My friend Luc told me that biking is the perfect meditation. I sighed and said in my pious enlightened voice “So true.” My imaginary skeptical voice scoffed and said “Oh God here we go again.” He was referring to my history with meditation; I am a dilettante of spiritual traditions.
NYC is Candy Land for spiritual seekers like me. I’ve taken all the yogas: hot, naked, Kundalini, and laughing. An acupuncturist using electrified needles has worked me over more than once. The herbal oil enemas were transcendent, but wrecked my furniture. I took the 12 steps and turned my life over to the care of a doorknob.
It was expensive, but I loved all of it and regret nothing. One of the smartest purchases I made was the $250 I spent on the secret mantra. I have been meditating with it sporadically for 16 years, so I feel well qualified to judge whether or not biking is the perfect meditation.
Let’s compare the two.
Meditation
Biking
Gently close your eyes
DO NOT CLOSE YOUR EYES
Sit in a comfortable, upright seated position
Wedge a piece of plastic mounted on a clattering aluminum frame between your ass cheeks
Slow your breathing
Gasp for breath
Bring your focus to a single point
Only Chinese delivery guys are qualified to do this
Play gentle, calming music
Sift crucial sounds from 85dB of city noise
Activate your calming prefrontal cortex
Fire up the amygdala. It’s fight or flight time, baby.
On paper, biking is about as meditative as a Rammstein concert.
But is it?
After crashing into a limo on 6th Avenue and being doored in Chinatown in the first week of my bike commuting experiment, I realized that spacing off while hurtling through a gauntlet of cars is deadly. There are hundreds of harmless things on the streets that can turn perilous in an instant. All my senses must be focused on everything at once and my reactions must be agile enough to evade danger. When my mind is occupied in this way, the chatter nearly stops. I’m forced to be in the moment.
While in this state, the ride is sensuous and I feel everything intensely. Rhythms emerge from the din. I float across dunes of asphalt formed by pounding tires. Sound is hushed when I turn off a busy thoroughfare onto a side street and the kaleidoscopic city turns into a quiet little town. I fly down the avenues with pigeons on a magic carpet. It’s exhilarating. And then the ride ends.
Luc was right. Biking in NYC is the perfect meditation.
When the police officer finally got me to stop, about six blocks after running a red light, the first thing he said was, “You didn’t even slow down!”
His baleful look and intonation fully conveyed the unique mixture of injured pride, maternal exasperation and wonder tinged with admiration employed by officers of the NYPD in the execution of their duty.
Indeed, I had tried, and failed, to rip through the intersection at Flushing and Cumberland against the light, and right in front of one of those little 3-wheeled baby shoes the traffic police drive around in. Only a left-turning beige van had forced me to concede defeat in mid-intersection.
The policeman, not getting any acknowledgement at all as he drove alongside me for about a block, zoomed ahead and parked the three-wheeler diagonally athwart the bike lane.
This hadn’t registered at all.
Shouldn’t he know better than to block the bike lane like that? I thought.
And why is he stopped there, in front of those abandoned buildings in the Navy Yard? Following his gaze, I cast a glance over my right shoulder toward the tangle of trees and falling-down-buildings, curious to see if I could get a glimpse of whom he could be meeting in such a desolate spot, and expecting someone truly exotic.
Nobody there.
Strange behavior, I said to myself, mentally tsk, tsk-ing as I neatly nipped past him through the unobstructed 14 inches between the vehicle’s front wheel and the sidewalk, pedaling along at a cheerful 15 miles an hour. Maybe he’s doing something he shouldn’t.
Beautiful day.
And it was.
Only a mild curiosity as to the appearance of a person exhibiting such bizarre behavior made me finally look in his direction as he drove up alongside me for the second time, only to discover the police officer delivering a hard stare and emphatically waving me toward the sidewalk.
There is no excuse, but there is an explanation for my behavior. I believe that when traveling on two self-powered wheels, one should benefit from the advantages accorded to both pedestrians and automobilists, but held to the restrictions of neither. I am pedaling, after all.
Which of the two with whom one chooses alliance depends entirely on the circumstances of the moment.
For example, it has been my habit to cross in the crosswalk along with pedestrians (without dismounting, of course) while the cars wait at a red light, and then ride away, glad to be able to relax and enjoy the view for a few moments before the light changes and the street refills with aggressive and inattentive motorists, and my attention once again is entirely occupied with avoiding being the victim of a fascinating text or desperate left turn.
At other moments I expect pedestrians crossing the street against the light to make way for me, despite the modesty of my 26-inch wheels Tramadol and their utter lack of life-threatening speed or steel-clad avoirdupois.
There may be some other practices I would not admit to in public, but nothing that would be harmful to me or anyone else. Having frequented the occasional Klansman, génocidaire and other armed checkpoints, I’m against all health-endangering behavior on principle.
My reasoning is more of a philosophical position, a belief, if you will, that bicycles occupy something like a third way, represent a kind of fifth dimension, if you like, in the urban environment.
If that was ever true anywhere, in New York City it is no longer. From a policy that–and I believe rightly so–placed Visigoth-like attitudes on the part of bicyclists rather low on the priority list of law enforcement, the last year has seen areported increase in tickets for traffic violations
Two tickets that bicyclists have told me about recently are: turning right on a red light, starting to cross an intersection in anticipation of the red bicycle turning green, both arrests accomplished by patrol cars with flashing lights and bicyclists instructed to assume the position.
The days of emulating bike messenger ballet are over.
In my own case, what I got was a lecture, and one of the best I’ve ever heard.
The policeman started with, “You didn’t even look behind you! And you scared the hell out of the guy driving that van.”
He paused, giving me a long look full of reproach, to let that one sink in.
“These drivers aren’t as on top of things as you might think. You can’t count on them to be alert. They might be on drugs. They might be wanted. There might be a warrant out for them. Anything could be going on. You just don’t know.
“And you’re on a bicycle! You don’t want to go up against a car, do you? Who do you think is going to win that fight?”
He went on in this vein. As I listened to him, my self-pitying thoughts of how much those $130 were going to hurt were slowly replaced by frank admiration.
A young guy, sporting a Brooklyn accent whose integrity would merit a place of honor in a museum, if they had museums for things like that, and I’m not suggesting it.
“Well,” he said, after some time, “I guess you realize I’m not going to give you a ticket. I’m going to let you off with a warning this time.”
He paused again, and by this time I felt the dramatic effect he was going for was entirely his to claim.
“I’m not going to give you a 10-minute lecture and a ticket.
“That would be double punishment.”
Hearing this expression of a logic as pure as that of any Greek philosopher, and as strictly limited to the City of New York as that amazing accent, a thought sprang to my mind, and not for the first time.
My friend Luc told me that biking is the perfect meditation. I sighed and said in my pious enlightened voice “So true.” My imaginary skeptical voice scoffed and said “Oh God here we go again.” He was referring to my history with meditation; I am a dilettante of spiritual traditions.
