Bikes: April 2008 Archives

The cat keeps climbing into my lap the very instant that I sit down at this computer. I think it's because she knows I am a quivering, frantic, furious, stressed-out mess, and she is trying to help.

Of course, when I am a q,f,f,s-o mess I really do not want anybody touching me. Not her. Not the horrid guy I had a date with last week (ugh, I get the creeps just mentioning it). Not nobody, not no-how. (Points to anyone who can identify the source of that line.)

Thankfully, I had a better, less bizarro date on Sunday night, so I am no longer quite as repulsed by the idea of the entire human race, but not by much, because a client is driving me so crazy I cannot even express it to you. And when words fail me, my friends, you know it is serious.

Anyway, that would and will account for any dearth in verbiage you have encountered or may encounter in the near future. If I come out of this project with my bloody triumphant sword over my head, life here at girlwich may resume some form of normalcy (that being a relative rather than an absolute state, of course).

In the meantime, I leave you with these here random assorted news items.

1. I am knitting legwarmers again. I'm about a third of the way through the 2nd one.

2. I rode my bike all weekend. Huzzah!

3. I have laundry in the dryer. Huzzah!

4. There is a cat paw on my arm. Her way of saying, "Yo! Pet me!"

5. I am giving the men my age a try lately, but I honestly think I prefer the younger ones, so I can't say that any of them have that great a shot. I just thought I'd see.

6. All these dates have made me realize that I am infinitely more entertaining, scintillating, and visually pleasing company than any of the guys in this city (or at least the ones who ask me out) seem to be. Which is a) an ego boost, and b) a problem.

7. It is raining.

8. These pics were taken by a friend to whom I loaned the Nikon. Aren't they nice?

I am in something of a state. Work has gone to some next level of stressful that I didn't know existed, which is funny (strange, not ha-ha) because this very same client sent me to what I had thought was my maximum level of stress a few months ago. And here we are again, except that we are farther onto the plane of insanity.

If I had any hair, I'd tear it out.

Yesterday was so bad that after my horrible meeting there was nothing that could possibly save my life except to get on my bike and go have dinner with friends. Which I did. Of course, the fact that my rare and precious cranks could break at any moment because they are not properly equipped with pedal washers* does not make for the completely carefree biking that I would like to have.

But I had no choice. I hope the bicycle gods will be merciful.

Anyway...that's a whole other story. All of that. I mean, not just the bike stuff, but the whole horrible shebang of shit. Pardon my french, this is not a G-rated blog. Don't like it? On your bike, as the British so charmingly say.

Anyway...again.

One thing the gods seem to be suddenly providing me with is men to go on dates with, all of whom have Biblical names. We started with the old testament last week, and now we are moving on to the new.

If I end up getting a date with the Bodhisattva, though, I am gonna really laugh.

So what do I do with all this bounty? Why, I go and acquire an instant liking for one of my friend's roommates, of course. Yeah, uh-huh. What is it with me and the men in unexpected places? Last time it was a bicycle mechanic. Didn't work. He likes 20-year-olds.

This time, well, who the hell knows, but he is awfully cute, and (based on the impression of 10 minutes) just my type of boy. Anyway....

I know, I know, this post seems to be ratcheting around like a ball bearing set loose in a rubber room, but, well, that's what the inside of my head probably looks like right now. Okay, the inside of my head looks like a soft pink glob of neurons, but you know what I mean.

"Don't want no pork chops and greens. Just give me gin instead!" - Nina Simone, and I agree wholeheartedly.

*Worry not; I have ordered the washers and they will be here tomorrow, and either I or my bike mechanic (not the one I had the crush on) will install them, and all will hopefully be well, at least in that area of life.

Well, well, welly well well. Still here. Kind of blah. Took a couple of days off (yes, that's called a weekend to regular humans), which was a good idea, but only now, after having done so, do I begin to realize the depths of my tiredness.

I had a date today, which had that effect that first dates sometimes have on me. It's not when they go drastically wrong that it gets me. It's when they're quite nice, but I'm not interested. I find that very depressing for some reason. "Close but no cigar" is what my dad would call it.

It's depressing both because I somehow end up feeling lonelier than I did beforehand, and (I suspect this is the bigger reason) because I then have to tell the person that I liked them but didn't like them. And I hate doing that, because I know just what it feels like to be on the receiving end, and there's just no good way to reject or be rejected. It all stinks.

So, I'm rather down. Also, I didn't get to ride my bike today because I woke up with one of my many injuries bothering me - and bothering me to the point where it was clear that I should not do anything to exacerbate it. So I didn't, and it doesn't hurt quite as much now, and that is good.

So here we are, the little feline and me, and we had a nice little super-snuggle moment on the couch (rare these days because I am so busy that I'm a neglectful cat owner), and that made both of us feel better, I think. But still.

I am coming to the conclusion that online dating is much like online shoe buying; nice in theory, but it would really be better if you could try them on in person first.

Well, I'm workin' and I'm crazy, and yet somehow I keep having these moments where I just love everybody and everything. There are several potential explanations for this (yes, I feel a list coming on!):

1. The Bike Is Back. It (he, actually, and he has a name, which I am keeping secret because he is my lover) is on the wall now, but when I first brought him in, I had to roll him into the living room so I could just stare at him lovingly, and gloat over his beauteous and rare vintage French cranks, which match his bad-ass French self. Oh he is so hot.

2. The Boys Are Out. It is spring, and in spring, this city has a habit of rewarding its long-suffering overwintered single girls by unveiling lovely sleek little geek boys for them, in little fits and starts. One here, a few more there, one at the cafe where you'd least expect him to be, flirting as he hands you a menu and ponders whether or not he has any Guinness available, and then screws up your check and promises you a free dinner if the credit card turns out to have been charged twice. Uh-huh, sure cutie. Lemme see those tattoos on your arms again. As he walked away, I turned to my friend B. and said, "Do you suppose he'd fit on my bike?"

3. I am perhaps just a trifle overcaffeinated.

4. I got to sneak in a tiny little bit of girltime tonight, right smack in the middle of my horrid deadlines, and that cheered me up. We were very silly, and we laughed, and that is healthy for me. I like laughing. It feels so damned good.

5. I am going to have a picnic on my birthday, in Brooklyn. It will be fab. I will toss a frisbee with my good shoulder and eat angel food cake. Yay, picnic!

6. If my knees hold up (please hold up, guys!) I can stop riding the subway. Yay!

7. My exotic French cranks have exotic French threading, which means I couldn't use my spanking new (and very nice) English-threaded pedals. A minor bump in the road which ended, entertainingly, with my bike builder taking a very fine antique pair of pedals off one of his own personal bikes and selling them to me, at about half what they're worth. I love him and he loves me (platonically, in both directions).

8. When I got home, I realized that my bike had given me a hickey (from the messenger bag strap). The funny thing is, so did the Nikon when I first got it. See? I love everyone, and everyone loves me.

9. Okay, okay, I will cut back on the caffeine.

10. But you do see why I love the Nikon so much, don't you? Claudia, these are again taken on auto exposure, sans flash.

I keep trying to post, really I do. I get one half-written, and then it's the middle of the morning (as in, 4 am), and I am too tired to go on, and I leave it for the next day.

And the next day comes, and I am too much like a hummingbird, only less joyous than that sounds, and I have no time to breathe, much less fix or finish a half-posted post, and then it's the next night, and I no longer feel like what I said, or no longer want to share it.

And then four days go by, and it is spring, in the sense that the birds are singing and the sun is shining, and I can go out without anything more than a jean jacket.

But not in the sense that I can enjoy it in any fashion.

My arm hurts. My shoulder hurts. My ass hurts. My knees hurt. My head hurts. I am tired. I am busy in a way that cannot be measured or even effectively described with current technology.

My cat is insane because it is spring and she wants to kill all those singing birds. And she, too, is cooped up and unhappy about it. I love her for that.

I hate every single person who glides by me on a bicycle. Hate them.

I hate the people who talk about riding their bikes. "Oh, I had the nicest bike ride today," said one of my friends. "I hate you," said I.

I like the Nikon. I like the legwarmer (#2) I am knitting. I liked the doctor I saw yesterday. He told me I wasn't old enough to be needing a doctor like him. I told him how old I am. He said, "Okay, you are old enough. But you look younger."

Well, doc, today I do not. I look every minute of my age, believe me. If this whole mess keeps up much longer, I am gonna look every minute of my age, plus every minute of the doctor's age. Plus my cat's, for good measure.

See, I meant to write you a nicer post. A happy post, or a contemplative post. Something to make you go "ahhhh," after you read it. One of those. A post with life and color in it.

The trouble is, I am depleted of life and color at the moment. I am angry, and I am frustrated, and I am petulant.

And there you have it. Spring seems like a slap in the face to me, administered on the wheels of so many bicycles. Fuck it all.

Here, look at these nice roses.

Gak! I have written and rewritten this post three times already. Sometimes nothing seems good enough for the outside world. All my efforts seem to fall flat, like those banners in Soho that have holes cut in them to let the wind come through so they don't topple the poles to which they are attached and fall on unsuspecting pedestrians below.

But really, that's not what happened today. What happened today was:

1. I got the cranks I desperately - oh so desperately - needed. I won't actually have them in hand for probably another week, but I am guessing that even if my knees agreed to let me bicycle, my shoulder would have something to say about it. So to wait another week is probably a good thing. In theory. In reality, I am like a racehorse that's not getting taken out to run. Ever see one of them? No? Okay. Ever see one being put into the starting box and freaking out and trying to leap vertically up and out of it so it can run free? Yeah. That's me, all right.

Anyway.

2. I got the deadline extension I so desperately needed. Not as long an extension as I had hoped, but I think it will be enough. And she was pretty nice about it. (Thank you, oh client lady. A blessing on both your publishing houses. And so on.)

3. I went for a walk in the park, and there were daffodils. Daffodils are just excellent.

4. My long-dreaded tax bill, while it is higher than I can actually pay at the moment, is so much lower than I was afraid of that I practically did a jig when I got the package from my accountant. (Note: I did not quite actually jig, because of all my various injured bits, but under normal circumstances I damned well would have. I like jigs.)

5. The new season of BSG starts tonight, and I have much geekery goodness to look forward to in a mere 3 hours and 50 minutes. And BSG has been getting me through my long work sessions all week, because the beloved Sci-Fi channel has been playing reruns from last season from like 1 am to 3 am, which is perfect for my work-till-1-am schedule.

6. If you made me blonde and changed my facial structure a bit, I think I'd look just like Starbuck. Well, okay, my tattoos are different than hers, but you get the idea. She's a swimmer, you see. And she rocks so hard. So...well, I am just saying. I pretty much am Starbuck, minus the drinking problem and extreme self-destructiveness. Okay then, I'll be getting into my Viper now. See y'all later.

PS. Look-look! I finished my first legwarmer yesterday. It fits, sorta.

PS2. I spoke to my bike builder on the phone, which just cheered me up by proxy somehow. He was all excited about the cranks, too. See? GEEKERY.

PS3. A big thank you shout-out to Boywich, who handled the cranks transaction for me as partial repayment of a debt. It was fun to get text messages about cranks that were made before cell phones were even a twinkle in Alexander Graham Bell's ghostly eye.