A Pedal Power Guide to the Galaxy


For a night of fossil free experiential cosmology any clear night from now through summer, ride your bike as far as you can from the city and lie down under the starry sky with your feet to the South. See the Milky Way like the rim of a bike wheel over you. The South of the sky, where the galaxy is thickest between Saggitarius and Scorpio, is the hub of the wheel, so if you dare contemplate the cosmos, connect yourself to this through imaginary pedal cranks as you lie there. The earth turns and the solar system turns within the greater turning of the galaxy wheel. The galaxy turns once in 200 million years, and dinosaurs walked the earth both half way round and a full turn round and you can connect to their spirit power by lying with your feet pointed through the middle of the galaxy and across to the other side.

Where the wheel is East of overhead, set right in the rim is a really bright star. Deneb at the head of the "Northern Cross" is about the farthest away single bright star in the sky, so it is about as bright as a star gets before it blows up. The light we see now from Deneb left it some 1600 years ago in the time of Celtic saints. That is the direction the wheel is turning toward, but we won't be over there for a long time at the speed we're going, so pedal harder.

The Summer stars are centred around Ophiuchus, the healer, the serpent holder, the Dinomatrix in the Southern sky above your feet. It consists of some medium-bright stars in a tent-like shape that is kind of empty-looking in the middle. The West side is the Serpent holder's left shoulder, elbow, and the left hand that holds the serpent's middle is two stars. The light that we see from those stars started from there in the time of the invention of the bicycle. The Western hand star is about 140 light years away when they were inventing pedals and cranks and the other one 90 light years, when the bicycle was complete and being displaced by the car.

The zodiac or the ecliptic is the plane of the solar system in which we see the planets travelling and astrology divides it into twelve equal houses, but the planets actually travel across thirteen unequal constellations that includes Ophiuchus' right leg standing on the galactic axle. So if we include the snake charmer in the zodiac we can have odd postmod astrology or the cult of the pedal power goddess in the sky.

Pedal Power Goddess
Key of D     
To the tune of
"She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain"

There's a pedal-power goddess in the sky
And she turns the Milky Way between her thighs.
She's the pedal-power goddess
And she doesn't wear a bodice,
She's the pedal-power goddess in the sky.

There's a pedal power goddess in the stars.
In the cosmos there's no lasting place for cars,
So the goddess doesn't drive one
And her energy's a live one
And there are no fossils burning in her arse.

There's a pedal power goddess on the way
And we pedal by her power  every day.
Through the road rage  and pollution,
We will make a velorution,
By the goddess we will find a better way.

Lee Henderson
MMIV

 

Two web sites that feature star maps
appropriate to this article - enjoy!

http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/

http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/
constellations/java/Ophiuchus.html