19 July 1999: Bikie

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The under-chin buddy snuggle for convenient cozy head-petting.

For a while I have been meaning to say that I am as comfortable on two wheels as on two feet and if I get proficient with rollerblades I might have to rethink spiders. As it turns out, I'm lying. I am not as familiar with two wheels as two feet.

Yesterday we zipped up to Keystone for my first single-track experience. Or the first time in four years or five. RDC says we did single-track in Bigelow State Forest in Connecticut, but I don't believe him. I mean, I remember it, but that wasn't this.

Very few women made an appearance, and even fewer in the extremes by many men. Body armor, like hockey or football players. Helmets, yes, gloves, even knee and elbow pads. But shin pads? What was I getting into? Ahaha, don't listen to a word I say. I was going to ride green circles; they were going to ride black diamonds. Or, if they were going to ride greens, they weren't going to ride them like I was going to ride them.

Shocks on the front wheels, shocks and springs and struts and saddles that bounce. Helmets like motorcycle helmets. Gear.

I felt very pedestrian.

We cleared the trail a few times for people warming up on greens to prepare for blacks later in the day. One man in particular who rocketed by us showed why all the gear might come in handy. He aimed straight down the path, oblivious to the tiny boulders whose smaller cousin rocks I steer around. He hurtled full speed through hairpins around which I squeeze my brakes even tighter. He flew on the rough path on his fully suspended bike like he was that mohel in the spoof commercial. In seconds he had crossed a traverse I had gingerly taken at least a minute hard on my brakes to navigate. My eyes were riveted to his trail of dust.

I am far too timid.

I know that riding my brakes--and I did; my fingers cramped--gives me less control, but I preferred less control over a considerably slower vehicle to more control over a bike zooming toward trees and other crunchy objects. I figure it's like not being able to steer a boat unless it's going faster than the current (a factoid I gleaned from "The African Queen"). Perhaps if I were going faster than gravity alone impelled...

Well. It was a fun ride, wimpy as I felt. Eight miles across and down and if gravity meant I didn't have to pedal much, resisting gravity and steering and hopping did provide me with a good upper body workout.

Afterwards I thought maybe a simple creekside path so I could pedal some, but we both opted to quit like quitters. We ate our sandwiches sitting in the hatch of the Impreza--have I mentioned what a cool car it is? We can host tailgate picnics now--snacked at Starbucks (that's us, the cell phone naturalists--that was the Utne Reader article), and turned for home. It was raining, you know. And we listened to Pearl Jam, if that doesn't date us as pathetic has-beens who are still listening to music from the early 90s.

I saw a Secret Service agent on the news, the agent assigned to JFK Jr. personally. JFK Jr. had begun to squirm during his father's funeral--he was, after all, three--and Jackie asked the agent to remove him. He did, and in the vestibule or wherever they went stood an officer whom JFK Jr. saluted--with his left hand. The agent showed him that you should salute with your right hand, and so later in the day when Jackie knelt to tell her son to say goodbye to his father, he knew how to deliver a proper salute. And so he entered all of our hearts, say I, his junior by more than seven years.

My parents--my father, probably--squirreled away a few newspapers and a Life magazine during the time of the assassination and funeral, so I have known of that endearing, tragic moment since I was old enough to dig around in the garret.

This morning I felt like a racist bitch and then sighed with relief that I wasn't. When I turned on the television for the news, as usual the sound worked before the picture. Jesse Jackson was speaking about JFK Jr. When the picture cleared I reprimanded myself: do all black men sound alike, you cretin? That's not the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Then when I read the caption giving the speaker's name, I had my moment of relief: Representative Jesse Jackson Junior, who sounds more than he looks like his father.

 

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