Velocipedic? Saturnal?

When I have told people about my upcoming adventure, the number one most frequently asked question has been "Are you going to blog about it?" The best, most honest answer I can offer is, "I'll try."


When I exchanged messages on the subject with my friend Keith, I told him I would need a name for the blog. "I'm thinking of something like Brant's Bike Blog," I said. "Unless you can come up with a better name."

A moment or two later he replied, "I like the word velocipede."

Okay, velocipede is a good, though somewhat obscure, word. From the Latin meaning "fast foot," the word was coined in 1818 by Frenchman Nicéphore Niépce to describe his version of the conveyance pictured above. It is now used to describe any human-powered land vehicle. I didn't know until today that Keith had done a quick search of the internet to find synonyms for "bicycle."

I'm pretty sure that I coined the adjectival form velocipedic. It gets flagged by spell-checkers, anyway. The saturnal part of this blog's title was contributed by another friend, Emil, who is a PhD classicist.

In an email correspondence, Emil noted the irony of calling this trip a sabbatical. Because sabbatical comes from the word "sabbath" calling a pastor's leave of absence a "sabbatical" makes it sound like the proverbial busman's holiday. Emil suggested an alternative: Saturnalia. I objected.

Saturnalia, a Roman festival to the god Saturn, was celebrated on December 17. My problem with the term was not because of its pagan connotations, but because of its association with winter. Riding across the Northern tier of the United States in September could get cold.

I've told people that I'm not worried about getting snowed in at a mountain pass. I carry a knife and BJ is meaty.

Yes, that is a sick joke. BJ and I have both laughed over it. Be warned, if you continue to read this blog, there may be more "humor" of this sort. Anyway, I don't want to have to go all Alferd Packer out there, so I told Emil that the term saturnalia is off the table.

Emil countered with a final offer. "I'll drop the I-A," he wrote. Thus the word saturnal was minted and the irony, according to Emil, complete. Saturn, you see, gave his name to the seventh day of the week, which the Jews called the sabbath. So, saturnal is a parallel  construction to sabbatical, more (or perhaps less) appropriate for a pastor's holiday.

With that I have probably explained any humor out of this blog's title. I might also have outed the anonymous individual who made the first comment on my previous post. Oops!

Having struck upon the phrase velocipedic saturnal, I hurried to register it before anyone else could snatch it up!