On almost every one of my many rides up through Rock Creek Park and into the well-tracked wilds of suburban Maryland, I wonder what it might be like to get a flat tire out there in the farthest reaches of my usual routes. What would I, sans-tube, do? How would I make it the 10 or 15 miles back to my home in the city?
Out this morning on a quick jaunt to the park limits, my rear wheel whacked one of Beach Drive's many potholes, just after I made the turn to head home. The low hiss of air escaping quickly and the fingers-in-gelatin feel of the wheel rim against rubber told me truly: God cut me down. After a few profanities both mouthed and voiced, and self-flagellation over my forsaking the CamelBak stocked with spares, tire irons, and a hand pump, I realized that there was just one thing to do in this oft-imagined situation: walk. And I did, muttering to myself about that inch between success and disaster, the haphazard ease with which human plans are torn asunder by an unfeeling cosmos, and the "opportunities" we have to "grow" and "learn acceptance" when we confront these facts.
Walking the couple miles towards the park station to ring for a cab, I was at least heartened by the more than few offers of aid that came from passing cyclists ("You OK?" - "I'm fine, thanks, just screwed without a spare" - "Yep, that bites"). To wait for my very expensive ride home, I took up the single sunny spot by the creek, and recalled that there are worse ways to spend a spring morning. The too-brief draughts of warm sunshine, though, were not enough to stem the tide of early-morning chill, and I was soon looking for a place to warm my hands (hard to find for the spandex-clad). Just as my teeth began to chatter, my knight in a black and yellow Ford Crown Victoria arrived, and I was wisked home for the pretty price of a decent dinner.
The glaring lesson, of course, is one in preparedness: cyclists should carry spare tubes like boats got lifejackets. I think that this has been suitably impressed up on me.
Another point, though, is that we often fail to consider that accidents fall on a sliding scale. I've just begun reading one of JM Coetzee's lesser-known novels, The Slow Man. In the first paragraph, Paul Rayment suffers the loss of his leg in a collision with a truck (he was cycling, of course). I identify with the cycling aspect, and more deeply with facing up to getting around on one leg (though I, unlike M. Rayment, was lucky enough to have my busted-up limb reconstructed rather than amputated). Comparatively, an inconvenient flat tire is obviously on the trivial end of the aw-crap scale.
And how does this all relate to affordable housing? Well, to bring it home with broad brush strokes, an accident may foul our plans (and perhaps our propulsion), set our world wobbling on its axis, and redefine our experience with new and unexpected limits. For these reasons we try to prevent accidents and plan contingencies. It's altogether different when, for some, limited opportunity and contracted horizons are product, part, and parcel of our social machinery. For accidents we should learn acceptance and perspective; perspective on societal inequity of opportunity, though, should move us to take up tools and ready ourselves to fine-tune the system, or maybe do some serious re-engineering.
Maybe there will be more on this as I get further into the book, and back out on the road . . . (with spares, of course!)
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