The Oxford English Dictionary Atom: The smallest part of a chemical element that can exist.

It is Friday evening just getting dark, it is raining lightly. I am on my way home on my bike. I have a part-time job as a bicycle messenger (courier), delivering supposedly important and urgent documents around the city. Usually I do this work for just a couple of days a week. This week though it has been four long, wet and windy days. I am feeling cold, damp, tired and, after100 kilometres today, hungry. Worst of all, despite all my training, I have a sore, painful backside! It is this last fact that made me think of a book I read a long time ago: The Third Policeman by Flann OBrien. This very amusing satirical book is crammed full of scientific facts and half-truths which are the supposed theories of the fictional scientist and philosopher De Selby. The most important one, as far as I am concerned, being his Atomic Theory: the exchange of atoms between bodies in close contact. Sergeant Pluck, a character in the book, applies this theory to bicycles............and so will I. Let me try to explain. We all know that there are atoms flying all around us and that everything, including ourselves, is made up of atoms. I think most of us will know that, although we cannot see it, there is activity at the surface of all materials. Atoms are continually breaking loose. The more unstable the material the more atoms are escaping. It is logical, then, that when two materials come into close contact there is a reaction or interaction. Atoms will pass from one thing to another resulting in a mutual exchange of particles. The one substance will take on some of the qualities of the other. For instance if you leave cheese wrapped up in plastic for too long it will begin to taste of plastic. This transaction can take place between any two objects in close contact, for example: a person and a bicycle. When riding a bike the riders hands, feet, and especially their backsides are in almost continual contact with the bicycle. All the time atoms are being exchanged. The effect of this process is increased by the thousands of tiny impacts experienced when riding over uneven roads or rocky paths, forcing and mixing the atoms together. The process is further accelerated due to the heat caused by friction in the saddle area. As the atoms change places the cyclist is slowly taking on the characteristics of the bicycle whilst the bicycle is absorbing the characteristics of its rider. I cycle for my work. I cycle for sport and pleasure. I use a bicycle to visit friends, to do the shopping and to go to the bar. I have cycled over the Alps in France, over the Rocky Mountains in Canada and through the Mojave Desert in the U.S.A. One trip started in Spain, via Portugal, France and Belgium back to The Netherlands. I have cycled among other places in Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, Britain, Germany and Hungary. Last summer was spent on a mountain bike in Kyrgyzstan. During all this cycling microscopic Bob particles and bicycle particles are exchanged. According to the Atomic Theory by now my bicycle must be nearly fifty percent Bob whilst I must be nearly half bicycle. The bicycle I use for my couriers work is an old, almost antique, Italian racing bike. I am not going to ask my bike how it feels but on this cold, wet, Friday evening I certainly feel very much like an old battered bicycle! bob powers January 2012 607