Physical Gratuity

In 1956 the League of American Wheelmen designated May as American Bike Month. Might have rode a tricycle that year. Its predecessor, League of American Bicyclists, renamed it National Bike Month with Ride-a-Bike-Day on its 1st Sunday, and Bike-to-Work-Week Monday through Friday of 3rd week. For New England region, it’s when recreational bicyclists generally begin their 6 month season anyway. Hardcore riders with right gear defy mud, rain, and snow year round.

LAB has a conflict of interests advising anyone to take on sports challenges in that they represent bicycle manufacturers and sellers, not consumers and users, especially incompetent or infirm folks for whom bicycling could be dangerous. These days their claims of congressional influence are largely confabulations and deceits; Republicans in control hate cycling and uniformly vote against funding. Throughout LAB literature you’ll note many references to avoiding automotive traffic and obeying motor codes that cause unsafe situations for cyclists. Seems they’re serving Big Oil more than the 70 million liberated Americans who arrive anywhere by biking there.

Stories about amusements or food might get read, but not mundane routines by which one earns bread. Media highlights so many gratuitous distractions, tips, and what to do with your time, makes you wonder whether they’re safe hacks or scams, and why insiders are so interested in your welfare as to share so-called secrets. Misery craves company, so be wary. It’s been indubitably proven that, instead of Houses of the Holy in nonviolent service to humanity, villains promote harm for their own gain (e.g., sell opioids for which WHO attributes 600,000 fatalities annually worldwide, still less than heart disease in USA alone caused by lack of exercise due to automotive convenience and idiotic policies). Your demise leaves more for them. Billions of your taxes dutifully and involuntarily forwarded are being stolen outright by highest office as treasonous capital felonies beyond prosecution. Constitution entitles courts to issue writs of mandamus to cease and desist, but justices appointed for life stand idly by or support corruption during current administration.

Hard to admit, 6 decades ago cut lawns, did chores, and shoveled snow for empty promises or literal coins. Not having a bike at the time, delivered newspapers on foot; summers, walked to Roger Williams Park Carousel to collect tickets, pick up rings, start/stop rides, and sweep spilled popcorn. All work is heroic, inevitable, noble, and taken for granted by ignorant ingrates and selfish narcissists. Minimum wage laws didn’t apply to part time teens, so took years to save $125 for a Schwinn Continental (aged Kodachrome slide); bought used cars for less, in fact, restored and sold them for profit. Waitstaffs are just now getting to keep physical gratuities previously taxed, not due to an altruistic policy but a political stunt. Trudged miles on mornings to restock assembly cells at Elmwood Sensors, not on a bus route, next to Pawtuxet River, forever a threat to flood its banks.

Even before Led Zeppelins’s Physical Graffiti dropped on original vinyl half a century ago, began own bicycling transportation scheme through crosstown commutes to high school. Didn’t work out... no safe place to store an attractive new 10-speed during a bike boom; one in family was stolen despite sturdy chain and locked to a wrought iron fence. Nevertheless, ever since learning of this recurring observance, determined to bike everywhere feasible, not just to work. Bomb proof gear, dedication, early rises, lights, and logistics were needed to cover 250,000 miles in under 25,000 hours, which equates to a full time job for 13 years, yet half as far as stressful commutes in cars on highways. Some weeks drove 1,000 miles. Traffic has only gotten worse since. Little wonder why so many need mood altering and pressure reducing medicines.

Now retired from a 40 year professional career and consultancy, 3 proprietorships, and 38 sundry paid positions, decided to revisit by bike from Eden Park all 33 Rhode Island work venues except Portsmouth; also excluded a construction site, 2 colleges, 3 Fortune 100 medical device manufacturers (though bike commuted to 2 of them), and a regulatory agency in Massachusetts. Was engaged at multiple sites for certain employers, though most are now either gone altogether or repurposed for new businesses. Given short distances, regret not biking to more at the time. Throughout personally did steady work of carpentry, electric installation, gardening, landscaping, masonry, painting, plumbing, and roofing for sweat equity, unless tasks were dangerously complicated, a slew of short term volunteer gigs including Procycle 2009, region's 1st all bicycling art gallery show, and worked long overtime hours late into nights, so may have been preoccupied with those projects.

Long before graduating from university, knocked out brass tags and rubber stamps for A. A. White, Chestnut Street; this entire workshop was absorbed into Johnson & Wales campus, as was iconic Outlet Company, then state’s largest department store, having served in payroll-personnel office on 5th floor high above bus hub Weybosset Street, downtown’s oldest thoroughfare, before landmark edifice was raised to rubble. Parallel Westminster Street had E. L. Freeman stationers, where as an East Side high schooler worked late afternoons delivering packages to skyrise offices on route home by a 2nd bus. In 1969 and 1970, worked at Wingate Computing on mezzanine floor of Dorrance Building above Waldorf cafeteria processing payrolls for client companies during a Night Flight shift.

On way downtown to them intersecting old paper route led by fading sharrows, rode by what once was Jake Kaplan’s car lot on Elmwood Avenue. As a licensed chauffeur drove a bus for Warwick schools from behind Thayer Rink, and a decrepit Yellow Cab out of a dingy garage on Lockwood Street near Central High School. Passing city’s “scenes of occupational crimes” returned via Field’s Point, having driven Jake’s new cars off cargo boats from Europe and Japan, including Datsuns (Nissans), Saabs, Volvos, and whatnot. About this time took a bus trip to Manhattan, and hiked though St. Mark’s Place in Greenwich Village; it definitely resembled album cover. Shipyard once built naval vessels under banners proclaiming “On to Nippon” blocking sun at dawn during war in the Pacific. Ironic that Japan sent competitive vehicles back through same docks.

Blocks away rode by Federal Products’ 3 buildings. Wrote thousands of instruction manuals, Ten Years Gone yet holding on, for dimensional inspection machinery crucial to product quality and reliability among world’s largest manufacturers. The “sheer amount of physical energy poured into writing” (both Led Zep's and own) impressed contemporaries, but AI now outputs many more paragraphs per hour, surpassing foundational lifetime efforts. Earlier on Eddy Street, rang up purchases and wrangled carriages at Almacs food market, which served South End shoppers and was bought by Federal. Almacs competed with A&P and Star, both on parallel Broad Street but now long gone. Eddy branch, known to insiders as “The Zoo”, was where they sent incompetent newbies fresh from their training facility on Noyes Street, along Seekonk River in East Providence. Also did a stint at a nearby waterfront dye mill on Dexter Street. Used Gano Street Bike Path to get to Richmond Square, a CyberMdx worksite, Henderson Bridge Bikeway to Dexter and Noyes, then Broadway to Rumford Mill at Greenwood Avenue, having braided shoestrings and shuttled barrels of them for further processing or storage. Returned via Commercial Way past another place for CyberMdx, Waterman Street, East Providence, Wampanoag Mall, having crafted leather and sold retail, then Henderson again, across Wayland Square, down Angel Street, and through Providence Place to level of Woonasquatucket River.

Made it a point to pass both former Brown&Sharpe facilities on Promenade Street on a new adjacent bikeway, and South Main Street where it was founded in an old house on defunct harbor. Passed Pat Izzy Trucking, at Hemlock Street, having served there as a driver and striker, that is, an apprentice who rode along on triangle runs among Boston, Cape Cod, and Providence to help unload trailers and learn to drive tractors. Without climbing Chalkstone Avenue a few blocks away, got close enough to Roger Williams Hospital, where washed commissary pans and pots during a college summer break. Same bikeway accessed 2 other spots: silk screened panels in Eagle Square, and stamped tags in what’s now the Rising Sun Mill, on Valley Street in Olneyville. Not at all funny, seems the more onerous conditions and strenuous demands are the less employers are willing to pay. When after 6 months they refuse to give the 5 cent raise they promised as a sign-on incentive, it’s either get trampled under foot or time to ramble on, neither of which ensure unemployment compensation.

Arranged a separate trip to Frenchtown Road grounds of Brown&Sharpe, North Kingstown, which was sold off after parent Hexagon moved them to Quonset Point’s Kifer Park. This award winning property of berms and natural gardens hidden from highway has crumbled into ignominy behind chainlink gates that disturb pine scented memories of 3 mile lunchtime walks twice around Precision Park’s perimeter road. During 14 years there producing new media and publishing technical documents it stood as the largest manufacturing plant in Rhode Island, and probably still is its biggest single structure, nearly twice the floor space of national food brand Daniele in Mapleville. Indeed, it now encompasses 6 medium size ventures including a massive rooftop solar array, though question remains whether its water treatment has been kept operational. Was where bike commuting became routine, although 24 mile roundtrip route crossed some tough segments including Apponaug Circulator, since improved for motoring but not bicycling or walking.. 

Last bike commute of career turned out to be favorite one, 30 miles roundtrip, one hour each way to pharmaceutical giant Amgen in West Greenwich, where edited and spot checked regulatory filings. Used West Bay Bike Path, a segment of the East Coast Greenway, to get to Coventry Center, then climbed Hopkin’s Hill to campus, where they had lockers for bike storage. Amgen was title sponsor of annual Tour of California, once America’s premier pro cycling race, so understood cycling needs. Often varied routes, especially on summer returns along country roads, so week after week covered century mileage, even double metrics, nothing to brag about, since professional Giro d’Italia and Tour de France racers go farther in a single 4 hour stage. Return trip transited Metro Center, where in 2 different offices separated by half a mile compiled dicenial population data for US Department of Commerce. Rounded third by Midland Mazda on Post Road where stocked auto parts, self start-up Warwick Woodcraft on Harrington, Elmwood Sensors at Wellington, then home, site of many succesful consultancy projects and job searches. This 4th revisit loop completed personal Bike-to-Work challenge.

Details matter. Bicycling is how you gauge your vitality and reward yourself for being in shape. In final day of Spring, Memorial Day recalls sad memories derserving of the mood boost that bike spins bring.

“And if you feel that you can't go on, and your will's sinkin' low, just believe and you can't go wrong. In the Light you will find the road, find the road.” John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti, Swan Song Records, 1975; Grammy winner and 16 times platinum