Paranormal Cycling

Recently, I’ve been trying to figure out the difference between the original Kenny G, and new Ironic Kenny G:

One of these things is not like the other.

But I’ve also been thinking about the effects of riding a bicycle, and I don’t just mean the positive mental and physical benefits and all that. I mean those less frequently documented and just a little bit scary ones. If old school Kenny G equals riding for health and fitness, and the hipster Kenny G equals riding to push your limits and express yourself, then what I’m talking about here is some straight-up, hardcore Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute.

Here, then, are a few of the lesser-known ways cycling can affect us:

Cryptozoologically

Chestnut Ridge area – September 2002: A witness was riding his bicycle and observed a large hair covered creature walking through the woods. Two weeks later a woman driving her car heard noises in the same area. Expecting to see deer cross the road, she slowed down. But instead of deer she saw a very tall hair covered creature standing on two legs, walked parallel to her car. It then stepped over a 48″ high fence without breaking its stride. Courtesy www.paresearchers.com website

I myself have ridden bicycles in this very location and have also experienced unusual phenomena. I once came around a turn I thought was the crest of a climb, only to find a much steeper, sustained grade. According to the account of an eyewitness riding with me that day, I reportedly began making “sounds like a screaming woman or a baby” and proceeded to rise awkwardly from my saddle and begin pedaling with a full-body action similar to riding an elliptical machine on a trampoline while having a stroke. The event was described by the eyewitness as “truly disturbing.” I believe Science can’t explain what happened to me that day

On another occasion within only a few miles of the first event, I was nearly overcome by a strong and terrible odor, just as I began the steepest section of a climb through a heavily wooded area. This occurred almost exactly as the grade pitched sharply upward, and the smell seemed to increase in intensity, getting stronger and stronger until I had to visually confirm that my legs were still moving and that I appeared to be upright. Eventually, I became unable to reconcile standing to climb a steep grade with attempting not to breath, and I experienced the very distinct sensation of rolling my eyes into my head and observe my own brain, upon which the Virgin Mary was seated, wagging her finger and scolding (in a language unrecognizable to me) a small, gray and white dog wearing a tan fedora and smoking a cigarette. The obvious question here: what the hell was that smell? While reports of mass deer suicide pacts are not unprecedented in this general part of the country, is it possible that what I was smelling that day was something not yet entirely dead? Also, was that Latin? It didn’t sound like Latin.

Cosmologically

We all know that riding a bike makes us happy, but few of us truly appreciate the expansion of consciousness that comes from pedaling a bike.

Clearly, pedaling a bike for an amount of time sufficient for entering transcendental states has huge benefits–most notably, enhanced awareness of self and surroundings, heightened reflexes, and the drastically increased need for self-preservation commonly referred to in pseudo-psychological circles as “constructive psychotic paranoia.” Here, 2011 Tour de France champion Cadel Evans protects himself from a gigantic alien bumble bee cleverly disguised as some douchebag’s microphone.

Evans here demonstrates the transcendental cycling phenomena known as “speaking in tongues”:

Not to be confused with the well documented tri phenomena of “running in tongues”:

We may never fully understand all the ways cycling expands our understanding of the natural world and of ourselves. All this enlightenment, of course, builds toward making the journey the destination, and taking the mind on an extended solo bike tour. Though the civilized world continues to deny it, there are documented cases of true cycling gurus–those who began riding and just never stopped.