The ball flew over a fence about a block ahead of me: Bounce, bounce, bounce, before settling into the gutter.

I scanned up and down the street. Good — no cars. I was pedaling home on one of the rat runs I use as much to keep things interesting as to avoid arterial roads. There would be no reason to panic if a kid ran out to fetch the ball.

But nobody came. I rolled up on the ball, looking for its owner.

The Bicycle Man

“Hey mister, could you throw that to us, please?” The tiny voice came from a young girl standing just inside her fenced yard. She couldn’t have been more than six or seven.

“Sure,” I said, dismounting. I fished the ball from the curb and walked it over. “Here you go — good idea not running into the street after it. Cars can’t always see you.”

“Thanks!” she smiled. I wasn’t finished dispensing advice.

“But be careful about talking to strangers. You don’t know me. OK?”

“My Auntie says you’re not a stranger,” the girl laughed. “You’re the Bicycle Man!” That’s when I noticed a figure watching from just inside the doorway. I recognized her — a woman with a funky, artsy, ramshackle front yard a few doors down. I usually waved as I passed. Now she was waving at me, casting a watchful eye over her niece and nephew.

The sun was going down, and I still had a few miles to go. I nodded to the Aunt, mounted up, and headed for home.

Street level

The Bicycle Man: I had a name around here. I’d become a part of the neighborhood without even knowing it.

That’s the second way a bike will change your life. It will connect you deeply with your community. You notice a lot more from the saddle than sealed inside an automobile. You catch bits of conversation and see the warm glow from people’s windows in the evening. You’ll catch the scent of fresh laundry or tonight’s dinner; hear the sound of hidden fountains and windchimes; watch the progress of flowerbeds and vegetable gardens. You’ll learn which dogs belong which which yard, and wonder why every neighborhood seems to have the same pair of shoes dangling from an overhead power line.

And people will see you — not a car speeding past, but a person on a bike. Now and then, they’ll say hello. Or perhaps ask you to pitch a ball over a fence. You won’t mind.

The world lies to us every day. It lies so casually and persistently, we hardly notice.

Of course, not all lies are malevolent. We like being lied to, especially the silken deceptions of flattery. But it doesn’t really help us to be told we’ve lost some weight, when we haven’t. It’s like that second piece of pie — delicious, perhaps, but something which looks more appetizing on the plate than around our waist.

The bicycle as truth-teller

Bikes are incapable of lying. Rubber and steel lack the artifice of flesh and blood.

A bike will never fib about your physical condition. If you’re tired, it will tell you. If you’re strong, it will tell you that, too.

No bicycle will ever mislead about your surroundings. If there is a grade or rough section of road, you’ll know it. There’s no climate control system to turn a July afternoon into a spin through the Swiss alps. A bike won’t hide the consequence of the distances which separate us from people and places we love, nor will it conjure the shimmering petroillusion of movement without the expenditure of energy.

Your bike never lies. You may not like how muscle sometimes tires of its conversation with the highway, but you will clearly follow the discussion.

The road begins here

You learn a lot about yourself when you ride. The interesting thing about this objectivity is that it invites more of the same. One journey leads to another, both on and off the bike.

But clattering along the wooden boardwalk of a nearby creek this weekend, I realized it has finally happened: There’s color overhead. Soggy little islands of yellow and red leaves creep downstream, turning gently in the pale columns of November light. Autumn has found us, at last.

Following nature’s example

Fall is my favorite season. We trample summer underfoot, where it will rest until returning as the blossoms of spring. Bounty and letting go, all with beautiful result.

That’s the same result I hope for in my own tiny affairs. For the past few weeks, I’ve been engaging in a round of creative destruction. In some cases, it’s just been a matter of releasing things which have served their purpose — letting them spiral to earth, hardly noticed by anyone. In others, I’ve had to lean hard against the plow before tilling things under.

None of these, taken individually, amount to much. But together, they’re the first steps in a realignment I hope will recover the time and focus I need to write. In sentences longer that 140 characters.

Letting go

Some nights ago — with this unburdening process stirring the dark silt of dreams — I found myself on a hill overlooking a ruined section of Hardian’s Wall.

“You know the surest sign of an empire in decline?” intoned the specter of a grey and lonely Centurion. “Neglected outposts.”

I have a lot of those, particularly in the digital realm: Gates hanging on rusty hinges; abandoned watchtowers; rotting timbers. Time to pull a few of them down. So farewell Twitter and Facebook. Goodbye, also, to LinkedIn and Flickr. I’ve opted out of Klout, dumped at least a dozen domains, and shuttered a number of online and in-real-life projects. I am clear cutting whatever obscures my view of the horizon.

Gathering up

I haven’t sustained a publishing project since Lighter Footstep and its short-lived successor, More Minimal. After a number of false starts, I’ve decided to return my attention here. As I approach my third year living in suburbia without a car, I’ll be writing about my first love — bikes. More importantly, I’ll be writing about how a bike can change our lives: How we feel; how we look at out community and surroundings; and what happens when we take a considered look at our real needs and desires.

I will also be participating in Google+. If you haven’t tried Google+, please allow me to invite you to give it a whirl. For me, it’s everything under one roof: Great conversations, terrific video support, and built-in Google Reader. Sign-up is open to anyone with a Google account (now including Google Apps). I’d be pleased of you’d add me to your Google+ circles.

As an experiment, I’m going to move comments from this site to public threads on Google+. Once I’ve published an article here, I’ll link it to an entry on Google+. For such a young community, Google+ is amazingly engaged and diverse. I’d like to see how conversations reverberate in open spaces.

This site will be substantially re-aligned. To be honest, I’m not sure what form it will take. But whatever happens, it begins now.

Updated: I’m still enjoying the conversation at Google+, but I have decided to restore commenting on this site for the New Year. I will again be using the DISQUS commenting system, for the convenience of everyone who uses it or prefers a third-party web identity.

Uh — yeah. I’m an irregular blogger these days, so I didn’t bother writing up Moving Planet here. Pop over to the site, flip through the pictures, and see why I’d like to keep casual downtown bike rides a regular deal.

Normal people on normal bikes. Wearing normal clothes, even. Lycra will be begrudgingly tolerated, if that’s how you feel comfortable on a bike. But it’s rather like turning up at a public pool in a Speedo: If you need race kit for an easy little spin around town, you must want people to point and stare. And if they don’t, we will.

No douchebaggery allowed

Weather-appropriate street clothes will do just fine. This is an amble. Call it slow biking, if you wish (I do). The ride starts at 8am from Ever’man’s Natural Foods on West Garden. We’ll follow parts of the Moving Planet Pensacola route, rolling north through Belmont-DeVilliers neighborhood, east on shady (and partially brick-paved) La Rua Street, and south on 17th Avenue (under Graffiti Bridge).

Then it’s breakfast at Bagelheads on Gregory, so bring some pocket money. This is the reason you don’t wanna dress like a sausage — we’ll be in contact with the non-cycling public. Save the Leopard-Trek jersey and bib shorts for a club ride.

Which this isn’t. If you ride Slowbike Saturday, you’re riding as an individual. This means you are responsible for your own safety, conduct, and breakfast. That ought to make the cops and my lawyer happy.

After Bagelheads, we’ll probably loop through DeLuna park at the end of the pier, then back up to Palafox Market to see what’s fresh. You’ll enjoy this a lot more of you’re riding a bike that has a basket or something.

A grand experiment

Total ride should a couple hours, including bagel and coffee time. If it’s not, we’ll adjust next time. This is an experiment.

I’m posting this late on a Friday evening, so I may be the only one who shows. That’s more coffee and cream cheese for me. But feel free to roll along — slowly.

Still sitting in the build rack at Bikes Plus: My shiny new Surly Long Haul Trucker.

Nope, I didn’t take any risks picking the tried-and-true LHT. Bombproof, overbuilt, and ready for whatever riders throw at them, LHTs have been toting commuters and fully loaded tourists for years. I’m looking forward to dressing this one out. Delivery should be Monday.

And then there shall be no excuses for not putting blacktop beneath tires.

I assure you that the passage of two years since the snapshot of me on Southern California Public Radio’s website was taken has left me with a suitably weird cyclist tan. The kind which guarantees beach visits are solitary affairs, and the prospect of a summer pool party invitation is enough to set me into a full-scale panic.

But I’ve never been one for photographic self-promotion, and I was told there must be a suitably bikey picture of me to illustrate an interview green blogger extraordinaire Katherine Butler did with me about urban cycling. So you gets what you gets.

Suitably warned, feel free to step right up and check out the full text of Katherine’s piece, Want to start city biking? Here is your how-to. In which I try to sound like I know something about bicycles, while clearly looking awkward around my own.

Thanks to Katherine and Southern California Public Radio for their attention to urban cycling. Let’s ride!

One of my projects this afternoon: Getting a new set of cork grips mounted and shellacked on my vintage Raleigh Sprite.

This is right after applying a second coat. I use common amber shellac, each application giving the cork  a darker and more durable luster. Three coats are about right. By that time, the cork will have taken on a richness similar to leather.

Cork is probably my favorite kind of bicycle grip. They’re inexpensive — this set was less than nine dollars — and feel good in your hand. The cork tends to dampen road buzz, and the shellac is easy to clean. It’s nothing to add an extra coat if they start to look worn.

Once the last coat is dry, I’ll slide the Velo Orange city brake levers back into place, reconnect the cables, and tighten everything back down. The Sprite is my favorite bike. I’ll feature her conversion with a more general photo layout soon. Her name is Carmen, and she has her very own Flickr photo set.

Such as this gallon of Li’l Napoleon IPA from the good folks at Pensacola Bay Brewery. Nothing like being able to toss a cold growler of dry, immaculately hoppy ale in your pannier on a blazing hot summer evening.

That’s my indestructible Chrome messenger bag, which I’ve abused daily for three straight years. This shot was taken outside the brewery in downtown Pensacola, just as the shadows were starting to lengthen. Locally brewed beer, sustainably transported. Let the weekend roll.

Pensacola’s Belmont-DeVillers neighborhood has more than a little Blues heritage. On this summer afternoon, blue is everywhere. Shot over-the-shoulder from a moving bicycle.

At the same time, you have to wonder about the effectiveness of such stunts. The cardinal rule of boycotts is never to call one unless you’re sure it will have a measurable financial impact on the target. While it’s true that Black Friday is for suckers and a lot of the Buy Nothing Day demonstrations are both witty and photogenic, it’s not likely that they’ll achieve their stated goal of bringing “the capitalist consumption machine” to a grinding – if only momentary – halt. Maybe what we need is a better kind of buying boycott. One which aims at the right target.

Blame where blame is due

Really, it’s time to quit hammering on the merchants. Yes, Black Friday is designed to whip shoppers into a spending mood: to lure them through the door with loss-leader specials in the hope they buy thoughtlessly once inside. And unfair labor practices, artificially cheap goods, and the effect of big-box retail outlets are all valid — though separate — issues.

But all the advertising and marketing gimmicks in the world won’t buy a fundamentally unhealthy consumerist society. We did this to ourselves. Nobody would flatten a couple hundred acres of wetland to build a strip mall if people wouldn’t come. No creative department is really clever enough to convince us that spending is equal to love, or that we should see more discount store sales associates between Thanksgiving and Christmas than our own friends and family.

Buy Something Day

What we need isn’t a once-a-year Buy Nothing Day. The real cure for what ails us is to apply some common sense and restraint every time we consider a purchase decision. Perhaps we should turn things around and make Buy Nothing Day the norm. Need something? Write it down. Do your homework. Let the shopping impulse cool.

Then, once a week, we’d have Buy Something Day. Shopping day, essentially: Online or at the mall, make the week’s purchases in a considered manner. Perhaps you don’t mind crowds, and the best bet is a Black Friday deal, after all. That’s fine, because we’re shopping with our heads, not our hearts. Just stick with your list, and leave those Zhu Zhu pets on the shelf, where they belong.

However you choose to observe the holidays, here’s wishing you health, happiness, and peace.

Do you shop on Black Friday — or do you have another way of handling what you buy? Discuss this article on Google+.