Angry is away on business.
I like riding my bike. Which, is probably about as obvious as it gets. I’m not a smart man: never finished college, have learned a good deal by doing dumb things. If it weren’t for our editor, I’d probably be arrested for exceeding the allowed amount of subject-verb disagreements, or noun-predicate conflicts, or something like that.. I’m not particularly good at much, honestly…and frankly, when it comes to looks…I’d never lose a Mr. San Diego contest because they’d never let me submit an application. But, I know what I like. And riding my bike; it’s on that list. A long with cheese, most all music (minus Justin Bieber), sharrows, long walks on the beach, dry socks, attractive women, funny jokes, plaid shirts, being bald, that tingly feeling when you’ve played a good prank and being able to turn the news off when it’s annoying as an errant nose hair. So, in short, I’m not different from anyone else, in regards to bikes.
But you’d never know it from me, or the rest of us. We, lovers of two wheeled transportation, promoters of leaving the car behind to gather dust..yes, WE the cyclists who literally beg our poorly equipped and mildly uninterested friends to go ride…and fail often. We fail because, we take our happy cycling life…and, make it into a war story. Some will ask “isn’t dangerous?” and we’ll say ‘Oh no, it’s not at all’, but in the same breath use the f word 6 times about some jerkasorousrex on a cell phone who nearly made us one with a curb and a light pole.
Yes, us cyclists will often tell horror stories of near misses, confrontations with angry motorist, how they almost got killed by angry-suv-rabid-dog-texting-teen-aliens-from-pluto-drunk-pedestrian-distracted-buisinessman-makeup-applying-lawyer-skunk-you name it. It’s like we ride in a jungle, a war zone, an odd planet where as soon as foot meets pedal, daggers sail down from the skies and sewer grates open with armies of undead ready to demolish us on our innocent travels. There’s always a fresh memory of near death. And I’m hear to say that we are all nearly just about full of it because it doesn’t happen.
Often.
Or much.
Today was a near death of nothing. One of my favorite routes is Imperial Avenue. It is a bisector, running parallel-ish, to the 94. It goes through some colorful areas, that I love. Even if I had the option of riding on the 94. I’d skip it. Because the sights, the smells.. the sounds are all added bonus to my chosen method of getting around.
Now often people will ask me, “isn’t that a dangerous area?”. On a factual basis , you’re in more danger downtown; the Gaslamp district actually has more assaults, robberies, and sexual assaults than anywhere else. Yet, Logan Heights.. gets a rap for being dangerous.
29th and Imperial: a group of 5 males, all very young are crossing the street. One of them, face with scars, high cheek bones, has the look of hungry or annoyance and menace in his eyes. One is built probably from a good deal of not having many options and being surround by situations that, to some of us, would be surreal. He stares as he walks by. He stops. I put a second foot down, crack my neck, put my hand to the buckle of my bag. His fingers curl just slightly. I flex the fingers on my other hand out, wide, and then rub my thumb on my pointer finger, relaxing my arm down to my side. He spreads his jacket wide and tilts his head back. I look away, look back, lock eyes and breathe out slightly. For a short bit of eternity, it’s locked on and still. My peripheral vision isn’t good enough to track where the others went. He looks at my feet and then back to me. His eyes narrow, almost like coin slots. I lean forward and grab the bars putting a foot up. For about 3 million years, there is an electric tension in the air. I spit to the right, not looking away. He nods his head, and starts walking.
And as quickly as it started, it stopped and I’m riding. What was it? Nothing. Really, it was nothing. But it is something, that when relayed, becomes that snowball assumption of danger that we want to talk about. Never mind that against all lottery like odds, I caught 10 green lights in a row. Nor that I saw probably the 100th incredible sunrise on the way in. Except this sunrise was framed by the ballpark and the clock tower. Or that I didn’t forget my pocket money and was able to get a nice warm coffee from the coffee cart that is always on Broadway near the YMCA and, that getting coffee from there makes me feel pretty good that I’m supporting a local and not some out of town huge company. So, yes, I catalog in my mind a brief stare by someone and capture it…completely letting go of the fact that while riding in I hit probably the most zen state of perfect cadence, breath and Iggy Pop in my ears.
And we all do it. “No one reports on a safe landing of plane”. True. And that’s crap.
I rode on from the chance meeting: the slight smell of firewood burning braced the evening, the smell of dinners so strong that they can nearly be tasted. Laughing kids. Catching the light over the bridge so I didn’t have to stop mid climb, which is, probably one of the best things ever. Near home I met up with my wife and we were able to talk and walk without hurry, which is an uncommon treasure.
Tom Waits (who I accidentally left off my “like” list) sings “There’s always free cheddar in
a mousetrap, baby, It’s a deal, it’s a deal.” As soon as we jump for the easy cheese that is the story of doom, we’re trapped in the cycle where people look at us cock eyed with a bit of distance thinking that there’s a spook loose in our brains.
I say..it’s time to skip the scare, and to talk about.. the silent moments, the views, the smells, the feeling that makes riding something we all do..again and again.
January 11th I say, let’s all meet at El Take It Easy, and share boring stories of how wonderful our rides are, boring stories of beautiful sunrises, of sweaty helmets and of happily sore legs. Let’s say that at 6:30 we all get together and hoist a glass high to all the non-events that make up 99.5% of our rides. I say we have an evening of stories that will be the precursor to a year of stories about the good we see, the fun we have and the year we say things that will make people want to ride with us instead of run from us.
Join us. We won’t buy your beer, but we’ll all listen with wide open ears to your stories. Afterward, we can all happily get on bikes and have non eventful rides home leaving us with nothing to tell anyone about the next day other than.. “a plane landed safely and my bike ride is pretty damn boring”. And say it with a smile.
So: angry stories = bad, fun = good, bike riders meeting at El Take It Easy on 11 January at 6:30 = super awesome.
Just like good cheese.