The Aerie

A couple of restful days.

After returning home from Paris we've had a couple of much-needed restful days. On Sunday the rain cleared up in the afternoon, leaving us with another rainbow. This one stretched full across the sky - so wide that I couldn't even capture it with in one frame of the camera.

Drawn outdoors, we began to explore the various toys that our hosts had left for us in their garage. In addition to a collection of bikes, some borrowed from neighbors for the occasion of our visit, our hosts had left us a set of unicycles and a Vespa scooter.

My youngest boy took to a bicycle immediately, while my oldest wanted to try his hand -- or butt -- at the unicycle. Despite the assurances of our quite acrobatic hosts that unicycling would be easy and fun, the charm of falling off someone else's expensive piece of equipment wore off rather quickly, hastened by the intimidating lumpy solidity of the cobbled driveway. And no teenager wants to undertake a recreation that requires leaning heavily upon one's parents for support the entire time.

I was secretly relieved. Meaning no disrespect to our hosts who I like and admire, but, well, there's always been something about unicyclists and jugglers that has confused me. I mean, think about it. First of all, why do they always go together: the jugglers and the unicyclists are always the same people, along with the stilt-walkers. They always have this earnest friendliness, and of course as entertainers they want to please. But... well... what's the point?

I mean, look, here's unicycling: a difficult skill to achieve, and once you can do it, what does it get you? You get to ride half of a tiny bicycle. Most people can WALK faster than a unicycle travels. Maybe if it's one of those really tall ones you can ride HIGH, but what are you going to do up there, clean the gutters? Otherwise, well, you're just pedaling this wheel around.

Related to this of course is stilt-walking, which removes the charm of the little tiny wheel and pedals, and replaces it with a signficant risk of severe knee injury. People who don't believe in evolution like to pretend we're fully-evolved creatures made in the image of "God." Well, let me tell you, God has a bad back and his knees must be for shit by now, because we're still evolving in those areas. Look at any mammal, and you can see that the knee and the heel, those are meant to be part of the LEGS. The heel isn't designed for banging on the ground, it's a JOINT, it's meant for suspension and speed.

The knee is supposed to be part of that supporting leg structure - each knee and elbow is evolved to support 1/4 of the body's weight as part of a flexible suspension system. Human knees have to support twice as much weight as other mammals' knees, and that weight is piled up-and-down right on top of the joint. And let's not even TALK about the spine, which is supposed to be horizontal but which we stack up like a set of dinner plates.

So the human body is not done evolving yet, and one of the things that's having the most trouble is the human knee. With that in mind, consider how very, very unwise it is to extend the length of the calf from the 18 to 24 inches on most people to several yards in length. The knee, which is having enough trouble just walking for 80 years without grinding itself into painful little chips of bone, is now asked to swing and support a lower leg much, much longer and weightier than it's ever had to handle before. Trip on a curb normally and you might suffer some knee pain: trip on a curb in stilts and you are pretty much asking to feel your tendons snapping like guitar strings at a Megadeth concert.

And once you've considered the risks, what are the rewards? You can walk on stilts... where? You demonstrate instead to all viewers that you are willing to invest significant effort in a dubious endeavor. Like unicycling, the only thing stilt-walking is good for is... stilt-walking. These are completely eponymous skills - all you can do with them is DO them. A bicyclist can race. A bicyclist can travel. A bicyclist can run errands. A stilt-walker can stilt-walk, and that's it. A unicyclist can run errands or travel, but would be better off on foot.

Likewise juggling. A juggler can... juggle. Can they juggle for any purpose other than to juggle? No. You can't drive nails while juggling or by juggling, you can't juggle in order to, say, carry more items with you than you otherwise could carry in a sack or a basket.

So, you have these difficult skills: juggling, stilt-walking, unicycling, and what are they? They're something you do on broad, grassy lawns in order that you can say to those who see you, "Look! I can juggle/stilt/unicycle!" And at that point the only response is "Splendid! And?" To which there is no answer. The entertainment value of each is limited to a few moments of polite interest, possibly a tiny bit of envy for this unique and interesting ability and then the audience drifts away.

Of course, many folks try doubling up these skills - many stiltwalkers and unicyclists can also juggle at the same time. And I suppose a dedicated individual could walk on stilts while juggling unicycles. Or vice-versa. But aside from that overlap, the Venn-diagrams of Stiltwalking/Unicycling/Juggling do not overlap with any other circles in the world, save "Circus employment", which is not a large circle.

So when the unicycling did not draw in The Boy, I secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Again, not meant in any way to put down our juggling, stiltwalking and unicycling hosts: I remain convinced that this holy trinity is part of a religion, and as such is simply another religion of which I am not a part. But for those who find something in this Trinity which speaks to them - good on yah! And if my kids wanted to join this religion, well, I'd certainly accept them and applaud politely while they juggled flaming unicycles on stilts. I would just be very challenged understanding the whys or wherefores of what they do. But then, that was my parents' lot with me, so it would only be fair.

Fortunately I apparently won't have to suffer Tevye's struggles of watching my children marry into the foreign religion of unicycling, because as mentioned it failed to hold their interest. Of much greater appeal was Saint Vespa, patroness of the Motor Scooter. This was a device which had immediate and powerful appeal. After trying out the bikes and falling off the unicycles a few times, inevitably their eyes returned again and again to this winged chariot. They touched the smooth black surface of the helmet, and it was good.

As a complete and absolute nerd I of course had never driven so much as a Vespa - the one time I was a passenger on a motorcycle I almost caused a wreck trying to remain perpendicular to the ground while the motorcycle banked on an entrance ramp. Nerds don't understand the whole "lean into the turn" thing, at least not without someone describing it in terms of centripedal force and centers-of-balance, and I had had no such instruction.

However as "Dad" it's my job to instill confidence and to open up new worlds to my kids - if I wanted to raise narrow little nerds like myself we wouldn't be in Germany in the first place, would we? We'd have all stayed home in Minnesota and spent the summer sitting in front of various screens and returned to work and school in September just as pale, out-of-shape, and unenlightened as we were at the beginning of the summer. So if we were going to be in Germany and there was a Vespa at hand, then it was my role to encourage my kids to Embrace the Different.

Our host had briefly explained the Vespa to me before he left, but probably assumed that anyone could master so simple a device in fairly short order. However, this is ina country that has THREE separate garbage collections: one for paper, one for biological waste, one for junk, and where everyone has a compost pile and glass an cans are recycled in the grocery store. As a result it took about half an hour of fiddling and pressing of buttons and switches before the motor finally coughed to life. The proper order was, with the Vespa up on its larger of two kickstands, put the key in the ignition and turn it to about 2:00 o'clock. With the right foot on the ground, twist the right-hand throttle slightly, while pressing the red right-hand thumb-switch. Have the choke open on the left side, and somehow contort your left leg to kick the starter peg down and forward. When successful the motor will start - any misstep results in an undiginified flopping-to-the ground on the part of the operator.

However, once started the Vespa was a fine little machine to drive. It propelled itself forward at a reasonable pace, and held itself upright without help of the operator. I buzzed off down the narrow German street, hoping only to encounter no traffic at all as I rounded the suburban block. Things went well until I rounded the final turn and the sunlight shone directly in my eyes as I tried to negotiate cars parked on both sides of the narrow street. Fortunately I was able to avoid a collision, and rode triumphantly up to my admiring family. Dad: courageous hero of the Vespa.

Shortly I gave rides to each of my children, and then with my heart in my throat confidently offered my eldest son the keys and said "Give it a try." The boy's 15 years old, he could go for a driving permit any time, and I could see no reason that he should have to wait to return to America to imperil other drivers and pedestrians. Heck, an accident here in Germany might not even make it on to his driving record, who knows.

I could tell he was thrilled. I walked him through the operation of the Vespa, which aside from the starting process is astonishingly simple: the hardest part is remembering to turn off the turn signal, and since he was going to be circling the block even that wasn't critical. I left my confusion about what we were supposed to do with the choke out of the discussion and with a pat on the back sent him off on his first ride.

Of course a car came, but he negotiated passage without accident, if not without accidentally slipping off the brake and hitting the throttle. Nonetheless, no harm done, and a minute later he zoomed exuberantly up the road towards his family, even managing to stop without incident. His sister took a turn at it and only nearly ran in to a concrete barrier one time - and it was only four inches high, so she probably would have been fine anyway. Finally we badgered their mother into taking a ride - our youngest we judged too young yet, and he didn't seem to mind that assessment.

All in all we spent a pleasant hour annoying the neighbors by imperiling their cars with the buzz and stink of the Vespa. And now, rather than the dubious ability to ride half a bicycle at a time, my family is instead able to start and pilot a Vespa with some small confidence. At the very least, they can carry a passenger on a Vespa! The kids had a fine time, and you know that after this trip is long over, they'll remember riding the Vespa more than they'll remember visiting the Louvre, even though we could have driven a Vespa in the U.S. at any time. But the important part was we all had fun!

Posted by Albatross at August 22, 2006 4:00 PM | TrackBack