As in life some people change tires because they are preventive types who follow regular maintenance schedules or because they note tread wear and decide to bite the bullet and to buy new tires and tubes, but not so in my case. I was eking the last millimeter of wear possible from my tires — false economy at best. I did notice that the tire was a little spongier than usual before I cycled last Saturday; nevertheless I pumped up the tubes to eighty PSI and mounted up. Joyfully I shoved off, but alas, halfway down the trail, I heard ”Pfft” and steering turned sluggish and ultimately lumpy. On the rim I was — thanks to a sharp, penetrating stone, I think. A senior should be much more aware of tread wear in life.
I had a little repair kit containing useless dried up rubber cement. A man should always check his rubber cement before taking risks. My wife was at home and lying in the sun. It had been years since I’d had a flat and needed her to rescue me, yet she was not mollified. After a frustrating search for me requiring the aid of a clerk at Seven Eleven, she finally found me sitting on a rock playing with my repair kit. See how our little negligent indulgences impinge on the lives of others?
I’m blessed with good woman, though. The next day, when I was taking a break from cutting grass, she said, “Hey, why don’t you go get what you need to fix your bike. You need to ride tomorrow.” So I left the mowing to her. I do not deserve this woman.
I went to the bike shop which like bookstores and nurseries always have the nicest people to assist. We fussed around and found the right tire size. I bought two tires and a tube. The nice people at Trek gave me five bucks off the tire that had been marked up. While they searched I watched the female twenty something hefting bikes up and down from the repair rack and wielding her tools deftly. Thinking of things unisex these days, I marveled at how boys and girls work together in such equality and I wanted to be one of them in this new age. Are there any sissies anymore, male or female, gay or straight? At least in the bicycle shop everyone had muscle tone.
But I went home, took a nap, opened a beer and set about changing tires. I always worry about getting the chain back correctly on the cassette (or mass of gears on the rear hub). This time I took note of the sprocket last used. I suspect this was unnecessary as I believe chain and sprocket find each other like lovers.
The philosophical element here is making sure that one’s tread design hits the road effectively in the advancing direction of life. One must remember always to find the little arrow marked “Forward Direction >>.” It is difficult to pick out from all the other information such as brand name, tire dimension, inflation pressure and a bunch of other numbers on either side of the tire and understood best by Bontrager and the folks at the bike shop. Experience with tractor tires, believe me, has inestimable value here. When the tread has a v-shape, the single, convergent point must dig into the earth for maximum traction. A man has to attack life with the tip of the arrow, not the feathers.
Then one must remember that the clamping lever on the hubs goes on the left side of the bike. In the end one notes that a successfully mounted tire also has the brand name on the right side. It all fits and matches when fitted right. As in life it helps to know port from starboard. And like life, inflation is crucial. I mean how much air we blow into the tube or skin of life matters: enough, just enough, too much? You can’t just count on the same pressure you put into the old tires. The secret lies in all those variable dimensions which determine the surface area of the inflated tire. Even here leverage matters — pounds per square inch. In this case sixty PSI did what it took eighty PSI to do on my last set of tires and tubes. It’s a matter of time, design and change. One must adapt to his pressures, internal and external.
In the end I did as good a job as anyone at the bike shop. The tires held firm and I joyfully cycled my whole route the next day. My wife got her sun bath, too. With a little more care and foresight, I’d have had an additional fifteen or so miles on the trail that weekend and a tanner spouse.
David Milliken
Camus, a Romance: Review of Elizabeth Hawes’ Memoir-Biograhy
When I learn from Hawes that Camus drew upon his experience of Melville, again a writer whom I have enjoyed, I begin to feel a certain circle of influence pressing on me. The circle widens when I read that Camus had sensitivities for Keats, but then what reader with a heartbeat does not. In the questions for discussion of Hawes book the editors suggest thinking about Keats’ concept of Negative Capability and again I feel more and more among friends. Of course, Camus, a fellow tubercular would have been a reader of Keats. In his way Camus is a Romantic, too.
What is harder for me personally to understand is how I, a son of Appalachia and basically the product of upper middle- class, Midwestern influences have been influenced by, I must say it, “existentialist” literature. On the other hand, questions of existence were around long before the bohemian fad. Camus himself rejected this term and “absurd” as well; therefore I will, too. I am content with Keats’ preference for a literature that simple does not seek “irritable reaching after fact and fiction” or philosophical labels. That absolves me also from my own attraction to things French. I have no mitigation nor apology for my respect for la civilisation française.
I suspect that my Francophilia also contributes to my enjoyment of Camus, a Romance (Grove Press, 2009). Hawes is an extraordinary Francophile whose love affair with Camus began as a coed when she pinned a poster of him on her wall in college. She admits to being a “fan,” but her dedication to and discipline in the biographer’s art impresses me immensely. Sustaining a professional point of view was paramount and she succeeded. Indeed, her sharing of the memoirist and biographic process makes the book even more interesting. I passed weeks savoring it as I also tried to empathize with Albert Camus who had never been much more to me than “the stranger.” And yet, even at the end of his life, he was still a stranger in the world — especially among Parisian intellectuals. Sartre and others broke his heart over their criticism of The Rebel . The controversy became virulently personal. Camus mended, of course, but the scar remained. Camus condemned capital punishment, terrorism and violence. His cause for a French Algeria died, as one might say an Algeria died, too.
I was looking for signs of happiness in a so-called “philosopher of despair.” Hawes found it in his devotion to his sense of responsibility, the most important thing to know about Camus, she says; and after that his sense for fun. Hawes chronicles the latter in the man’s love for his women, dogs, friends, Citroëns, the sun and the beach. Catherine Camus, his daughter, trying to express the intangible in her father, said of him, “It’s that one feels solidarity in a situation of happiness.” This would account for his passion for the theatre. And Camus himself said, “But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”
His Nobel Prize actually became a burden that required nearly two years of adjustment. At the end of it, not long before the fatal car accident, he said, “Absence, painful frustration. But my heart is alive, my heart is finally alive. So it was not true that indifference had overcome everything.” In Hawes’ words Camus believed ” it was a duty to be happy [and] not to give in to inevitability, whatever face it took. Sisyphus speaks here: “There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.”
I will let a photo gallery speak. And you can also visit “Albert Camus Quotations” to your right and down on the Blogroll.
For me, having read Hawes’ biography, Camus stands even bigger in life. He was a devout humanist above all. As for what he does for me, Camus epitomizes what he thought Europe has to offer America — “a useful sense of disquiet.” In our current relapse into dysfunctional adolescence in the world, American behavior is absurd and a dose of Camus’ conviction taken to heart could do us much good. He has never been more relevant.
David Milliken