mortal coil.

he was the only one trackstanding, in a blue jersey on a blue bike that looked like it wouldn't be able to handle the size of his calves and he was making all that hulking power look graceful and stationary.

i would end up memorizing the number of rectangles on his back (7) over the next hundred kilometers, straining to keep up, even in his slipstream, and imagining the cries from the carbon stays when he stood up, and really went hard. he was a mountain biker, a cross racer, a roadie with unprecedented handling skills and fluid movement. he educated me about the roadie snobbery - it's safety/trust-based because the risks are exponentially higher on pavement, in groups. he looked like the bike was an extension of himself; he was poised, like a guitar in the monstrous hands of a man who looked more like a boxer, or a bricklayer. the bike was strung and tuned, humming, suspended from his physicality, a delicate instrument cradled by immense power, skill ready to unfold.

i turned down the invitation to the sunday group ride i suffered through last weekend to embark on this saturday group ride that i had at least suffered through a few times before. composition of the group usually dictates the nature of the ride, and i've only just begun to figure out whose attendance will spell my disastrous undoing, and to whom i must dedicate myself to hanging on. i had never met the man in the blue jersey before. he was easygoing, ready to grin, too strong for his flimsy-looking bike, and he could trackstand. must be a mountain biker. we spun out easy onto lakeshore heading west, and were told at a light to ease off the pace as it was too much for a warm-up. i'll blame it on him, of course.

as we headed into mississauga, the pace was great, the draft was fine, and i did some pulls. it was going to be a great ride. i even kinda knew where we were going. we set up for a hard paceline on mississauga road. we dropped and got dropped and caught back on and it was not the devastating 'i'm f&*$ed' situation of last weekend. i could hang. i wasn't the worst off in the group. i had an extra bottle in my jersey.

somehow, there cannot be a weekend group ride where i avoid getting dropped.

my favorite spot, it would seem, is somewhere where the wind picks up, the stretches are long and lonely, and the air is clear enough to see just how far ahead 'unreachable' really is. this is the airport loop. sandwiched between highway and runway, the noise is not distracting enough, with the wind, to truly detract from the suffering at hand. and somehow, i got pegged with the 'fastest' group. damn it. so there i was, staring at those rectangles, mesmerized by those calves, trying desperately to hang on, to pull through, to take my turn. i did. then i got dropped. then i clawed my way back, up a hill and into the wind, then we dropped the third guy. then i sat up for him. then i clawed back to the blue jersey. then i let him go. i was shuffled off like a mortal coil, he churned away into the wind, and i finished the chase in absolute no mans land. it was glorious.

although getting dropped seems to have become a certain theme in my group ride attendance, i would admit that it is fantastic. i've learned how to chase, and in chasing, have become a much faster rider than i would be on a solo ride. and there's always a benchmark, a goal: to get dropped later in the next ride, and, eventually, not at all.

and the best part about following that blue jersey everywhere: he was gracious. all he ever said was 'nice!' when i pulled through, or, 'you caught back on! wicked job!', or 'great ride, man'. he didn't rip me apart for dragging down his pursuit team. he didn't offer pointers or tell me to get the hell off his wheel (that i'd been sucking since we started) and man up to a pull. he even let me attack up a hill and then came around after we crested, enough to make it a contest, but not enough to lord his power over my measly attempts. i never ride with people. and i can't wait to go again.

shelled.

i want you to have a great time tomorrow. i want you to ride hard. seriously...

she told me these things as i prepped all my things and i tried to remember everything and the last thing i wanted to think about was how hard i had to ride. but that's the way it is with a partnership, a family, a dream: you own up to it, and you don't screw around.

so i got everything ready. aired the tires, filled the bottles, set out the kit, organized the food. then i went to bed, to chew the inside of my cheek and unconsciously panic about everything that's going on these days. it's a hard june.

i got up at 5 and putzed around, waiting for my body to wake up and the espresso to creme. i ate a little and drank a lot and went to the bathroom a bunch. i put on my kit. i put on chamois cream. i put on some embro so that my calves wouldn't lock up too readily after my 12k run yesterday. i drank some more. i drank the espresso and ate a clif bar and had another drink and left.

everything was in my head and most of it was positive as i set out to the meeting place, some 26 minutes away. i rode the shit that is bloor street, abetted by the pre-dawn glow that lent everything a softer, more ponderous pose. i avoided some potholes and hit others. i spun easy, hoping to lap up every second of this warm-up pace, before i'd be hoping to hang on for dear life, or at least a satisfactory end to it.

we met at the coffee shop and it wasn't open. we left when everyone got there and names were exchanged. mikel, of velominati fame, was the one who'd invited me on this adventure, and i was hoping to not let him down. i knew he was a stronger rider and that it would really hurt if there were just the two of us, but then a whole group showed up and they seemed alright and friendly enough and only two guys were on carbon wheels. it might have been a fine morning.

we spun easy out of the city, gliding quickly through what will soon be the tail end of my new commute, chatting in a double paceline, interrupting ourselves every now and again to call out 'clear' or 'right'. it was that flow that makes bicycling cycling. as we got out into the suburbs and then the county roads, the pace picked up. i recognized some of where we were, but i kept most of my attention on holding my line, not dropping the pace, and generally trying to find a draft. problem was, i was in a group of extremely different riders, and they were riding, and racing. my draft was not mine; i would have to fight for it. and it was a crosswind, so someone would be the ticket puncher. the wind drifted across my nose at a gainly clip and i wished for a smaller cross section, a bigger rider in front of me, and a little more room to the right. but i was getting edged out by that severe racer-looking guy with the audacious swiss kit. so all i could do was hang on, and get battered.

we made it around the airport, that same road of prior infamy where i ended up getting dropped and then towed by a man more than twice my age. then we headed out further and further, and the further we headed out, the more i dreaded having to take a turn on the front. i took my turn. i took turn and then turn and then one more turn, and eventually, after one hill and a couple of traffic lights, i would take the turn of my life.

we were flying. it was upwards of 50km/hr. but i didn't have the wherewithal to look down and see that at the moment; i was trying to breathe. i was trying not to overlap wheels in the tightest paceline i'd ever ridden. i was trying to make it tighter. i was trying to stay relaxed and hammer down on the pedals and keep my eyes on the road and stop hearing the lady's words in my head 'i want you to go out there and ride hard'.

it was those words, those expectant, vulgar words, that ran seething laps through my skull as i pulled through and pulled through and then popped.

we were somewhere on an overpass that had a sign that said to take the 403 east to toronto. we were far from home. i would have a long ride back by myself. the lady would not be pleased.

the group pulled a few more through and then sat up. i worked to catch back on and ride right through to the front to tell the leaders that they should just go and i'd see them later. they insisted that i sit in. they refused to drop me that far out. i said it was fine. we pedaled on. i sat in for a good long time, and even tried to pull through a bit to show them that i was cooked, but still willing to work for them as much as i could. it was no use. as soon as we hit even the smallest hill, my legs gave out and they pedaled away. i used to use hills to pedal away like that. today was different.

one good thing about getting shelled, for the second time: i had to chase my ass off.

another good thing: i found out that i could chase. i spent most of my time on mississauga road hammering myself in the drops at 37km/hr., with the singular focus of getting the group back into view. i rode past enormous houses with driveways nicer than the street. i rode past girls learning to ride so that one day, training wheels off, they could suffer like the blithering idiot blurring past them. i rode past basketball hoops never used but weathered nevertheless. i rode myself into the pavement.

i caught up at the light at lakeshore. we spun easy back into the city. we meandered. i recovered, a little.

i got home and was met with a glorious father's day breakfast. i was met with little girls with big brown eyes and bigger sunhats and beautiful, personal, rickety, humorous gifts that couldn't possibly be purchased anywhere, with anything like currency. i was home.

i had to tell the lady. i had to admit that i'd been shelled, that i bit off more than i could chew, that she would have been the better one to go out there and hammer and represent the family. after all, she's the fast one. i told mikel it was like sending out the soigneur to race with the stars. he laughed. only i knew how true it was. bill strickland has a t-shirt: "every domestique has his day". i wasn't even a domestique today. i wasn't pack fodder. i was weight. dead, stinking, sinking weight, off the back, on my steel bike and wool jersey and glasses i only put on as the sky got darker. i had a garmin to tell me just where i popped, how much i was suffering when it happened, how far we had gone. i just don't know how far i have yet to go. there is, again, much work to be done.

thrust.

there was nothing wrong with the thrust, except that it was inaccurate. if such had been used to force a sparring position, or an instrument into a surgeon’s waiting hand, a life may be taken or saved, but here, both. giorgio withdrew then, to gaze upon his glistening error: soul killed, pregnant with soul conceived. the irony would not reach him, until it was within striking distance.

katya had longed for just such a man: irreverent, lusty, and hard as the nails that crucify criminals and their heroes. here she was, then, balking at her success. breathing shallowly, her breasts trembled, rippling and white, surrounded by the secretions of afternoons and the itch of honest woven wool. she was a garment.

in order for the sun to reach the striped blanket, it fought heartily through the crusted window glass, its final passage a shadowy memory of its earlier fervor, a surrendered, broken kind of light. it was no longer a ray. nevertheless, it made a drunken path over the bedclothes, cavorting over tangled wet hair, goosebumps and blemishes, and a bold blue bolt underneath her shoulder blades.

the bolt extended to her hands. her hands extended to her fingers. her fingers barely curled in relaxation, succumbing, ultimately, to the truth of the moment: it was over.

the baby would be called jake.

thank you to phil lee.

once upon a time, i was waiting in line at a hotdog stand, biding my time before trudging off to another dreaded biology lab.

i had bribed myself, with a hotdog i could not afford, into attendance at my bi-weekly punishment for being a science student: 3 hours of torturous biological bliss. it was horrible. i don't remember the details of these terrible times, but i remember avoiding them like the plague, and having my grades in the class decline terminally.

back in line: it was a beautiful october evening, with the sun setting and everything crisp but not yet cold, basking in golden nostalgia for the summer, about to don a toque for the fall. i was savoring another glorious drawing class in the studios of the heart of the campus. i had spent the last three hours putting charcoal to newsprint and manila paper, scraping conte contours and smearing true, absolute black into shadows only i knew the depths of. it was second year drawing, my only elective in the fall of my first year, and i was in love.

how i would fantasize in those days! i would picture myself walking along the paths of the quad, bearing the weight of my artistry in a massive black portfolio slung over one shoulder. i would dream of the victorian, jacobian, elizabethan volumes scattered across my desk. i would envision myself, twitching, pressing buttons to different floors in the library, seeing the stacks instead of the scientific journals, signing out shakespeare instead of organic chemistry for absolute idiots.

i was in the middle of just such a daydream when i recognized a classmate heading away from the cart with his own hotdog. he was actually in second year. he was dashing, charismatic, friendly, and, most importantly, a really good artist.

hey.

hey.

we made small talk, gabbed a bit about the class and our crazy but gifted prof, and what we were working on for our series due next week. i eventually got my hotdog. i looked at my watch. he asked me what my plans were for that night. being an absolute novice, i didn't recognize the invitation in the inquiry, and couldn't have wished to respond appropriately if i had, and i told him the truth: biology lab.

biology?

yeah.

what are you studying?

human biology, a major. i'm going to be a doctor.

what? i thought you were in art!

no. i wish. i would love to be in art. i really hate science here.

man. you should switch.

what? no way. i can't.

yeah. well. you should. your stuff's really good.

and i don't remember much of the conversation past that because my head started to swirl and everything faded away and all i knew was this: someone, who didn't know me at all, who owed me absolutely nothing in confidence or compliment or commitment, who was hardly even a friend, and who made wicked works on paper, told me that my stuff was really good.

for someone who grew up to become someone like me, that moment was crystal. and, about a year later, it would all come to a head and i would make the big switch and paint a painting of it and rid myself of the suffering sciences forever. i was an artist. and that fact shone so truly that a stranger could see it and believe it! here was no daydream. here was no sick fantasy about having a pile of homework written in verse and iambic pentameter. here was no coaxed and forgotten cheap thrill compliment from a girl i'd rather kiss than critique my art with. here was the real potent deal.

i grew up always looking for praise. my parents tried very hard to make me non-dependent upon praise or other stimuli in the model of externalized self-esteem. this was, despite all their efforts, to no avail. maybe they wanted me to depend so little on direct praise that they almost never gave it to me, or i learned to ignore it if it did happen. maybe i internalized every struggle, triumph, and pride so that my rewards were mine, and i wouldn't mess up the tenuous balance between my sister's moods and my brother's learning disability and my mother's shift work and my father's philosophies. either way, whatever happened, i learned to keep to myself, and give absolute licence to the things i could not help but love doing. i didn't need praise if i just needed to do the thing, no matter how "well". i didn't need approval if i couldn't help myself but do it.

the hotdog started to drip grease and relish onto the web of skin between my index finger and thumb. the grease joined some of the conte and charcoal dust trapped there, and i thought a minute about primitive pigments and visions and the big Truth. it was all there. i went to the lab. i barely passed the course. i didn't become a doctor. and i'm still an artist, approved or otherwise.

creep.

silas clears his throat and breathes through his 's's and 't's and never shaves all the way and frowns to consider things but smiles readily, and often, at me and my foolery. he is smarter than i am, and this has not served him as well as he had hoped. she may not love him.

when her breasts were pushed up against him, her hands went hot and she imagined blazing searing addresses over his skin, cauterizing half-truths and full insomnia into each freckle and benign mole. he was solid, she was supple, and they would both do, for now.

kathleen turned to him with her unprecedented brown eyes and asked whether these were good feet. he, puzzled, fumbled over a mumbled response and made up for it with a quick look to water, all pollen green over too-warm blue, considering hue and saturation variations that would have been more suitable. she fell for it. so did he.

after she read the first four and a half lines of the letter, the doorbell welcomed distraction and her footsteps adopted the destination of every woman he'd ever written before: away. it was only in the fifth line, second verb, that she may have been coaxed back, that the bathrobe may have stayed white, that there would not have been that mark on the tiles under her hip.

a scratch in the paint.

after getting my bike across the border, getting it built in a day, and riding it tentatively for a few miles, i began the process of owning it. i would say it is the process of owning because it is not a simplified, finite act. first it had to be conceptualized and then realized, step by excruciating step, and then it had to be held and ridden and experienced. this is a process.

my bike is painted in liquid pearl-finish black. when i spent my nights in darkrooms printing pictures of fleeting beauty, i printed on pearl-finish paper. i printed for tones from black black to white white, leaning more towards grit, grain, and contrast than an easy grey curve. my bike is gritty, and black, but pretty, and hard. except for the paint. the paint is not hard, or at least, not hard enough.

i had read about chipping liquid paint. i had heard that liquid isn't as durable as powder coat, but that it has a deeper tone, a more satisfying lustre. i didn't really care about either at the time; it was the only, and fastest, paint option available to me. i took it. the bike arrived. i built it.

i chipped the paint.

marking one's things with the evidence and damage of use is perhaps the final step in ownership. scratching the clear coat on my carbon fiber crank; grinding the teeth of the big ring on an unsuccessful attempt over the gate at the spit; tearing the bar tape in an overcooked corner; these are the marks that make the thing mine. i have at once ruined, and released the chains of perfection from the thing. it is tarnished, flawed, real, and, now, perfect.

after sending a tweet to @truebs notifying him of my appreciation for his writing, i got a little too excited and tweeted the link to this blog. i was absolutely elated to see a subsequent tweet of an excerpt from the blog, my blog, and the response that i have some decent writing going on here. in all honesty, i was like a kid with a shiny new bike: i had the thing, it was sitting there are perfect and liquid, and i didn't dare touch it for fear of making it real.

this is the scratch in the paint.

in all honesty, it would be a dream come true to have a writer i respect give my words a similar respect. it would be beyond my hopes to make a break in the world of writing, to get somewhere because of the way i string together vowels and consonants and imagery without device. but in getting so wrapped up, i forgot that i need to do that thing, i need to write, i need to keep looking for something gritty and grainy, and i need to print it for black blacks and white whites. the writing must go on. i may not sit idly by and be satisfied with a shoutout, a tweet.

now, we ride.

Ontario Cogal: Velominati Ride Dundas

we sat at the shed in erin, talking about bikes and riding them and all that other stuff that happens between the wheels and moments and our legs and memories and right and wrong answers. i mentioned poutine as a poor fueling choice. adrian and mikel ganged up on me, insisting that such behavior is the basis for insanity. i was about to counter with the fact that i am artistic (yes, it's a condition), and that madness and genius feel pretty much the same to me; it's the audience that decides. problem was, my mouth was full of italian panini at the time, so i just smiled and chewed.

just to make sure that i didn't miss anything obvious, i typed 'cogal' into dictionary.reference.com and came up with a very satisfying '0 results'. i was hoping such would be the case, as i had spent the day yesterday learning that term, memorizing it, chanting it, cursing it, and ultimately digesting it in every molecule i could still retain after 185 kilometers and 1796m of elevation gain.

a cogal is a ride.

a simple concession, to be sure, but therein lie its absolutes: beauty, truth, communion, and bare humanity. a cogal is a ride, on bicycles, among fellows committed to these two-wheeled elements, for a long, long way.

bicycle rides start out at the meeting place, or before, at the trash-talking conversation, and then at the meeting place. we watch how the others wear their caps, we note the lengths of their socks, study their angle at the urinal, and ultimately make a mental catalog of likely strengths and weaknesses, traits to be considered or discarded, who to follow when, and who to let go.

i arrived at the domestique later than planned and preferred, in keeping with my innate talent for getting lost despite every gps and printed-map auxiliary one could ask for. i was early enough to assemble my bike, find the washroom, and don my kit. i was too late to not look flustered and nervous while doing it. a girl was putting up pink balloons in honor of the last day of the giro. everyone was hoping against hope for ryder hesjedal's win. the baked goods were stacked high. the espresso was stocked. and we were set to depart exactly an hour before canada's original cycling hero, steve bauer, would enter the cafe to watch the final stage.

timing is everything.

next in the steps of the ride and the constant cataloguing of one's ridemates is the inevitable equipment appraisal. old wheels. new brake pads. dirty chains. shiny cassettes. appropriate bar tape/saddle color combinations. campy or shimano. carbon or metal. 23 or 25c. it's all there. the writing is on the wall. and one by one, we succumb to out and out classism, basing expectations on the numbers presented by the outward appearance of our possessions. there were two steel bikes, a couple of carbon bikes, and an aluminum bike or two. six of us. only two on campy. i worried that my equipment might project falsities of fitness or ability. i hoped i would live up to these.

we stood in the drizzle for a group photo, twice. i tried to relax. i hate being photographed. worse is being photographed while on a bicycle while not actually riding said bicycle. awkward hasn't enough double V's for the sentiments involved.

after brief introductions and briefer instructions, we rolled out from the cafe to begin the most epic ride of my season thus far. we took a right, almost missed the second right, then rolled far too briefly to the first climb of the day. sydenham.

my lady rides around dundas regularly, and has mentioned this hill to me, along with the side note that she climbs it in the big ring. i considered this for the first four and a half revolutions into the climb, then banished the thought as i shifted ever further up my cassette, taking no shame in the 27 tooth cog as i enjoyed the view and worked into a rhythm. the hill was over as soon as it had started, though not without repercussions: it was going to be a long day, and we were not all climbers..yet. (i am never a climber at only 3 minutes into any ride.)

much of the rest of the first few kilometers remain a blur. i kept confusing mikel and michael, as i was sure they had both introduced themselves as such but i wasn't sure that there were two of similar-sounding names. and they were both leading and trash-talking and wearing white kit. regardless, i took some photos and worried about the longevity of the new tube in my front wheel and wondered about rattlesnake, the big feature of the day.

as we cruised along the ridgeline, enjoying rollers and shouted directions, we settled into that easy, assumed conversation: we're both on bikes, so we must like each other, and as such, we must have something to talk about. among the members of the group, this was absolutely the case. there were conversations among all subjects, age groups, and depths. i remember talking about the states and the auto industry with seth; about suburban riding with will. michael fascinated me with history and psychology while adrian piped in with intermittent sound bytes. and mikel, well...we covered everything else: pink, V, and that loving feeling.

·      we did rattlesnake and no one walked though several returned to get photos of the last 100m push.

·      rattlesnake was not the only hill with switchbacks.

·      we had some gravel and lots of chipseal but no extended grange road.

·      michael successfully unloaded his jersey cargo at the shed, only to be saddled with a jersey for the return trip.

·      ryder won the giro by 16 seconds, and i told everyone as we waited for a light. we stood in the middle of the road, clapping and cheering.

·      we continued to revel in ryder's victory intermittently throughout the rest of the ride, somehow sharing in something so monumental that we were a part of it, whether we could even pronounce hesjedal or not.

·      mikel at the hill on the terra cotta course: race ya. me: yeah right. subsequently: my ass kicked as mikel rode away.

·      michael and mikel pulled all of us, most of the time.

·      never let a gap open.

·      have you seen my horse?

i posited long ago that a good ride must, at some point, be so hard as to make me want to quit the sport. i posited that alone, somewhere on a road, suffering by myself. such a conclusion would never occur on a cogal, surrounded by gentlemen and nature and the opportunity to bury oneself on an ascent, skirt one's fears on the descent, and take an honest pull every once and again. the cogal showed some of the best roads of the country and county, for terrain, challenge, surface quality and utter lack thereof. there is no pulling anyone up a hill. at 22% gradient, the truth is distilled and even if it burns when it goes down, it tastes good. and then at the top, everyone regrouped after their honest efforts, happy to have buried themselves and to be with others to tell the tale in a double paceline at 38 km/h to the next climb.

when i got back to the house and was recounting different parts of the ride to my lady, she asked what my favorite part was. i sat there, confused, and unable to come up with any single moment where i could really pin down any favoritism. then it hit me: mikel. besides the two of us having to be separated by michael for bad behavior and filthy humor, we had a tendency to ride off the front while conversing deeply about childbearing and rearing or movie quotes from the eighties. so, two favorite parts: unintentionally pulling away up a gravel road while recklessly recounting all the pros who crashed, sustained broken clavicles, and continued to race (sometimes for weeks); AND riding off the front, up a hill, into the golden part of the afternoon as it rested on the tops of green fields, singing You've Lost That Loving Feeling much too loudly for the crest of a hill more than 100km into a ride. a cogal is for the people. we happen to be on bikes, but what we are is so much more complicated than the circles we spin. there are stories there and manners and mannerisms, sweat drips and drink drips, clicking cleats and inappropriately long track stands. we are supersaturated, making our way through most days condensed and solid and stoic. only when heated by that hill or that effort or the sun or a hand on a back at just the right time do we spill forth all that molecular adhesion, coating the moment and remembering it with flavor.

my dad always told me that a good party is one where everyone gets to bring something and participate, and then leave wanting more. on sunday, we all brought something, left it all on the road, and departed wanting more. i can't wait til the next one, if only to know more, get more than a glimpse, of the people who came together to make it happen. it's always a good day for pink.

current.

i was on a river trip once in high school, all meek ambition and a fantastical concept of my own capabilities. tanned and tired and happy and dry for the first time in 18 hours, i was contentedly sitting by the cooking fire on an unlikely island in the middle of the petawawa. a guy named jim played a crooked guitar and sang johnny cash like only a guy named jim can, on a crooked guitar in the middle of a canadian river.

my friend nick, the taller, good-looking one, full of talent and charisma and enthusiasm, had found something in the river and wanted to share it. he stood there, dripping from his life jacket onto the pine needles between his teva straps, grinning like an idiot and waiting for me to join him.

i hate being wet.

and there i was, dry and fed and halfway to bedtime, with a glistening guy demanding company. of course i said yes.

i donned my life jacket and followed him to the river to discover his treasure and there it was: no river booty or skeletal remains or even anything shiny, just a big, black rock. thing was, i couldn't see  the rock. there was a strong, liquid current coursing over the top of it, hiding it from view. nick carefully picked his way through the shallow rapids, careful not to get tied up and break an ankle, and waited for me at the ever-changing bump of water. over the noise of the current, he told me to reach down and hang on. i didn't understand, so he demonstrated, squatting in the water, gripping the invisible ledge on the invisible rock, then he extended his body downstream behind him, and it all made sense.

he was weightless.

thousands of gallons of water from millions of years of water cycles and glaciers and evolution bore down on him, filling every fissure and pressing him downstream. he held on, face down in the current, as long as he could go without air. then he turned face up, let go of one hand, and smiled, squinting up at me.

i understood.

i took my turn and gripped the rock and eased into the current and disappeared. i was gone. there was no day or night or wet or dry or air or time. there was only current. streaming and streaming against me, i knew what it must be like at the speed of light. everything stopped and everything existed all at once. there was only now. i opened my eyes and watched light invade me at warp speed, surrounded by a constant blue pressure, my two-handed anchor forgotten. i had become the present.

i don't think i ever thanked nick for that evening. we returned to camp only after we had sufficiently waterlogged ourselves and used up all the strength in our hands, holding on for dear life, and finding something so much bigger than ourselves, and knowing we belonged.

guys with guts who hammer.

we must beware the rider with a gut, bib shorts, hairy legs, and mismatched kit at the saturday group ride.

he will hammer.

i showed up to the group ride last weekend, slightly nervous but mostly just optimistic; i was out for a ride and it was all i would have to do for the next little while. the sun was shining. i was wearing sunscreen and my usual kit. my bike worked, mostly. it was going to be beautiful.

at a group ride, like a group anything, there is much sizing-up and scrutinization. the categories and criteria are varied and storied and often false. that lady with a couple extra pounds and a really expensive shop-floor bike: she will hammer you. that guy with a comfortably rambling laugh, a mop of grey hair under his small carbon helmet and a white pinarello: he used to be a time trial specialist, and he knows more about wind than you do about being winded. then there's the unassuming, awkward-looking vince vaughan lookalike with a green jersey from a bike company that didn't make the bike he's riding with hairy legs: he showed up late, he will make the air part before him and drop you before you know it. the engineer riding his 'other' aero road frame: he will drop you. the nice, scruffy, grey-haired casual rider who got second at the race you finished DFL in: he can hammer AND corner so watch it. the shop owner and provocateur of all this two-wheeled silliness: he will drop himself in a ritzy neighborhood along the way and wish the group well. this is the saturday ride. assume the worst.

i spend my life knowing that few people ever know much about me, and those who know anything probably know too much. i assume the same about others: they are so much more than the nickname they've lodged in my brain, or the association i use to remember it. damon is an engineer and rides a bike made by engineers. jonathan lives in parkdale and went to italy to meet dario and have his pegoretti made for him for the italian fondos he does each year. chris rides a cervelo and broke a shifter cable on the first ride i did with him, finishing easily with the rest of the group, in a 39-12 gear combo up every hill. i'm just a weird guy on a steel bike who started crashing their group rides weeks ago, i'm terrible in the wind, but i'm okay on the climbs, and i make awkward conversation. we don't know each other. we ride together.

that ride ended up being a hard one. i ran out of water somewhere around 70k in, which was also around the time that i got dropped on a small rise into a whipping headwind next to the airport. we had attacked. i had worked, just enough to pull through two or three times, then i spun off and popped. jonathan passed me, working solo. then graham came up, a man of more than 60 years old, pedaling smooth as you like, into a stiff headwind, humming softly to himself. as i sucked wind and bottle and thrashed my pedals while trying not to look like i was beaten, i drifted to the right and let graham go by. then i did what any ashamed, beaten, no good rider would do: i went for his wheel.

i hung on to that wheel all the way around the airport.

an old man pulling a young man like flashy tin cans behind a beat-up VW.

it turns out that jonathan never did catch the leaders. they stopped at a stop sign and waited for the rest of us, jonathan soloing in, graham pulling my sorry ass. i thanked him, throughout the rest of the ride, for the pull that saved me. he shrugged it off, said no problem, and mentioned that time trialing was once his specialty. he's twice my age, and i couldn't bridge up to him if i was paid to.

and that other guy, in the wrong jersey with hairy legs and a vince vaughan-ness about him: he was up there with chris in the breakaway, and i couldn't hang with him. his belly hung low between his bib straps, but every time he pulled in the paceline, he jumped and we broke pace. when we attacked, he pulled through and left me behind.

we often don't look like the complete stories of ourselves. our scars may or may not be a starting point. we may or may not know any good stories, or even how to tell them. we don't know who woke up where or how they got there or whether or not they go home afraid of getting hit every night. we guess. we go on hypotheses. we must be proven wrong. we must be willing to look and learn.

let's not do the editing thing here.

nevermind.

i hope you don't mind
but i started reading your book
and i dog-eared some pages
that reminded me of you.

i hope you don't mind 
but i'm borrowing your car keys
to drive away from you and this and those things and that taste
that i got in my mouth
like last time.

i hope you don't mind
but i've squandered our sex life
spent my best elsewhere
and left you the scraps.

i hope you don't mind
if i beat down your love song
and hum those tunes to myself
as i ruin your day.

i hope you don't mind 
if i cut off those pretty parts
praise them and water them and frame them
separate from you.

i hope you don't mind
if i forget the rest of the words
you were always so good with them
i'm sure you won't mind.

new.

she asked why i hadn't written in a while, and, like all the posts of this month, i had a really good answer: .

that is not a typo. there is not that comfort. there will not be silence or sadness or the things that occupy emptiness when happiness runs dry. it's a space. there will be no televised alliteration.

when cracks in the pavement wrap around tires like awkward hugs, not knowing when to let go, and always doing it too soon or too late, momentum slips away in jagged pieces, defaulting to halted rejection. i didn't write about it, because it was happening. it's all been happening, and i've been looking for space, to let things ruminate and germinate and then reach some level of status. alas, it's been a big month.

there are things to enjoy on a daily basis, and there are things to document and write about after it's all come back together into some semblance of words that might capture an essence of what was. the little girl asking, before dinner, to head out into the alleyway so that she can ride her bike. the big one reading, with utter fascination, about how geckos and some snakes like their eyes to clean them because they don't have eyelids, but scales instead. the scales on the eyes are shed with the rest of the skin. i'm sure there's a poem in that somewhere, but i'll have to drink about it first.

yesterday, i rode my beautiful road bike 60k to coach a bunch of track and field youth in their individual instances of pain. the sun shone. the wind blew. the track brought glory and defeat and sometimes both. there was a tailwind and a headwind and a burn in the legs. then i got to run 8k. i did it with music because i knew i would need all the help i could muster to make the distance. i needed it. it helped. i made it. and i wondered how i would ever do this for 12k in july, in the rockies, without music. i wondered how i would make it through the duathlon in july. there is much to do.

there is more to write.

where did you go
and what did you see
and when you went there
and saw that
did you remember me?

did you remember that time that we walked along walls
stooping for dandelions and catching our falls
from grace or from innocence or the far off long somewhere
where dreams can come true like prisms in blue air?

when you tied up my shoes and zipped up my collar
and fastened my boots and for dinner would stall her
coming down from upstairs or out of the bed
still fuzzy and dreaming big dreams in her head

we stumbled through daydreams and walks in the woods
and i remember every playtime and patience, you stood
on the sidelines just hoping
and hoping 'til you burst
knowing the truth: we sometimes come first.

so settling for sunlight and breezes and naps
and medium and reflection's inevitable collapse
into one more slumber i yearn to exhaust
when you saw and you went were you home or were you lost?

and are they really all that different, anyway?

pots and pans.

there's a banana, whole, peel and all, in my leg right now.

it's in the right quadricep, the vastus medialis, about an inch below the surface, and a thumb length from the bone. it doesn't hurt so much as nag. it is a recurring pain, a reminder, a recalcitrant bit of evidence, surly and unsilent. it only hurts when i remember it, and it keeps reminding me to remember.

sixty kilometers is the meandering distance from paris to ancaster in southwestern ontario. many of these beautiful kilometres are flanked by farms and fields and scenes centuries old. some of these kilometres are covered in thick, slippery, deep brown mud. others are chutes of sloppier light-brown mud, peppered here and there with granite and concrete. some of these kilometres are covered on two dirty, weeping wheels; others, on slipping, saving, slipping foot. the sixty kilometres between paris and ancaster are long, and those that are paved barely whisper respite before the next trench slog.

at the start of the paris to ancaster race, hopefuls line up by the dozen, sizing each other up and steeling themselves against the agony that is about to ensue. some plan to win. others plan to survive. i just wanted to make it in a time that wouldn't embarrass my lady too much after our results were totalled in the mixed team category.

the road is not really my friend. i love it, usually, but on top of two knobby cross tires and with absolutely no high end fitness, the road was the worst for me. the trail, with all its handling necessities and slick chutes and rocks and mud and mud and grime and chance and luck, was my saving grace.

a sixty kilometer race is fully manageable. hard from the start. pace line on the flat stretches and rail trail. the first hill made the selection for everyone. i stopped and took off my rain shell and glasses. i walked, remounted, rode. sixty kilometres is fine. except: sixty kilometres is far when it's mostly in mud, trying not to fall over or unclip, with only one bottle in the cage. it's far.

the last 12k of the race were the entirety of the race for me. i began to lose heart, and then, hope. i fantasized about the last agonizing hill being around every corner. i got dropped and let people go. i surged only to slip backward. single track looked like missed opportunity. and my legs faltered heavily.

i had joked earlier in the last 12k about how i had had so many religious experiences (hard times) throughout the race that i wasn't sure which religion i was at that point. the rider to whom i was speaking was probably religious, didn't get any humour in the statement at all, and rode on, after asking which religion i was at that point. of course, i responded that i didn't know, but that it hut a lot. some kind of flagellant or something... funny ha ha. just not to him. when doing hill repeats, if it hurts a lot, i usually claim that i am having a religious experience, more as an exaggeration device than as a theological epiphany. and then, right there in front of a few hundred people and a guy banging a pot with a wooden spoon, i knelt.

kneeling, on the rocks and mud and sand of the final climb of a 60k race, with shouting in my ears and my bike in my hand, i was confronted with reality. i always talk about going to exhaustion or failure. i often wonder how hard i would have to go to actually throw up or black out. i always figure i'll finish, no matter what. but right there, kneeling in the dirt, i wasn't so sure. people were yelling like their sheer volume could lift my cramped legs and force them to bend. that guy was banging so hard on his pot that i thought he would split it or the spoon. the mud felt cool, and the sand was pleasantly gritty. after a while, i rose, fearful of the impending cramp that had turned my entire leg into a spasm. the cramp had subsided, just then, for just long enough, and i managed to take a few steps. then i walked, poking my wooden limbs forward in the lurching, robotic fashion of a rusted tin man, willing myself to the top. i would finish.

in just a few more steps, my legs remembered themselves, and the hill levelled off, and i managed to mount the machine, spin the pedals, and take off toward the line. so sudden was my recovery that some spectators wondered at the truth of my previous genuflection. i was happy to leave it behind, on shaky legs, and cross the glorious white band of completion.

i had stopped the clock in 2:36, 6 minutes over my hoped-for time, not at all helped by extreme muscle cramps or the lone water bottle, now empty save for its liberal coating of sludge. enjoying the new functionality of my legs, i made the most of them, stashing my bike and heading back down the hill to cheer on the lady. i went hoarse with encouragement for each of the steady stream of riders making their last gasp effort for the day. i clapped wet gloves together, told them everything i had needed to hear, and hoped for them, one foot in front of the other. i did this, legs splayed and helmet still on, sitting in my kit at the halfway point of the hill. i did it because i needed it to get myself up the pitch. and it was the only thing to do.

practice.

i stink.

in this world of denying all human functions that are deemed 'gross' or 'improper' or 'unacceptable', i excel at two elements of perceived effort: i sweat, and i stink.

there is something about watching the best people do what they do best. it always looks easy. the problem is, we never see or hear or smell them becoming the best. we don't know how many nasty pairs of sockless runners that sub-four-minute miler left on the porch because they were too potent to be inside. we don't see the saddle sores of tour de france stage winners, or the chamois so spent that it will be thrown away after a single race. we don't see the callouses or bleeding fingertips of that guitarist, or 3 a.m. when that adoring parent gets up without question and changes another diaper or soothes another crying beast. we just see the best. and we see it looking easy.

i got some new shoes, finally, recently, and they look ridiculously pristine. they are white runners, the kind that make me look even more like a grandpa, my grandpa, when i wear them with kakis, which, i am careful not to do. standing in the kitchen this morning, drinking coffee to lure myself out of the fog of friday night sleep, i looked down at the shoes and wondered: will they stink?

the obvious answer is yes. of course they will stink. they've not many miles on them yet, and i only wear them for running or crepes-making, and only with socks, except for this morning, but the weather is getting warmer, and i'm going to get faster and longer, and they will bear witness to progress. and progress stinks.

when i was a kid, i used to fantasize about being seen during my progress. i used to wish someone, a pretty girl or someone, would accidentally witness my training, the unflinching resolve to get out there and sweat and stink and become something, the hard way. of course, this was ridiculous. the whole point was to be seen excelling at that thing after so many unwitnessed hours of becoming excellent. i guess my problem was that i would never be excellent, so the most excellent thing would be to be seen as a work in progress. i have always been good at practicing, and training, and doing things over and over. i'll do it again. i'll do it to failure. i'll go back for another. but i'll never win on game day or race day or that Big Day.

in high school, the last year i was fortunate enough to play volleyball before work to rule ended all of our sports, i was the youngest and smallest and least-talented player on a senior boys volleyball team. i also had the highest academic average and the second-highest muscular endurance. of course i would be bullied. the oldest (shamefully so, at 19 years of age in high school!) and most experienced and tallest and best player on the team decided that he would be the bully. the coach was pretty much no help, except that, because i was so dogged about my attendance at practice, he would have me start every game. i would go on, i would try to do my job, much of the time i would suck at it, and then i would get myself rotated off as soon as possible to avoid the on-court bullies. i hated it. game day was hell.

practice, though, was beautiful.

as much as i was terrible at volleyball, practice allowed me the time and pressure-free environment to work on things over and over and get them right, no points at stake. and when i did screw up, and push-ups were involved, i could do them til the cows came home, and better than that 19 year old softie. i loved practice. all the physicality. all the work. all the getting things done with skilled people of like pursuits. that's what i loved about team sports. practice.

so today i'm going to get some sweat and stink into my shoes and helmet and gloves and shorts and jersey. tomorrow is the big day. race day. 60km of cross bike torture. should be fun. no pressure. i've never raced the cross bike. i haven't raced just a bike for years. and it's supposed to rain. no one will see it, but tomorrow, i'm going to progress.

bad.

it's bad. it's bad when the stupid lyrics on idiot radio stations pull at my heartstrings anyway and my aloofness is no longer effective so i break down anyway. it's bad when t.s. eliot's wasteland i know like the back of my hand and sanskrit is a livelier thing than the parts of me that used to beat. it's bad when sunshine looks like crap. it's bad when the delightful cries of little girls and their songs and their silliness just sound like noises behind the static of this sadness. it's bad when none of it's worth it. when none of me has ever been worth it. when the things that are worth it don't make this part any better or easier to take. it's bad. it's bad.

salt.

it's because of the salt.

you see, winter in this part of the country means that we must succumb to a colder air, an impractical temperature, and a slickening of otherwise passable surfaces, all to the chagrin of our usual self-possessedness. we prefer arrogance. and, arrogantly, we scatter salt over the surfaces to make them passable for our impractical shoes at the bottom of our skinny pants and thin coats. we make faces and complain about the grey skies and driving snow, even if it only happens four times in a sparkling new year. we will remember every time.

if you look at my fingers, you'll notice a crack or two at the otherwise callous crease on my writing hand's middle finger. i contemplate this biological failing daily, every time i brandish a writing utensil, every time i stir the soup or the oatmeal or her hair. the worst, of course, is tying my shoelaces. i'd forgotten what it was like to have my skin fall apart when i need it most. i'd forgotten the bleeding cracks that provide glimpses to my vulnerability underneath all those derma. i'd forgotten driving snow and curses under collared noses and salt, all that salt that couldn't stop a winter if it wanted to winter.

considering the bottle, there was no choice but to pour a glass. the label ended just above the meniscus of the red, necessitating a hearty relief of fluid into some crystal container. of course i obliged.

unleash.

the lady got a shirt once that said "unlearn." on it, white on white.

in order to go outside on a sunny day and put the work into riding a bike that looks more like it's meant to fall over than glide in beautiful physics over a hard black surface, the little girl had to unlearn. bikes aren't supposed to stand up. put one on both its wheels and walk away and it'll fall over. put one on one of its wheels, walk away, and it'll fall over. sure, it's possible for it to stand there indefinitely, by simple kinematics of perfect balance and some coefficients of friction. but, in all likelihood, it'll just fall over.

this is something that must be unlearned.

all this child's existence, she has been more than precious, and beyond precocious. we worried about her upon conception, and didn't stop for the next year. we hoped for her. we wondered about her. we wondered about our abilities to deal with whatever she would be, and we hoped for adequacy. we watched. we waited. she arrived, minuscule and perfect, and hasn't stopped growing or moving since. it is my life's work to protect her and carry her through.

this, too, must be unlearned.

in a park, on a sunday, down a ramp from a closed-for-the-season men's washroom, into an intersection of paths and sunlight and the unpredictable vectors of fellow free spirits, a little girl pedaled away on a tiny purple bike, and her dada's hand let go.

she was ready, probably. she was more ready than her dada, who got all choked up and tried to cheer but couldn't and kind of let out a strangled encouragement that sounded offensive and failed to celebrate the greatest and most fearful moment with anguish and joy. she walks. she runs. she goes to the toilet. she says crazy things and wears crazy clothes. and now she can leave me on humanity's greatest form of transportation.

i love her, the beast, unleashed.

quit.

sometimes, the bike makes the floor dirty, so the street is there, on the floor, getting in between the cracks of the boards a century old, and the cycle is made complete: we've returned dust, to dust.

i used to judge the depth and quality of a ride in terms of whether or not the difficulty of it made me want to quit the sport altogether. did it ever get so hard that everything felt heavy? did the air sear my lungs and did my lungs collapse into my stomach and did my stomach roil with unfair demands of effort? should i just quit, and sell everything, and take up yoga or some other peaceful, inside activity? yes? then: a good ride.

corollary: this sentiment of necessary quitting of the sport in its entirety must not continue to the conclusion of the ride. if it does, it is a bad ride.

i have looked at many things and wanted to quit them altogether. all along, of course, i've known i never would (my guilt is deeper than anything driving me to leave or quit or otherwise pursue selfishly). months of not sleeping through the night and changing diapers at all hours and working a job and doing the dishes and never exercising and always being tired: no quitting. years of becoming only one part of myself while all the others shrivelled up and died defenceless, despicable deaths: no quitting. argument after argument about all of this with the lady: no quitting. i'm not sure what, exactly, anyone expects to gain by quitting. i don't know why anyone thinks there might be some kind of relief after quitting. it's still torture and pain; just in a different form, or from a different direction. and besides, why the fuck does everyone think they deserve to be happy, past the age of ten?

beats the hell out of me.

there are things that must be forgone. there are words that will never encompass all that must be communicated. that's why i gots my hands. that's why autocorrect completely sucks. that's why we stick around, we don't quit, we get to a new place, in ourselves and out, and some people call it religion and i just call it good, maybe even enlightenment if we can get that far. we do not quit.

and of course, i will have to remind myself of this tomorrow morning at 5am. wish me luck.

privilege.

there was the gentle, eager hum of tires on pavement.

the sunlight, usually so elusive this time of year, splintered the morning into more and more audacious promises of springtime weather, and everyone smiled ridiculously. i pedalled easily, coasting over bumps, ignoring the weight on my back, anticipating traffic and flowing into my usual lefthand turn lane.

she was pretty. judging by her hair style, the look in her eyes, and the neighbourhood in which we both found ourselves, i assumed she was young, spoke a different language than english at home, and made much more colorful food that i ever do. her car was black, and older than my backpack. she squinted, but the sun was in my face, at her back, so maybe she was looking for something, maybe a sign, or a street name. (here in toronto, we're lucky to find one on any of the four corners.)

whatever she was squinting at, or looking for, it wasn't i. it wasn't i until i squinted at her, judged her front wheels to be moving, judged her car at about axle height as my front wheel went careening toward it in a perfect vector of human power.

we would collide.

except, we didn't. she saw me at the last minute. i prepared for the worst. we both slammed on the brakes. we both got angry at the near-miss. she yelled at me through her closed window and flipped me the finger. i looked back at her while pedalling, and just through up my hand in a gesture of 'what?!' what was i supposed to do? what is your problem? what part of the-left-hand-turner-is-always-at-fault did you fail to read, memorize, and practice?

it was an otherwise gorgeous morning. and i wasn't coasting over bumps. i was pedalling lightly over them, not having stopped pedalling since i started, as that's how it goes on a fixed gear. it's also quite intense to stop a fixed gear with legs and hand brakes and the will of something holy while trying to avoid a head-on collision with an ugly car driven by a pretty young lady. thankfully the only thing getting splintered was the scene, by the sunshine. i arrived alive.

and yet it got me thinking. i only commute about 5 minutes each way to work and home. i rarely have interactions with vehicles, and not nearly at the rate or intensity at which they used to be, when my commute was 32 minutes one way, through the heart of the city, twice. i've been reading michelle landsberg of late. wonderful lady and writer who never fails to instil a wonderful sense of slow-burning rage in me. having fancied myself a feminist for a decade, made a lot of art about violence against women, based a thesis on it, and having campaigned for awareness and prevention of it most days from september to june, i'm used to the slow-burning rage, but i never cease to be shocked. landsberg wrote in one column about the assumptions of white people. born into our privilege, we are usually appallingly unaware of the ease we take for granted. the list was cute and profound and sickening all at the same time, and worked very well to consider just what it is that makes one marginalized. what cues must be given and taken to consistently establish the social barriers that distinguish between this class or that group or them or those. of course, all of this crystallized in my mind while i recovered from a near-something experience, and, from my privileged perch atop a used carbon saddle on a two-wheeled mechanism condemned by our mayor and driven by my love for physical activity and quest, i came to a completely arrogant, but somewhat true conclusion.

cyclists are marginalized.

further: this is accepted practice.

when i was growing up as an american landed immigrant in small polish town ontario, i stuck out. i talked differently. i cared about school. i couldn't drive any heavy machinery from a snowmobile to a skidder. and i was american. out came all of the anti-american jokes. they're along the lines of dumb blonde jokes, or racist jokes, or any other kind of "joke" whose punchline depends on the denigration of an entire group of people loosely linked by a single defining characteristic, usually completely superficial. none of this anti-americanism was bad, though, because it was americans. big, fat, gun-toting, loud-mouthed americans who think canadians live in igloos and the entire world is up for stars-and-stripes' grabs. yeah. right.

except: if all of the 'american' terms in the jokes were replaced with 'jew' or 'arab' or 'muslim' or 'your mom' or 'japanese internment camp survivor' or any other 'term', the joke would have been wholly offensive and deemed 'too far'. it would have been disturbingly non-comical. alas, no one saw it my way.

backlash is a tricky thing, and i do not, by any means, mean to discount the struggles of such noble and (unfortunately) necessary movements and revolutions such as feminism and anti-capitalism and anti-racism. by calling cyclists 'marginalized', i'm stepping on some tricky ground. i recognize this. but i also recognize that it is this realization, this one instance of being marginalized, that called out a general awareness of what it means to be marginalized. and i was aghast! backlash has made it tricky to be a white man living in the western world. i may be dirt poor and living from crap paycheque to crap paycheque, unable to afford exorbitant hydro bills of my rented home, or the gas to drive the car anywhere but somewhere that's free to stay for the night (thanks mom and dad). however, i am now the butt of all the jokes, and it's okay because i look like the privileged. and, honestly, i probably act like the privileged, because i am privileged, and a couple hardships here or there will never stack up to generations of anguish doled out by people who look like me. i get it. respect.

so for one instance, in one morning, some driver of some car didn't see me, the all-important me, and that was a terrible experience. marginalized people are usually 'not seen'. the noble cause for which they work is not recognized nearly as scrupulously as the extreme hassle they've placed upon others as they are momentarily in the path of something bigger and more lethal and..senseless.

so my list of privilege became that much longer. imagine being not seen, and then imagine that being routine, along with the accompanying outrage at such life-endangering invisibility. imagine all the people...

the last thing i wanted to do when my alarm went off this sunday morning was ride.

no, not true; the last thing i wanted to do was leave the sanctuary of a dark and warm bed, next to a dark-haired, warm lady, to walk down some dark, cold stairs, dress in the dark, ride in the cold dark, and stick my bike on a trainer to just be as fat and slow as i was the last time i did that.

of course, i got up anyway.

i'm paying good money for this. i've spent thousands of dollars on riding clothes and bikes and bike parts. the least i can do is show up to a 6:30 a.m. self-led computrainer ride and hammer myself until the sun comes up. so i did. and it made everything wonderful.

hooked up to a computrainer, the bike is held there, suspended in mid-air, by attachment to its rear axle. the front wheel remains stationary. the bike couldn't fall over if it wanted to. i go nowhere. going nowhere is a great place to be when contemplating things. i contemplated a lot of things today, and forgot about all of them on the ride home, because then i was going somewhere, and there was much to pay attention to, mostly as a matter of survival. the front wheel moved. i look at it periodically, because i am very proud of it. i built it a few nights ago when i should have been doing homework. i followed jobst brandt step by step. i did everything mike t said to do. i took the longest i've ever taken to build a wheel, since my first one, and most of this time was in the tensioning of all the spokes, a quarter turn at a time. all the spokes were greased at each end. all the nipple beds were greased before i even put nipples into the rim. i turned things slowly. i repeated sequences. i took breaks. i allowed for unwinding of the spokes. i kept tensioning. i dished.

and then, after three and a half hours, there was a wheel.

it was the nicest wheel i had ever built. the parts were not a lot of specialness, or at least, not the hub. the lacing pattern was staid and correct and the opposite of flashy. the nipples were brass. the spokes crossed 3 times. the labels all match up. nothing special, at all. but when i spun that wheel in the truing stand, it was hard to tell that it was spinning at all when i looked at it dead on. it was the straightest, roundest wheel i had ever built. i think it was the wheel i had built with the least apprehension, and the most patience. i must be getting old.

i was talking to my lady friend a couple of days later, and one thing led to another, and there i was, being stupid and overtalking my abilities in one arena or another, to compensate for my lack of abilities on the bike, particularly as compared to her and her lady riding friends. it's the truth: she's just stronger and faster. and it's also true that i'm just getting older, and being sidelined by injuries (to bikes or bodies) and overworked schedules doesn't make getting faster any easier. i let all of this boil up, and boil over. i was stupid. i sounded like the youth. i flew off the handle. i attacked her friends because i was afraid of how weak i really was. this is not getting old. this is acting like a dumb, shameful, gutless kid with nothing to show for hard-learned lessons. this is like falling and throwing the bike (as if it crashed by itself).

of course, i cooled off, changed my language, and apologized.

this is how it goes when you get old and patient. you come back around, use a different tack, make it right, learn for next time, emerge better, or at least, not behind. i went around and around that wheel more than 6 full times, tightening each spoke by a quarter turn. each time around, i did stress relief of all types on all the spokes. a ping here. a pang there. more turns. more relief. a true wheel. i suspended a cylinder of aluminum in a woven web of stainless steel rods inside a round, straight aluminum hoop. i did that right, 28 times. and for some reason, i still couldn't carry on a non-offensive conversation. oh man...