Should you’re at all times going towards no matter it’s everybody else is saying or doing they name that being a “contrarian,” prefer it’s a nasty factor. However I don’t consider that’s a nasty factor–I assume as a result of I’m a contrarian, however that’s not the purpose. The purpose is that being a “contrarian” will not be being ornery for orneriness’s sake; it’s merely making refined corrections when the world is veering wildly in a single course or the opposite.

That is a part of the enjoyment of using a bicycle–an ostensibly “contrarian” pursuit in that everybody else appears to suppose you’re mistaken and annoying and simply making an attempt to be totally different, however the truth is a joyous one that’s primarily the artwork of creating refined corrections. The terrain and the drivers and the squirrels and even gravity itself are conspiring always to take you down, however by way of a refined collection of inputs you barely must even take into consideration you’re in a position information your self and your machine by way of all of it. The act soothes you, it comforts you, and it transports you–each bodily and spiritually–and it’s a reminder that as zany and madcap and fatuous and antagonistic because the world could seem there’s one thing in every of us that may information us to the place we have to go. Actually the trick is to disregard the distractions and keep in mind that the bike goes the place you look. So it’s as much as you to determine the place to look.

In fact a few of us get too carried away with all this. It’s not sufficient to revel within the refined artwork of correction whereas using; you’ve additionally acquired to do it together with your bike alternative. You get a second bike, a 3rd bike, a fourth–each correcting for some “deficiency” within the final one. A quick bike, a cushty bike, a skinny-tire bike, a fat-tire bike. A set-gear, a 12-speed, a single pace…built-in shifters, downtube shifters, listed shifters, no shifters. Every bike appears excellent within the second, and the style through which they distinction is its personal type of perfection, and so you progress from one to the opposite, like working backwards and forwards between the pool and the sauna.

All of this a roundabout method of claiming that we’re now properly into the autumn:

And after a protracted interval of using street bikes with skinny tires, this previous weekend I rode an upright bike with fats tires:

When the leaves of autumn blanket the paths ample tire quantity enables you to journey with out worry of the various unseen sticks and stones which may in any other case break your bones:

I hadn’t spent any actual time on the Jones since my end-of-summer trip, throughout which I rode it a lot of the time, and as I at all times do after a protracted absence I reveled in its specific type of perfection:

That being the style through which it’s completely at dwelling on the roads and clean trails:

And but you possibly can preserve using it as deep into the woods as you could care to go:

I went deeper into the woods than that however I used to be having fun with myself an excessive amount of to take pictures.

Sure, no bike is proof against path hazards, and it was virtually precisely 4 years in the past now that I used to be using this very bike solely to be felled by an Osage orange:

Nicely, there I used to be once more in the exact same spot:

The preternaturally organized freak fruits taunting me from their perch upon the Outdated Croton Aqueduct’s historical ventilator tower:

However this time I made a decision to cease and present these fuckers who’s boss:

That’s known as “focus:”

It could appear secluded, however about two seconds into the video you possibly can hear somebody in one of many close by homes coughing up a lung.

By the way in which, that’s a merino sweater from Rivendell, it’s stupidly snug, and as soon as the climate will get cool I put on it on and off the bike just about on a regular basis:

[Photo: Rivendell]

And wanna hear one thing actually bizarre?

Earlier than I put it on I didn’t even know the way to juggle!

I might completely see Rivendell promoting juggling bean baggage although. Looks like the type of old-timey analog leisure you’d need to preserve in your voluminous saddle bag.