The Mute Button

“What?”

“Bicycling Magazine has a contest about “Your Favorite Ride.”

“You mean that magazine I borrowed for you from the dentist's office?”

“Yeah.”

“You left it in the bathroom. I thought I threw that out.”

“You did. I got it out of the trash can on the way to the dumpster.”

“Whatever.”

“So if I win I could get a five thousand dollar bicycle as a prize.”

“Yeah, right. I'd like to see you do something like that.”

“Me too.”

“Whadaya want for breakfast?”

“Sausage sandwich and hash browns. And go tell the dogs to shut up. I'm tryin' to think up a five-thousand-dollar story.”

“Well, if anybody has five-thousand dollars worth of bull crap in 'em, it's you.”

#1

My favorite ride takes place not in time and space but is a place in my mind that I can find when alone out in that special place where just me and my bike can be together, alone. That place where we both cease to exist as machine and rider but instead...instead we both can, if only for a minute or an hour, disappear.

We can disappear and only on my bicycle on a quiet ride for a moment in time or on a mystical dawn float at slow speed, floating so slowly in the quiet of dawn that almost, maybe, we are not moving at all, we are flowing gently towards something and yet maybe not moving at all. This is a place I find only when riding my bicycle. It is a place where I feel that I know myself. My bicycle is a trusty friend and carries me to this magic place. It doesn't always happen, for time and space are elusive and the world is a tricky place. Favorite rides are hard to find. This is mine. It is the ride where I lose myself, the bicycle disappears beneath me and there is nothing there: I am a cyclist...

What a pile of woo-hoo, said the Voice.

“Ya think?”

Definitely.

“Well, it's only a rough draft...”

Very rough, said the Voice.

“Here. Those hash browns might be a little crisper than ya wanted. I gotta go get ready for work. You want some hot sauce?”

“When have I ever not wanted hot sauce? And grab me another beer, will ya? I'm trying to find a groove here.”

#2

I climb into the saddle from the top step of the porch so that the morning dew does not dampen my shoes. There is a kind of magic in leaving home when your feet never touch the ground. However far I ride today, I will not touch the Earth. I will float above it, a flying spirit at dawn on my bicycle. The mists of sunrise and the sound of the planet awakening all around us create the music and mystery that make this something special. Sunrise! This is my favorite ride. I am a cyclist.

Coasting slowly towards the river, I adjust my glasses and my gloves and twist around a bit in the saddle, getting ready...

“Dammit Toby! Get off my leg! I swear! If you don't quit humpin' my leg! This is my big chance to get a fancy bicycle! Stoopid dog.”

“It is by riding a bicycle that...”

“Oh great! Not only do I have a dog humping my leg and burnt hash browns for breakfast and now you're here”

“One true sentence..”

“Ernest, once and for all, please put a sock in it! You know how much crap I take from the Voice about simple declarative sentences?”

I've always encouraged you in your work, except for when you indulge in too much woo-hoo.

“I wish my head had a mute button.”

#3

However crazy the world around you feels or the time of day, the act of riding a bicycle is a thing that can be done with minimum effort, little expense and maximum pleasure. This is one such ride. I call it the “Mute Button...”

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and Literary Society

#102

A Long Way Home

The Long Way Home

Broken Glass On Memory Lane

Man, sometimes it just about kills me to ride my bicycle around this little beach resort that I once called home. They keep tearing down funky old buildings where we were known to drink and raise hell and act like pirates. There were fine old dilapidated turn-of-the-century houses, big places that had at one time been the homes of railroad officials and sea captains and rum runners; but they are all gone now; mostly, or converted into art shops or boutique saloons where the beer is priced high to keep out riff-raff like me. Jimmy Buffet music is everywhere. There are new hotels, painfully contrived to fit in with the original architecture, but why? They tore down all the original architecture. What they are trying to do is match the spirit, the ghost of the place they have just destroyed. It is a pattern started by Disney and it has become the sad blueprint for this my home.

Old Fart Syndrome

Maybe I sound bitter. I hope so. I just spent a drizzly Sunday morning pedaling around early (too early, I think), riding under these gray skies and looking at this restless gray late-winter ocean. Maybe I should try again later when the sun comes out. The sun will shine later and things might look better.

This is Old Fart Syndrome. Wanting everything to stay like it was in the good old days. I've lived here long enough, almost, to be an old-timer around here. But I have only been in this town for twenty-five years. I remember when I first came here, after being run out of Cocoa Beach during my first divorce. I fell in with a group of real locals, guys who had been born here. They would reminisce about when this was an undiscovered little surf town loaded with beach shacks on dirt roads, saloons with concrete floors where dogs were welcome and the policy was no shirt, no shoes, no problem. Acting from some inexplicable impulse, I park my bicycle in front of one familiar place that hasn't changed, much...

Shaky Ground

It's a pottery shop. I walk inside. No Jimmy Buffet music in here. Just cool jazz and world music. The good stuff. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust from the outside light. But there he is: back in the corner, glazing pots, same as always. It is his power spot. He has always been standing there, it seems. It is something I can count on..

“Hey, did you see what's going on over on Esther Street?” I ask. He looks over his half glasses in my direction. He never knows whether or not he is happy to see me.

“What's going on over on Esther?”

“They tore down the shack and there's a new house going up.”

“Our house?”

“I just went by there and the Sugar Shack is gone, man! They've already poured a new slab and everything. What the hell is happening to this town? There's a Hampton Inn on Flagler Avenue up where the Ghost House used to be. The Bamboo Saloon is a goddam wine tasting place or some kind of cigar emporium or something. Do you know they charge six dollars for a beer in there? Busch draft in those red plastic cups used to be a quarter each there at happy hour, and you could keep the cup!”

“They tore down the Sugar Shack?”

“Cromwell! Wake up! They're fucking Disneyfying our town! We've got to do something!”

“Calm down. I am doing something. I'm selling this place.” He dips a pot into the glaze bucket, twisting his wrist in that certain way that puts a wave of color across a bowl or a cup in a distinct pattern that is all his own. I was the contractor that built this shop when we first met those twenty-five years ago. A quarter of a century. Is that a long time? Seems like just a few days ago.

“You're selling the pottery shop?” I feel as though someone just stuck a pin in me and let all the air out. This was...I start for the little refrigerator to grab a beer. But no, that has changed, too. Cromwell quit drinking three years ago and joined that cult that spends more time talking about not drinking than we used to spend guzzling beer together. Almost.

“I had the building appraised and the business and the shop are worth enough that I'll never have to work again. I'll just set up a wheel and a kiln at the house and do the art shows.”

“You're selling the shop?”

“Time goes by, brother. When I sold the Shack and the spec house I made a pretty good chunk. If I sell this place I'm good. No more daily gig. Just making pots and traveling the circuit.” He picks up a fruit bowl and dips it into the glaze bucket. I hear a long, sweet trumpet note on the stereo. Miles. It's Miles. Kind of Blue. This cool old hippie potter and I were partners in that Sugar Shack/spec house deal. After my second divorce I sold my half to Cromwell. I sold it for chump change but the divorce had left me a little lost and forlorn and the open road was calling. Cromwell, on the other hand, held on and when the real estate bubble was bubbling, sold the property at a huge profit. A pretty good chunk, as he calls it.

“Both of us were supposed to sell out when we turned fifty and buy that boat and sail the islands. Then you got all sober on me. Fuck, man, I'm fifty-seven and you're...holy crap! You'll turn sixty this year!”

“Time goes by, brother.”

“I need a beer.”

He looks at me again over those half glasses. When he strikes that pose, he no longer is a cool old hippie potter. When he looks over those glasses like that he is a high school principle, or a judge, maybe, about to hand out a stern lecture. Sober. Sober as a judge...

“You need to slow down and start thinking about what you're gonna do when you can't swing that hammer anymore. You don't have a single cent put back, do you?”

See what I mean? The big brother I never had. But all the same...

“Why would I need to put anything back? You stole enough for both of us. We were gonna cruise the islands and my retirement plan was to die young and in bed, with a couple floosies at my side to see me off. Remember?”

“Things change, Blix.”

“Yeah, Crom, I know all about change. People change, too,” I said. I was having about enough of this predictable trip down memory lane. Things never go quite right when I step into this place, which is why I only go in about once a year, these days. I used to come in here every day. “Listen, man", I hear myself saying,  "things just worked out the way they worked out. No hard feelings.”  Yeah, right.

“Ok, Blix.”

“See ya later, bro,” I say, trying to keep a cheerful note in my voice. I was faking it. I wasn't cheerful at all.

“Ok.”

Pebbles

Man. Going outside, I grab hold of my trusty bicycle. I stand there for a moment. I'm not exactly catching my breath, but I might as well be. Across the street is the little apartment I lived in when I first moved to this town one scattering of memories ago. One scattering of memories, a scattered family, one aging pirate who remembers forty as a time of youth...

My old apartment is on the second floor of a funky weather-beaten frame house fifty yards from the beach. It is an artist's studio or gift shop or something now. Cromwell used to throw pebbles at my window to let me know it was time to put down my pen and go out and drink some beers. Nobody had cell phones yet. Who needed cell phones? I knew what it meant when a couple little pebbles hit the window next to my writing table. It meant evening was upon us and the fun was about to begin.

Nothing Lasts Forever

I climb into the saddle and hit a few hard strokes to catch up with traffic. I cruise past unfamiliar storefronts. The cars parked along the street are all the same; they all look alike, whatever these new cars are. They all look like toys, or some kind of mutant seed pods. Cross over? I think these are called cross-overs; these cars. What the hell, man. Is it time to cross over? Time to cross the bar? That's a laugh. I can still swing a hammer just fine. All I need is a new old beach town. It won't be in Florida though. Even Key West is Disneyfied now and no longer worth the effort. I don't know if I am a dinosaur or a lost pirate or what...I need to kick Jimmy Buffet's ass.

The day started drizzly and it seems to be darkening. Evening is a long way off.  At least I hope so.  I can smell the rain coming and it is still early and I am seven miles from the Whispering Pines Trailer Park and a long way from home. Baja? Maybe. I'm broke but I know where I can get some beer. Maybe some rum, too. I ain't dead yet.

It is a long way home but I'll get there just fine. Rain? Hah! I'm a cyclist.

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and Riff-Raff Refuge

#101

Reading Rocket

Functional Art

It's a little cold this morning (about fifty degrees Fahrenheit) so I will wait awhile before heading out the door to wherever my bicycle will take me today. Last night I was drinking a beer and just idly spinning the front wheel of the bike where she hangs on the wall, a black bicycle against a white background. When you are poor you learn to make things do double duty and so my old Schwinn serves not just as transportation during the day but also as wall art when at home. As crazy as it seems that I should be so enraptured of this elderly machine there is nothing to be done about it.

I love my bicycle.

Fix-it!

Sipping a beer and spinning the front wheel in the semi-darkness that is my single-wide trailer (in the second-crappiest-trailer park in town) a little before midnight, I was startled to see a kind of strobe effect as the thirty-six stainless steel spokes flashed there before me; I switched on another light and slowed the spin for a better look and was dismayed to see that yes, there was a jerky motion in the spinning wheel, not a trick of light but more likely some contamination of the wheel itself, something in the hub.

“This wheel is not that old! It has maybe...uh, wait...a thousand miles?” I never lubed the hub in a thousand miles and now it is showing. This is a kinda-cheap Dimension product, a single wall Alex rim with a Formula hub. Taking the wheel off the bike I go to the bench, grab a couple wrenches and open up the hub. There was not enough axle grease in there to even hold the bearings in place. Unhappy experience has taught me to be ready for the rapid mass exodus of bearings suddenly freed from their little prison. These wayward rascals fell harmlessly to the clean towel I had spread on the bench in anticipation of their escape.

Off Kilter-ness

My maintenance stories used to be a lot funnier as I attempted to work on my bicycle without a proper stand or the right tools, usually more than a little inebriated and absolutely unburdened by any excess of knowledge or skill. Alas, those heady days are more or less behind me now. I have acquired the gear, mostly, to get the job done right; and while my skill and knowledge remain far from a heavy burden, I seem to be able to perform the simplest bicycle maintenance chores without an excess of cussing, bloodshed or damage to the machine.

Midnight repair is not a part of my usual schedule. In fact, these days midnight anything is pretty much a stranger to my experience. But of late my routine is knocked off-kilter by this most recent bout of joblessness and idle time. As I always do when I have extra time on my hands, I have been doing a lot of reading. Good reading, too: whenever I am fortunate enough to have a stack of good stuff on hand I just read. A lot.

Sometimes I Ride, Sometimes I Read

Too much, in fact. When I get on one of these reading jags I am incorrigible. I read two or three books in a twenty-four hour period, just blasting through like an addict who has stumbled across somebody else's stash and has to use it all before they come looking for it. I read while eating and I read on the porch and I read in bed and sometimes I read all night and that's how my rythms and schedule get thrown off; that is how I find myself awake at midnight, drinking beer, contemplating a just-finished book, thinking about life in general and absent-mindedly spinning the front wheel of my bicycle at midnight. I like it and why not?

New Friends and Old

This month I have been roaring through the good stuff and finding writers I never heard of, young guys with wit and charm and frightening skills that blow me away; such as essayists David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster) and John Jeremiah Sullivan (Pulphead). Also sketches of America and beyond by the likes of people with long-familiar names like McMurtry (Roads) and Vonnegut (While Mortals Sleep) and Vidal (Clouds and Eclipses); David Byrne, too, of all people: the Bicycle Diaries wasn't half bad.

Bicycle Boys

I read Grant Petersen's Just Ride and Eben “Bike Snob” Weiss's first book. (His second has yet to appear at the local library). Both were good, in fact, Just Ride was better than good, in a simple instructional-manual kind of way. David Byrne's book had even less to do with bicycles than the Trailer Park Cyclist, but like here, bikes are in there, if you look hard enough.

Big Guns

Also: I finally got around to reading Cross Creek by Marjory Kinnan Rawlings. It was a knockout and I am glad I waited, it is a delight to read stuff you already knew about but thought you wouldn't like. I first found Hemingway in just such a fashion; which is funny. (I re-read The Sun Also Rises and forgot how good he was at twenty six. The scene when a drunk Bill Gorton first arrives in Paris is just...well, I can't write like that. Obviously.

No reading jag is complete without some Faulkner (Absolom, Absolom!), Oakley Hall (Apache), Tom Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49); John D. MacDonald (Cinnamon Skin); I am sure that you know about the Travis McGee series...but how about Tim Dorsey? His Serge Storm character, a kind of bizarro Travis McGee, is mandatory midnight maintenance reading for any Floridian worthy of the name. I just read Dorsey's latest, The Riptide Ultraglide. Eben Weiss, I think, could crank out madcap stories like Tim Dorsey does, should the Snob ever shed his snark skin and spread his wings. Do snarks have wings? Probably not in the cocoon stage, but later...

Adventure and History and Peanuts

There were more. A book about a lady who throws away her “normal” life to row a little boat across a big ocean (Rowing the Atlantic, Roz Savage); I read some stuff about life and art by Charles Schulz (My Life With Charlie Brown), and...well, there were a lot more. A lot more books. I read a lot of Florida history.  I read books about prehistoric indians and not so prehistoric Indians, there are stories of the "Weird Florida" variety and of course tales of sunken treasure and mysterious fountains and on and on...but the books I mentioned above I would recommend to anyone.

Midnight Bike Repair

I got that glitchy wheel off the bike, I pulled it apart, cleaned things up a little and packed everything back together with some nice clean lithium grease. It was well after midnight when I finished and cleaned everything up, everything that I was able to clean up. There is a lot of clean-up needed, I think; it will take time though and more than a little money that I don't have, yet. Not yet. But for now the library is free and full of books. The library is free and it is a perfect little three mile bicycle ride from my front porch.

I have time to read and ride my bicycle and that is what I am doing. There is clean-up and fix-it to do, but not yet. Soon.

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and Reading Room

#103

Grapefruits of Wrath

A Year Goes By Like Nothing

I was checking some old shipping notices yesterday and realized that, according to my roundabout record keeping, my Sram chain and cassette have a little over two years and five thousand miles on them. I have been noticing a kind of slipping in the drive train lately and when I lubed the chain the other day I noticed that the links are not seating properly in the chain ring. This has caused a kind of ghost-shifting, or slipping, anytime I put extra torque on the pedals. This of course usually happens when I am busting a move: as in dodging a bus that I thought I could easily beat across a crowded intersection, only to catch a demonic gleam in the driver's eye that spells certain doom.  When I crank  down hard on the cranks and exert all the power of my mighty thighs into one desperate effort to escape, I get a 'clunk' out of the drive train that may be the chain coming off (death) or an unexpected shift into a random gear (life, at least until next time).

Five thousand miles isn't much for two whole years, I realize, but it is enough, perhaps, to warrant a new chain and cassette (and big chainring, if possible). Who knows where the money will come from but as I am fond of reminding my imaginary car driving friends, compared to an automobile, the drive train on a bicycle is cheap.

Your car driving friends wouldn't be so imaginary if you would quit bragging about how much better bicycles are than cars.

“I know, Voice, but I am a man on a mission.”

Tires and Chains, Miles and Buses

Whatever the case, I am more unemployed than ever and thus riding more than ever and as January draws to a close, there are a little over five hundred miles beneath the wheels and it shows. The Kenda Kwest 35mm tires I put on back in September of last year are a little worn, but supple and worthy after 1500 miles or so: but I think the next pair will be something else. I am not yet sure what...but they will continue to be the fattest I can fit. The extra amount of squish I get from these larger tires makes a big difference on the long ride and while I think maybe I am a little slower because of the tires, I don't care. When I hit some rough stuff I can feel the squish go to work and I like it.

Tires and chains and buses, demonic drivers and life and death scenarios; these are the minutiae of my life of leisure. But hardly interesting. The good stuff is what happens on the rides. Not much lately, other than maybe getting shot at when I was stealing grapefruit the other day. There is a house that I know about and long admired for its fruit trees. It sits on one of the far reaches of my favorite ride and as I passed by recently I saw that it was abandoned. Not just abandoned but boarded up as though the most recent tenant had been less than careful on his way out and maybe trashed the place. Also gone was his collection of old appliances and the car-on-blocks in the side yard. But the tangerine trees and the orange trees and in particular the big grapefruit tree, the one not far off the road, were in full and inviting bloom and I was suddenly struck with an overwhelming desire for citrus.

Temptation In the Garden

This is Florida, and around here citrus is the cash crop. Well, one of them; I have acquaintances who grow a different cash crop but that is not today's subject, today is about citrus and the powerful yearning one can attain for a rush of vitamin C when deep into a thirty mile bicycle ride and suddenly confronted with poor abandoned fruit trees, their fragile boughs straining under a heavy load (grapefruits at the grocery store are about a dollar each) and here were hundreds begging to be safely stashed into my Goodwill messenger bag. I paused, there, looking around for someone to ask about picking one or two or so but there was no one about. Then I decided to err on the side of reason and pedaled off. Then I turned around and pedaled back. There are almost no cars on this stretch of country lane and very few houses.

“What do you think, Voice?” I asked.

Well, you might as well go ahead and grab a couple, since you could hardly look more suspicious than you already do, riding back and forth like this and staring around like a felon on the lam.

“Okay!” With one last look over my shoulder I coasted into the yard. At that exact instant far away, so far away I could barely hear, a man's voice shouted something unintelligible. I couldn't understand the shout, and it was so far away that it was hard to believe it was directed at me. But it didn't sound friendly. I was pretty sure it wasn't yelling 'Help Yourself'. It sounded so far off that I figured he would have to be watching me through binoculars.

Or a high powered scope, yelled the Voice. Run! When the Voice yells run, you run.

“But Voice, I'm on my bike! Do you mean 'run' as in leave the bike, or do you mean...”

Get out of here!

Here There Be Hellions

I push back up the slight grade of the drive, then turn and pedal away. I try to do so with dignity but I am pretty interested in leaving. I put a power stroke into the getaway, only to hear (and feel) that 'clunk' as the chain skips (but mercifully does not come off) and soon I am hitting a good lick back towards the highway and what passes for civilization in these parts. I really better think about a new chain. As I made my way on down the road, I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if I had gone ahead and plucked a grapefruit. But this little section of Old Florida backroad is renowned for its 'hellions', as the Blonde calls them. And it is the location of some of those other cash crops I was mentioning. So discretion is, in these parts, a sound policy. But I sure wanted some of those grapefruits.

Maybe after dark...

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and Packing Plant

#102

Haulover Canal

Love In The Jungle

Manatees make sounds when mating that I have never heard before. To describe these sounds would be difficult, to say the least. They snort and blow out spume and make a kind of bleating sound, not calf-like, but close. It has an odd, almost human quality. They thrash about on the surface, big and slow and they are like little whales. They certainly look as though they are enjoying themselves, here in the deep cut of the Haulover Canal, one of my favorite Florida Places.

A New-Found Clarity

The water, finally shed of its damnable summer algae bloom, is clear and enticing after a strong twenty-five mile bicycle ride into a gentle southeast headwind. Here on the bank of the canal the thin water is clear and as it falls off into the deeper water of the channel it shades through a spectrum of ever-deeper blues until it is purple and cool and a kind of a mystery to a happy cyclist who is here today, in the heart of a place that he loves, a place that makes him smile no matter what direction he looks.

I Am Not Alone

A young dolphin breaks clear of the surface just a dozen feet from where I sit, then arcs rapidly back into the water. He is on a school of bait fish, slicing again and again through the little silver cloud that darts erratically about. They don't stand a chance.

I look around for the rest of the pod. Usually, there are three or four more tursiops keeping company on these hunter/gatherer excursions, but today this young brave is alone, it would seem; alone but enjoying himself nonetheless. I am enjoying myself also. This is a good place to be and I am happy to be here.

Listen

In the sad and lopsided year that was 2012, a sorry and awkward election year, a year of a slaughter of children and of failed promises and maybe a dimming of hope;  in a kind of a year of lethargy and of pedaling clogged avenues toward elusive truth and joy and light it seems that I rode my bicycle 500 miles less than I did in the year 2011. This lessening of joy, perhaps, is a result of this not-riding.  Is there a chance that a perverse god in some side-show heaven somewhere far, far away has placed the happiness of a planet on the shoulders of a single cyclist?  If so, wouldn't He tell me?  If I had ridden 500 more miles in 2012 would things have been better?  Well...

Perhaps.  If perception is reality, then from the point of view of me, that single cyclist, the number of miles I am riding has a dramatic effect on how I view the world.

Sorry about the Slacking

So here in the new year, this year of the future, a time of perhaps renewed hope and promises kept, maybe;  this new season of the year 2013,  I have determined to fix that problem, and to ride more.  If by riding more miles I somehow help the rest of the planet then  I want a statue built somewhere in my memory and if that is too much to ask then perhaps a McDonald's Happy Meal in my honor...

OK

Things have changed and perhaps (probably) it is up to me.  But I don't know what to do.  I am without answers but there is a Voice, a source of light, a glimmer of promise and a far off, lonesome note of hope, a hint of what to do about it and that Voice says ride.  Home, hearth, dog, family, comfort....already these things are fading as the truth claws its way to the surface of my conciousness and it says ride, boy.  It's all ya got.

There Is Work To Do

That teenage dolphin has chased the bait pod further out into the vastness of the Indian River and those manatees are also gone. I hope they were successful in their endeavor. We seem to have a manatee shortage here in Florida. I get up from the sun-warmed sand beside the canal, put my pen and notebook back into my Goodwill messenger bag and dust the sand from my shorts. I turn back to my bicycle and pause for a moment to just look at her. Sitting in dappled sunlight against a baby palm tree, my red and black gloves lying on the saddle, waiting; my bike is waiting here beside the Indian River and far off on the distant horizon I can see the vague image of the Vehicle Assembly Building, the place where the Space Shuttles were put together. It is unavoidable not to ponder for a moment the long strange trip from bicycle to spaceship. But what of that? Today will have pondering enough, of that I am certain, but that is not my task. My self-imposed chore for the day is to ride the lonesome road of the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge  some twenty-five miles from the Whispering Pines Trailer Park to the scenic Haulover Canal. Upon arrival, I am to spend an hour poking around the area, seeing what I usually don't see because this is, for me, normally just a waypoint as I pedal further south in search of the elusive Big Miles.  It is up to me.

 

A Good Sign

I am diligent. I saddle up, slow-ride the dirt road back to the drawbridge, then ride across. At the southern base of the bridge is a dirt trail that runs along the side of the canal. A steel barrier has been installed at the head of the trail: NO MOTOR VEHICLES, it says. HAH! I love that sign! No Motor Vehicles, indeed! I lift my bike over the low railing, climb back into the saddle, hit a couple strokes to get my chain into the biggest rear cog and then:  I pedal slowly and alone down the trail.  

This is the stuff! This is it! I have put away pen and pad, for now.  Now it is riding.   Right now it is about no cars and a smooth dirt trail alongside these crystal waters filled with mystery and life; a place of primordial creatures procreating, a place of dancing dolphins and also a place of one old cyclist, pedaling slowly and steadily ever deeper towards home, ever deeper into the heart of this old Florida Place,  this place that is his home.
 

 

 
Whispering Pines Trailer Park 
#113

A Blog Is Born

 E-Mails and Telephones

The phone rings about sixteen times.  She always takes a long time to answer.  I’m used to it though.  At least she always answers.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Blondie!  Guess what?  That guy Roadie Ryan out in Seattle is sending me some bicycle stuff!  I just got an email.  Pretty cool, huh?”

“Didn’t he send you some stuff before?”

“Yeah, a bottom bracket and the tool but it didn’t fit.”

“Is he the one I had to go get a box and pack that lamp…”

‘Hey!  The lamp!  I forgot about the lamp.” 

“What’s he sending?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why is he sending it?  Did you write about something you needed or…”

“I don’t think so.  He says he had a vision or something that I was gonna get an old ten speed to fix up and sell, so he was sending me a starter kit.”

“That’s cool.”

“Yeah.  What happened to that roast venison you were bringing over?  I’m hungry.”

“Soon, Honey, soon.”

Ryan

Long-time readers may remember Ryan once wrote a Guest Post about a coffee run of sorts on one of his Seattle rides.  At the time I knew that he fooled around with old ten speeds,  but I had no idea how MUCH he fooled around with old ten speeds.  His work has frequently appeared over at Cameron’s Old Ten Speed Gallery (currently on hiatus, but still worth a visit.)  As all of you who have not been just skimming my stuff for the funny parts already know, I Like Old Steel Bikes and Ryan does too. 

A Blog Is Born

He likes them so much that he has succumbed to the dangerous vice of writing about them.  It was what I had planned on doing when I started this booger, but, well,  let’s just say the TPC evolved in a different direction.  Not Ryan, though.  His new Blog “Ryan’s Rebuilds” is the straight stuff about his many project bikes and the trials and tribulations of the world of the Vintage Bicycle Refurbisher.  That’s what he calls it and I am envious of his having coined a new name for a new trade doing good things with old stuff.

Here There Be Monsters

So I waited and waited in actual fear for this box of joy to arrive, afraid that one of the Whispering Pines Zombies would get to it before me;  plus I have never quite gotten over that thing from my childhood with the cereal box tops and the Woody Woodpecker hat.
As always with our transactions, e-mail took over:

me,Ryan:

Hey Ryan!  Should I have received a package by now, or was it all a dream?  I didn't want you to think it came in and I failed to say thank you.

ryan,Me:

It shipped a few days ago so I don't think you've missed out

me,Ryan

I’m just worried about the zombies.  There are zombies here.

ryan,Me:

We have them here in seattle, too, except here they’re called hipsters

 Then, the Next Day:

me,Ryan:

I got it, man!  Thanks so much!  Your generosity is overwhelming.  Now I gotta find a steed worthy of the new gear.  In the spirit of your action and thoughtfulness, the bike that will one day wear these parts will purposely be selected to NOT be a bike for myself.  It will be a refurb that will be a gift.  I'll find somebody to give the bike to...already I am envisioning a step-through...I can see it. 

 I can see some grateful college coed-type, her breasts trembling with gratitude as the tears of joy roll down her face, wetting the light cotton t-shirt...wait..ok, maybe I got carried away.  But you get the idea.

I gotta stew the free bike idea over...it sounds good, though doesn't it?  We will call it Ryan's Rides of Freedom...or, The Ryan Surface Foundation National Campus Bicycle Crusade...I'm open to ideas, here...but I've been out of booger material for a couple days, even though I have been getting in some twenty and thirty mile rides...so this will be the next post, definitely...

Is there any way you can e-mail me a picture of that lamp?  I want to show the world how my generosity compares to yours.  Actually, I really liked that lamp.  It would be really cool if every time you turned it on it played "Margaritaville..."

Thanks, Brother!

ryan,Me:

Hey glad the package finally arrived Tim Joe, and you are very welome.  Your description of the grateful coed made me laugh.

My initial thought was this might prime the pump for a little side, beer and pizza money, business for you of fixing up bikes to sell at a reasonable price and then once that was up and running you could "pay it forward" in some way, what was that you said in your post about small groups helping each other?  Coeds who pay for their very cool fixed up retro bikes are grateful too...

But of course your idea of making it a gift is a generous and thoughtful way to go.  On the third hand if a bike that fits you perfectly for the perfect price in the perfect color (Florida Sunshine Orange say) should cross your path then call it fate and build that sucker up for your own-self! 

 If you do donate the ride how about Timjoes Innovative Transport Systems?

Picture of very cool lamp attached.
Tailwinds Brother

Pro Starter Kit

So that’s it.  I got my box, carefully opened it and there it was: the perfect Refurbisher’s Starter Kit.  A pair of  27 inch Kenda gumwall tires,  new Jagwire Basic brake and shifter cables, a chain, some really nice cork bar tape that just screams out for an aged Brooks saddle, some tubes and rim strips and a full set of Crane Grey Matter brake shoes.  The inclusion of the rim strips, while the least dollar value of the starter kit, showed the most thought and care taken with this package.  More than once a wheel rebuild has been stalled because I forgot the rim strips.  This is the stuff.  Now I gotta find a new project bike.

That’s all for now, folks!  Drop by Ryan’s new site, say hello, but as always, keep coming by the Park!

yer pal,

tj

All Ryan Got Was This Lamp

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and House of Refurbishment
#103

Return of the High Country Stranger

Yesterday my friend and brother KAZ from the far country of The Carolinas paid me a visit.  As always, he came bearing gifts of Pirate Juice and goodwill.  We spoke of many things, as we always do, but two points in particular I remember.  I don’t remember much else, due to the Pirate Juice, but at the risk of breaking my two self-imposed guidelines of avoiding politics and religion and Walmart, I will relay to what is left of my readership the gist of the sit-down, as it were. 

“This isn’t an interview,”  I say.

“Were you peeing when you went outside just now?”

“Yeah.  Go ahead, man, it’s one of the last freedoms we have as dudes.”  As junior agent KAZ(he is only fifty), goes out to the giant palm tree the phone rings.  Due to my vast wealth as a boogermeister and literary provocateur, I have one of the last remaining wall-mounted telephones that are hooked to wires that go out of the trailer to…uh...telephone-land.

“Hello?”

“Hey!  There’s a pit bull out here!”

"What?”

“Nothing, honey.  I forgot that Rocky was visiting.”

“I thought that bicycle guy was there.”

"Don’t pee on him, KAZ.  It makes him mad.”

“Hello?”

“Yeah.  What’s up, Blondie?  I’m busy.”

“Sounds like it.  Now I forget why I called.”

“Me too.  Call back when we remember.”  I hang the phone back on the wall.

“I don’t remember that dog from last time.”

“He wasn’t here that time.  I’m dog-sitting. In fact, there’s a good possibility none of this is even happening.”

“You’re right.  So anyway, you asked about our community churches.”

“What do you mean by community churches, specifically?”

“My wife and I were involved in the development and growth of several churches in the past, but it just wasn’t getting the job done.  Every time, it developed into something…big.  It got too big and it changed and …”

“Turned into a car show in the parking lot and a wardrobe display inside?”

“Yeah!  Not exactly, but… yeah.  So we started having these small gatherings.  Six or eight people.  We did communion and a little music, a couple of us had guitars, and together we were somehow getting closer to, uh, finding…the Spirit, the comfort of Grace.”

“Whenever two or more of you…”

“Yeah.”

“I can see how that would get out of hand pretty quick.  So, those six or eight people have six or eight friends and there ya go again…”

“Right.  Exactly.”

“So…?”

“Of course, we couldn’t turn anyone away, so what we did was encourage the new guys to start their own groups.  It grew from there.”

“What you are describing is the exact model of a revolution, the cell system of organizing a large group of people who are not connected except by a precept, a single motive of change…typically, one member from each cell would go to help start the next group, establish some guidelines and patterns…”

“Yeah!  That’s what we are doing, yeah…”

“He was the original revolutionary, after all, I suppose.”

Here we pause for more palm tree watering and a little rustling through the ice chest.  A couple dashes of Pirate Juice get tossed into my best (only) glasses.  I really like this guy, this Agent KAZ.  He is a good operative.  He leaves a trail of good.

“Did you ever give a rider a push, or get a push?”

“What?”

“This isn’t an interview.”

“You mean in a group, someone is tired, or dropped?”

“Well, KAZ, you don’t push the leaders.”

“What?”

“The fast guys aren’t in it.  One time I caught up with a crew and in the back was this girl.  She was crying.  I wanted to be a superman, the Noble Trailer Park Cyclist and give her a push.  Or at least get in front and let her get on my wheel so I could pull her up to the group.  They weren’t that fast.  I could have done it.  But I was too shy, I was a real trailer park guy, goodwill clothes and so on and I just didn’t do it.  I just turned off and came home and drank a dozen beers and thought about how I could have been a hero.”

“You are a hero, Tim Joe.” 

"Aww, KAZ, you didn’t say that.”

“Well, I should have said it, if I didn’t.  But yeah, there’s this guy in town who wants to join our group.”  This makes me laugh.  I see, in my feeble mind’s eye, a straggler, a lonely orphan like myself, yearning to be a member, a participant in this crew of brightly clad fast-riding men- of-war, this crew of the shining, the privileged, the few…

“We call him Grey Shirt.  He always has on this grey t-shirt and some baggy gym shorts and old tennis shoes.”  I laugh again.  The Pirate Juice is doing its job.  Manic and attuned to the ludicrous, I am Grey Shirt.  I am that outsider, that lone straggler.  I am Grey Shirt.

“His name is Ben Donaldson.” 

“What?”

“Grey Shirt.  His name is Ben Donaldson.”  This messes up my self-absorbed fantasy of Lone Ranger-ness.

“One time on a long flat outside Charleston, I forget the ride, I was done.  There were still a lot of miles to go, you know?  You’ve been there.  There were still a lot of miles to go and I was done.  I was way off the back of the pack and all of a sudden there was a hand on my back and I was getting a push.  It was Grey Shirt.”

“Riding steel, right?”

“Riding steel, old steel like yours and later, we were sitting side by side on the curb outside a market, drinking beer.  He told me his name was Ben.  Ben Donaldson.”

“I love you, man.”

“I love you, too, Tim Joe.”

All of this counts, folks.  It all counts and I want you to know it.  I want you to know that to me, you count.  Every single one of you.  Remember yourselves, stand tall and strong, remember that you are here to form a cell, to give and get a push.  We are here to fix it, you guys.  Agent KAZ and I are here. We are here to help.  But we cannot do it alone; nor can you do it alone.

Together we can.

tj
Whispering Pines Trailer Park and House of Hope
#102