June is bike month. Bike month begins with beautiful weather. It’s difficult to spend any time indoors on an electronic device when the trails are beckoning and the weather is fabulous.
But first…
…it’s time to invite some friends.
The trails are calling my name, your name, everyone’s name, so we may as well make it a group event.
Let’s go ride a bike.
Sure biking can be done solo, but isn’t it so much more fun with some friends? Isn’t it much better with a group, especially if the group is full of people you love/admire/respect?
As many of my biking friends do, I have a project bike.
It’s fun for some of us to crank on a bike and make it closer to what we dream of a bike being. Not only that, but it’s fun to see what different styles of bikes are out there (see just about any of my previous articles on bikes) and to find one you like. It’s fun to make an old bike new or to restore a classic.
Well, I suppose I should be more accurate and say I HAD a project bike. Mine blew up the other day when I was just messing around on it. Praise the Good Lord I wasn’t in the mountains, I was just tooling around town when it exploded, so there wasn’t far to go after the horrific accident.
Okay, more honesty: I’m begging for sympathy here. There was no horrific accident. It was more of a traumatic moment specifically located in my brain. Sad really. I spent a lot of time building up the bike only to have the frame give out on me. Granted it’s an old bike frame. Things like that don’t last forever.
So, now what? Like those friends I mentioned do, I’ll start over, find another frame, start putting things together and have myself a new project bike. By the way, my bike had no seat. That’s because I wasn’t quite done yet. I had everything but the seat. In fact, my ride when the frame broke was intended to get me to the local bike shop so I could get a seatpost fitted and then a seat. Hopefully next time I can finish.
Anyone can be an art teacher. Watch me do it. Free lesson!
Rule number one: art is everywhere, all around us. Along with that, anything you call art IS ART! Bammo, whamo! Now you know, you can go color something with crayons. A wall, a window, the wood slats under your bunk bed, it doesn’t matter. Crayons are most great artists’ inroductory medium.
Pens and pencils may be next, though some folks may argue that charcoal is before those.
Charcoal can be interesting because it works on most surfaces. Charcoal and chalk work well on concrete. To remove it, just wait for rain.
Pencils are great because you can erase the lines and shades you made. If you use an eraser, just remember to not erase too hard near the edge of the paper or you could rip it. That’s probably rule number two, but who’s counting these silly rules anyway?
Here’s another thing about art: it should be about stuff you like. So, for instance, if you happen to like cars you should either paint cars or paint cars, you know what I mean? Some people really like train cars because I see they paint train cars a lot. There are miles of paint, and miles and miles of art. Perhaps too there’s something satisfying about having your art travel to other states, other countries. Paint your mural and say goodbye.
Then again, maybe you’re not about any of those things.
Possibly you want to enjoy your own art and don’t care much for an audience. Make some art and keep it in your sock drawer. Ain’t nobody looking in there but you.
Rule number whatever is this: make your own thing. Copying other people’s art is fine, to a point. It can help you be artistic. It doesn’t make you an artist though. An artist has to have a measure of creativity, and a dose of originality. The ability to make your own art will give you a sense of accomplishment as well as the satisfaction of knowing you can make what no one else can. Art cred is found in the thing no one else thought of doing—until they saw yours.
Once you’ve written it all down, everything you know, you can empty your brain, you can start over. Go back to kindergarten and learn your numbers. Learn how to draw a big letter A and a small letter a. Learn not to eat crayons. Dont even stick them in your mouth.
Maybe you’re a quick learner, you can skip a few grades and jump right into Junior High (some places call it a middle school, though they haven’t bothered to change the sign out front that says John Fredrickson Kennedy Junior High—no wonder everyone who goes there is confused).
So now you’re going to Junior High, named, ostensibly, after a past president, but you’re not there to learn about presidents. This time you want to learn about girls or boys, or whatever the opposite of what you are is. Here in this place, you’ve entered that stage of life when the hormones will make you forget all scholastic facts. What you’ll remember are all the horrendous jokes everyone repeats on a daily and weekly rotation.
You’ll soon grow too mature for all that puerile nonsense. Once you’ve grown mature enough you’ll pack up and move away to college. In college there will be plenty to learn, though not all of it will be what is taught. You’ll be forced to use your powers of deduction and observation. You’ll know to observe all the other students. It won’t take long to see who has the right idea and who is faking it. Some of those wandering around campus are still putting crayons in their mouth or walking about with a mouthful of obscene jokes. These will probably be good to avoid. Avoid the latent thumb-suckers and the pessimists who find sadness in every inch of life. Aim toward the happy crowd, and find out why. Observe their reasoning and employ your own reasoning for yourself. Get along in your new school, get a good degree and move on with life. Make that degree pay. Settle into a healthy life. If you want, you can marry. When you reach the right age, empty your brain and start over.
The cairn, as a cultural peculiarity, is as entertaining as it is clever. It’s purpose, since the beginning of time, is to designate the correct trail.
So, for instance, if you were hiking along a trail unfamiliar to you and the trail forked, all you would need to do is look for a cairn. The idea, of course, is that animals don’t stack rocks, so the game trails would be cairn-free, while the human trails would feature cairns at critical points along the way.
To boost the entertaining factor, there are people who go hiking with the singular goal of putting up cairns. There are those who will spend all day on one cairn, and those who prefer to stack as many as they can along a trail.
Other hikers love to create specific patterns. They have their signature style of creating a cairn. They will stack seven stones every time, or a stack of six next to a stack of three. It’s all determined by their personal creativity.
Because of this, some cairn stackers will look for their own creations when hiking. They also tell their friends what to look for. It becomes a challenge, an added bit of fun to a hike.
If you were going hiking, what sort of cairn would you make?
Xenosthesia.com 