On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 6/1/2008
Ain't superstitious, but...
Years ago, I wrote a column in this space called Riding on Air. It was about bike tires and flats. In it, I mentioned a new set of tire liners that showed promise for puncture protection. At the time, I was hoping to find some feedback from others who had been using them...something in the way of testimonials to their effectiveness. After all, what is the best form of advertising in the bike world? It's word-of-mouth feedback from other bikers.
But it occurred to me that, in the case of any product having to do with puncture prevention, word-of-mouth is the absolutely last place you would be likely to find any useful information. Can you think of one cyclist anywhere who would willingly say this: "Oh yeah, those tire liners are great! I've been using them now for over a year, and I haven't had a flat in all that time!'...?
I mean, really, no cyclist I know would be willing to risk such a jinx. A jinx? What jinx? I make it sound as if there is some proven scientific principle at work here. Of course, any rational, sensible cyclist knows that no such principle does exist; that testifying about not having had a flat in so many months will automatically cause you to have one--or several--flats within the next week. And yet, no one is going to risk it by making such a claim. It's like Pascal's premise about praying to God: you might not believe that God exists, but you don't really know for sure, one way or the other, so why not say a few prayers, just in case? (I should think that if God does exist, he--or she or it--is going to know the difference between sincere prayers and ones that are merely offered as a way of hedging one's bets, but that discussion is beyond the scope of today's column.)
In the case of making a claim about flats, a rational person might believe there is no cause and effect between the boast and the next--immediate--flat, but you never know, so why take the chance?
The fact is, cyclists are a superstitious lot. In this respect, they are probably not unlike most athletes. When we take our bodies and minds and push them out to the edges of what's possible, we enter the realm of unknowns: why do we have a great ride on this day and a crummy ride on that day? Why does a baseball player have a hot streak at the plate in July and then a slump in August? Supposedly, sports physiologists ought to be able to explain it all in simple, logical terms, but the real world never quite fits inside those tidy boxes. There are too many intangibles and mysteries out there. So we study up on the trends and the science and all the various formulaic theories, but then, just in case, we also cover our butts with a nod in the direction of voodoo: we keep those basic superstitions in mind.
I think most of you will admit this is true, but if you're scoffing, answer these questions...
If--on a ride--you see a black cat alongside the road ahead, do you hope it will turn back and not cross in front of you? If it does cross in front of you, are you relieved to note that it actually has one white leg and so is not a true black cat? And if it is truly black, do you resolve to be a little more careful for the balance of the ride?
Do you subscribe to the prohibition related above about mentioning not having had a flat since...whenever?
You are in a group, pounding into a headwind, and some dumb cluck says, "Well, at least this ought to turn into a killer tailwind when we get to the next corner.' Do you cringe a little when you hear that or perhaps even scold the fool? Or do you look up to the sky and say, "I don't know him!'
We are all hyper-sensitive to the threat of the probable jinx...what might be termed tempting fate, as if the fickle finger of fate were a real, tangible force in nature, like gravity or the laws of motion. Do we take it all seriously? No, of course not! And yet, you never know, so...
There are loads of more personalized superstitions too, such as wearing the same lucky gloves for really special rides, where you will need all the help you can get. Never mind that the ancient gloves are ratty in the extreme and so smelly they should be declared a hazmat site.
There is one particular area of superstition that pops up all the time on rides, and it is the layman's practical guide to understanding Chaos Theory: we call it Murphy's Law. I don't know who Murphy was (and surprisingly, my on-line Phrase Finder doesn't list it), but as I understand it, in broadest outline, the law states, "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.' In the real world, there are myriad subsets and variations on the basic premise. In cycling, a classic case of Murphy's Law might be: you've been riding along a narrow road with no shoulders for five miles now, without seeing a single car; then, just as one approaches from the rear, another one approaches from ahead, so that you and the two vehicles all meet at the same time on the same pinched piece of narrow road. To be truly Murphian, one vehicle would be a log truck and the other would be an RV. You know this happens all the time! You've been there and had that done to you, right?
Those blighted moments when bad luck and bad timing collide and the calloused fickle finger of fate squashes you like a little bug...how does that happen? What forces are at work to create such improbable scenarios? Our tiny, tired minds are ill-equipped for sorting out such complex conundrums--especially halfway through a hard ride--so like superstitious peasants in the middle ages, we chalk it up to some higher order beyond our ken...we shrug and invoke Murphy's Law.
But I want to propose an alternative to Murphy's Law, or perhaps the countervailing opposite of it. In keeping with the lucky Irish theme implicit in Murphy, I am going to call this Riley's Law. I take the name from the old Life of Riley show on early television, starring William Bendix as this hapless, happy clown who never got it quite right but always landed on his feet...who lived a life where things always worked out, no matter how muddled they might have appeared, halfway though each episode.
Riley's Law does not state that whatever can go right, will go right. It's not that simple. It's more a case of, if things are about to go totally wrong, a la Murphy's Law, sometimes the fates conspire to pull our fat out of the fire. To belabor that previous cycling scenario: you've been riding along a narrow road with no shoulders for five miles now, without seeing a single car; now two big lunkers arrive at the same time, and you're caught in the vise. And then, just at the moment of crunch time, an isolated patch of wide shoulder presents itself, affording you the bail-out room you need.
My own personal favorite example of Riley's Law occurred when I overcooked a corner on a fast descent and flew off the road headed for a drop into a 20-foot deep rocky creek bed, only at exactly the spot where I went flying off the road, a little bridge spanned the creek, and I was able to plot my tanget straight over the bridge, instead of straight off into space and down into the blunt trauma of the rocky creek.
Some would call this serendipity: "the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.' I prefer to think of it as Riley's Law.
We think we live in the age of reason and science; that all phenomena are explicable. We flatter ourselves that we are not like those superstitious peasants who imagined witches on broomsticks and black cat familiars. And yet, when we hop on our own magic broomsticks and pedal off into the unknown of a ride in the country, we are quite comfortable filtering some of our more inexplicable adventures through the fuzzy lens of superstition. It's our humble way of saying: yes, we are rational and intelligent and masters of all we survey, and yet, and yet, we never really do understand it all, for sure, and so...
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net