Bikes: March 2010 Archives

I'm gonna keep this brief and random because a) my ass hurts, b) my knee hurts, and c) there is compelling scifi television looming.

random item #1 - everyone here is talking about how beautiful it is out, and I have to say, I hardly notice the difference. It seems to make more difference to me that there are more people whom I have to dodge and avoid and ding the bell at, and this makes my rides a lot less pleasurable, despite (or just next to) the fact that it's warm enough to ride around with uncovered knees.

ri#2: I am poised on the cusp of being ready for a boyfriend, and I hate that. The cusp feeling. Not-quite-yet, but so almost that I'm getting frustrated by it.

ri#3: you know it's spring when all the cute boys are out, and they've broken up with their girlfriends, and we race around telling dirty jokes. Hey, it's my idiom.

ri#4: both my kitten and my eyeballs get very high maintenance in spring. Yowling, clingyness, and dry eyes.

ri#5: a big shout out to my darling girl Special J. It was lovely to see you.

ri#6: In the classic freelance nightmare scenario, I went from having not nearly enough to do to having 423 projects competing for my attention. Most of which are work to try and get more work, but at least things are moving.

ri#7: sadly, ri#6 means that I am really lacking in sleep.

ri#8: I am thirsty and I wish I had a dishes fairy.

8 minutes until Star Trek 8 minutes until Star Trek 8 minutes until Star Trek 7 minutes until Star Trek.

I was out riding with Da Boys tonight, and mentioned my recent 3rd-worst-date-ever, and they wanted to know why. What made it the 3rd-worst? (for one, there was his disdain for TNG. I mean, c'mon, it's Jean-Luc frickin' Picard.) And what was the all-time worst? And why on earth had I gone on a date that night instead of riding laps with them?

One of them (the very cutest one) said when he'd gotten my text about it being just a first date, he'd really wanted to text back, saying If it's just a first date, blow it off. Ride with us instead.

Dudes, I so should have.

So tonight when I got the LAPS TONIGHT text, there was no question. And the fact that I got to spend most of the night riding formation right next to the very cutest one didn't hurt matters. I mean, it's just riding, but oh the lovely scenery. And I don't mean the woods and starry sky, though there were those, too.

Shit, 3 minutes until Star Trek.

Someone offered me a ride home tonight (in a car, with space for my bike in the back), and I said no, though it was rainy and cold and I was on the fence.

Then I got on the bike and had the most glorious time. Well, maybe glorious is too strong a word. But I heard myself say, at the foot of the bridge, "Oh it's lovely out." I wasn't talking to anyone in particular - just the imaginary companion who hears all my best stuff. Maybe I was talking to my bike. I do that a lot, and I know I'm not the only one because I once ran into a fellow who was arriving by bicycle from British Columbia.

I felt so lucky to run into him. I got to ask him about his journey. I've wanted to do bicycle touring for quite some time, and I haven't managed to get out there yet, and he was encouraging and open about it.

He asked how long a trip I was planning, and I said 5 days, and he said that was the perfect length for a first journey. His exact words were something like, "It's just the right amount of time to have no one but the bike to talk to."

I loved that. I remember, too, that when I said I'd been looking forward all winter to the reward of summer weather (which we got very little of that year - it rained a lot), he said, "No, winter's the real reward."

In the brief little spell of mild sunny weather we had last week, I remembered again the curse of spring cycling: crowds.

The streets were suddenly clogged with fair-weather riders. The pedestrians were out in foolish droves, jumping out in front of me and waving their arms as if they thought that was a game. Drivers were distracted by the promise of summer, and perhaps by the fact that short skirts had suddenly resurfaced on some of the pedestrians.

And then it turned rainy and cold, and once again I had my privacy. A small handful of cyclists on one bridge, and a lone cyclist towing a trailer on the other.

I really did feel that it was a beautiful evening. The rain was refreshing on my face. It was quiet for a Friday night. I like the sound of tires, theirs (4) and mine (2), on wet pavement. I like the way everything shines.

And then I like being finally warm and dry and having the cat come over to curl and purr.

PS. Yes, those are bike wrenches weighing down the yarn. I had unraveled a project I wasn't happy with and then washed the skeins to straighten out the ripples. I was so tickled by the usefulness of tools from one love/obsession for another that I took a pic.

There are days when I feel exceptionally beautiful. They don't come often, and I always feel just a tiny bit guilty for saying anything about them, for having the audacity to claim beauty.

But I also suspect that it's on those days that I come closer to seeing myself truly than at any other time.

Most other days my judgment is clouded by a lifetime of hanging back, of not wanting to be upfront about what I can do, what I know. It seemed always as if for me to step forward someone else had to step back, as if acknowledging that I have beauty, or talent, or grace, meant that someone else was going to suffer.

It's indoctrination, I know. It's not uncommon among women. It's also a crock of shit. This I know intellectually, but not with conviction.

I have this persistent belief that I can't be great and nice at the same time. And by great, I mean Great. As in, possessed of greatness. Special.

"Everybody's special, Dash." -Helen
"Which is another way of saying no one is." -Dashiell

It reminds me of The Incredibles, where the supers (as in superheroes) were forced to go underground, to hide their powers and masquerade as ordinary citizens, not just in between acts of saving the world, but all the time. Basically they were told that they had to sit on their gifts, not show who they were, because who they were made the non-supers feel uncomfortably less-than.

Have you ever watched the way kids treat the geniuses among them? It's not pretty. And I think it used to be worse.

These days there's at least some lip service to the idea that it's cool to be a geek, though I don't know how far down it trickles, chronologically. And there are still differences between chic geeks and real live nerds.

I'm one of the latter. I don't look it, but I am.

Tonight I spontaneously solved an engineering problem - quite by accident. Then I threw my arms up in the air and exclaimed, "I'm brilliant!" After which I felt abashed.

One is not supposed to exult in oneself. One is supposed, above all, to fit neatly into some acceptable pigeonhole, within which one may exhibit a high level of competence without threatening other people, because it's confined to a limited sphere.

One is not, for example, supposed to be both an artist and a writer, and also to be good at science. One should not understand astrophysics. One should certainly not be able to immediately and intuitively arrive at the solution for a complex engineering problem that's taken a team of scientists years to unravel.

Man, I am so busted.

And worse, I was proud of it. I still am proud of it. It was a moment of gleeful insight, and those give me great pleasure.

I know for a certainty that some of the people I've dated have trailed away from me because I was simply Too Much. Too big, too much energy, too passionate in all senses of the word, too fast, too funny, too intense, too serious. Always leaving them behind. Not even trying to. Trying to be kind, to bring them with me, to invite them to play.

On the way home tonight I saw all these things I wanted to show you. An art installation of colored lights that created, as a byproduct, two long beams of reflected color on the river. Like a more cheerful version of the 9/11 memorial.

A driver was kind to me. She (I like to think it was a she) waited for me to get over, when I was expecting to have to wait for her. I was surprised, and turned around while we were stopped at the light to mouth "thank you."

I'd like to do a PSA campaign telling drivers that it's good luck to be nice to cyclists, in the same way that chimney sweeps were considered good luck in Mary Poppins's London.