Adams Morgan Romance

A (highly fictitious!) poem by Lacy MacAuley

Leaving Affinity Lab on a Saturday night
I hurried down the stairs
I stepped out on 18th Street baby
And I breathed in the Adams Morgan air

There you were locking up your bike
Right by the Diner line
Didn’t you work at City Bikes?
Did you repair my spoke that time?

I decided I would get you drunk
And see what happened then
There was something about that fixed-gear frame
That was a-making my tires spin

Filed under: biking, humor, lacy's life, poems

ways to ride a bicycle

A poem by Lacy MacAuley

Biking with an umbrella through my neighborhood.

A frame of steel and a couple of wheels
practical, a bit political and ill-fitted in terms of gender
this bicycle suits me just fine
it’s not elegant with clean lines
sort of like my rhymes but I make them anyway
and like this machine they get me from point A to point B
give my soul a little foot rub on the way.

There is more than one way to ride a bicycle.
When I started riding in the city I was, shall we say, anxious
hidden foes abounded like kung fu movie extras in a ravine in China
enemies in the form of car doors and drivers on cell phones
I put on armor and clattered down the street like a woman in defeat
to the broadcast safety warnings that bombast into life when you’re young
weighed down but expected to perform well
like a soldier in the desert trying to defend herself with 60 pounds of gear
but no bullet-proof vest – I used to ride my bicycle that way.

But now, it is just one soft me against a hard reality
how do I avoid injury? I dance
I weave through the cumbersome, clamorous motions
of people in their slick expensive homes on wheels
This misshapen-looking contraption becomes a thing of water
and I am rain on a path of least resistance

Filed under: activism, biking, environmentalism, lacy's life, poems, thoughts and philosophies

freedom is a bicycle!

The route to freedom starts with mounting your bicycle!

Freedom is a bicycle! I’ve biked this morning to the National Press Club (despite a bit of drizzle) to distribute alternative G20 Media materials for the G20 pep rally press conference, then to Dupont Circle to participate in a “No Colombia Free Trade Agreement” street theater event, then out to the National Park Service office at Hains Point to sit across the table from a police officer and National Park Service officer to discuss our permit for the G20 action next week.

I ride my bicycle for transportation every day here in Washington DC, but today I’ve felt especially close to my two-wheeled dream machine. Every pump of the petal today is a small form of resistance to corporate and commercial interests that tell you to buy cars, burn oil, and spend your last dime on comforts that you then feel you cannot live without. Each inch of pavement I have covered today has propelled me toward a better world. My bicycle is a central part of my activism, especially today!

Filed under: activism, biking, climate justice, consumerism, environmentalism, global justice, lacy's life