mobe

Hi, how are you? Allow me to introduce this podcast. You, podcast. Podcast, you. These are bicycle themed stories and essays by Peter Gelman. Do you like bikes? More importantly, do bikes like you? Well, these are odd stories. Humorous, satiric, silly, snidely, melancholic, absurd, and odd, these stories have had a wide success, picked up by bicycle anthologies and now available for your listening pleasure. Bikes, so often misunderstood and considered incomprehensible, Peter Gelman uncovers mysteries you never thought of about the two wheeled tribe, and explains them. Mysteries are so mysterious! As a bonus, podcast side-kicks include his office assistants, two pet guinea pigs named Ludwig and Schubert. Please listen often, until you memorize them. This will be reflected on your final grade. Some of these short works comment on deep, deep profundities, too deep, really, and too profound, celestial, thrumming and meaningful, for me to comment further here. (Too deep for tears. Okay, I consider my case made.) Others wallow in shallow depths, splashing about madly and making nonsense for the benefit of humanity. The rest is up to you.

What? More? About? Who? Me, me, me! Behold my wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command!  This podcast is about anything I think of connected to bikes. Usually it tries to touch lightly on the ridiculous and the funny and the profound. It varies. A few of them are wild essays, the rest stories, fiction.... sometimes commentary on our times. I hope you enjoy them.

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.

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Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained #2... Recumbent Cyclists Have Big, Big, Big, Big, Big, not Small, BIG Butts.

Cyclists, we can laugh at ourselves. 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.

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Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained #1... A Intimate Examination of Bicycle Bungee Science.

This essay an early work I did on the vast and profound subject of bicycles. It was the second I wrote, but the first under the MOBE name. It was published in 1998, if I recall correctly. Neal Skorpen drew a great cartoon of the narrator angrily jumping up and down, bungee cords wrapped tightly around his bike's rear axle, while smiling faces in a Suburu took in the entertainment. Yes... I remain your humble, absurd and reverent bicycle writer, Peter Gelman.

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Click here to go to the audiobook mp3s

This is a new, additional way you can download the 11 mp3 files that make up the "Skull of the Robot" audiobook (free of charge). It sends you to Podcast Alley, which lists the 11 installments of the novel. These links are ...

Recently I wrote about organic food, recruitment of engineers, steel containers, and the architecture of the "man : machine" interface. I also wrote about investment strategies, insurance software, and card transaction readers. The list goes on. I'm quite happy to have that work. It helps pay the mortgage. It's ...

Here are Ludwig (left) and Schubert (right) taking a noon snooze after tearing down their hay rack and eating all the Timothy Hay. They've been quite excited about Springtime, the little birds known as Bushtits flitting around the window, the carrots coming frequently from my hand... Both boys are ...

Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained #4: Coffeebike

I've tried to write about what it's been like to live in the USA in 2003, or , say, some time between 2002 and 2004. I've found our times have been quite stressful, not just because of 9/11 itself, not just because ...

This is the MP3 link: Pedaling Through the Paleolithic I'll add commentary on the story later today... after I lift weights (my fans demand that I maintain my iron physic) and run some errands.

Podshow Mp3 podcast link Pedaling Through the Paleolithic. Odeo MP3 podcast link: Pedaling Through the Paleolithic .

This is another story I wrote while suffering from Reality during our slowly evaporating (maybe) era of Unreality. I'm not just being cute about it; I know that I had to ...