Single Speed Slim

Hello my friends! Spambots be damned, here am I. These tales must be told and I am the man for the job. I think the “Authentication” process will filter the little bastards out just fine and if not I will strap on all manner of hardware and special goggles and dive into the screen and hunt them down one by one, if need be...I don't want to have to do it but listen, these machines have got to be tamed.

It's All About the Jumpsuit

I was reading somewhere the other day about these little, really little robot computer dinguses that they can inject into your blood stream and then roam around doing who knows what, sending messages about your health and using little laser beams to clear arteries and kick ass on cancer cells. It sounds just handy as hell and I remember a movie called Fantastic Voyage, I think it was, and I remember how well Raquel Welch's jumpsuit fit. It was really tight and it fit just right. Man! I think I was about twelve years old when that movie came out and if I remember correctly all hell broke loose and everything went wrong that could go wrong and the only way they could get out of the guy's body was through a tear.

I wasn't that poetic when I was twelve but I am now and the idea of a teardrop being a way to safety, or a kind of path to salvation just appeals to me, somehow. I like it. Crying helps, sometimes.

Raindrops Are Fallin'

Not right now, though, I ain't cryin' and while maybe I should be, it just isn't happening. Last week I pedaled my ass up to the VA Clinic in Daytona, leaving the house at five thirty in the morning, in the dark and in a misting rain. I had a cheap little flashlight taped to the handlebars with duct tape and a blinking red taillight hanging off my saddle bag. Quite frankly, I stole the taillight from off one of the grandkid's bikes. (He won't need it for awhile because he is grounded). Predawn and cranking fast on the pedals I hit one stretch of highway that is called the Three Bridges and listen: it was DARK. I mean so damn dark that for all I knew I was about to pedal off one of the bridges and plunge into the water far, far, below. Well, ten feet below...

So dark that I couldn't use the shoulder or sidewalk, I had to stay in the lane where the feeble light of my half-assed headlight reflected off the painted highway stripe. But, oddly and unexpectedly, I had the road to myself and about thirty minutes later the sun started sneaking up over the horizon and I gotta tell ya, sunrise on a bicycle...well, I want to do it again. I want a better light system and I want to get out before sunrise more often.

The Lament of the Soggy Cyclist

As things age (I am an expert on this) they wear out. That's one of the reasons I am pedaling my bicycle the twenty miles to the VA Clinic. While I can pedal twenty miles fast like nothin', if I stand up quick or just something like climbing a ladder leaves me out of breath. So I'm getting a check up and so on. But the worn out thing I am most interested in is my rear derailleur. No, I am not speaking figuratively, although my figurative rear derailleur is important to me. I'm talking about the one on my bicycle that died on the way home from the checkup forcing me to fork over a buck-fifty for a ride home on the bus.

I Hope This Works

So...I have now put on a new chain recently donated by Roadie Ryan and converted my beloved Schwinn to a single speed. She didn't like it, at first...she spit the chain repeatedly. The skewer just couldn't hold the wheel in place. The chain was coming loose. Then I grabbed a six pack of beer and a three-sided metal file and spent a mellow hour or so filing a diagonal groove pattern onto the dropouts.  I scrounged in my old parts stash and found a heavy but hardy mountain bike skewer and I clamped the rig together and now I am blasting around in one gear all the time. It ain't bad. I seem to be going fast as hell all over the place and the bike, stripped of the cassette and the derailleur and the shifters, feels about ten pounds lighter.

It Ain't Over 'Till It's Over, Rover

But yeah, things wear out. Moving at one speed might be the key to longevity; it is hard to say. Maybe an injection of microscopic robots would be a good thing, although it sounds less than appealing. Having Raquel Welch injected into your bloodstream would probably be a boost of sorts, I suppose, but still, it ends with tears. Somebody has got to cry.

Sometimes I wish I knew what I was talking about. I have a habit of saying things that don't make sense until later on, after the shootin's done and the smoke clears and I think, “Oh... I'll be damned.”

I think you know what I mean. Meanwhile I'm living on my bike and I have a bid in place for the first construction project in six years. It is a juicy one and I have no reason to think I won't get the gig. Let's face it, I need the dough. The only reason I'm not kicked out of the Park for not paying lot rent is...well, I'm not sure why. Borrowed time, most certainly, I'm treading water. So...

It looks like the cycle is about to renew itself and I will begin again. Spambots can't stop me and if I once again have to strap on and do battle, well..I ain't dead yet.

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and Rumination Place

#104