Riding Dirty

I woke up early this past Sunday morning in an ashy mess of a living room strewn with beer cans, blunt innards, miscellaneous flakes floating around and a snoring roommate surrounded by bottles of painkillers... the TV was still on and my brain felt dried, wrung and stupid, burned with digital images and droning sounds. My sinuses were sore with languishing stale smoke, my blood felt dirty, my muscles creaky stiff and cold. I stumbled into bed unhappily and reflected on the shitty physical state I had let myself get into with my face buried miserably in the pillow, coming to the conclusion that this is just not how my life is going to be. I'd have to take immediate action to shake myself out of this wintertime stagnant potato chip movie watching lifestyle, or why not just pour the quicklime straight into my skull and die now?

I got up officially when my bike mechanic friend came over to help me work on my Bianchi road bike. I've been waiting to work on it since the summer but I've have been pretty much just been busy keeping my other bikes ridable. In the meantime, I thought out the process, talked to my bike mechanic, came up with the gear ratio that I want and put aside the $$. It had been sitting in the corner all dusty with a bent wheel just being unusable and annoying.

I'd been riding my mountain bike to work since it got cold out and my road bike would get all salty and messed. Its a stable bike to ride in the raw elements and its fun to jump curbs and roll through bridges, but it is also fucking slow and heavy. I got passed on the street by all kinds of dorks one too many times, contributing to the depression of last weekend. I don't really have the sort of constitution to be fine with being the slowest person on the road.

By 10 AM I had taken my bike apart completely. I got new wheels and fit the back one to a single cog, took off the gear shifters and derailleurs, cut my chain and oh shit, its converted. Those may have been the most educational few hours that I have had in a long time, my mind was spinning in high gear. I found myself happily playing with my old hub on the carpet in total fascination. I worked with like 20 different tools that I had never seen before. It looked awesome, especially with all the extra gear stuff taken off. My mood changed and I was a completely different person from the cranky croakiness of the early morning.

But the next day when I was riding it, something felt kind of off and I wasn't too surprised when the chain fell off and I heard the faint clink of broken washers on the road, a fucked up sound to hear when you're on your way to work and late. So I walked it to the bike shop later in the day where we took off the old stupid biopace chain ring and my old pedals and just set up a new crank system. It turned out that the shape of my old shit was ovular and made my chain fall off without the derailleurs. I had never taken apart my bike and put it back together by myself before- my bike mechanic encourages a sort of dependency when it comes to fixing stuff.

"What's this?" I'll ask.

"Ah, basically, its really complicated and that's why you have me here to help you."

"But what if something happens to you? Then I'd have to go figure it all out off wikipedia?!? What?!?!?!?!? I need to learn."

Taking my bike apart reminded me of how I used to love taking apart my skateboard to clean out the bearings, set up new wheels and fuck around with the bushings on the trucks. Every part of my skateboard is customized to my exacting specifications, except for the grip tape which I usually like to outsource because I'm clumsy with that shit. Once you've had your hands on every bit of hardware and have rotated the screws on every thread to exactly the place where it will bear your weight perfectly to your style it is your skateboard - more of a part of you than your shoes or clothes.

The bike ride home was delightful. I never us that word, but thats what it was. I was delighted. "My bike is the shiiiiiiiitt!," I sang at the top of my lungs, "my bike is the bomb-dot-com! Its the smoothest bike in town! There's no cooler bike around!" I called Jen 10 times in a row until she answered because she may be the only person I know who could understand the excitement. Converting it to single speed turned my bike into an elegant machine with simple mechanics, a light coasting smooth ride that rockets me around.

I am 100% purist. I like to keep the components simple and minimal and focus my energy on the essentials. The skateboard is the most ascetic vehicle around - its just wood, trucks and wheels. There is no sophisticated technology that can help you be a better thrasher. Its also the most egalitarian ride - the skater makes the skate tricks, not the board. You could line up five people and give them the exact same setups and they will all skate differently. Out of this most basic formula I've seen superhuman feats accomplished and the physical laws of gravity challenged in the sickest ways. It doesn't take that much to rip, as long as you keep your bolts tight.

Once I got home from the bike ride I was spinning on a natural high from being so stoked and I put the bike in the kitchen so I could just stare at it. I sat down to watch Heroes but my blood had not quite settled yet and I couldn't shake the restlessness and felt like jumping around or dancing. After a short while I found myself standing on my skateboard watching TV. I hadn't seriously sessioned in months and my board looked bored just sitting there. Then oops I jumped and snapped an ollie. Then, oh shit, I start practicing my kickflip on the carpet. I landed one and did the I'm the coolest song in my head again. The roommate starts looking annoyed at all the noise, and I couldn't take it anymore. I ran out of my house like a werewolf and ollied every sewer cap on my block.

It's been a year since I broke my leg, about the exact amount of time that my doctor said I would be fully healed up. So I skated with the confidence that my leg is whole, a luxury I haven't felt in a long time.

Then I knocked on my friend's door a few blocks away with urgency. She answered the door in her pajamas. "Let's go skate!!! We have to! It's the only thing that will sustain us!!!"

"Uh... actually, I'm sleeping?"

"All you have to do is put on your skate shoes and coat. That's what I did."

It was 16 degrees in the late evening. "You're crazy", she said before closing the door. "But I want to skate too."

I cruised around fast like a maniac until I broke a serious sweat. What is better for a pent up and irritated cranky person than the private personal drama in the pushing and jumping kicking toe flicking falling getting up again then landing and cruising of skateboarding? Nothing. I'm absolutely certain.
I got home and called all the skaters in my phone to set up time to go to the skatepark. The next day I got a new deck and skate shoes and took some personal afternoon time off of work to schralp it up with my homies. I finally skated Krush again, after breaking my leg there last winter and I no longer hate that skatepark or fear the bowl. It's funny. I spend so much time and energy trying to act like I'm supposed to be a for real adult but I wind up having the best time taking turns skating with a bunch of helmeted and smelly 7th grade boys at the miniramp. Funfuckingfunfuckingfunfunfun.

Ok, I am getting to the point. Getting back on my skateboard and fixing my bike this week has made me realize how much I am missing in life when I am just drinking beer and watching football sitting around trying not to freeze. Without it I am lost. While I was skateboarding my creative thought process and abstract reasoning skills came back after mysteriously disappearing during recent crucial times. Its a very real and tangible phenomenon how skateboarding expands your mental awareness and understanding of everything. That's why I do it. Later I asked other skaters at the skater bar if that is real to them or am I just crazy, but everyone I talked to knew what I meant.

So it's important to make the time and effort to skate when you are a Chicagoan because this weather will weigh you down in every way. Even when its fucking freezing and you think you're too old for goofing around. Just wear gloves and a hat and you'll get warm pretty fast. And call me, because I've decided that a dedicated person should skate every day that they can even if its just the curb in front of my house, as long as I am not injured or its wet outside. There are so many things I am not even close to doing on my skateboard that I have been dreaming about for a long time. Cold air has higher pressure than warm air, which is what I believe makes us all feel so yuck in months like this.