We were really excited to talk for a bit with Evan at Tour De Fat 2008 in Austin. Here are his answers to a few questions from us about the origin of Boneshaker, and thoughts on cycling.
Wolverine Farm Publishing’s Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac originated out of a desire to create a book that would somehow capture the many aspects of practical bicycling that seemingly go un-remarked upon in today’s fast-paced, car-centered world.
So about year ago, the co-creator and designer of Boneshaker, Todd Simmons, and I sat down for many long cold hours in a handmade, mud-and-wood-and-glass-bottle-greenhouse in Colorado and let several years worth of talk culminate in a working plan. What we quickly recognized in this meeting was that despite our desire to co-author and publish a book, what we really seemed to be creating was a publication that looked at the bicycle from various perspectives simultaneously, an approach which rarely works well for a single volume book. Our conclusion, then, was to put out a periodical, a collection of considerations that could renew itself twice or thrice a year; a magazine-type publication, in short, that could continue to shift and change as we saw fit.
That’s about the time we came across the War Department’s 1941 Soldier’s Basic Field Manual, on which we decided to loosely base our little book: a pocket-sized collection that readers could take into the streets as they battled hills and traffic and weather on their bicycles. The result was Boneshaker as you now hold it, which we decided to title an almanac due to its useful and eclectic nature.
What we believe, and hope to offer at the heart of Boneshaker, is the idea that the bicycle, when conceived of and used appropriately, can become a tool for social change and community building. And though bicycling has become, for better or worse, an activity tied to radical undertones and bohemian implications, we are less interested in those types of categorizations and more so with simply riding bicycles to get where we are going.
Our involvement with New Belgium Brewing Company was borne out of several factors. For one, the brewery itself is located within a mile of our publishing offices in Fort Collins, Colorado. As they have always been an environmentally-minded company (they are employee-owned and entirely wind-powered), in addition to the fact that their flagship ale, Fat Tire Amber, was conceived of from the saddle of a bicycle during a ride across Belgium, they have long encouraged and supported our efforts at Wolverine Farm Publishing. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, Wolverine Farm graciously accepted the offer from New Belgium to travel on the Tour de Fat and to offer our various publications to visitors throughout the Tour, which include, in addition to Boneshaker, Matter Journal (a literary collection of poetry, art, activism, movement, essays, and interviews), and GER, an annual free guide to sustainable living.
As it turns out, the Tour de Fat ended up being a perfect place for Boneshaker to make a debut, as hundreds if not thousands of bicycle-minded people pour out of the woodwork to attend the ballyhoo in each city. We were quite unexpectely yet wildly received from Seattle to Boise, from San Francisco to Phoenix, and of course, in Austin. It was a long summer, no doubt, but Boneshaker found its way into many, many pairs of hands, which is the most we could ever ask for. If even ten people begin to look upon the bicycle as a means of utilitarian transporation after reading Boneshaker, and perhaps use their bike more often than their car, our publication will have been a success in my opinion.
With that said, though, Boneshaker is in no way an anti-automobile almanac. Cars have their place in society and driving them is not the problem. It is perhaps the oil on which they rely and our collective and debiliating dependence on them, however, that makes cars the bane they have become for our planet.
The almanac is, therefore, simply a collective ode to the ride itself, that fundamentally lonesome experience one has in the saddle, and the results of repeating that ride over and over in different directions on different days with different destinations in each instance.
As a periodical-style handbook, we routine receive submissions and articles from the bicycle-riding public at large. One of my favorite pieces in Boneshaker’s second installment (42-200, which is due out later this month), in fact, is a review of studded bicycle snow tires which came to us from a reader. Another fantastic piece in this next issue is an essay by a university professor on bicycling as a means to women in the 19th century. Paired with poems, a diary of a cross country bicycle ride, a profile of Octopus Cycling Caps in Columbus, Ohio, as well as reviews, advice, and another full moon ride schedule, I am, needless to say, extremely excited about the release of 42-200. (In Austin, I should mention, Boneshaker is available for sale by our friends at Ecowise.)
With all this in mind, my take on urban cycling today is a complex one. Many people, when they find out that I edit a publication dedicated to bicycle commuting, immediately get defensive and explain, without prompting, why they drive instead of riding their bike. “I would have to get up earlier,” they say, or, “I have so much I have to carry,” and, my favorite, “I get all sweaty when I ride.” These testimonials are so interesting to me. I am very careful never to evangelize on behalf of the bicycle, and yet people still tell me their excuses, to which I always respond, “Well, bicycle commuting is certainly not for everyone,” which I truly believe. But, more than that, however, I think that if we are ever seriously going to attempt to be indepedent of foreign oil and fossil fuels in general, we are going to have to collectively evaluate what we are willing to scarifice to get to that point. It is certainly a momentum thing–once more people ride their bicycles, the safer riding bicycles will become, which will, in turn, encourage more people to ride bicycles. It’s cyclical, like so much else.
Visit Wolverine Farms Publishing here, and Become a Fan of Boneshaker on Facebook.
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