Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 2    My life defied the human impulse to harm and control others.
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Inexplicable to common sense is why people kill and maim other people.

I came to believe strongly that there are people willing to harm others no matter where you go, especially if you’re alone and appear vulnerable … and this is the lesson law enforcement teaches everybody.
They tell people to stay in the group, be wary of your surroundings, be prepared to defend yourself, don’t meet with on-line strangers.

Good god, if you act like a scared cow, then they're going to eat you … but throughout my life, I have refused to be eaten, yet demanded my right to travel outside of a group ... the right to travel alone.

And now you see my comparative oppositional mind … a mind that prefers singular unopposed action and would face danger and say nothing in exchange for the mere pleasure to walk free in America.

I am a man who will not be eaten or fenced like a cow, and this is the thinking that allowed me to become an unapologetic street activist for bicycle rights; a cow who refused to be eaten.

Paradoxically, the desire for free walking space didn’t take me into the wilds of Alaska or Canada or Montana.
No, I chose to walk freely among men in society, because I wanted to share what others see and feel, to live mostly as a stranger and a loner yet participate vicariously in the sharing that others enjoy.
And I wanted to do it without being endangered, eventually to discover I also wanted it to happen without being judged.

Without being judged by others?
That’s a silly request.
Only a man living totally apart in an unknown cave can live without the currency of gossip tilling plans to bend him to social will.

But I lived without social conscience, nor did I understand social consequence, seeing instead a body of law that mandates our rights as free people.

If a man is different and chooses to live differently, then he must abide by the law only. Society means nothing.

It is the law that defines our boundaries ... and therefore society takes a back seat to law, right?

No. People don’t think that way.

People impulsively demand a right to exert influence outside the law because to most, the idea of social conformity provides greater comfort than law itself.
Therefore all must yield to social pressure or be scorned.
It’s an age-old simplicity of human nature, which I became aware, my bicycle activism defied.

But no matter what society said, as I grew into adulthood, my life defied the human impulse to harm and control others.
Or did it?

Chapter 3) Caving
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