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Aug 29

Advice

My friend assigned a piece of my writing to his freshman composition course, and we’re going to discuss it next week. He said they would ask me questions, questions about where the ideas come from, and about the writing process.

I don’t really know where the ideas come from. Blah, blah, read a lot of books, maybe. The air? I think some ideas come out of the air. And process. What is that, anyway? 

I just sit here, drink espresso, and stare at it. Sometimes, I stare at it for a very long time before anything actually happens. I put a lot of shit sentences on the screen. Then I try to make them better if I can. Sometimes, it works even.

When I get stuck, I go clean the toilet. 

I’m not sure this is especially helpful advice. 

Jun 19

there’s a warm wind blowing. the tall grass swims and glints. feel the wheels slide, then grab beneath you. turn again to face the sun.

Nov 13

too long

there’s a point in a long ride, and it nearly always comes when you’re the farthest from home, when your legs decide enough with this bike thing, we want to get off. but you can’t get off, because you’re way the hell out there and somehow you have to find your way home.

you think maybe food will help. you eat an energy bar and you forget it like it never happened. the sweet aftertaste lingers, the only clue that you’ve eaten anything at all.

you try to blow snot but you’re tired so it ends up all over your face. you figure there’s a reason most people wear gloves on bike rides. but you’re not as smart as they are, so you try to wipe your face on your hands but it just smears and now you’re an even bigger mess. next time, gloves. 

before, you glided along gleefully, each pedalstroke blending smoothly into the next one, the pavement blurring beneath your wheels. now you feel like a hummingbird. it takes a thousand turns of the pedal to move an inch. the tree in the distance stays stubbornly in the distance. you’re pretty convinced you’re never going to get there. 

and you start thinking about carbon and expensive bike parts and you wonder why the bike can’t just ride itself home. but there would be no challenge in that. the risk of riding too far, the need to peel yourself off the pavement and get there, it’s the part that makes you feel alive.

so you keep going, because what else are you going to do. a second energy bar goes down almost as fast as the first, but this time, you actually notice it. you’re still not exactly soaring, but you’re moving forward. and forward is good. the inches turn into feet and the feet turn into miles. you pass the tree in the distance and leave it behind.

and you think maybe you’ll make it home again. 

Oct 10

that moment when you send a piece to an editor and the editor writes back and simply says, it’s good.

that’s a pretty good moment.

Sep 4

Lost

We get lost a lot. We go out on the bike on the same rides we’ve done hundreds of times, for the past ten years and counting, and still, we get lost.

Maybe it’s because we each ride along in our own particular world. Sometimes, when we get home we talk about what we saw. It’s like we weren’t even on the same ride at all.

There was the black truck stacked full of badass dudes with tats with Call Me Maybe blasting from the stereo. There were tourists dressed in bright colors, reading their guidebooks as they walked blindly off the curb. There was a bird in a tree and a cat slinking through the grass stalking it. There was a woman riding one horse and leading another. There was a man in playing golf in a red sweater. A duck flew by.

You didn’t see that? Not any of it?

And then there’s the clearing where we always meet up. But somehow this time, it didn’t work out. He went up the climb. Then I followed after him. And that’s where I lost him. A car passed behind me as I turned the corner, so he didn’t see me. Tricky, those cars.

We started the ride together, and then we finished it separately, because we get lost a lot, even on the same ride we’ve done a hundred times.

We make the wrong turns and climb at different speeds and somehow lose sight of one another for a moment too long. Maybe there was a bird in the tree or a horse on the road or a woman jogging with a dog. 

You’d think no one ever gets lost in a world of cell phones and signal towers. But that imagines that we all carry our phones. There’s pockets in the back of our jerseys, even, and the phone fits right in, but you have to remember to put it there. Sometimes, it’s easier not to remember.

Phones don’t work in the best places, anyway. The places you want to go, those are the places beyond where the phone can go. You ride right up to the edge and then, you keep going.

And so we just get lost. And we get home and we laugh and we talk about what we saw. Because we ride a bike to see the weird and wondrous things along the way and to share them at the end of the day. While we may ride the same road, we never sees it exactly the same way as anyone else.

We get lost to find ourselves all over again.

Apr 16

first race

This is a story about a bike and a bike race.

Once upon a time I was a swimmer, but I got bored of the pool and bikes looked pretty fun, so I thought maybe I should get one.

A boyfriend in college used to lend me his. Yes! It’s true! And a total cliché. Ask just about any woman rider who she got into the sport, and there’s probably a boyfriend or a brother and a borrowed bike somewhere in the story. So, there’s mine. I also borrowed my brother’s bike, which is funny, if you only knew how much taller than me he is. 

Eventually, I decided to get my own bike, but really, I didn’t have any money. So, I bought this green steel thing. <Grandpappy voice> In my day, they only put suspension forks on the expensive bikes! </Grandpappy voice>

So, I got one without. It was steel. And forest green. And rigid. It had cantilever brakes that didn’t really work. It also had hideous decals that I eventually tried to remove with disastrous results.

I took that bike on lots of adventures. Including this beautiful disaster outside San Diego. 

After a while, I thought it would be cool to have a suspension fork. So I bought one. But still, I had no money, which meant I couldn’t buy a good one. Hey! At least it was yellow so it looked like a Judy, even it wasn’t one.  The Yellow Fork – because who remembers low-end anonymous product names – was only slightly better than nothing.

I rode just about everywhere on that bike. My helmet was always crooked, because it didn’t fit. Also, bar ends. I don’t even know why we had them. The first day I rode clipless pedals, I fell over in front of all my dude friends. Because that’s what you do on your first day with clipless pedals. Who was I to argue with the pattern that Fate had outlined?

Then one day, my friends were going to a bike race. I’d never been to a bike race, and they convinced me that somehow it would be fun. I think I’m a very convincable person, maybe. 

So we piled in cars – I did not drive my VW bug to this edition, that came later – and headed up the coast to Sea Otter.

I stayed at some random house crammed full of people. I think it was in Santa Cruz, but I don’t really remember. I do remember the next year involved a crowded hotel room, and one of my dude friends eating donuts in bed. But that’s another story, my friends, for another day.

Then, I went to the bike race on my heavy steel bike with the shitty yellow fork with no name and the brakes that didn’t really work and my helmet on crooked. And it was the funnest thing in the history of the world. 

After that, I went to lots more bike races. I put roofracks on my VW Bug. And I bought a nicer bike with a real suspension fork and brakes that mostly worked.

But I think the first race is always the best race. Because you go there with no expectations. It’s all just one crazy who needs brakes anyway adventure. You can’t be bothered with the results and you can’t be bothered with fixing your crooked helmet. You’re too busy having fun.

Really, life should always be exactly like this.

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