Peoria’s first roundabout: in Springdale Cemetery

Welcome to a simple grassway around an elevated circle (made of concrete? Stone?) surrounding an obelisk within Springdale Cemetery.

It’s a different sort of traffic circle. No cars, for one. No road signs either—and you can stop wherever you want. Not as long as residents of the immediate area, to be sure, but long enough to regroup, maybe pose for a photograph.

It’s obvious where to ride or walk. You follow a path through cut grass.

For some reason, every time I see the circle, I think of the Large Hadron Collider, probably because I have little understanding of it.

I know the Collider is big and underground and in Europe, three attributes that would seem to make it quite different from Peoria’s Small Path Combiner.

But the Collider is used to test theories, and in that, the Combiner could serve a similar function. Consider the following theories, for example.

Theory #1: This is a good place to ride.

Seems like it. It’s scenic, relatively smooth and easy to navigate. Repeated testing is both necessary and likely.

Theory #2: This is one of the best intersections for human-powered travel in the city.

Of this, there’s little doubt. The nearby Rock Island Greenway, as important and valuable as it is, is replete with examples of amazingly bad intersections: usually crossing a street at a pedestrian walkway, which forces people on bicycles to look, not to the right and left for other vehicles, but forward and backward. Unfortunately, few human heads pivot quite as freely as an owl’s.

If Peoria designed all intersections like those of the Greenway, car traffic would come to a standstill. And while that’s an intriguing idea, some might find it unworkable in practice.

Theory #3: We are having fun.

Again, more testing is needed, but yes, absolutely. Every Thursday morning coffee ride should be measured, at least partially, in yardage.

And we’re getting somewhere, too.

Questions for the reader awheel

When you look at a bicycle, what catches your attention? The orange frame, the shiny cold-forged cranks, or the red panniers just slightly smaller than Rhode Island?

When you ride a bicycle, are you more interested in the twisty gray road, the blue morning landscape, or the cloud that looks like Tevye playing the tuba on the roof of a small-town bank in Indiana?

Do you imagine pedaling? Do you peddle imagination? Is there a difference beyond word choice?

How wide are your eyes?

Waving between eyeglass prescriptions

Details. I miss more of them the older I get.

It’s not a matter of inattention—not for the most part—it’s the eyes or the glasses, or most likely, both. It seems progressive vision means progressively worse.

Clap if you can read this.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not making excuses; it’s more to explain why I always try to wave when I see people pedaling by, even though I rarely know who they are.

It’s because I don’t know who they are.

Years ago I waved to cheer the passage of friends. I knew Don by the angle of his arms as he reached for the bars, Jean because she sat well forward on the saddle, and Doug because I didn’t know anyone smaller and few who were faster.

Today I wave to everyone under human power to make sure I continue to wave at my friends.

As a result, I have moved from intermittent waving to relatively constant gesticulation.

I have become a virtual drinking bird of welcome.

Let’s say it’s you on a bike.

If I knew who you were for sure, I’d know I like you and wave. But since I don’t know who you are, I have to assume I like you.

And act like it.

In other words, I am pleasant to all riders, even though, statistically, it means I’m nice to some stinkers, too.

(My apologies if you self-identify as a stinker. It must be confusing when someone is nice to you for no reason.)

Anyway, back to today’s ride.

I stop just over halfway through a 20-mile ride at the intersection of Singing Woods and Cedar Hills Drive to take a picture of my bike.

You know, for the Instagram.

I see someone approaching from the east, maybe commuting from Caterpillar Mossville.

I turn to wish the rider good morning and take pictures of the passing scene.

The person waves and continues toward the big climb leading to Route 40.

What do I see by eye from 30 feet away? A white helmet and the motion of an arm.

Someone waving back at me.

Given the helmet’s height above the ground, I know I’m not looking at someone on a recumbent or a tall bike. But that’s about it: somebody waving at me from a predictable point in space.

What did the camera capture of the same scene?

Gray socks. A taller rider than me, but similarly equipped with tights, jacket, jersey and a small rear-view mirror attached either to helmet or glasses. A bike with fenders and a large seat bag. Brake cables arcing above the handlebars. Downtube shifters. Three chainrings. A generator hub. A full-length pump under the green top tube.

As it turns out, even with the aid of 21st-century recording technology, I don’t know the rider. But I recognize the equipment choices, which suggests I might also like the person who made those choices.

Even though, officially, I already did.

Why to shift gears without electricity

The way I understand it, pushing a button to initiate a wireless gear change is like squirting ketchup out of a plastic bottle: the signal travels between shifter and derailleur in a straight line.

My understanding, of course, is based less on electronic engineering and more on a healthy regard for the care and handling of processed tomato products.

Nonetheless, moving a lever to shift gears is an entirely different matter: the force is transmitted through a twisted-strand cable constrained within a multi-curved space defined by frame builder, component maker, mechanic, and finally, when distorted by the application of human power, rider.

This cooperative space, inclusive and complex, mechanical and maddening, remains worthy of exploration.

For one thing, it can be explored.

Mechanical systems exist outside the binary, go/no-go world of the electronic.

They’re all hardware—no firmware updates, no batteries—and immune from electromagnetic pulse weapons, for those keeping score at home.

If you’re on a budget, mechanical drivetrains remain the value play. So keep your bike in cables and pop an extra Keith Haring into the pain cave.

If you like options, mechanical’s your jam. You can grease a cable so it slides more predictably inside a housing. You can run a cable without a housing and increase shifting accuracy in that way. You can connect a lever directly to a derailleur and shift gears without a cable at all.

You can fight friction and win. Or if you prefer friction shifting over the indexed variety, embrace it.

If you’re predisposed toward design, you can work to make mechanical drivetrains easier to assemble, maintain and service.

Someone needs to.

Most of all, you can learn to fix your stuff and engage with the physical universe. You can push and pull. You can witness cause and effect out in the open, well beyond the closed realm of the electron.

Don’t get me wrong: wireless shifting is amazing, moving the derailleur the same precise amount, time after time. And if you’re more about riding and less about tinkering, wireless is downright fantastic.

But the mechanical still exists; still has its benefits, its pleasures.

So while we’re floating around this particular bend in the river of time, we might contemplate the virtues of the mechanical drivetrain a bit longer before channeling all that came before—all that brought us to this moment—into a battery-powered squirt gun.

Ed. note: This is an expansion of a 16incheswestofpeoria Instagram post.

What’s your line?

Ride around the block and you soon find yourself retracing your journey.

Not exactly, of course: a single-track vehicle cannot help but make two tracks in the snow, the track of the rear tire crossing and recrossing the track of the front as the bicycle leans slightly to the left and then to the right.

As you circle, two tracks become four, become six, become eight.

Become more.

And the road you pedal alone grows crowded with previous selves.

You’re reminded that Whitman contained multitudes. And here you are, alone, generating multitudes of your own, just like Whitman: without fear of contradiction.

The same as you did last winter and the winters before that.

Let it snow? Maybe not. But if snow there be, you might as well make the most of it.

All together now.