peter's podcast

Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained number 9. "The SHOCKING Bike Ride" by Peter Gelman. A Drunken Midnight Gothic Tale set in rural Oregon. With odd behavior and ruminations. A strange adventure on a Frankenstein bike and Pink Girlie Bike. With insights from the Dalai Lama's visit to Portland. This is the first MOBE recorded with (slightly) improved equipment. It also contains a notice about my bicycle adventure novel coming out later in 2009. Thank you for listening!

Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained number 8. "This Machine Cures Melancholia" by Peter Gelman. Concerns a winter bike ride in Portland. Bad moods, names for mountains, the pleasures of learning Spanish. A Kapow! The virtues of Mexican cactus thorns and tire slime. A lesson about fixing tire gashes, and about superpower money. Ms. Bolt of Speed! Faster and Faster. This story was published in a U.S. bike magazine, and also in Traffic Life, a Canadian anthology still available via its website trafficlife.com. My website is dangerquestmysteries.com. I wrote this story in the late 1990s. This is a recording from last spring and I hope you will forgive the sound imperfections. I'm working on figuring out better equipment. Thanks for listening!

Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained number 7 by Peter Gelman… Concerns the metaphysics of a cycling with a Bicycle Dynamo Hub in a time of war. A dynamo hub generates electricity for a handlebar lamp. The narrator discovers that a sprite lives inside the dynamo. He sees the light! He is a witness to local violence as war begins. He visits a wedding on top of a volcano. Portlanders are defiant of terror. He cycles so fast that his dynamo light uncovers a hyper-reality. He turns off the light to see the stars. He, too, is a galaxy. He turns on the light and finds a man lying on the road. The narrator considers himself tainted by evil as he fights evil. Finally, he considers how the dynamo hub could possibly influence the end of history. (DangerQuestMysteries.com) (petergelman@yahoo.com) Note: If you like MOBE 07, you might also like my maximalist podcast novel posted here: http://petergelman.podomatic.com --Skull of the Robot, ...Passion, philosophy, fisticuffs and word ferment....

Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained number 6, by Peter Gelman. This is the first Cyclo-Pimpernel adventure. He is a very handsome bicycle superhero. In this adventure, he seeks some free French munchies that some suburban grocery stores are throwing out in protest. Joan of Arc may figure in this silly, satiric story. (www.dangerquestmysteries.com) ...

Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained, number 5. Pedaling Through the Paleolithic. A true story of life in America. By Peter Gelman. www.DangerQuestMysteries.com. Includes office tribal warfare, a review of Ice Age TV channels, Critical Mass bike ride hunt, mastodon on the highway, sabertooth tigers wandering Forest Park in Portland, pterodactyls in the sky. Lots of grunts and grumps... drinkin', grunty unh uunh philosophizing, mockery and praise of trees, bad automotive behavior, sleeping through bad times, and cycling out on the ice.

Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained number 4... Coffeebike... by Peter Gelman. A wide-awake bicycle tale of our times. The narrator loves his coffeebike, and asks, can I stop drinking too much coffee in our nervous times?

Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained, number 3. A Brief Encounter with the Surly Shakespearean Insult Quoting Bicycle, by Peter Gelman. The narrator discovers that civilization has not fallen from the Y2K moment. In a spirit of optimism about the 21st century he discovers a bicycle with a strange power, a power that seems magical. Taking it to a PBS antique appraisal show uncovers surprising results. (www.DangerQuestMysteries.com)

Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained #2... Recumbent Cyclists Have Big, Big, Big, Big, Big, not Small, BIG Butts. This early MOBE I wrote seemed to upset some people... The magazine that published it followed it up, the next issue, with a retort: a photo line-up of recumbent cyclists from the rear, bent over. I owned a recumbent bike for years.... a Rans VREX. I rode it on a bike tour from Minnesota to Michigan. I also rode it around Minneapolis, and later, Portland. Finally I sold it. But the point is, I do feel that I can claim reasonable authority on this unique and very important subject attending to the very nubby rub of bicycle culture. I read this story on KBOO radio's Bike Show a few years ago. I was utterly terrible in the interview, because I spend most of my time in a grassy cave with only guinea pigs as friends, but I was not at all nervous while reading the story... why? Because I am so confident, authoritarian, snidley, devil-may-care, suave, and indeed, comforted in that magical realm. Okay... I remain your humble, absurd and reverent bicycle writer, Peter Gelman.

From Peter Gelman’s series, “Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained”, this humorous essay describes the benefits, moral qualities, and terrible dangers of using a bungee cord to hold packages to the rear rack of a bicycle. (www.DangerQuestMysteries.com)