Luft

There is a jawnty style, a swagger that is a non swagger. a free floating confidence, happy, loved, strong, alive.

       photo: Brian Biggs

A spirit that floats, made up of the tinyest specs of life that moves through the air, through us.

If a small breeze comes along it lifts the balloon and the short cord slips through and released from the hand of a child,  we float, for a bit lifting up, but not away,  looking down at, and decided to return to the child's hand.

A funny thing about luft, is you can't rule it, but that it has rules.   And luft only lives, with others around you.    Sorta like if you had an instagram account and posted the most outstanding selfies, but you had no followers. 

I love a world where you don't need rules, and people are good, and you don't think about why you are smiling.  

I have memories, of people and their luft, and saddly they are not around anymore.

That one moment, of saying cheers! and looking into the others eyes, and the beer tasted Tasty!

Paintings have luft,  songs, birds on the birdfeeder, their early morning chirping, coming in an open morning bedroom window.  Things like bikes in general don't have luft,  maybe their are a few, that have acquired that spirit, but it was the spirit of the ride, not the bike. 

You really can't count on what life is going to give or take from,  you definitley don't control when. 

but it does seem like, you can even be strangers with someone, and for some common reason, there is luft.  For that short event, maybe working in a break-away together, or just stopping to help fix a flat, and ending up with an interesting conversation. 

I've always applied, a spit polish, to my bike, not literally, ...but I know, and respect, how that machine has put me place, and made me meet peolple, and symbolicly whatever bike that I pull out of the shed, for whatever ride to where ever, I know I'm lucky, and try to shake my anger, not take to serious the workout, and definetly know that what ever happens, that the luft is important. 

Cheers!  

Thanks for coming out and, ride after ride, never let me down, Here is a big toast to you, Cheers!

Water Ice CX '21 "Harry Horray!"

david

Pin-up

I just want to write like old days, like a garden hose left on, and the water gushing out, on a hot day. a Niagra Falls on dopey 4 year olds, in underwear, and smiles. Flowing free, un-restricted, and cold. I've had so much other stuff on my mind. but today, I pinned up, clicked in, and raced. Not a smart race, like most of my crits, but a dreamy race, and pretty good legs, feeling like there is lots of potential. At a recent Thursday evening GV30 training crit, a rubber band snap I was right where I always was again, closing a gap, big gap, unfathonable doable gap, and behold a rider is with me, on my wheel, and I'm a bit spent, and my hearts apound about 200 beats a minute, and I ask, "can you pull?" as I look at him, and smell spent cap gun bullets. That smell....is good, and the break went away and we sat back in the field. I pin-up every race to win it. It's nice to fall asleep after a bit of nervous tossing, to the imagined story, of somehow a miraculos outcome, legs never giving up and going off the gile at the only correct second that the universe gives, and I cross the line, to stand atop the box, winner. I respect honesty so much more today. I want to make sure to feel the joy of every catastorphy racing could every bring, if I never win ever agin, that's ok. Just as long as I have the dreams, as I pin-up. Cheers! dlowe

2021

and Pffft, just like that something appears. I have a few bikes, a road, mountain, beer-beater, and cyclocross. I'm a cyclist more than anything eles. I love to ride. I'm happy on all of them. but, sometimes, more often than not on my cross bike, I see something, a downed telephone pole, that I have to hop. A narrow ribbon of dirt off the gravel road, and the bike I and pull to it, turn up the effort a bit and get at it!

My cx bike loves the spewn decaying streets and urban blight as much as it does, the paved path to Valley Forge. Around here there is a lot of stuff, if brave enough, I can ride. There is a short paved path, underpassing the road, an old trolley line, that I will hit every once in a while, and I'm scared to know what is in that tunnel, I'm ready to turn around and high tale it if needed. And I sprint down to it, and high speed right through it. I miss racing this year, I miss the really steep off camber mud hill decent in the Sly Fox race, that I barrel down and almost say a thank you out loud, that I'm still up right, when I arrive at the bottom, but quickly forget to do, cause I'm racing cross, and lots of other thoughts appear, quickly, chasing you or just needing to get going harder. Oh also, I've been racing long enough to hear people say "that's it, I'm down with racing", like someone can really hang it up. and I know in their mind, that when they say they don't miss the training, or racing, I know, I think they are just trying to convince themselves more than anyone else. Once a racer, you are never retired, never. and who knows the future, and what turns are up there. I got out for a nice easy ride today. It's damp, 35 degrees. On the cross bike, with just faint plans of where I was headed, and got a lot of pleasant pedaling in. I found a couple of new lines. The exploring always sorta keeps me warmer and happy. Ha! Well I really look forward to more gravel roads, hole in the fence short cuts, and burly rocks. Cheers friends, stay happy, and ride fast, when you can, like a whacked out kid, not knowing where they are going, but are loving getting there. dlowe

COOL

I don't mind riding in the humid summer heat of Philadelphia.  I just try to measure my effort.  As if nursing my old AMC Gremlin along, windows down, hot air smashing in.  Watch the temperature gauge, and hoping and trying to keep it out of the red.  That once it is too hot, you'r done, for a long bit. Happy Birthday today to Marcel Duchamp, and to his ability to make me wonder.  I imagined he had a love of cycling, and knew a bit about suffering out on a ride in the sun.  The table on our porch, on it I have waiting, to greet my return, from my summer ride, a cooler of ice cold seltzer, a towel, and by it a chair.  Just to sit.  And let the cooking finish.
I've seen a couple of new riders out there, hammering along, I mean at a real good clip, 225+ watts, railing at maybe 23mph, for a long bit, 10+'s miles, and on flat pedals, an old bike.  I can't wait till the end of their effort, to almost give my applause, as I pull up along aside them, and they all seem to turn to me and have a smile, I say "man you were a crushing it!" and we both roll on.

I wish that this could be memographed, or piratedly xeroxed at kinkos, after hours, cut up and pasted in a zine, then probably it'd have some kind of creedence, and mean something more, and positive enough.

I wish that every person in Montgomery Co. went to a bike shop and bought a bike.  and That when I went to George's on Monday nights to drink beers with him, Anthony, Erin, and whatever other guest invited to the outdoor back porch.  That Anthony and George's eyeballs would be bugged out, and I'd see dirt so deep down in the skin of their hands it can't be washed off.  That the little common touch spots, the top of a pant pocket, or center of the t-shirt where they'd wipe the stress and sweat off, is black of old bike oil.  From selling and fixing bikes busy all day Monday at the bike shop.

Just a bit more.
There is something to falling asleep with a fan on high, and it's hot, that I like.

Cheers friend, enjoy the summer heat.

dlowe