bongiorno

Finally, it's on Netflix streaming—but not for long.

Breaking Away.

Yes, one of the few bike racing movies, one that I should probably own (if I still believed in owning CDs and DVDs) that was shown in Grant Park earlier this year to kick off bike-to-work week.

I was loathe to attribute it to an archetype, as if they were even avoidable. A real story about real characters, the movie is a far cry from Shutter Island, a plot device wrapped in clichés.

It's about 4 recently graduated high school friends who have nothing to show for their first summer out. No jobs, no aspirations, only feelings of inadequacy for being townies in a college town. Sons of stonecutters, quarrymen, they're called cutters. And you can see the word impale itself in their flesh each time it's leveled at them—like a knife.

Dave stands out. Having won an Italian bike, he's been obsessed with bikes and Italy, speaking either Italian or broken English with an affected accent. He's blissed out living in his delusion while his friends and father are downtrodden realists, even pessimists.

Dave meets a girl in this state who believes him to be an Italian exchange student, presumably studying at the University. Double lie.

But he's so happy, albeit due explicitly to his idealism and naïveté.

He reminds me of myself for a few months in the Fall of '07.

And naïve idealism is precisely what makes his fall so hard. The Italians come to town for a race; Dave participates, spends the first half of the race catching up to them; he tries to hang with them, riding with them, speaking Italian; they [take offense to this?] stick a pipe in his spokes and crash him out of the race. [Were they earnestly worried about losing to him?]

In Dave's case, his idealism was shattered, his flesh bruised. He stops speaking Italian, even to his girl [who dumps him], and he suddenly resembles any one of his dejected friends. His father finally recognizes him, content that he's finally acting "normal" again. Or just real?

His father had been highly put out by the Italian act, and though he probably didn't realize, maybe deep down he was just concerned that his son's idealized delusion would turn around to cause him pain. Was he just being (subconsciously) protective or just miffed that his son could be so namby-pamby happy?

Then there's the big race. The Little 500. It goes as you might expect, and we feel the requisite joy at the end.

As for an archetype, I had forgotten about the "Rags to Riches" type, one that includes a "Coming of Age" type. Each of the 4 high school friends develops as the story progresses, leaving behind their insecurities and stepping boldly into new terrain. And the hero, the main character Dave, experiences the "False Ending" in which the bad guys win and it looks bleak. But that makes the triumph at the end all the greater.

Win.

throwing things into other things

I've been storing up these stories, awaiting the completion of a trilogy. The other day, completion; here they are.

1) It's no secret that I go to Kuma's Corner maybe once a week. Meat, it's good. It's maybe a secret that I used to be vegetarian and, for this reason, have little sympathy for veggies, thinking that that was a phase that I went through and thought better of. Glad I did it though.

Generally what happens is this: I eat something for dinner - neither a mere snack nor a feast - and feel pretty satisfied until one or another of my roommates sends me a text: "House meeting." This, of course, means Kuma's, and it's almost always after 10:30, sometimes 11.

If we happen to be in person, one of us will say: "Yeah, I could wrap my dick around that" which somehow translates to "I'm in." [I'm in = I'm down = I'm up for it... etc.]

So one time a week or two ago, the crazy roommate and the aborted-baby-daddy suddenly said they were going, but I had just opened a beer. Dilemma! I was on the ram's horns, wanting to sit and finish my beer (waste not!) but also wanting to go get some meat.

Solution: bike with beer.

It's not legal per se, but it's not exactly immoral. I draw the line at immoral. Or at least just a little past.

So I'm biking one-handed on the fixie, left hand poised on the brake [safety first!], when, about half-way there [it's a 7-minute ride], I finish my beer and feel an immediate desire to dispose of the empty bottle. I'm feeling fractious and have an urge to just throw it, devil may care. But then, golden opportunity: a dumpster on the other side of the street. Almost like a reflex, I hook-shotted the bottle in an arc over my head.

Draino.

It couldn't have gone any better.

2) My crazy roommate had gone to Florida and come back, was forbidden to come back to the house, and was spending the weekend in a padded room. [At least that's how I picture it.] The day after her institutionalization was C's birthday party. He had a keg of good beer [that still has some left in it] and a barrel for a hobo-fire.

So, now that we all know what a hobo fire is, let's carry on. [We didn't use a blowtorch to make the holes, rather a drill with some hole-cutting attachment.]

Picture this. The fire is burning and people are showing up. I showed up after a concert that was pretty terrible and had drank 2 G&Ts at the post-concert reception. [I ended up way drunker that night and ended up missing my cross race the next day.]

So things are happening, I turn on the music, it's a party.

At some point, we were going to burn this small wicker ottoman that was taking up space in the living room. In honor of clean-space-clean-mind, I'm getting rid of the random junk in our apartment.

Somehow, I decided to try to throw it from the balcony [2nd floor] into the hobo fire 30 feet away. It seemed unlikely to work, but the greatest rewards come from the highest risk. And the best risks are the one you're not attached to (or are ignoring).

First throw! Miss. Just wide. No can, no fire. Close but no cigar.

C throws the ottoman back up to me (wicker is pretty light), I catch (amazing!), and throw again.

No real thought, just a vague amount of preparation.

Draino. Right in. There were only a few orientations that the stool could even fit into the can, and it happened to find it just as it went in.

Someone came up to me afterwards and said: "If that was on Youtube I'd think it a fake."

Not a fake, just being awesome.

3) On Sunday, my chef-friend and I are driving to a bike race (I've learned my lesson about drinking too much the night before and have made it to *all* subsequent races), and we stop at a gas station for some 5-hour energy and coffee.

But I have this cup from last week still in the cup holder and don't have room for my coffee. What to do?! Dilemma!

So I look around for a drive-up trash can. Nothing.

I find one right in front of the cashier but that's 4 feet away from the curb. I drive up and ask him: "think I can make it?" He laughs, I aim and shoot...

Way way too high, like 3 feet. Hit the window right by the cashier and sort of exploded with melted ice from last week's post-race soda. Missed the can.

So I take my foot off the clutch [LURCH, stall...] and go throw it away. Total fail. The lurch even spilled my coffee [a little] in the car.

Then driving away, he's still laughing in fits, I'm trying to drink the coffee. He gets me laughing right as I'm drinking, and I inhale it. Really. Inhale. Not just choking on it, the coffee enters my lungs and I feel this strange sensation like I'm freebasing coffee, the caffeine entering straight into my blood stream.

I managed to cough most of it out before the race and like to think that it was to blame for my 8th place finish in the race. Not too shabby but would have liked to do better.

Trilogy complete.

constant maintenance

I am getting awesomer and awesomer at certain things, worser and worser at others. Your attention begets your intentions, and mine are sporadic and chaotic, governed by a mind warped by the internet unable to listen to an entire mp3 from start to finish without seeing what else might be better.

Listening to records, strangely, is the opposite. Maybe the effort required to skip around - getting up, physically moving the needle - is enough to allow me to enjoy whatever's on as good-enough-for-right-now.

So today, I was pleased with myself that I could maintain a task for a better part of the day, even if the task was only tangentially related to my overall ambitions and goals for this lifetime. I fixed my bikes.

Yes, bikes. My racing bike needed truer wheels (unwobbly), and my get-around-town-bike, my old 10-speed that I converted to a fixie (très hip) needed a lot of shit. The bearings in the wheels gristed too much, too much grit, not enough grease. Actually, that's all. But both wheels needed it, and each one had a different style of bearings.

The rear wheel, the one that I'm going to use on my new track racing bike, had sealed cartridges - reminding me today, for the first time, of the skateboard wheel bearings we used to use - and the seals were broken and rusty grease was leaking out. I had never changed such bearings before; thought it was much more difficult.

So I traipsed over the boulevard to my LBS (local bike shop) and pestered them. I made them true my wheels - in exchange for money - and picked their brain about the feasibility of me reinserting the bearings into the hub without fucking it up. He made it seem manageable, so I took my $16 worth of bearings and traipsed back home. Tra-la-la-dee.

Carefully, I hammered the cartridge in, making sure that it was going straight in lest it damage the hub. No damage and 20 minutes later...

I got distracted by fixing the other hub. I went to use it as a reference but, as it turns out, it's not a cartridge but a loose set of bearings. It, too, was rusty and gristy, so I took it apart and cleaned and degreased and cleaned and degreased. Almost lost a bearing down the sink but saved it in the nick of time. The nick!

Finished that one in about 1/2 hour and finally banged the last cartridge in the first one. Success! Two functioning wheels.

Almost time for food - [I was starving at this point] - but no: I felt I should change some tires around. No food till the work is done.

Finally, time to eat. And write this post about how I don't write enough posts. Looks like it got hijacked by bike talk, which is sort of fitting, since that's how my life has been this summer. #extendedmetaphor

Actually, the whole morning started with a piano lesson followed by a text from my roommate W offering to take me to Kuma's if I could fix his bike. That was the easiest fix but the one that got my hands greasy and my mind into a mechanical rut.

I actually sat down to write a post on Beyond Words about how much I loathe Classical music. Actually, it's not the music, it's the people. The music itself is nice and worth listening to from time to time. For some people, it's essential, but for most people today, there is nothing essential about Classical music. It's hardly pertinent and borders on irrelevance. And that's fine.

The real problem is that we are still subjected to the mediocre music from the past. For instance, Haydn doesn't have anything important to say to modern audiences. The gist of his music is how he uses and abuses the forms and styles of the time, of which we have less and less knowledge. His music should reside solely in specialty concerts. Much of Mozart is the same but there are some pieces whose musical content is interesting regardless of form or style.

Haydn's music is far too much form with no content; Mozart achieved somewhat of a balance; Beethoven was content-driven, and so therefore maintains more relevance.

The Romantic period is more content-driven, so has more potential to be relevant. There's still plenty of music, though, that has inconsequential content and so can be left by the wayside.

There's so much music out there, there's no need to dwell on mediocre pieces from the past. And yet we do because programmers have a personal attachment to a piece, inventing objective reasons for its significance. Sure, every piece is important in some way. Much of my music stirs my soul - even still! after all these years - but that doesn't make it essential.

If they were to make an episode of Hoarders about Classical music, I would love to go through these crusty curmudgeons' attics and throw out all their Kleiber recordings. I'll bet they would squirm just like the packrats on the show. From what I've seen of the show in my imagination.

Le Grand Boucle

They call the Tour de France Le Grand Boucle, The Big Loop, and yet it rarely ever looks like a continuous loop around the country. In this year's race, there's a day near the end where they hop on a train to race the next day around Paris. I'm sure it's a difficult race to organize - year in, year out - but they seem to be missing the point.

Or maybe I am.

Regardless of everything, it's an amazing feat: a physical feat, a logistical feat, a cultural feat.

Yes, maybe even a medical feat.

This year's Tour started with 378 feet, belonging to 189 riders on 21 teams. I don't know why they vary the # of riders every year, but this is one of the biggest fields.

Perhaps because of that, perhaps due to myriad extraneous reasons, it's been a total shitshow: every day there are crashes, and often the crashes end a rider's tour, forcing him to "abandon."

It's been all the talk, perhaps because many of the bigger name riders have been forced to abandon.

One British announcer was near tears when British star Bradley Wiggins broke a collar bone. I cried a little today, but I'm not exactly sure why.

Chris Horner's condition got to me. After a brutal crash, he was lying motionless, unconscious on the side of the road. He had had a concussion and somehow came with enough clarity to ride the 20 remaining miles. At the finish though, he couldn't seem to figure out why he was 16 minutes behind everyone else. [Watch it]

Then today, Alexander Vinokourov broke his leg in a massive pile-up that affected so many riders that the peloton waited around for 5 minutes to allow everyone to get back on.

Vino is a total badass riding in his last Tour - monumental misfortune.

[When I first read about it, the news headline said that his crash was "career-ending", which alluded to something even more serious than a broken leg. It just happens to be career-ending because he's at the end of his career.]

And then the nightmare.

A French TV car was passing a group of riders at grande vitesse - too fast - and had to swerve to avoid a tree, clipping a rider and causing another to do a double somersault in the air before landing backside first on a barbed wire fence. [Watch it]

It was just so ghastly. Every cyclist's worst nightmare. And the car, with its smug, unchanging expression, seemed so unapologetic, like it did it on purpose.

Which would be the case if it happened to me on Chicago roads.

It's getting to the point that I don't even care who wins and loses, hoping instead that everyone stays safe. In the Italian version of the Tour de France earlier this year, a rider died from head injuries sustained during a crash. It happens and it's scary. Or maybe it's scary because it happens.

see: Wouter Weylandt

LFP => $$$

I heart the lakefront path in Chicago.

But, seeing as I use it so much, in all types of weather in all seasons, I feel territorial about it. It's cumbersome to me to weave around slow-moving bikers; for me, the path is a bike highway--not for Sunday drivers. But I deal. I am always surprised when there are droves of runners, which I forget happens every nice weekend in the summer--especially in the early-morning hours. But I deal. Pedestrians are my least favorite variety of LFP (ab)users, especially tourists who are out for a leisurely gambol. Some of us are late for work; you'll have to excuse our speed.

And some of us only have one speed; mine is ~20mph.

On Friday night, I had the night tour. We had 30 people but I was training another guide, so the student-teacher ratio was a more manageable 15:1. [For the record, I have total confidence leading a group on my own--up to 30 but not over.] And as we rode north on the LFP by Oak Street beach, there were a new variety of pedestrians clogging the LFP: hundreds of disillusioned minority youth, in groups of 5-15, engaged in whatever sorts of in-group / out-group antagonism that are trendy these days. Not that I felt too threatened--for myself or for the tour--but I was annoyed at their slowness, their lemming-like groupthink, and complete disregard for other users of the path.

But maybe I should have felt unsafe. The past few weeks, as I've "home" on the LFP, I've noticed a stronger police presence. This weekend (Memorial Day), I've seen marked and unmarked cars, and roving gangs of bike cops. It's like the Jets and the Sharks out here. And apparently, they are there in response to angst-fueled youth riots like the ones that happened on Wednesday. Granted, only 22 people got arrested. This isn't large-scale--yet.

The other clear problem with disaffected youth is that they leave the beach TRASHED. Friday night, the beach looked as bad as Grant Park after Taste of Chicago.

Why can't we all get along? For me, on the LFP, the simple answer is that we're all moving at such different speeds. How can I, on my bike going 20mph, effectively navigate through a mass of inconsiderate boobs traveling at near tectonic speeds.

I think of this as a metaphor for the economy. What if the ratrace really is a race? As we're running along, the only other competitors we care about are the ones just ahead of us and the ones just behind. The people limping along 10 miles back are of no concern; the people 10 miles ahead we can just barely see.

On the path, I am the clear winner--the Warren Buffett--and everyone else is just in my way. Having a bike is like having an education--a tool to a better (faster) life. In the real economy, I feel uncompetitive, or more like I am choosing not to compete or choosing not to see it as a competition. And yet, I'm still stuck on the racetrack, worried more about the soundtrack to the journey than getting to the destination first.

[The whole lakefront path experience, and the thoughts and feelings it arose in me, made me think that maybe affirmative action should focus more on geography than race. The economic segregation is a bigger problem than racial segregation: it's so easy to confuse them because most poor neighborhoods in Chicago are Black, but not all African-Americans are poor.]

red bike luv

I have my red bike at my disposal and have been riding with it back and forth to downtown along Chicago's incomparable lakefront bike path. This is the first bike I bought as an adult from Working Bikes back in 2002. I took it with me to grad school, riding it around Iowa City, and then riding it across Iowa state. When I rode it on RAGBRAI, it was still a 10-speed. At some point after getting back to Chicago, I got doored and bent the right crank. After replacing it, the bike was left a 5-speed. Really, in Chicago, you hardly need gears at all. So, at some point, I converted it to a fixed-gear by replacing the wheels, the crankset, and the chain.

In the history of bikes, fixed gears came right after pennyfarthings, the latter not really being a "geared" bike at all having no chain.

Wikipedia: "the 1870s saw the development of the "safety bicycle" which roughly resembles bicycles today, with two wheels of equal size, initially with solid rubber tyres. These were typically equipped with a front spoon brake and no rear brake mechanism, but like penny-farthings they used fixed gears, allowing rear wheel braking by resisting the motion of the pedals."

This is pretty much exactly like my bike. It's so über-retro. The 80s are totally in these days, but my bike goes back a hundred years earlier. So it's like way even cooler than that.

[Ok, so I don't ride my bike because it's cool. Or, at least I don't love it because it's cool.]

When I started riding fixed, I mostly wanted to see what the fuss was about. Now I'm here to tell you what the fuss is about. It's about symbiosis as opposed to domination, analog versus digital. When the bike is in motion, you are in motion. There is no coasting, so there is no lazing around while the bike does all the work. Starting is work, stopping is work. Maintaining speed is the path of least resistance, for you can let your legs go somewhat limp and just let them follow the flow of the pedals. It helps to have your feet clipped in to the pedals. It encourages you to try to maintain a constant speed, for that requires the least work. So instead of stopping at red lights, I slow down way before and try to time them. If I fail, I can always practice my trackstand, which makes me look so super-ridiculous-cooler-than-thou. When I'm riding fixed, I never really stop, I just slow way down, like approaching zero Kelvin.

Most of that is just surface details or ex post facto rationalizations of my irrational feelings of joy riding my bike. It's all about going super fast while staying in control. Riding in traffic, I don't go quite as fast because I really can't stop as easily as on a "modern" bike. (I do, however, have a brake on the front wheel for emergencies.) Riding on the path, I can go faster but still keep it under 20 because you never know what kind of idiots are out there. Yesterday, it was super crowded and I had to do some fancy maneuvering. It was pleasing to blow by the plump yuppies on multi-thousand-dollar carbon fiber road bikes with their girth restricted by spandex. Bikes are not symbols of status but symbols of freedom.

I would hate for my expensive 1000-dollar racing bike to get the wrong idea. I love her too. When it comes to bikes, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool polyamorist like this guy. [This is Oberon holding the scull of a unicorn he made by fusing the horns of a goat into one. Judging by what is left of the unicorn, he did so for sexual purposes. I saw him speak once at the Occult bookstore thanks to she-who-was-called "pirate girl".] The bikes are just different riding experiences: the road bike is about the goal, the destination; the fixie is about the journey. Any way you want it, that's the way you need it.

I'm staying in Chicago for the next few days to: teach a piano lesson, give a bike tour, review a concert at the symphony. Apparently, everyone who is anyone will be at the symphony on Thursday: synchronicity. And then Friday to Détroit pour les obsèques.

Merci d'avoir lu jusqu'au bout. Que des conneries que j'ai racontées au jourd'hui. Tant pis.