I asked Evan Schneider of Boneshaker Almanac to send us some information on their second issue, which has just been released. We don’t have a copy of this one in our greasy little hands yet, but we’re looking forward to doing a full review as soon as we can. We greatly enjoyed the first issue.

For now, here are some thoughts from Evan on the issue and where he’s coming from:

This week Wolverine Farm Publishing’s editorial core is excited to finally and officially release the second issue (BA 42-200) of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac. From the moment it solidified as a publication, Boneshaker has been about understanding the bicycle as an extension of humanity, and this issue is no exception. Personally, one of my favorite aspects of this volume in particular is the inclusion of such wide perspectives about the bicycle across a significantly wide swath of history. In an essay by Dr. Paola Malpezzi Price (a professor and chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Colorado State University), for example, the bicycle is beautifully and articulately posited as a vehicle of freedom for women in the 19th century. But then, in the very same issue, there is also a collection of letters to different cities from New Belgium Brewing’s Michael Bussmann who traveled the country this past summer unrolling the carnivalesque Tour de Fat for people who were ready to get on bikes in costume and go for a ride in the sun. That is the steady nature of the almanac: a varied collection of useful and interesting explications on the single, dynamic topic of bicycling.

Staying true to Boneshaker‘s recurring framework, then, this issue features another bicyclist diary (day-to-day entries from a singlespeed venture aimed across the United States), another full moon ride schedule (“This will be cold. It will probably be cloudy. In fact, just count on it, and then if it’s not, you will be pleasantly surprised. What this means is that you will just have to trust that the moon is there. But it is. It is up there somewhere, shining above the cloud ceiling, a perfect disc of light.”), several poems, a miniature manifesto by artist and curator Shea’la Finch, another record of the cyclist, a profile/interview of Octopus Caps in Columbus, Ohio, a review of studded bike tires, a poignant look at the documentary B.I.K.E., two short stories, an explanations of some basic evasive maneuvers, and more. Weighing in heavier than the first issue, we are, needless to say, excited to have 42-200 out in the world, in pockets of cyclists everywhere.

Per our own evolution, it’s no exaggeration to say that Boneshaker is forever an ongoing experience. I can’t ever seem to write and think enough about the bicycle, and that fact is the very foundation on which the almanac continues to be built. For such a simple machine, the bicycle certainly has a way of defying the imagination. It constantly astounds me. It is also no exaggeration that almost every single time I get on my bike I conceive of different aspects of the ride that are worth exploring literarily: the poetics of a well-tuned singlespeed; how tired my legs feel some days for no reason at all; the resentment I feel when a fellow rider blows through a stop sign, but then I myself hypocritically blow through one later that same day, sometimes the exact same stop sign; the very many different types of air there are to ride through. Have you noticed this? It seems infinitely changing, doesn’t it, the air? The density and warmth and sharpness of the world feel different every day, even in different parts of the same city, a fact I never discerned before I rode so often as a commuter. Last night, for example, I was riding home at about midnight and I was at a stoplight and could see my breath billow out in front of me; hot, moist air that mingled for a moment in front of my face before it drifted off and diffused itself with the February night. How could I have consciously given up this experience for so many years from within the confines of a car?