KISS me

Case in point, the name of the blog, I'm not opposed to an...

[Aside: wow, this was not the intent of this posting, but part of this blog has become the experience of last year's accident. Yes, it seems that brain injuries, like diamonds, are forever, so I won't ignore the fact that I can't think of the word that means: a word created from the first letters of words in a phrase. I think it starts with "a" and ends in "nym", and I could search the wide world of spidey things, but that's not my method.

The memories are all still in my joggled noggin, but the neural pathways that allow access to them were disrupted, or so I've been told by people who more than I how a brain works, or in my case, works a little less well than it once did. Yes, I could opt for incredible frustration at this, and I doubt there are many who would blame me, but instead, I try, usually somewhat successfully, to be happy that another opportunity for rebuilding my brain has occurred.

That's small picture, individual events of not remembering words or names. Bigger picture is that I now have an altered, yes, slightly damaged, lump of neurological tissue in my skull. Again, that's a possible frustration, right?

For a little over 48 years, I had the particular brain from birth, and while far from perfect, I was pretty happy with the way in played in this world. Now, while very recognizable from that past, I have a slightly different thinker, one that offers a few more challenges than its forebearer.

Forty-eight years is a long relationship, especially one as constant as one's own mind, but now I have the enterprise of developing a new relationship with this slightly different lump in my head. Would I choose that, advocate for it? Heck no! That, however, is the life I currently get to live, and I'm darn fortunate to be here living it!]

...mnemonic device (not the exact word, but it'll serve for now). As a child, my mother introduced me to the concept of k.i.s.s. for Keep It Simple, Stupid. Despite the admirable current steps away from calling people stupid, there is still much to recommend this guide to living, and very conveniently in the case of this post, the s.s. could also stand for Single Speed.

Just before the 25th of December, and any significance that date may or may not hold for you, I mounted a replacement fork on me-olde single speed mountain bike, which in recent years morphed into more of a pavement machine in the interest of avoiding the knee surgery other non-shifting friends have required.

When my go-to bike for foul conditions was damaged along with me in 2022, the single speed became my worst-weather bike, with the most fender of any functional bike and the least drivetrain to be bothered by roads of crud, but that also meant subjecting to corrosive salt the Viscious Cycles fork bequeathed to me many years ago by Carl Schlemowitz himself (and hey, I remembered his name no problem, even if I did have to search for the correct spelling).

So, I replaced Carl's lovely steel fork, replaced it with a far more rust resistant aluminum one, and a slightly longer one at that, which helps raise my handlebars to my post-broken-neck position. Added bonus, it also decreases the bike's angles by one degree, and this slacker likes slacker! 

Since the fork swap, and since the Mass DOT salts state roads whenever temperatures drop below freezing, I haven't ridden another bike. I'm a long time lover of the idea that riding single speed bikes is a silly choice, but not surprisingly, I also have a soft spot for a touch of silliness.  On New Year's Day, I was thinking, yes, maybe it is time to take two steps forward and switch to a three speed, but the next day, I felt less hurried and realized I had a good cruising gear, coasting down big hills was fine, and any uphill that forced me to walk with loaded panniers was steep enough that I wasn't much slower hoofing than riding.

Simple, all bikes used to be that, while also representing the newest technology. I read a book (hey, bingo, I forget the title, but I doubt I'd have remembered it even back in May of 2022) about an early touring cyclist and some of the challenges she faced with having the pronoun and body of "she" in a world that was much more in support of "him". Beyond the societal woes (only partially undone today), her bike didn't coast. The freewheel hadn't been invented yet, so all bikes were fixed gear, with the pedals locked in motion with the bike. They even had pegs on the front fork for a place to rest feet as the cranks spun at high speed down big hills.

Simple, I suppose, is all relative. I'm keeping my ability to coast through my errands, but dropping the ability to shift, even to just two alternate gears, that's definitely open to consideration. Maybe that's just the working of my new, more simple, mindedness, and no, I haven't thought of the correct word yet!

[Less than 5 minute later edit: Acronym!]