KOTAČI TIŠINE WHEELS OF SILENCE

Bikepacking 2025: Geometry of Fatigue and the Mysticism of Asphalt

Sensors indicate overheating. The year was long, the roads were tough, and the silence was sometimes too loud. I didn't ride to get somewhere. I rode to escape everything that wasn't asphalt and a heartbeat.

The archive is full. Some data has been transferred to Hard Copy, some remained frozen in Optics, and some are forever lost in the wind. That's fine. The system must be cleared to function again.

Thanks to everyone who caught the signal.

[ SIGNAL AT REST ] // WAITING FOR 2026.

June 2026 sounds like science fiction. Like a date on a food can you save for an atomic war. It’s far. Too far. And we are here. Stuck in December.

I look at this ornament. I don’t see a decoration. I see a "Palantír". I see a non-blinking eye, a sphere that absorbs the room and returns it to us – distorted. That’s the physics of a convex mirror, they would say. But tonight, it’s the only truth in the room.

We are all here. Accounted for. In the frame. Family. A holy word spoken with too much sugar this time of year, to hide the bitterness. We stand in front of the tree, smiling for the audience, wrapped in the cellophane of expectations.

But look into the red sphere. Look closely. In that reflection, our faces are stretched. The smiles are grotesque. The room bends as if under the pressure of depth. In that red mist, I see what we hide behind Christmas songs and lights – I see people acting out life instead of living it. I see "project management" instead of emotion. I see a vacuum where nothing grows, only aesthetically maintained on life support.

This bauble is evidence. It shows that this glitter around us is just cheap scenery. A distortion of reality. We are not these smiling extras. We are those distorted characters in the reflection – cramped, deformed by compromises, starving for air.

That’s why I need June. Not as a vacation. But as a vision correction. I need Wheels of Silence to straighten the image. I need that brutal, straight line of asphalt to cancel out this curvature in which we are suffocating. I need the wind in my chest to blow away this stale air of cinnamon and false security.

Until then? Until then, I sit in the corner and observe. Logging the coordinates of the cellophane cracking. I don’t go fast.