Friday, September 29, 2006

bicycling

I went on my first bike ride yesterday. First bike ride ever, at 30. Went about a mile and a half around the lake near my house.

30, you may ask? Well, I actually learned to ride when I was 11 or so. But I had a bike several years before that - blue, with a banana seat and Charlie’s Angels silhouettes plastered all over it. With training wheels, of course, and no gears. Somehow it ended up living in the abandoned chicken shack at my grandparent’s place. I’d haul it out to the field and ride it up and down a little rise along the fence. Back and forth and up and down over the grass. I don’t remember anyone really helping me much, but my grandpa sometimes kept an eye on me from his riding mower. (Of course, it’s also highly probable that refused any help offered.) Everyone thought that was a good place to learn, because my mother had learned there 20 years before and had ridden her bike all over the uneven turf.

I eventually got bored with the back and forth. That bike ended up rusting in the chicken house until I was older, when it got hauled back to my parents’ house. We had adopted three second cousins by then, and they all came equipped with bikes. I made the mistake of expressing interest, and so everyone determined that I would learn to ride. It was an entirely negative experience, involving much crying and yelling by all involved. I learned to ride well enough that everyone decided I would go up to the top hill in our neighborhood and ride down it. There was fresh gravel that hadn’t been well-tamped, and some dirt-bike riders who blew by close to me. I fell off and skinned everything. That’s what bravery will get ya, kid. I rode back and forth and up and down in the dip in front of our house for a few weeks, and then put the bike in the shed to finish rusting out. The next year I got a pink 10-speed racing bike for Christmas, or maybe a birthday. I had thought that with a different bike I’d be more interested, and that more gears would help with the hills in my neighborhood. But I hadn’t counted on being thrown so off-balance by bending over the handlebars, and that bike rusted out too.

That was the end of me and bikes. For 20 years.

This summer, my parents took up riding, and brought their hybrids up with them to visit. They’ve been enjoying it a lot, and are noticeably more compact after several months of riding the trails. I was curious. And they were patient. I rode up and down behind my garage for about an hour last weekend, and on Thursday Mom and I went around the lake. I white-knuckled it the entire way, chanting Don’t hit the lake. Don’t hit the tree. Don’t hit the people. I had to walk a little bit, since I didn’t entirely figure out shifting on hills and short-circuited over riding on a section that was street on one side, hill down to lake on the other side, and partially blocked by a utility truck. But I did the rest of it and didn’t fall over and didn’t end up in the lake or on top of any joggers. It was fun, all things considered. At the tail end of the trail, I even relaxed enough to notice there were trees around me.

They offered to buy me a bike, but there’s only about 3 weeks left in the riding season up here. I don’t have a proper place to store it, either. But those things will be dealt with by next spring, and that’ll give me time to do some more research and figure out what’s really needed this time.

Dude. I rode a bike.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Her Kind

— Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I hae ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

Friday, September 01, 2006

is there such a thing as a grease hangover?

We went to the fair last night. And that means fair food:
  • Key lime pie on a stick
  • Cheese on a stick
  • Lemonade
  • Corn dog
  • Polish sausage with lots of onion
  • Italian donuts
  • Coffee ice cream
We each ate a couple of bites of everything, with him eating more of the sausage and me eating more of the corn dog and ice cream. If something didn’t live up to expectations, then it got thrown away. (Which meant neither of us ate much of the pie or cheese.)

Today, I feel terrible. Besides the predictable gastrointestinal disturbances, I have no energy. None. I feel kinda achy. I'm vaguely depressed.

I wonder if there’s such a thing as a grease hangover? When I was younger, I would have eaten all that and not felt a thing. Now I feel sorta like I've poisoned myself. So there’s been lots of water and vitamins and healthy food today. And I hope to hell this wears off by tomorrow.