Like a stowaway serpent aboard a raft of vegetative flotsam, I spun and writhed around the bottom bracket of the newly painted steel rig. After having just finished Culley's book about being a Chicago messenger and painting petroleum jelly on his face to keep his skin from freezing in the winter, I committed to hitting the almost certainly rainy passage to the part-time gig this morning. After all, it wasn't salted roads and solidified mucous ahead of me. It was just rain, right? Yes, well, I'll have to do a little extra maintenance, but it was one of the best rides I've had in months. The reflective vest tied to the pannier, the reflective triangle under my ass, and the small, red blinking light were just enough to keep me from getting clobbered by a wall of water, and I don't even remember a single car horn. Sometimes you've just got to eat it...or drink it, as it was...it nourishes/hydrates the soul.
The Raleigh is riding like a champ, despite the "enormous" heft of 24 or so pounds (probably 3 of which could be blamed on my candybar bag full of roadside essentials that exceeds what most would bring). I don't even notice the weight, but the limited gearing (12 speeds...total) has made me push a little harder. Simply knowing that the bicycle is nearly my age (nearly 40) assuages any slight dissatisfaction with something so banal as weight, and I feel as if I'm riding atop a work of art. The "sunbeam" (safety-yellow touring bicycle made by a company that shall forever hence remain nameless; even negative publicity is publicity), while a proven workhorse, only looks artful due to my adornment (Berthoud fenders, etc.). The Raleigh looks like something that was intended to not only be ridden, but gazed upon at length. Once the leather bar tape and the honey B-17 saddle are installed, I'll throw an image up here.
I missed the tour around Lake Michigan with my brother from college. I'm looking forward to an ebb in our very wet weather, so that I can get in another bicycle camping trip before the twins arrive in November/December. Bob, I hope you all had a blast, and I was with you in spirit, you must trust.
As for the twins, they will be beauties and not beasts. She will be with them for the first few months or so, at which point I will take over and begin the indoctrination. I'm looking forward to the break from work, and I'm sure they will keep me busy. I'm hoping to make some long-needed headway on the creative fronts with them, and I can't wait until their metamorphoses into garden bugs. I am anxious to share their inevitable wonder and questions about the natural world, and what I hope will be their inevitable continued questions about this world. It is exciting to think of how they may or may not share my perspectives and of the conversations about such similarities and differences. We could all stand a little more humility. I love my little babies, already.
I do not, however, love the job at this point in my bicycle repair career. I am not too bent out of shape about it, since I'll be breaking from it in less than 10 months, but retail can really chew you up and spit you out, sometimes. It is difficult to contain the anger at being treated as less than human, especially when one is cognizant of the even worse treatment suffered by those not quite as white (or male, or middle-aged, or fill-in-the-blank). That sort of knowledge invalidates any hurt feelings, I believe, and, while I should be uplifted by my relative rapport and consequent comfort, most often, I am not. I find this acceptable, if frequently upsetting, because I become better at avoiding such interactions with every exchange of stern looks and harsh words. I like to dream of a future that finds me answering only to myself, in which I am able to operate my mind fully for the purposes of communication. I do not work for an ass (far from it), but I still feel like I work "for" another individual more commonly than I would like. This is not an insurmountable problem, but working for an institution, an agency, or the public seems so much easier, sometimes. At least when a flaming hoop must be traversed within a corporation, a government or other institution, there is a constituency to absorb the corresponding negative reaction. When the target for such negativity is a "boss" and a good friend, it makes things more delicate. The hoops to which I refer are relatively few. In fact, there is really only one, and that is having to "play nice" to a sometimes supremely undeserving audience. It is not as if I feel I would ever be fired for being "short" with a customer. Rather, it is the hard time I have capping my temper with those that denigrate the tremendously honorable profession of which I am a small part. They display their ignorance of economics and the symbiosis of this discipline with ecology and human rights when they do not accept that prices in the market barely provide a decent living for some of us. I am one of the luckier ones, but I still don't have my own health insurance that would make taking care of the wee ones less expensive, and I work "unpaid" overtime nearly every week. I say "unpaid" because I may get a few "free" things from the shop here and there, but there is no such thing as an overtime check in my life. I say "free" because I also donate things to the shop on a regular basis that zeros out the whole game, in effect.
Again, I am one of the lucky ones, and, while I am complaining, I am happy. I get to work with some of the most dependable, intelligent, and interesting people with which I have ever associated, and we all share the mild frustrations, making their severity seem less pointed.
Potatoes are going like mad in their pots, the four pineapple plants look as spiny palms of foliage, opening their hands to grope at sky and sun, and the basil and chives, since transplant from their old pots, are breathing easily and plumping. We're looking forward to the spinach and lettuce season, and are planning a cinder block garden to cradle such edibles. I also spoke with the local blueberry farm about getting some seedlings to plant in the early part of next year. We're hoping to land 8-10 or so, enabling us to harvest enough for a pie or two a year that will bring smiles to the girls' faces.
Speaking of the girls, by the way, the going names for the girls are decided, but I'll hold off on getting them involved, here, since they've not yet signed their release forms (though I do expect them to do well on their morse code examination on me lady's belly next week). Rest assured, they are good old southern gentlelady names that will connect them to their roots on both sides of the tree.
I just finished "Into the Wild," finally. I don't know why I put it off for so long, but it reminded me of "Grizzly Man." I know the author conveys that the protagonist was not so careless, but it seemed like another misdirected effort at becoming closer to the planet. It was really nice, then, to read "The Immortal Class" right afterwards. Travis Culley pulls the reader up and down his roller coaster, but he not only doesn't come off the track, he keeps his hands up. I really liked that two of the most depressing AND inspiring things in the book are explored in the last few pages. Some of what he writes reminds me acutely of that article I linked within this blog about cities as ecosystems or organisms. It makes me feel better with our decision not to move from the city, however smaller than his Chicago, of Charleston. I'm hopeful that school quality and other "familial" concerns will not drive us away from this creature but towards improving it. It is time to get back on the political treadmill. I'll write once I've got something (maybe after the maintenance course for the City of North Charleston bicycle force next week...a possibly interesting engagement).
Oh, and the bombyliid fly, Xenox tigrinus (?), was on the screen in the garage the other day. BugGuide.net lists it as a larval parasite of carpenter bees, which would explain the pile of sawdust and fecal matter I found a few days later under a small table in the garage. Hanging next to the massive hole in the table (made by a carpenter bee), was an exoskeleton that reminded me of a tachinid fly. Only a few weeks earlier, the wife had trapped a small "cricket-fly," as she called it. It turned out to be a parasitic wasp of some sort. I suspect it feeds upon cockroaches, based on the number that have turned up, lately, and I seem to remember identifying one like this years ago. If I see another, I'll try to catch a good image, in the hopes of preventing some of them from being smashed by my more "nervous" readers (no, they do not pose a stinging hazard). It is nice how little worlds work themselves out all around us, whether we are paying attention or not, huh?
From the world of the six-legged (two wheels, four limbs),
Brad
