired Schwinn in his boyhood so was unused to the 21-gear hi-tech two-wheeler he was given, but quickly took to it.  Riding up the same kind of hills he had struggled over on his bulbous Schwinn was a dream.  If this was climate change advocacy, he was all for it. 

The mystique of cycling escaped him - as simple as he was, there was no vision or epiphany in it. It was simply pedaling, sometimes hard up, other times light and repetitive, nothing more.  When he sat at the Old Ebbitt Grill with his colleagues over a beer, he was lost when the chat turned to mountain vistas, expansive prairies, farm houses and cows in pastures.  

He had taken to biking as a matter of duty - if his organization was all in for bikes, so would he be - but he found nothing particularly uplifting or elegiac about it. 

As a matter of fact, bikes were a pain in the ass. Driving from here to there in Bethesda was slow, interrupted, and interminably blocked because of the presumptive Rulers of the Road, dedicated bike lanes, and the inevitable accidents.  

'Perhaps I'm missing something', Doug said, not giving bikers their due, not appreciating the particularly heady, transformative experience of rushing down a mountain pass, wind in the hair, guided by the natural winds, inclines, and vistas of the open road. 

He gave it a go, joined a weekend biking group that headed north to Poolesville, stopped for beers at a local tavern, then cycled home for dinner.  All without anything more than traffic, impatient drivers, potholes, and dreary, endless trees. 

He gave urban biking a try as well, cycling from his suburban home to his downtown DC office; but that was a gantlet, a medieval joust, a mudwrestling ugly tour better left to others. 

Perhaps because Doug was so limited, so simple and unpoetic, so straightforward, practical, and nose-to-the-grindstone, he decided to chronicle his biking experiences as a kind of clinical record. At first he did it to illustrate his organization's vision and principles, then as a down-to-earth account of the order of biking.  Whether he understood it or not, whether he got or didn't get the essentiality of the open road, it was his duty to paint the picture. In the end, as dull and prosaic as it was, it became his raison d’etre - which of course everyone needs regardless.

 

His chronicle, his biking memoir, his record of traipsing Appalachia and suburban Maryland was the most horrendously boring saga imaginable.  It was a story of gear ratios, brake linings, torque, tire resistance, and ball bearings and nothing more.  A tedious recollection of bike trips in the most predictable places, a soggy, watery saga of nothing but grinding up and down the hills of Western Pennsylvania and points west. 

Why he ever bothered, why he even tried was a mystery.  Why would this man of limited means, desultory intelligence, and without a drop of insight, creative vision, or personal feelings ever think that it would be of interest let alone be inspiring?.

Such is the nature of true belief - febrile, airy, satisfying, and overarching.  It matters not to the believer whether or not his ideas have currency or relevance; or whether his passion and obsession will encourage other to action.  He speaks, promotes, insists because righteousness is hardwired and absolute. 

No one of course paid any attention to his wandering, incoherent, fantastical memoir.  Not only did few care about biking; not only were most people pissed that their civil rights were being infringed upon by the unhinged two-wheeled few, but the fact that some actually believed the absurd idea of a biking heaven . It was a consignment to a Barnum & Bailey side show. 

Doug - Dougie to his diehard friends - never quit, and in all forums, informal dinners, roundtables, conferences, and on streetcorners he hammered on about bikes, bike lanes, and bike heaven.  His old friends tolerated it all but waited for the day that he and Mary Beth took up their residency in Avalon Quarters retirement village, but even there anyone within earshot thought the old man queer and ready for the glue factory.