Bike Parades and Rhetorical Questions

By now, maybe no introduction’s necessary. Though I’m sure that statement is false, I’m not going to go through that rigmarole of telling you who I am again, or what I’m doing here, or what you’re about to read.

[Ed's note: He's Evan P. Schneider, editor of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac.]

So.

I think it’s Tuesday. Or maybe just Monday. Whichever it is, hello! Were you awakened by that ridiculously violent thunder and lightning this morning, cracking and crashing into the living room window of the place you are staying? Well, I was, which is not to say that I am cranky, just a little on edge. That’s not a fun way to wake up. All of that turbulent weather so early in the day, though, cannot put a damper on the weekend Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac had here in PDX as part of New Belgium’s Tour de Fat.

Man, Portland! That was a good time! So good, in fact, I actually remember very little of it. In two words, it was mighty rad. In three, it was very nearly unbeatable. Far better than the Tour de Fat Seattle, especially since there were no clueless homeless men attempting to lead the bike parade, one that took us far, far away from the city into the remote countryside where everyone sort of just stopped and wondered what had just happened. Nope, not here in Oregon. You Portlanders certainly know how to read and ride and throw a party. In the words of my colleague, “If you remember it, you weren’t there.”

From about the time I rode my bike in circles in front of Fat Tire Farm getting hosed down by the resident mechanics, things just sort of coalesced into a boundaryless mess of wonderment, with crowds cheering us on (I’m still not even sure what they were yelling so merrily about other than we were on bicycles and Portland really likes bicycles and it was Saturday and very hot and the fact that the heat may have gotten to all of us just a little bit) and very many beautiful people on bikes gathered all around me on every side.

Enough said.

But other than the Tour, I have been pondering something lately. Do you think people actually read tidy, artsy magazines? Seriously, I don't want to put out a book that no one reads. But is that the conundrum all small presses face? Even McSweeneys almost went bankrupt at one point. That's scary. Do people even read things in print anymore? I guess that's my question, to which I have no answer. Not even Stephen King had an answer, and you know it’s bad when he wondered at the purpose and quality of today’s literary magazines.

On top of this daunting query, I was asked recently to summarize Boneshaker’s business plan. Well, if you’ve tuned in at all to this ongoing blog contribution of mine, you’ll know this is like asking a monkey to explain how a dolphin swims. In any case, here’s my plan: make an almanac; sell enough copies of that almanac to make another almanac; build a small but reputable name and look that people like; and then make the recurrent books for a set period of time, after which I reconvene with the people close to me and decide whether or not I should do it again. Books like ours that are handcrafted and tiny and narrowly circulated are ever only liked by a small, strange set of people that we will likely never meet, though we would really like to. Will Boneshaker ever make it big? Probably not, but as long as I can keep going and not die and not go into debt while doing so, I think I’ll be okay.

This was all very disjointed, but that’s the lightning’s fault.

On to Boise!