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...

PT

there was a picture at my parents' house of my dad in a suit, at a wedding, dancing with his daughter who looks taller than himself.

he looked my age.

of course, that's a filipino thing, and he'll always look like he's just a bit older than i am, while i, in the meantime, lose all my hair, wrinkle frequently, and ache every time i bend down. there are problems, being only half filipino.

i realized that time has really passed. obviously, you think, time passes all the time. i know. but its passage becomes a bit more blatant when we get comparison moments, when we take stock, when we genuinely fear the reality of losing people we've too long (always) taken for granted.

shovelling snow this afternoon, my mom noted that she was glad that i had kids, as it gives me continually more insight into my own parents, and their struggles, and their deeds, and all that stuff. i'm pretty sure that's the way it is with everything that we do that other people did first and that we then gain perspective about. age, getting old, hit me today.

i've seen people get older. i've seen them watch their own ideals crumble all around them, succumbing to the wear and tear of time and all its stuff, while they've lost their strength, youth, energy, compassion, passion, conviction, optimism, innocence, and anything else they may have used to buttress. there was that time that i said to charlie that we were here to make the world a better place. and he vehemently disagreed, insisting that the only option was to take care of himself and his, everyone else be damned. charlie, it turns out, has taken care of me, and made me better and put a roof over my head and food in my stomach and music in my ears and laughter in my throat, countless times. i guess i'm just lucky to be part of him and his.

i thought all this while walking next to a pressure-treated fence. ugly and green-tinged looking like cellulose syphilis, the fence just kinda hung there, functioning. it was not beautiful. any attempt it may have made at aesthetics was sadly lost in that insistent green, that refusal to become organic, that synthetic pride.

my dad was the one who got me on a lot of my paths, usually directly, by invitation; sometimes by pissing me off or driving me away. i learned how to love from him. i learned how to pamper a hard-working partner who works all night and has to sleep during the day. i learned how to cook. i learned how to sharpen a knife and split wood and sharpen a chain saw and cut logs and cut a chicken and set a table and clean a bathroom and use a hammer and a computer and a bike and an allen key and a tire lever and the environment. i wonder what he would think about a pressure-treated fence. i wonder if he knows that cedar is better for the environment, more easily-replaced as a resource, and infinitely more beautiful. for a guy who spent his youth making beauty in the darkroom or on his martin D28 and his 8-octave voice, he's amazingly resistant to engaging in aesthetic preference. but man, you should hear him sing...

i drove home in bad conditions today, four incomplete red oak table legs itching to be hewn, lying on the planer in my parents' basement. progress will have to wait.