While installing a new inner tube on my wife’s bike last week, I was reminded that the bicycle just might be the perfect machine.
That is not an original thought. It has been said before.
That’s because a bicycle is a collection of relatively simple bits of metal and rubber, put together into a logical form that accomplishes the incredible feat of allowing a human being to go fast with relatively little effort.
My wife and I own bikes of a rather advanced age. I bought them, already well used, at a yard sale in 1991.
After I pumped up the new tube, I put some wax on the frame of my wife’s red bike and buffed it as best I could. It made it a bit shinier. But our bikes, both with steel frames, no suspension, cable brakes and chipped paint, look their age.
I customized them both a few years back with wide seats and higher handlebars, accommodations to the aches and pains that come with retirement. Over the decades, I’ve oiled the moving parts and replaced tubes and tires as needed. Other than that, the original bits and pieces are still rolling along.
Durability is a trait I admire in a machine.
Three years into retirement, I’ve fallen into the habit of comparing things, of thinking in metaphor and simile. Today, for example, I began to ponder the similarities between a bicycle and the whole of humanity.
Each is composed of many parts that function together. But the similarity ends there.
Each part of a bicycle — pedal, chain, gears, bearings, handlebars — was designed to perform a specialized function as part of achieving a common goal: Move forward. The two-wheeled machine does this with little wasted energy and usually no drama.
But each individual in society has personal goals that often conflict, so the machine of society doesn’t run smoothly. There is constant drama. And much energy wasted.
Personal goals can be as basic as earning enough money to feed our families and keep a roof over our heads. Goals can be as fulfilling as becoming a respected musician, professional athlete or skilled medical practitioner. They can be as large as rising to the top of the business or political world. They can be as selfless as trying to cure cancer or developing a non-profit to help those in need or doing something else to help lift humanity toward a brighter future.
Those personal goals don’t all aim at a common point.
That’s the nature of being human. We all live together, but we don’t always get along.
Some say we live in a dog-eat-dog world. Others say the most important thing we can do is help others. Most of us exist somewhere in between.
It’s hard to help others if we ourselves have no food, no shelter, no future. First we need to take care of ourselves and our families. Then we have the energy to think about neighbors’ needs, or the needs of struggling strangers.
In humanity’s best moments, we work together like a giant biological machine. We collectively envision a future without crime or war — or the desire for either. All too often, though, friction develops as all those varied personal goals pit us against each other.
Throughout thousands of years of human history, we have continued to battle against nature and each other. We will continue to push and shove to get what we want. I’m not a nihilist — I believe things will get better. But I strongly suspect human society never will be perfect.
Old bicycles, though. Those are perfect machines.
The way they roll along so easily, with so little effort compared to walking. The way a smooth derailleur shift clicks into place with a satisfying thunk. The way old-fashioned rim brakes occasionally squeak, but reliably slow you down. The way the world streams past at an ideal pace: Fast enough to get you places but slow enough to enjoy the ride, and slow enough to stop instantly if you see something interesting.
And the way bikes, at least older ones, are so simply constructed that a 12-year-old can look at the parts and reason out how they mesh, what just went awry and how to fix it.
Those old bikes can be taken apart and put back together with a screwdriver, a couple of wrenches and a dirty rag. That’s my kind of machine. Simple, understandable, reliable, and easily repaired.
If you’re in the mood to admire slightly more complicated but still relatively simple machinery, mark your calendar for the third weekend in August.
The annual Buckley Old Engine Show offers a frenzy of antique tractors, steam train rides, a huge flea market, many examples of crafts and arts, farming demonstrations, a car show, a steam-powered sawmill, a charcoal-powered foundry, and an astounding variety of vintage devices large and small.
Every summer, I am particularly awed by the mechanical beauty of the enormous smoke-spewing traction engines that are the centerpiece of the show. I can’t wait to smell the heady aroma of burning coal, to feel the searing heat of a steam boiler as a 100-year-old hunk of heavy metal rolls by and shakes the ground.
Traction engines weren’t perfect machines. That’s why they’ve been replaced by more modern tractors. The bicycle, though — it’s still basically the same perfect machine as my 40-year-old rolling antique.