Derailed -- We Gang Aft Agley

"Do you prefer the spelling DERAILLEUR or DERAILER?" asked the bicycle tutorial Web site at the close of an entry on how to adjust V-brakes. I demonstrated my total greenhorn status by choosing "(c) Doesn't matter." Turned out to be the sentiment of me and just 967 of the rest of us neophytes out of the 6,432 votes cast. Derailer is a term that refers to the device's role, which is to move, or derail, the bicycle chain from one sprocket to the next. This morning, the day of Mark's and my maiden voyage on our brand new bikes, the term seemed more apt to describe what the brakes on Mark's bike portended for our cycling plans. He'd noticed that one of the brake pads was brushing against the front tire with each revolution. An hour later of futzing with nuts and bolts and the brake cable and pads, we somehow achieved reasonable riding status. But heaven only knows what all we screwed up in the attempt.

Derailed literally means run off the rails, like a runaway train. Or figuratively, a project, campaign, marriage, career, anything that was heading toward a fixed destination. We start so many initiatives knowing where they are supposed to end up. The path is clear, the mileage clocked, the GPS will guarantee the exact route. And yet, so often in life, things get unexpectedly derailed. The chain slips off the sprocket and suddenly we're careening out of control. Don't even know why half the time. A bump in the road? Our own ineptitude? Doesn't matter how you spell it because either way, you're derailed.

So what can you do but reset or mend the chain and get going again? Maybe not on the same path. Maybe you have to backtrack a ways, even limp your way to a restarting place. It can take time to get everything back in working order. Time and will. That's the challenge for those with the consciousness to remember the troubles of the past and the foresight to project into the future -- how to muster the will to get back up and ride again. The Scottish bard Robert Burns perhaps put it best in his poem, "To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough":

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

"Gang aft agley" is often misquoted and made more familiar as "go oft astray." Is a mouse indeed better off than a man when a home and a lifetime's possession get turned upside down? Well, at least we have the option of getting insurance.

Luckily, our derailers didn't derail Mark's and my inaugural bike journey today. We pedaled along the W&OD Trail from Vienna into Reston, perhaps not as briskly as the many experienced cyclists who passed us nor as far as I thought we could go when we first set out. We're still learning and faltering, tentatively feeling our way, learning about gear shifting, road etiquette, starting and stopping, brakes and chains and tires and cables and car racks. But we're mapping our routes, laying our schemes, and keeping in mind what the bike shop mechanic said: "There are just two types of people -- those who've had flats and those who will." Yup, we got our spare tubes.

(In case you're wondering, the majority of votes -- 3,348 or 54% of the total -- went to derailleur.)

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [dē-rāl']
Roots: French dérailler
1. To run or cause to run off the rails.
2. To come or bring to a sudden halt: a campaign derailed by lack of funds; a policy that derailed under the new administration.