I’ve been thinking a lot about visual art lately, a notable difference in mindset as I’m tend to be remarkably unobservant of my visual surroundings.

Many reasons have led to this elevation in seeing what’s around me, including a trip to Albuquerque Museum to see the dreadful Georgia O’Keeffe/Henry Moore exhibition. I miss going to museums, and reflect now that the Pandemic disrupted what had been a fairly regularly practice of attendance. I won’t be missing either O’Keeffe or Moore, however, as I find their art devoid of humor, which defines me as a very low brow art “critic,” understandable given my lack of observational acuity and preference toward putting overly long sentences with at least seven commas in them together.

Maybe more than anything, any jump in power of observation has been forged by a year-plus now of dedicated slow cycling. It’s a simple calculation really: You notice things better the slower you encounter them. At typical driving speed, about all can spot is another Ron Bell billboard, and we cyclists tend to overly focus on getting somewhere (a place, a state of increased fitness) to the detriment of seeing what’s around us.

Slow cycling smashes through all that. The photos below aren’t a true expression of the interactive visual experience, in part because I’m a lousy photographer and also because stopping to take the photo is itself a mental/physical distraction from the far more important visual/psychological experience of just taking it all in at 10 mph, if that.

Yesterday’s sandy ride/walk through the Bosque roughly between Montano and Alameda didn’t crack 6 mph on average. The sand and vegetation required much staring at the ground but there were plenty of chances to look up and soak in the environment.

Bosque cycling isn’t my favorite, largely because I worry about the environmental degradation of cycling, even at slow speed, and the ongoing impact of humans interrupting its wildlife residents. But every once in a while I lower my ethical standards and do always enjoy the enforced slowness. I also enjoy the many evolutionary travelers (plant seeds, etc.) picked up by my bike pants on the wander through the more vegetation-heavy stretches.

Go slow venues I can more wholly enjoy and endorse are gated communities and mobile home parks. These seldom cycled enclaves are perfect low traffic zones where drivers even have to stop, on occasion, to wait for gates to open. There’s also that wonderful 8-year-old explosion of joy when coming across something like this:

There’s just something gloriously juvenile about breaking into a place folks have gone to great trouble to prevent you entry.

I honestly can’t remember which gated community had the ajar pedestrian gate above, but I wouldn’t tell you if I did remember. Just know they’re out there, folks. Plenty of folks living in “communities” designed to never allow people like us in them have “fake locked” or completely open gates. You don’t even have to do the obvious scofflaw thing of waiting for a big gate to open when a driver shows up.

In the quite official but very fake locked example above, see that speed limit sign? Ah, that is beautiful. The biggest difference I’ve noticed in many unsanctioned trips through gated communities and mobile home parks is that almost NOBODY is puttering around outside their home in the gated community, while folks in mobile home parks are often out and about, often conversing with neighbors.

Mobile home parks are communities. “Gated community” is an oxymoron.

I admit I might be biased, as I’ve lived in a mobile home park and never a gated community, so go out and check for yourself. Just make sure you observe that 10 mph speed limit and use the extra time to really observe the world around you. It’s worth a look.