Altered Perceptions.

(Morguefile.)



When I got my new glasses, they were mostly for driving at night, in the rain, when it’s overcast, misty or foggy. When there are no amber lines, on a paved outlying road, where the streetlights are only at intersections and might be miles apart, the average reader will agree that it’s sometimes kind of hard to see.

I also wanted the right type of glasses for riding a bicycle. They keep bugs and rain and dust and gravel out of your eyes when cycling. They are useful for cycling at night, when all of the conditions in the first paragraph still apply.

Trying to walk in my new glasses was very strange. That was because it felt like the ground was up around about my belly button, and my legs are or at least were designed to reach the ground from about ass-level.

The glasses brought everything a lot closer to me. It took a while, but I walk and wear glasses at the same time just fine now. I had to learn a new skill: filtering. Or skewing, or ‘optimizing’ or whatever.

What had really changed was the perception. My visual perceptions were being filtered by clear lenses made of plastic. And it changed my whole physical world, for all perceptions are interpreted, and certain conclusions are drawn from them by the central processing unit, i.e. my brain.

What is interesting is how easily fooled we are as to what might be termed ‘spatial awareness.’ This was brought home the other day when I was riding my bike down the street and I took my glasses off while riding with no hands. I used a corner of my shirt to rub some dirt off the glasses.

Holy, crap. It was like I was nine feet tall on that bike. It’s quite a frightening moment. I couldn’t believe how effing tall that bike was, ladies and gentlemen. I don’t think I could ride without my glasses now, but I was doing it before just fine.

Incidentally, I took the garbage out the other day, and wasn’t wearing my glasses. Holy, crap. Was that ground ever a long ways away! You wouldn’t want to fall from this height. What was normal a couple of months ago seems very strange now. It seems to me that when we alter our perceptions, the brain works very quickly and efficiently to detect and identify these changes in our environment, and to filter them out, and make everything look ‘all right’ again.

Otherwise it would be very difficult to cope with an ever-changing world. To read a description or report on such a process is one thing, but to experience it is another. Over time, the effect of perceptual distortion is pretty seamless, and of course now I wonder if we’re fooling ourselves on a whole lot of other issues as well!

This is an uncomfortable idea, and possibly even a very dangerous one. I say that because if I rejected the new reality presented by my new glasses, and attempted to consciously contradict and compensate for what is presented in terms of the environment around me, I wouldn’t be able to walk, or drive, or cycle at all.

That’s because things happen too fast, and there is a glut of information that must be processed very rapidly by subconscious means.

In a sense, we take a lot for granted—that our feet will work when asked, and that the ground is indeed located in such and such a place.

When you look at the world around you, and see the number of people trying to skew the flow of information using various means, by adding to it, attempting to shut it down, attempting to discount or augment some message, we really should wonder what sort of effect that it has on our consciousness over an extended period of time.

The other day I was on a website, and reading a couple of posts in some discussion. It was tempting to comment myself, and then I thought: I don’t know anything about this subject, nor have I read ‘Harry Potter,’ and I don’t really care if Tolkien invented elves, trolls and dwarves.

It was such a pettifogging dispute, and how the hell did I come so close to getting sucked in?

If J.K. Rowling ripped off Tolkien’s invention of elves, trolls and dwarves, ah, then good for her. Take your billion dollars and enjoy the hell out of it.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. At that point, I shut down the computer. I got on my bike and went for a ride.

Now this is real.

***

For more on perception, read this Wikipedia article.

Cycling for health and wellness.

(Morguefile)

When I bought my first new bike a few years ago, it was because I wanted to get back in touch with something I lost long ago. I wanted to get in touch with my youth. It must have been a reaction to being forty-something, but youth, the energy of youth, the optimism, the adventurousness of youth, that is a very precious thing.

We lived on our bikes. From a very early age, my buddy and I used to ride out to the airport. We would check the schedule and wait for the twin-engine planes to land, disembark their passengers, and with a roar and a puff of blue smoke, fire up the old Pratt & Whitneys for another take-off. There’s not too many piston-engined airliners around these days.

The first bike I bought as an adult was a Supercycle Inferno, a mountain bike with a nice big frame. The geometry was far different from the highly-stable ten speed racing bike that I grew up on, or the cast-off six-speed commuter bike that I had been riding until a couple of cables broke and the cost of repair got too high. I started off riding around in a tennis court. It took a long time before I was able to ride with no hands.

It had been that long since I rode, but the three compression-fractures at L-3, L-4 and L-6 might have had something to do with being totally out of shape. My lungs were bad, my legs were bad, and everything hurt. I kept at it, and worked my way up a few kilometres at a time. The summer I turned forty-eight, I rode sixty kilometres round trip in about three and three-quarter hours. I hurt for a week afterwards, but I did it.

I wore that bike out in about two and a half years. At that point, I bought a Matterhorn, an all-steel frame Raleigh mountain bike. The machine was stiff, I’ll give you that much, but the frame seemed to be very short-coupled after riding the Supercycle. It was also heavy and too small for me.

By that time, I was much stronger, and so I wore that bike out, a machine which cost about $125.00 Cdn, in a year and a half. At some point the repair shop guy tells you, “Nine bucks for a gear cluster, twenty-five bucks for a chain, eight bucks each for two cables, twenty-three bucks for a tire, forty bucks for a rim…” and the conclusion quickly drawn is that a new cheap bike is actually cheaper and ultimately more satisfying than fixing up an old cheap bike, bearing in mind that it will never be really right again. That’s because old cheap bikes become loose all over, need bearings re-packed, new cables, new brakes, new tires, new seat…et cetera.

So then I bought a Trek 3700. Mine has a two and a half inch oversized frame. At first, it was like I was swimming on that bike. Seriously, after the too-small Raleigh, and even the Supercycle, which was a relaxed-stability revelation at the time, this bike is the first one in my entire life that actually fits me. The bike cost just under $400.00. It took five or six months to pay off my credit card. It was worth it.

This is my fourth summer riding it. It was pretty warm around here in late winter, and while riding in six or eight degree Celsius temperatures can be a character-building experience, it also gave me a chance to train up a little bit for summer. So far today, I have visited my dad in the old age home, (north end,) dropped off some mail, (downtown,) and stopped in at my brother’s place, (south end.) Then I rode home, and at this point I’m up to sixteen or seventeen kilometres for the day.

The only reason I came home was to make a couple of hamburgers, otherwise I would have gone to the beach—which from here might be another fourteen k’s or so. The bike has its limitations. Sometimes, coming home with forty pounds of groceries slung on the handlebars into a stiff breeze is hard work and a tough ride. Heavy rain is a bit of a downer. It’s cheap to operate, and since I never run anywhere, it will have to do. (I don’t run for nothing and nobody.)

I may not really be able to recapture my youth, but this is one good way to make my golden years a little less miserable. Nobody likes getting old, so a little procrastination can be a good thing sometimes.

Sometimes my knees hurt, and my lower back is a little stiff and sore the last couple of days, but some folks just wouldn’t be happy unless they had something to complain about, you know?

Here’s a previous post entitled, ‘Cycling is Therapeutic.’

For more information on the benefits of cycling as therapy, check this out.

(Morguefile)