Facebook is a strange and extraordinary thing, isn’t it? As I write my Reflections column—the last puzzle piece required before we can ship our magazine's September Performing Arts issue off to the printer—it’s a Friday afternoon that has so far been long on rain and short on inspiration. So, having spent half an hour gazing at a blank computer screen without having any original ideas, I’ve just flipped over to Country Roads’ Facebook page and broadcast my dilemma to the world (or to the couple of thousand discerning Facebookers who have chosen to follow Country Roads magazine’s Facebook page, anyway). And here we are ten minutes later, with a handful of potential column topics large enough to make it likely that I will spend the rest of the afternoon messing around on Facebook rather than writing anything to fill this space. Based on responses, there seems to be a consensus that the world would be a better place for the addition of more bike lanes. Especially Louisiana. It’s mostly flat, after all, and more than one of you noted the irony that the Highway 61 widening project through West Feliciana Parish—arguably the finest cycling country in the state—has proceeded without any bike lanes to keep the thousands of cyclists who come here to ride out of the traffic flow. I’m a keen cyclist myself, so this was an easy point of view to identify with. But even if I wasn’t disposed towards spending my leisure time on a bike, I like to think I’d be supportive of the idea that any brand new, federally funded road construction ought to accommodate a cheap, non-polluting, healthy, alternative mode of transportation into its infrastructure. If there was such a thing, it would be possible to connect West Feliciana’s excellent school campus with its equally impressive sports park complex, without kids’ parents needing to contribute to the traffic congestion along the stretch of Highway 61 between the two. I remember once seeing a cartoon of a bunch of people in workout clothes, standing waiting for an elevator. Next to the elevator is a staircase, and on the wall between the two is a sign that reads “Stairmaster Classes—Second Floor.” To me, driving schoolkids one mile so they can go to a sports park seems to fall into the same category. Is it too late, I wonder?
While we’re on the subject of cycling, I’d like to note that, after half a lifetime spent enduring my fanaticism on the subject of bikes, my wife has finally broken down and joined me in the saddle. For her recent birthday she received a new road bike (and even had the grace to feign excitement about it). Since then we’ve tackled various St. Francisville-area byways, and despite having developed a healthy antipathy to a l/2-mile-long hill on Highway 421, Ashley’s taking to it like the proverbial duck to water. That said, our most enthusiastically received ride to date took place not in St. Francisville, but on the Northshore, on the marvelous Tammany Trace. Thousands make use of the Tammany Trace but for anyone new to it, or new to cycling, it is a superbly maintained, very safe, rails-to-trails conversion that connects Covington, Abita Springs, Mandeville, Lacombe and Slidell with thirty-one miles of smooth, flat asphalt trail open to any form of engineless transport. We trundled through downtown Covington, rubbernecked at Abita Springs’ pretty houses, considered stopping at the Abita Brew Pub (but sensibly decided not to, it being 10 am), and ultimately arrived at the bustling Trailhead—complete with farmer’s market—on the Lakefront in old Mandeville an hour later. Along the way we rode slow, spotted birds, heard crickets, waved to flocks of other riders, and genuinely saw a side of the Louisiana summertime that, from inside an air-conditioned car, somehow remains invisible. It was, quite simply, a perfect reintroduction to the simple pleasures of a bike ride. To roll down the Trace is to fall in love with cycling all over again. How nice to have someone special to share it with.
Ah, Facebook. I’ve got to admit to having something of a love/hate relationship with it. Call me old-fashioned, but there’s still something I find unnerving about the window Facebook opens into one’s life—and then how seductively it invites us to fill that window with personal information. But then again, the interactive conversation that Facebook facilitates brings so much to the journalistic endeavor. Writing an article becomes a far more interesting—and worthwhile—undertaking when the people who read it can talk back to you. It’s the difference between a journey taken alone, or experienced with a friend. Kind of like a bike ride on a summer Saturday morning, company makes the experience richer.
