1. I both hate and won’t do without certain cycling-related things.

2. I’m a whiny, unappreciative bitch.

3. I spend way too much time wishing cycling was like it was in the good old days. You know, “when I was a kid.”

Here is a list of the things I’ve realized that I hate, but also am not willing to do without. Because, in the end, regardless of inconvenience, they have value. and provide conveniences of their own.

Filling tires before every ride.

For instance, I’m sick and tired of having to check my tires every single damn time I take my bike out, else I risk one (or multiple) flats.

Because when I was a kid (Go ahead, roll your eyes. I understand.) if my tire wasn’t flat it was good enough. And how many flats did I get by being completely oblivious to my air pressure? Less than one per year.

Now I get a flat every time I just wish I could ignore it. Which means that I probably have one right this moment.

On the other hand, I love my air pump, it’s cool gauge, and that I don’t have to walk my bike to a gas station to fill my tires.

Cycling Shorts.

When I was a kid I’d ride my bike all day long, every day of the week, all summer break, and never have an buttache.

There were no fookin’ cycling shorts, and if their were I would have scoffed at them.

I do appreciate the added comfort my cycling shorts allow me, and the fact that their skinny little pad actually protects my hinterparts better than any cushioned, springy seat. But it irks me no end that I need them, need to spend money on them, need to take time to put them on, need to wash them separately so they last as long as possible.

Cycling Computers.

Why do I need one of these things? I never cared how far I rode, what the exact percent grade a hill was, my exact speed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, when I was a kid. I just went.

Now I feel naked if I don’t have my Garmin with me. Or, God forbid, its battery should die while I’m out on a ride. Please, Sweet Baby Jeebus, forbid it.

And it’s worse than that.

When I got my first cycling computer just having it was good enough. Then I obsessed over knowing how fast and how far it’d gone, then about keeping typed logs of my progress. Now, a simple, basic computer is not enough. I. Must. Have. A. Garmin (until there’s some reasonably priced and reliable substitute).

It’s pathetic.

Knowing that it’s pathetic I will continue to obsess over it, and continue to hate that I need it at all.

Oiling Chain and adjusting derailleur cables.

I actually did keep up with oiling my chain when I was a kid, because it helped extend chain life.

But now, instead of grabbing my dad’s oil can, which was full of car oil, and clicking a few drops onto the chain and gears, I need some stupid fookin’ special chain oil. Dry chain oil, wet chain oil. Because the Universe may come to an end if whatever kind of oil is better for whatever type of bike in whatever conditions isn’t used.

But what really irks me about all this is that it isn’t just my chain anymore. Now it’s my derailleurs, too.

Because in oiling the derailleurs I save wear and tear on the cables and increase the amount of time I need between tuneups / cable adjustments.

Ya know what? I never adjusted a derailleur cable when I was a kid. I’d ride my bike till the cable broke (usually 3 or 4 years), my dad would put a new cable on and adjust whatever needed adjusting, and blammy, another few years of riding ahead of me.

Why are cables and derailleurs made to such whimpy-arse standards that they have to be babied like . . . well, like babies? Why?

Which brings me to . . .

Cables and chains.

Modern cables and chains stretch like freakin’ Stretch Armstrong (who I’m pretty sure is no relation to His Deposed Holiness Lance Armstrong).

Yeah, the above mentioned oiling of derailleurs helps keep cables from stretching, but (say it with me), when I was a kid this was never a problem. There was no constant cable adjusting, no oiling of derailleurs because you trembled with fear over the possibility of your cable stretching and you might lose the ability to shift properly in the middle of a long ride.

And when I was a kid you didn’t have to so swap out your chain every year, two years at most, because they’d stretched so far that it affects your derailleur’s ability to adjust and to shift properly.

No, if you had a bike for 10 years, chances were you had the same chain on it the whole time. If it sagged you maybe pulled a link off of it (and cursed what a pain in the behindwards it was to do so, but that’s another story) and threw it back on.

The only time you ever got a new chain was when it snapped. Though they didn’t usually actually snap. They tended to brake on one side of a single link. Yes, due to lack of oiling, which quickly taught you to love your dad’s oil can full of car oil. See above.

Pedals.

There were no “platform pedals,” “clipelss pedals,” yada, yada, yada. It was just pedals.

Toe straps were an abomination.

Now I have these mechanical “clipless” pedals. Sure, they keep my feet from slipping off when it’s wet out or when the road or trail is bumpy, and once you get used to “clipping in” and “clipping out” (idiotic terms, considering that they’re called “clipless” pedals) they’re safer than riding platform pedals (which should just be called “pedals” and left at that).

It isn’t so much the fact of needing them that bothers me. It’s the additional expense, the special shoes (another additional expense).

And guess what? You have to fooking oil them to keep them operating smoothly! MORE oil for another prima donna, prissy, pansy-arse bike part.

Prep time.

But the thing that really gets me steamed is that all of this means that I can’t just roll my bike out the back door, throw my leg over the saddle and take off pedaling.

No, each of these things adds time and effort to the ride, BEFORE THERE EVEN IS A RIDE!

A few minutes to dig out my special cycling shorts and wiggle into them. A few more minutes to wiggle out of them later, and still a few more to hand wash them or to wash them separately on gentle so that I can get the greatest amount of use out of them (because they’re stupidly expensive and I can’t afford to replace them).

A few minutes to check the tire pressure and inflate to whatever PSI is needed.

A few minutes to get the oil out, oil the chain, the derailleurs, the clipless pedals.

A few minutes to get the Garmin off the charger, clip it into its cradle, turn it on, let it cycle through it’s start up and find satellites.

A few minutes to get out my special clipless pedal shoes, change into them, get the laces tucked away so the don’t snag on the chain.

More than the individual items themselves, it’s the time they require in advance of a ride EVERY DAMN RIDE, that really drive me bat guano crazy.

The benefits of all these things – bike shorts, cycling computers, light-weight cables, chains and derailleurs, clipless pedals – once they’re added up, come with a godawful lot of inconvenience and added expense. Yet, they bring enough good, enough of their own types of convenience to the table that I am not willing to do without them.

Instead I just whine and complain about them, while simultaneously being thankful that I have them (kind of).

Why can’t cycling be more simple and less costly? Like when I was a kid.

They’ve always been part of my life. But, not always in whatever way I want them to be at the time.

Right now it isn’t so much that I always want to ride them.

I want to gather them, but not collect them. I want to clean them up, repair them, give them to people who truly need them.

It’s such a sad thing to me when a perfectly good bike sits in a basement abandoned, or is thrown in the trash.

I also want to write about them. I love writing about bikes. Not about professionals and racing, and carbon fiber and titanium. But about simple people with simple bikes and how they’re connected to each other. About cruisers and skipchains and balloon tires, and prewar and postwar and style and unpretentious elegance.

My job, working a route on the far north side of Chicago, affords me to see a lot of things. Unfortunately, it does not often afford me the time to stop and photograph and interview, or even to just simply talk with and about all that it allows me to see.

Last week I rescued an old, steel-framed Giant Upland from a basement. It’s a beautiful blue, and it has a rack with collapsible cage-style panniers on the back.

Now it sits in my living room, waiting until I can afford to replace the cables, cable housings and pedals, plus maybe the chain, then put some fenders on it, and add a big basket up front. Then give it away.

Lesli Cohen, Editor of Cyclismas, is aware of what I want to achieve with this bike, and others I find. Together we’re hoping to get things rolling and maybe get three to six bikes per year into the hands of Chicago area homeless.

Right now we’re doing it with no money and no help, so the process is getting rolling slowly. But it’s still a dream and it excites me.

In the meantime the old blue Giant Upland sits in my living room, like a guest who I told could stay for a week while they tried getting back on their feet, but who never left.

About a month ago I was driving  in Chicago on Peterson (6000 north), heading east toward Ridge. There, on the north side of the street, was the most fantastic old woman. She was riding a cruiser in the same direction.

She wore an ankle-length, pleated gray skirt, a baggy floral top, and an absolutely enormous, wide-brimmed hat. Around the crown of the hat was a ring of giant flowers.

She rode effortlessly, sitting tall, her back perfectly straight.

The back of the bike had a rack and panniers, the front had a deep basket. There were plastic bags full of only she and God knew what, piled up high at both ends of the bike.

The sight of the glorious creature made my heart race. I had to talk to her!

But there was no safe place to stop and nowhere to park. By the time I drove a half mile down the road, turned around and came back, she was gone. I pulled into the private parking lot of a retirement home, where there was at least a dozen people standing around talking. No one knew her, or what I was talking about.

I drove up and down nearby side streets. She was on none of them.

I’m constantly coming up short in these plans. This leaves me feeling endlessly frustrated and worse, but no less excited about them.

I’ll keep chasing these little bike-related dreams of mine. If I chase them often enough eventually I’ll grab one.

In many places riding the sidewalk is illegal. The list of towns and cities that prohibit bikes on sidewalks is growing. But, it’s always a questionable choice when you consider the risks for bike vs pedestrian accidents.

Onward . . .

The obvious reasons that cyclists ride on a road are:

3. Because the law says they can.

2. Why not?

1. Because they’re crazy / have a death wish.

We’ll ignore those, and their mental instability.

What about the reasons that are not obvious? And should cyclists ride on the road? Should they be allowed to? Can they be helped via therapy and medication?

Most of those are beyond the scope of what I want to discuss today.

But, another question is implied by the original question: Why do cyclists ride on the road even when there’s a paved trail running right beside it?

To that there are several answers. Some of those answers are understood on a gut level, but without ever having been articulated, or thought out logically, or breaking through the fog of mental illness.

1. All asphalt is not created equal.

By that I don’t mean that some asphalt is an entire asphalt, while other asphalt is only 3/5th of an asphalt.

There are many varying grades and qualities of asphalt. The asphalt on the surface of a road is consistently of a better quality than the asphalt on a paved bike trail. The asphalt road surface is also faster than the asphalt bike trail.

This is not a difference that might be appreciated if you’re being powered along by something with a mechanical engine. But, it’s something very much felt, if not consciously appreciated, if you’re moving along powered by nothing save the muscles in your legs.

A mildly, sometimes even moderately, cracked road surface is almost always faster and more comfortable to ride on than any paved bike trail surface.

Why is it also more comfortable?

2. All asphalt construction is not created equal.

Paved roads are constructed in layers. At a minimum there is a compacted base (often of crushed limestone or, in the south, “soil cement”) a subsurface layer of asphalt, which may be inches thick, and the surface layer.

Each of these layers is constructed for a specific purpose, adds a specific quality to the finished road, and is required to meet or exceed specific standards (for instance a compaction standard for the base).

Roads are built to be fast, to provide a cushion, and to withstand the weight of motorized vehicles.

Bike trails are often constructed to stretch the available dollars. This allows more miles of trail to be paved, but sacrifices several levels of quality.

Bike trails rarely see their base compacted, at least to any standard. More likely it’s been scraped and leveled and called good enough. The only compacting, actually rolling, a bike trail can count on seeing, is to smooth out the surface after its laid down.

This means that something as simple and fragile as as grass root will easily cause bike trail asphalt to bulge and break. It means that bike trails are highly prone to cracking and splitting and that these cracks and splits will quickly become deeper, longer and wider.

This makes for a jarring, energy-sucking ride.

3. You know that little transition area of curbing at every intersection where a sidewalk or trail has an intersection with a road?

While they may look smooth enough, the various surfaces are just mismatched enough that they’ll jam your teeth every time you cross them on a bike.

If you ride on the road you don’t have to deal with that. Every intersection is just a continuation of smooth pavement.

4. The cyclists you see on the road, regardless of what their actual ability may be, are generally interested in going fast (whatever their personal rendition of fast may look like).

Bike trails are not amenable to fast riding, and not only because the surface itself is a slower surface.

• Most bike trail users (not just bike riders) are slow. This means that even in the best of situations a fast cyclist must weave in and out of trail traffic.
• These slower users of the trail tend to be oblivious to any other users of the trail. They meander from side to side, wobbling, zigging, zagging their way along.
• At time they travel in groups and these groups, sharing in the aforementioned oblivion, spread out over the full width of the trail.
• They let their kids ride or walk wherever they like, from one grassy edge all the way to the other, they allow their dogs to trail out far and wide, long leashes stretched out from one end of the world to the other. No consideration is given to the fact that someone may come up fast from behind or even from the other direction.
• A rider will call out to them, “I’m passing on your left,” or “I’m coming by you,” with what should be plenty of time for them to react, then the cyclist calls out again, and again. Yet, the pedestrians (or slower cyclists) remain immersed in their personal fog until they hear the sound of bike brakes grabbing hard. At which point they look indignantly at the cyclist for daring to intrude upon their daydreaming.

5. Bike trails are peppered with places that are dark and narrow and that provide little or no opportunity for escape, making them high risk places for cyclists to be beaten and robbed, or raped and murdered.

Do cyclists belong on the road? Do they contribute their “fair share” to road upkeep?

Yes. But, that’s for another article. One I’ll write maybe after my medication kicks in.

The particular padlock securing the mountain bike was an easy pick. Hit it with a hammer, just so, on both sides at the same time, and it would pop.

D hit it once. The lock twisted and didn’t give. Again. Not hard enough. Brace, swing. Pop.

A couple more seconds and the round-steel chain the lock had secured was pulled through the bike’s frame and tossed on the ground.

Then D was on top of the bike, pedaling jerkily toward a friend’s place. He for damn sure wasn’t taking it to his own digs.

For tonight he’d stash it inside the apartment. His friend would bitch about bringing stolen shit to his place. But this guy was easily shut up. Angry words up in his face, a shove, a smack, and he’d be cool with it all. Cool enough to stop his crying, at least.

In the morning D would ride the bike down the back alley to a Pakistani grocery where he could secret it in the basement. The store’s owner ran a lot of shit out of that place. A lot of shit. He’d pretend to not even see D roll in with the bike and disappear down the stairs with it, then tell him to help himself to a soda or something on his way out.

It’d chill down there for a year or longer.

* * * * *

They called him Maymay, but his name was something else. Something most people didn’t even remember and that somedays he wasn’t sure of, himself. He was in his later thirties, but looked like his later fifties and felt like a hard-worn later sixties.

His guts hurt all the time and he puked up blood at least half a dozen times every day.

The sun was high and bright and hot that day. It hurt his eyes and  made the slow, steady ache in his head turn into a low, sharp throbbing. He needed a drink. He was broke.

He hobbled out of the alley, hungry, weak, aching from another night sleeping on pavement with nothing but a ripped and filthy sleeping bag. He’d work his way down to McDonald’s and do some panhandling. His sleeping bag was rolled up and stowed in a heavyduty lawn and leaf trash bag that was beginning to wear out. He kind of carried it, kind of dragged it along with him.

D rolled up from behind him and startled the piss out of him. The dark spreading stain was hardly noticeable.

“Maymay! You just the man I’s lookin’ fo’.”

“No I ain’t. I got nothin’ you want. Ain’t got nothin’ at all.”

Maymay kept moving toward McDonald’s. D rolled along beside him.

“I got somethin’ YOU want, M. I got this bike, right here.”

Maymay looked at the bike. Someone, probably D, had halfassed painted it baby-puke yellow, but only in places. The places where there’d been any kind of identification.

Maymay could imagine that bike with a rack and a basket and a milk crate, piled high with all his stuff. That is, all the stuff he could collect if he had himself a bike with a rack and a basket and a milk crate, instead of a shitty garbage bag. Then again, he could come up with a milk crate, but where the hell would he get a rack and a basket.

“I told you I got nothin’. And that bike ain’t got no place to keep stuff.”

“We can work it all out, Maymay. We can work it allllll out.”

* * * * *

D forced Maymay into the next alley, then about halfway down it.

“I’m gonna work you a deal, M. You gonna thank me.”

Maymay was scared. His shaking was more than just hunger and withdraws.

D said, “You gonna suck some dick, M. Then I gonna give you this old bike and you gonna go off and find yo’sef a nice milk crate to tie on to the front and make the whole thing good as new. You cool with that? I ain’t hearing you answer me, Maymay? I said, you cool with that?”

D tossed in an ass-beating, because he didn’t think he’d gotten fair value and you can’t let these fucking bums think they got one up on you.

Maymay found himself a milk crate, a length of chain and a padlock. He never talked about where he’d gotten the bike.

* * * * *

Maymay had a habit of dropping the bike on its side first thing when he dismounted. He’d drunk crashed it more times than he remembered, and a few more times when he wasn’t drunk but was wishing he could be.

The bike was old already, and not in the best shape. He managed to replace the tires once, though the “new” ones were cracked on the sides. He’d replaced the tubes a couple times but didn’t get the stems lined up very well with the stem holes in the wheels.

The seat came loose, then fell off. He tied it back on with an scrap of towel he’d found.

Over time the baby-puke yellow paint mostly wore off, along with the decals it had hidden. A brake arm broke off on the front, another snapped in half on the back.

The back tire wasn’t holding air. It was going flat every day and the guys at the gas station had stopped letting him fill it for free. He tried to get a new tube for it but couldn’t, at least not without spending some of his vodka money on it.

Wednesday came and it was as good a day to give up as any. Maymay chained his bike to the bike stand outside of McDonalds, that one on Clark just north of Southport. He begged some lunch and some cash and when he was all done he cut the milk crate off the front and walked away.

The cables were corroded, the cable housings were cracked. But that the bike needed a little work was not a problem. The chain was a rusted mess. It was all minimal. Even the tires, which were the original matched set of Schwinn HP Sport, were in passable condition for now, minus a bit of rot in the sidewalls.

When he rolled it through the door of his third floor apartment his wife rolled her eyes and said, “You aren’t keeping that filthy thing in here.” And she meant it.

“No worries. It’s going on the balcony.”

“You mean where we sit and talk at night? Where we grill our meat and eat our meals? I don’t think so.”

“It won’t take up any space at all. I’m gonna hook it by the handlebar drops over the edge of the iron railing with the pedal resting on the decking to support it. It’ll be fine out there.” he said.

“Until you fumble as you try to hang it and it falls three stories onto the sidewalk.”

“Won’t happen. I’m very careful.”

He found a place that could supply cable housing that was an exact match for the look of the original, and it was a reasonable price. The cables themselves cost hardly anything and were simple to install. He spent a pleasant afternoon swapping them out with the old ones.

He replaced the chain, but the new one was too small and the rear wheel sat 70% forward in the dropouts. Aside from that his work was excellent.

When he finished he flipped the bike easily over the edge of the rail… to have it twist oddly in his hands, catch briefly on the railing, and tumble 30+ feet to the rock-hard concrete below, landing to earth with a jarring crash.

He hurried downstairs, hoping irrationally that the bike had escaped damage. Alas, the full 40 lbs of weight was absorbed through the very tip of the stem, somehow only marking the stem itself with a series of heavy scratches, but sending a shockwave through the frame that bent both top tube and down tube.

The curve on the top surfaces of both was so graceful that it almost looked like it had been designed into the frame. But the lower section of the bend showed an unnatural bulge.

His wife was not at home, gone out on errands. He dragged the bike back to their apartment and hung it over the balcony railing. She hardly gloated at all when he told her what happened.

“So you’ll get rid of it now, right?”, she said.

“That bend in the top and down tubes didn’t twist the frame at all. I think it’ll still be a good bike if I just replace the stem.”

But the bend in the frame bothered him more each time that he looked at it. After he replaced the stem, that ’69 Schwinn World hung over the railing of his balcony for another year or a bit longer.

The frame rusted around the damaged section where the paint was missing. And his wife finally got sick of seeing it hang idle. She insisted that he dispose of the metallic corpse.

* * * * *

Omar maintained a 100-year-old apartment building in Chicago, on Surf Street right between Broadway and Clark. He stepped out into the alleyway one morning and could not believe his eyes. There in the alley, leaning against one of his dumpsters, was a blue Schwinn World. It was 30 years old if it was a day.

Its parts seemed to be original, except that someone had recently replaced the cables and cable housing. The right hand shifter was bent, but in good working condition.

He sighed. The frame was bent, too. In two places, one right above the other.

But he’d grown up repairing old bikes and still did it occasionally as a hobby. He thought he might be able to work some magic on this one.

He rolled it, with its flat tires and crooked wheels, into the back of his basement shop and leaned it against the 100-year old brick wall.

Months later he’d found no time to work on the bike and put it in his mind to get rid of it, but without ever quite being able to take it back out to the dumpster.

* * * * *

And that’s how it came into my hands.

I may, with some patience, be a good enough bike mechanic to get everything in working order and see this bike back on the road. But I lack the time and the money to give it the attention it requires.

It’d make a killer touring bike, if it had things like fenders, collapsible cage-style panniers, a rack over the back tire, and a basket on the front; it’d still make a killer touring bike, or a bike for the cycling homeless. But that isn’t going to happen. I haven’t decided for certain just what its fate will be, but I imagine it’ll go something like this:

It’ll sit in my living room until I realize that I have too much bike and too little space. Then it’ll be put on Craigslist for sale and some guy who does restorations will pick it up for hardly anything. He’ll pull it apart and make it live again through the bikes its parts go into. Then he’ll throw out the damaged frame, or give it to some guy driving one of those Mexican scrap collecting trucks.

The End.

He was also my next door neighbor and the kid who I spent the most time with on or around a bike during many summers growing up in NJ. I wouldn’t say we were best friends, but we hung out a lot more than either of us did with anyone else.

Most of that hanging out time we spent talking, or talking while we went about the business of children on summer break. It’s only now, a gazillion years later, that I realize how much we did that, how smooth and easy those times were, how good a conversationalist he was.

Most often we fished and we’d usually ride our bikes the few miles to a favorite spot on the Muskenetcong river. That included about a mile-and-a-half-long ride down, and later back up, Main Street at grades I’m guessing run between 5% and 9%.

You’d expect that Mark, with his extra weight, would have struggled on a the ride back. Early in our friendship that was true, but we rode it so often that he came to take it almost as easily as I did.

As we rode down that hill, our fishing poles stuck out ahead of us as if we were a pair of knights riding with lowered lances. I don’t think there was a single fishing trip where we didn’t make note of that or ride full tilt downhill as if we were charging a dark and sinister opponent who was bent upon our deaths.

This was a couple years after Mommy Dearest left my beloved Stingray down in Knoxville, TN.

Somewhere between the loss of my Stingray and the riding down Main to go fishing, a family friend had cleaned out his barn and given us half a dozen ancient bikes, all cruisers, that had been sitting unridden and covered in dust for at least a couple decades.

Most of the tires and all of the tubes were rotted beyond use. Some wheels were warped, some chains broken, some seats missing. But that pile of scrap bikes made my heart race. There was beauty and life in it.

With a little garbage picking and a few trips into Washington to buy tubes and chains, there was more than enough good stuff for me to build a few serviceable bikes.

The bikes I made were not works of art. They were Frankenbikes. But they were as lovely as any bike ever on any road.

That’s where Mark and I invested large chunks of our time. Coming up with different configurations for that pile of long-ignored wonder, trying them out, figuring out that some chains wouldn’t work on some bikes, that some wheel combinations worked and some would make the pedals hit the ground and wipe me out, that some rotted tires had some miles left in them, that some forks looked cool when you used one to extend the other but some just looked stupid and rode like shit.

Sometimes my neighbor two doors in the other direction, John, would hang with us while we worked on our bikes, or built mine.

John was a year ahead of me in school, but he should have been two years ahead and he was always at risk of flunking again. Except the school wouldn’t allow him to go back another grade because of his age, so he always managed to just make it to the next.

They tried making him get there honestly a few times, assigning him to summer school. But, he just didn’t show up most days and they ended up giving him a phony pass anyway.

John was taller than me and more muscular. His brown hair was wavy, ran about halfway down his neck and he had a nervous habit of running his right hand through it and then doing a kind of rock star angling back of his head while he shook it all out.

He was about 13 and already smoking when I first met him.

John could be the coolest, most genuinely kind, most generous kid (or person) I knew, or he could be the most psychotic. Mostly he was okay.

The one person in his family who really gave a shit about him – his favorite sister, Barb – stepped in front of a semi out on Route 31, down by the First National Bank, about the time he turned 14. She was about 18 at the time, maybe just a little older.

John didn’t talk about her or what happened very often, but when he did it was obvious that time didn’t ease the sting very much and that he’d love her for the rest of his life. He was a hardass, so of course he’d never cry about it, and if he did neither Mark nor I were asshole enough to notice out loud.

Some people said it was an accident, but the trucker who hit her said that in the moments just before she stepped out in front of him, she looked up into his cab and right into his eyes. Someone once said that she’d mouthed, “I’m sorry.” The guy never drove a truck again after that.

The story haunted John and during the times when his shitty family was at its shittiest he suffered moments of bitterness over her leaving him. But, mostly he just missed her all the time.

John was the most physically at-ease kid I’ve ever seen, which is not to say that he was graceful, because he wasn’t. But, he was loose from head to toe, no matter what we were doing. He laughed more and easier than anyone else we hung out with, but he brooded more, too. His body and his mind were naturally at rest, but his soul was in knots.

I can’t remember what kind of bikes Mark and John rode, except that John’s had very high handlebars and he had a thing for tall sissy bars. I only remember spending a shit-ton of hours with them riding.

“What kind” of bike was meaningless to us all, as long as you didn’t ride a girl’s bike. They were bikes, though it would be incorrect to say they were “just bikes.” They were cool and fun, but mostly they just were and that was enough. They helped define who we were, separately and as a group, though we didn’t realize it back then.

I can’t fathom, now, why I did it, but one day I removed the stem from one of the bikes I was building.

I was working on it out in front of my house, with Mark keeping me company. I got it tightened back up and Mark said, “I don’t think it’s straight.”

It looked okay from where I was. So, I called him names, then had him hold the bike and went to look at it from where he’d been standing. Yep. Crooked.

Loosen. Bump, bump, tap.

“How’s that?”

“Too much.”

“Fuck.”

Tap . . . tap.

“Better?”

Mark shrugged. He wasn’t always the most helpful companion.

Good enough. I started snugging it in place.

Just about then John sauntered over (he was the greatest saunterer in the history of the world), smoking. He did that nervous thing with his hair and said, “That thing ain’t straight. You got a curve in your eye or something? I saw how crooked it was from all the way by my house but you can’t see it from right on top the damn bike?”

“You’re full of shit. We just . . .”

Mark said, “No, it’s still out.”

I sighed, aiming ugly thoughts at Mark, as if it was his fault. I started loosening it again.

John said, “Get off of there. Let me get it.”

Mark and I just looked at each other, because we knew John wasn’t worth a shit at anything that required tools. But he was John and it was pointless to tell him “no,” so I got off the bike and “accidentally” dropped the wrench when I handed it to him.

He looked at me with cigarette smoke curling into his eye and said, “Har hardy har har. That’s real funny, punk.” Then he stooped and picked up the wrench.

We let him play with it for a minute or so, then Mark said, “You made it worse.”

At which point John threw the wrench on the ground and said the two words he probably said more than any other two words in his life, “Fuck it.”

“Thanks, that was very helpful, Mr Straight Eye.” I said.

“Yeah. Well, ya know what? Fuck you. You wanna go down to your grandfather’s store and get a Crush? I’m buying.” His family was broker’n shit, but somehow John almost always had money, and he loved orange Crush maybe as much as Mark loved Twinkies.

“Nope. Gotta straighten the crooked stem you just fixed.”

Mark was torn, but he hung with me while John started down the street.

About that time my dad came outside, looked at me as I was loosening the stem, and unhelpfully said, “It’s crooked. Who taught you to put one of those things on?”

“Me.”

He shook his head with that look of disgust he gets any time he sees me ineptly attempting to fix anything. Then he went back into the house to watch some twenty-year old comedy rerun for the 53rd time and chuckle like he’d never seen it before while he sucked Pall Mall smoke into his lungs.

Mark turned around, running after John. After a minute I followed on a hodgepodge bike that had a crooked stem.

* * * * *

He is a smallish man from Mexico, with a heavy accent but an excellent English vocabulary. I’ve known him for five years and never learned his name.

“My name? Ohh . . . you can call me Joseph”, he said when I asked him.

The previous month the building manager had told me that Joseph uses his bicycle to deliver fruit.

The bike is a well-ridden Specialized. The name “Specialized” is nearly worn off and there’s no longer any hint of the model name visible. The seat is permanently covered with a plastic shopping bag to keep Chicago’s weather from destroying it.

The bike has Shimano XT derailleurs,

Shimano cantilever brakes,

Araya VX 400 wheels (“Specially designed for use of hybrid/cross bicycles with cantilever brakes . . .”)

Mismatched Kenda tires with the more aggressive tread on the rear wheel

And handlebars so beautifully worn, with so much character, that you can tell he has taken many rides holding a package of food in his right hand while handling his bike with his left.

I at first thought the bike was about ten years old, but after doing a little research (see link for wheels, above) I believe it’s closer to twenty.

To be honest, while we talked I thought admiringly about his bike. There are many bicycles of the same age around Chicago, but few of the same quality. Specialized and its peers no longer manufacture comparable bikes at prices affordable to the average rider. This was a most excellent find.

I remembered, or thought I did, that Joseph rode a newer blue Roadmaster MTB knockoff, but I vaguely recalled him telling me that he gotten a second bike. When?

“How long have you had that Specialized that’s locked up out front, Joseph?”

“My bike?” he said, “About three years. Three years ago I got that bike.”

The Roadmaster is gone. It just couldn’t compare to the Specialized.

“I ride a lot in the summertime, from here to McCormick Place, up and around by the lake [Lake Michigan] then some up north [near Evanston]” he said.

“You deliver fruit on your bike?” I asked.

“No just . . . sometimes fruit, or something. The medicines and stuff. Salads.”

He makes the salads himself. Salads and a lot more, but I’ll tell you about that soon.

He took out his phone and he started thumbing through pictures.

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked him.

“A short time. A few months. It’s a hobby,” he said.

“What made you want to start?”

“Everything that I cook.”

He eats healthy. He likes to help other people to also eat healthy.

“What do you carry it all in? A backpack? A basket?”

“No. I have a plastic bag. I hold it in my hand. With one hand I ride the bike.”

He had continued to scroll through pictures as we talked. Now he showed me one.

“This is my burger.” he said.

It was gorgeous. There are professional chefs whose presentation cannot compare. And he’s delivering on a bike while carrying a plastic bag? I was, and continue to be, amazed.

Another picture. “My enchiladas.”

He showed me picture after picture of different dishes. The variety and the consistently beautiful presentation was amazing.

What does he charge for these fantastic, hand-delivered, homemade meals?

“Six or seven dollars.”

“Can you email me some of these pictures, so I can include them in the article?”

He said, “I have no email. I have too many troubles with email. People are crazy, they ask you for money. That’s just stupid.” He said he’d text them to me, but never did.

I wanted to take his picture to go along with the article, but he was skittish.

“I’m not . . . ah . . . how you say . . . not ready for the business. You know? Because I just started to cook. I’m not ready for the business to grow. It’s only a hobby right now.You can take a picture of the bike.”

So I did.

But, if you just happen to be in the area of Chicago that is around Devon (6400 north) and Clark (+/- 1600 west) you can have Joseph bring you one of his lovingly-made meals for the ridiculously low price of “six or seven dollars” by calling him at 773-397-0460.

Even sunlight seemed reluctant to enter that place. Once the door was closed behind me the lone, undersized incandescent bulb pushed out an ugly, inadequate splash of yellow light that was barely assisted by gaps in the boarded up window at the back of the room.

Two feet from the door, resting against the leaking hot water heater, was a Diamondback faux MTB, with its needlessly heavy steel frame and its mock full suspension.

Eh.

But the janitor seemed to like it. He walked to it and one of his bony, too-pale hands brushed over the seat in a gentle, familiar way. The sharp edges of his shoulder bones poked up from outside the straps on his grey tank top as he went still, looking down at the bike meditatively.

It was obvious that he was a bit off. Maybe more than a bit.

I went to work, spraying most of the corners for spiders, which was my purpose for being at this building. I poked the beam of my flashlight around the room and made my way behind the small furnace that filled its center.

Two surprises waited for me on the other side. The first was a rat. It was bones, a hint of fur, not much else.

I toed the sleek, white skull. It half rolled to one side, then, as I moved away from it, settled back where it had been and returned to its long slumber.

The second surprise was a dainty black cruiser, its tires 3/4 flat, its frame covered with a layer of sticky dust. It leaned against the brick  wall just beneath the boarded up window. Saltpeter leaked from the mortar in a white fuzz, as is often the case in century-old brick buildings like this one. To my left was an opening, a small room, of just the size to accept that bike and its rider.

It all reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat.” I could imagine the lunatic janitor unknowingly sealing the little darling up behind a wall of brick and lime plaster along with… who?  … after once already hanging it.

That story scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. Now that I was an adult, of course, it was no big deal.

“Nice little bike.” I said, foolishly not looking back at him as I wondered if he was raising an ax to split my skull open.

“Yeah? You want it?”

I probably didn’t flinch. I mean, I don’t think I did, but maybe. Just a little. “What? I mean… really?” I said, and hardly stammered at all.

He looked at me either like I was needlessly jumpy or like he was calculating the best spot to bury that ax. I wasn’t sure which, but I was leaning toward the latter.

He said, “Yeah. We put up a notice about a month ago, telling everyone to claim and mark their bikes. No one came for this one. You want it, it’s yours. If not it’ll end up in the dumpster as soon as I get around to it.”

“You mean, you’re not going to…  er, I uh, hell yeah. Thank you.”

Clearly he was a deranged killer.

He had greeted me that morning wearing the grey tank top, moon-and-stars fleece pajama bottoms, and dirty orange flip-flops. If that’s how he dressed for work, then I suspected it’d be a long damn time before he got around to the task of tossing this old bike in the trash. And like he really wasn’t going to wall it up in that little alcove along with some poor innocent’s body. Riiiiiiight.

I went inside the main building to knock on a few doors. When I came back outside he had pulled that little cruiser out of its tomb and removed the front wheel so I could fit the bike in my car.

Trying to throw me off my guard. Clever.

It was late evening before I had a chance to really examine the bike I had so recently saved from that raving madman of a janitor.

It was a girl’s junior cruiser, its wheels of the 24″ variety, its seat cover rubber that was crafted to very nicely resemble leather. There were bits of rope stuck to the head tube and what appeared to be burn marks on the frame.

One of the first things I noticed was that the black paint had run in places.

Damn. Repainted.

Stolen? I speculated that it was not, because whoever had painted it took the time to remove all the pieces and parts from the frame before painting, rather than hastily covering everything that mattered with black in hopes that no one would recognize it and thereby getting paint on all the parts that shouldn’t have paint on them.

No, this had been done by someone who was simply a better bike mechanic than he was a painter. He’d had some affection for this bike.

From the not-quite-entirely-flat state of the tires and from the amount of dust on the frame, I was guessing it was placed in that dungeon furnace room about nine months ago.

Had he intended to continue his work at some later time? Why had he abandoned it?

I knew exactly what had happened. The janitor. The ax. It was all clear, and suddenly I knew what befell the phantom painter and whose corpse was to be walled up in that alcove.

But, whatever. I had the bike now. His untimely demise was my gain.

On the tank, beneath the shabby, new black paint, was a sticker that said, “JAVELIN” and another that showed the Olympic rings.

The only thing that had not been painted over was the triangular head sticker, which was not on the head tube, but instead on the top front of the tank, just above the little fake head lights, one of which seemed to be missing. The head sticker read, “Roadmaster AMF.”

It’s not a valuable bike, but it’s lovely, and worth some minor attempt at getting back on its wheels.

Odd though, there is a little white mark on the front fender. At first it seemed like nothing; a scratch, a drop of paint, of no consequence.

But each time I’ve looked at it since that first night it has come more and more to resemble a … gallows.

Or is that a can of aerosol paint?

————–

Duane over at Chester Cycles in Chicago has pointed me toward a product that MAY help remove the poorly applied black paint without damaging the original beneath.

About the author:

Bikezilla is the handle for Tom Schaller, a professional in the varmint control industry and a crack interviewer of personalities in the world of cycling. His writing can be found here and on his blog, “Bikezilla: Ride the Puddles.”

At four years old, before he could read or write, and before he could ride a bike, Bikezilla wanted to be a writer.

He figured that if he couldn’t write stories, he’d tell them.

For instance, he told his mom that he’d hold his new baby sister while she (mom) ran into the house for a moment. Then he dropped that very same new baby sister upon the ground. Not on purpose, but still he dropped her. She cried, mom came running, he got yelled at. They’ve hated each other ever since.

Some things are just meant to be, and she was meant to be a brother.

Sometime later he wrote a series of short stories based a Peter Gabriel’s “So” album. One of his sisters, no not that one, loved them. Knowing that he was supposed to suck when he wrote his first stories he also knew that she was a lying ho bag. It did not matter than she read and reread those stories many times. She was a liar. And so they also came to hate each other.

Thusly did Bikezilla wander through his life, leaving a black trail of dysfunction in his wake. Until Lesli Cohen found him digging through a McDonald’s dumpster for food and said, “Come, sit in that corner and eat your maggot covered dregs, and write for me, away from all the Wangdoodles and Hornswogglers and Snozzwangers and rotten, Vermicious knids.”

Right, she quoted Willy Wonka. Bikezilla didn’t get it, either. But he came and he ate his picked-over trash and he wrote and life was. It just was.

You can follow Tom on Twitter @bikezilla1 and can take a gander at his artwork on his Etsy page.

A few days ago that’s what I was doing; sitting, waiting, getting frustrated about the sitting and the waiting.

Coming toward me on the other side of the street was one of Chicago’s biking homeless on a old steel frame MTB knockoff.

There are lots of these guys around Chicago. For instance, the guy who owned the old Moongoose in the above picture. No, that’s not this guy’s bike. But the two of them could be brothers, so closely matched are their mannerisms and appearance.

There’s something different about these guys. Maybe even a couple things, or several.

Unlike the shambling variety of homeless, and the shopping cart pushers, you don’t see the same biking homeless always in the same area. They take their freedom to roam seriously. So, you don’t get acclimated to seeing any one of them like you do with some of the others.

But, it’s more than that. You can see them riding at you from a long way off and instantly know that it’s one of them coming down the road. Maybe it’s the slow, easy cadence, or the way they meander more than your average cyclist, or maybe it’s the milk crates covered in plastic bags strapped to the fronts and sometimes the backs of their bikes, or perhaps the sometimes wobbliness of their riding. Maybe it’s all of that, or none of it. I’ve never really stopped to ponder it.

I’d never seen this one before, at least not to the point where I remembered him at all.

When he was maybe two car lengths away from me, he looked over, saw me sitting in my car, and swerved smoothly to the opposite curb. He laid his bike down so that it was two-thirds in the road, and then walked toward me like he’d been waiting to see me.

He pantomimed smoking as he approached, “You got a cigarette?” he was asking.

I pushed the button to lower my window, allowing the a/c to leak out of the car. “Nope, don’t smoke.”

He continued walking toward me. He was maybe two inches taller than me, sandy-haired and broad. “That’s ok. Hey, I wanna talk to you for a minute.”

Yay me. Another homeless guy who wants to breathe booze in my face for five minutes.

I must have one of those faces that says, “Unload all of your besotted street wisdom upon me. Please. Pretty please. Pretty please with a cherry on top,” because this isn’t uncommon enough.

Before I get further into this I want to make sure I don’t paint too bad a picture of him. He didn’t stink, in fact he seemed clean. He did not even smell overwhelmingly of booze, just a little. Considering that it was about 1 pm, late in the day to be sober for Chicago’s homeless, he really was doing ok. He’d even shaved in the last twenty-four hours.

He stuck his fist out to be bumped. I obliged.

“This is a beautiful day, isn’t it?”, he said as he leaned his forearm onto the open edge of my window.

“Yes, it is.”

“Oh, hi, I’m Jimmy, by the way.” Another fist bump.

It went on like that for a few minutes.

I maybe should have been thinking, “This is a cool guy. He isn’t acting crazy. It’ll be fine.”

But what was actually going through my mind was, “He’s gonna try to snatch something, or he’s gonna hit me and snatch something, or he’s gonna spit on me and run away.”

He was in my space, talking too close, making small contacts. Fist bumping about every thirty seconds.

I waited.

He kept talking.

“Do you know that Jesus loves you?”

“Uh huh. I’ve heard that, Jimmy. Thank you.

“Welp, it’s true. He does. And so do I.”

“Ok, thanks, Jimmy.”

He missed or ignored the patronage in my tone, and I felt just a little asshole-ish for allowing it to come out.

Then he stuck his hand out, open. It was half again the size of mine. “Here, take my hand.”

I tried not to sigh. I’m pretty sure I failed. But, I took it. I took his hand and we locked our fingers around each others’ thumbs in kind of a Bro-power-handshake thingy.

“Now, look me in the eyes. Important things shouldn’t be said without eye contact.”

I thought, “Please, Jesus, if you reeeeeeeeeally love me… ”

I looked into Jimmy’s eyes. They were medium grey and surprisingly clear, hardly any little red blood vessels showing at all.

“Has anyone ever looked you in the eyes and told you that they love you?”

To my relief he didn’t actually say that he loved me. I made a point of not mentioning this failure.

“Sure, Jimmy. Yes, they have.”

“Well, good. Everyone should know that. Everyone should hear that.” He said, not letting go of my hand.

I thought, “This locked hands thing will either be better or worse for me when he goes for whatever it is he has planned.”

I waited without listening while he kept talking, rambling, not always making sense.

“Can I have my hand back, Jimmy?”

“Not till I say what I have to say. Now, look me in the eyes again.”

Right, eye contact. Again. Fine. Whatever it was he had to say this time, it mostly blew by me like a breeze. I just wanted my hand back and Jimmy to go about his business.

A few minutes later he released his grip.

I’d been waiting for the person who was supposed to meet me for way too long, which had nothing to do with Jimmy. I picked up my radio to call Debi in my office. Jimmy seemed to take this as his signal to split.

He stood up and backed slightly away, still talking. I can’t tell you what he was saying, it was all white noise to me by that point.

I said, “Bye, Jimmy. Thanks.”

Then he turned, picked up his bike, threw his right leg over the top, and rode away with a  half salute and a little wave.

About the author:

Bikezilla is the handle for Tom Schaller, a professional in the varmint control industry and a crack interviewer of personalities in the world of cycling. His writing can be found here and on his blog, “Bikezilla: Ride the Puddles.”

At four years old, before he could read or write, and before he could ride a bike, Bikezilla wanted to be a writer.

He figured that if he couldn’t write stories, he’d tell them.

For instance, he told his mom that he’d hold his new baby sister while she (mom) ran into the house for a moment. Then he dropped that very same new baby sister upon the ground. Not on purpose, but still he dropped her. She cried, mom came running, he got yelled at. They’ve hated each other ever since.

Some things are just meant to be, and she was meant to be a brother.

Sometime later he wrote a series of short stories based a Peter Gabriel’s “So” album. One of his sisters, no not that one, loved them. Knowing that he was supposed to suck when he wrote his first stories he also knew that she was a lying ho bag. It did not matter than she read and reread those stories many times. She was a liar. And so they also came to hate each other.

Thusly did Bikezilla wander through his life, leaving a black trail of dysfunction in his wake. Until Lesli Cohen found him digging through a McDonald’s dumpster for food and said, “Come, sit in that corner and eat your maggot covered dregs, and write for me, away from all the Wangdoodles and Hornswogglers and Snozzwangers and rotten, Vermicious knids.”

Right, she quoted Willy Wonka. Bikezilla didn’t get it, either. But he came and he ate his picked-over trash and he wrote and life was. It just was.

You can follow Tom on Twitter @bikezilla1 and can take a gander at his artwork on his Etsy page.

Photo© 2013 by Bikezilla/Tom. Available for purchase on Etsy.

Riding toward me were a brother and sister. He was maybe 14, her about 12.

I was pedaling down a long straight and they were just coming out of not-quite-shallow curve, chatting as they rode. The boy was looking ahead and saw me, with my little blinky light in my helmet, before he even left the curve, but his sister was oblivious, looking at him as she yapped away.

As we got closer she began drifting into my line, as if my bike was a magnet drawing her toward us.

Her brother tried to get her attention:

“Christine.”

She turned her head more sharply toward him, her line drifting harder into mine.

“Christine, look ahead.” He backed off his own speed and she drifted ahead of him, her line wobbling slightly back in his direction.

Either to spite him for telling her what to do, or because she was just a little ditsy, Christine instead turned even more toward him, her body beginning to twist with the effort, her line now coming right at me, then opening slighting beyond mine.

Her brother stayed calm, but tried again to get her to pay attention.

“Christine, turn around.” His chin lifted to point at me.

She continued looking at him, her line coming back directly in front of mine, but floating back toward her brother.

She was doing a carefree, flighty rendition of the Stupid Squirrel Dance, and my thoughts seesawed with her line. As she swayed to and fro across the trail I calculated and recalculated the odds that she would or would not wander in front of me just as we were passing and whether or not I would have to brake or change my line to avoid a crash.

We were maybe 200 feet apart when I said, “HEY!” touched my brakes and veered ever so slightly to my right.

Christine finally woke up, startled, and briefly lost control of her bike as she turned and saw me closing on her. She nearly fell over directly in front of her brother, kind of righted herself, her eyes open wide, her mouth gaping like a choking fish. She said, “Ohhhh!” as we barely failed to brush against each other and her foot came down on the trail to prevent her from toppling.

Disaster averted, her brother laughed lightly at her as he came nearly to a stop to avoid running into her. He said something else to her, in that same calm tone, but I couldn’t hear what it was as I entered the shallowish curve they had just exited and they were gone, vanished into the sun-speckled shadows of the overhanging trees.