getting comfortable with discomfort
The situation unfolded when attempts at coherent thought through the written word were thwarted due to a computer so old it has a battery life that defies the natural progression of time. Shutting down within minutes, the computer simultaneously tempted me to kill it for good while forcing me to appreciate the irony of mere minutes of “life.” The swiftness with which my screen blackened was unexpected and I stared dumbly at the forced hiatus for several seconds before turning my attention to a gadget that had a stronger ability to cling to its internal stores of electricity.
It was then that he turned to me. “What are you reading?”
The answer should have been easy enough: state the title of the book and return with pointed disinterest to my cup of unremarkable coffee and Kindle. But I fumbled, unable to recall completely the title of the book, and sensing some sort of obligation to be polite, asked him what he was reading. As he talked about “spiritual materialism,” drawing out the conversation further, my mind was racing. In response, I also, most inconveniently, started sweating. The back of my neck and armpits became moist and my face got hot. My panicked response must have appeared to be active blushing, and the perpetuation of this misinterpertation made me sweat even more. My body language obviously wasn’t working, resulting only in the stranger taking the liberty to touch my arm and make depressingly predictable jokes. Where were my headphones? I was internally screaming. Where was whatever gadget/thing/tool that would allow me to get back to my book in a disinsterested “no, thank you”? Where the hell did that thing disappear to?
There is no such thing, of course, but it would have been handy. Unable to extract myself from the situation I was in part respnsible for, I started to pack my things away with deliberation, hesitant to leave and hoping he would get the point. I glanced around for help, sending out telepathic messages to everyone I knew to call me so I could excuse myself. The conversation, according to my fantasy, would start with an enthusiastic “hey babe, I was waiting for you to call...”, no matter who was on the other end. Explanations could come later; they’ll understand. As my phone remained dead and blank, I caught the eye of the guy across the communal table from me, and nearly mouthed “help me,” while channeling “SOS” messages into his retinas. He didn’t get it, as he glanced away, either in disbelief that I was blushing at this guy who had pecs bigger than my boobs or that I was desperate enough to engage this amateur bodybuilder in conversation. My legs started to sweat.
I tried to tell myself it was from my ride earlier, some sort of delayed reaction to doing more miles than I’m used to. But it was simple discomfort morphed into panic, a reaction to an awkward situation which I failed to take in stride, ultimately resulting in my hasty departure and vows never to return to that particular Starbucks. At least for the next few days.
This sometimes immature desire to escape uncomfortable situations is, I think, hardwired into most of us. It’s part of our self-preservation when gut instinct tells you to get the hell out of wherever you are. A healthy, Paleolithic anticipation of “something here is very fucked.” Social concepts like being polite and not being a jerk have muted the warning, but it still kicks in when a Steve Buscemi lookalike starts rubbing himself against you at a dive bar. It’s helpful in that way, and thus, can be a good thing. But when efforts to avoid discomfort have you grappling your bike as if in a bar room brawl [but with an inanimate object], something might be very wrong.
It’s not that riding a bike should always be comfortable. Anyone who has done over 5 miles will know that it can hurt, and that that pain tends to stay consistent as more miles are logged. And it’s not just the physical discomfort of pain that’s involved when you take up this peculiar sport of balancing on two wheels for slightly ridiculous amounts of time. There are clipless pedals to get used to, aggressive geometry to adjust to, and if you’re tall enough, speed quiver to hold down with your knees. We voluntarily sit on fabricated contraptions that can throw you into traffic, fold over onto itself at the introduction of a pothole at high speed, or simply fail to function. Hate all you want on triathletes, but given all of the above, you have to admit that it takes a special kind of person to insist on riding aerobars in open traffic.
But it’s what makes cycling so unique. That loss of control; that conscious stifling of a natural aversion to potentially life-threatening activities. The latter’s not hard. Once you figure out that you like cycling, your mind usually rationalizes it for you: “I could die, but potential for fun is clearly outweighing that small, almost insignificant risk.” The former, well, that’s the harder one. Because “learning how to be comfortable on a bike,” doesn’t mean positioning, posture, or learning how to turn without your mind screaming “TOE OVERLAP!!!” It’s learning how to get comfortable with the instability of the whole thing. It’s relaxing and letting go, and sometimes saying “well, fuck it, my face is going to rub pavement today.” Because in a lot of ways, that discomfort is always going to be there, the one that will rear its goose-bumpy head every so often, no matter how pro you might be.
My lack of claim to anything pro [other than my bike, perhaps] means I get to experience this discomfort regularly. Tight swerving around potholes or turning right [or, okay, turning at all] sometimes induce a little mental hyperventilation. This is in part due to some psychological extrapolation in which I’ve convinced myself that I’m actually 10 feet higher off the ground when I’m on a bicycle. Turning means that I will surely topple over and crush that rear derailleur that I can’t afford to replace. Neither make sense, but it adds a lot to my fear of falling.
But even so, the simple realization that it can be a rough ride have peeled back my grip on the handlebars. I try to keep my shoulders down and both feet clipped in when making quick turns. Hands rest more easily on the bars now, and when I’m brave, I’ll ride with my forearms on the bars, fingers dangling towards my cables. I’ve put my faith and the integrity of my face into my bike, and try not to fight it so much. It can be an awkward dance, but I think I might be stepping on my partner’s pedals a little less.
Still, there’s a lot to learn. On a ride a few days ago, I caught up with a guy in fluorescent yellow, dressed in full-length tights in the nearly 60F weather. He veered near the double yellow line on the narrow road at one point, and put a glove to his front tire, then the back. “There’s a lot of glass over there,” he said, looking over to where I was riding. I wasn’t sure if he was just showing off, but secretly impressed, I attached myself to his wheel when he was done. He spun a bit awkwardly in his smallest gear as the chip seal shook our bikes, pushing up the small inclines. In my big ring and desperately trying not to let our wheels overlap, I glanced up...to see his saddlebag swinging under his saddle like an extra scrotum. I bit my lip as it swayed and bobbed and bounced.
A new kind of discomfort, but maybe not an unwelcome one.
the weekend in pictures: ride.studio.cafe
Since first visiting Ride.Studio.Cafe last fall, I've been meaning to go back. A big, bright space with racks of Rapha, there are enough Cervelos and Sevens to make you reconsider your conviction that there is such a thing as owning too many bikes. A big coffee bar sits on the side of the shop, a wide table perfect for hanging out and resting tired legs while sipping good coffee or espresso. Spacious but cozy, with good company both behind and outside the coffee bar, I promised Rob I would come back as soon as I got my IF together.
But things like "winter," "cold," and "being lazy," kept getting in the way, even with all the events they were having. Finally, with the weather cooperating and all day events scheduled for their first anniversary on Saturday, I grabbed my IF and made my first geared trip to Lexington.
Lucky enough to catch the club riders after their ride, I walked into a packed shop, filled with a number of super domestiques in Ride.Studio.Cafe/Rapha kits. I was a sweaty mess, but that didn't keep a few nice people from pointing at my chest and asking about NYC Velo.
Drawn to the coffee bar [against my better judgment, as afternoon coffee tends to make me bitchy], I wussed out with a San Pellegrino. Then found out that espresso, De La Paz's Perfume V, was free that day. Sal promised it was interesting, and really good, with that intense look that baristas and coffee aficionados use to tell you you're going to miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity if you decline. And because I am a pushover, I said yes.
There was half a cup of Stumptown coffee too. Because, hey, last time I visited I drank an Americano and three shots of espresso so why not keep up the trend of consuming stupid amounts of coffee whenever I'm there?
Amped up like a paranoid squirrel, I left before the party [plus beer] got underway. Still, I've found a new favorite place to hang out. I'll be back soon!
copying fantasy
Back in high school, I was lucky enough to have friends who had much better taste in music than I. The Sex Pistols, Propagandhi, The Clash, [old school] Rancid. I would like to say that we exchanged CDs, but in reality, I was exclusively borrowing.
The music and [life]style came at a point when, much to my disappointment, copying my sister’s style - which required legs the size of my arms - was no longer physically feasible. It wouldn’t have been so bad, maybe, if my sister hadn’t been so cool to begin with. But she had friends, snuck out of school to smoke, and stayed out late, drinking. I hated the chemical smell of stale cigarettes that lingered in her closets, yet envied this social life of hers. And as most of my time was spent either staring at or falling asleep on books, plagarizing her style had been the easy option.
But stuck in the same high school as my sister for two years, I was left to conjure up both an existence outside of her shadow and the confidence to express myself [or else endure daily beatings]. To assume the risk of exhibiting my own personality. A confusing and intimidating task, mostly because since there was no longer an older sibling serving as an experiment as to what was considered cool or tasteful, I hardly knew where to start. But in the struggle to pin down my own identity while walking the gauntlet that is high school, there was the music. Those borrowed CDs that turned into a decent purchased-by-myself collection, a love for a good bass line, and a grasp of something that was distinctively me. Something that I loved enough to lay out for the school populace to judge.
This love ultimately manifested itself into wearing lots of black, including a dog collar. Not a clichéd cheap leather one with studs, but one made of light woven nylon with a proper silver buckle. It was actually made for dogs, not teenagers, but that didn’t deter my somewhat questionable accessorizing. Blind to any canine implications, I wore it religiously, and in the small world that was my high school, I considered it a trademark of sorts. Never mind that gutter punks had patented the look about a decade before I was born. To me it was a declaration of self.
I should have known better, but perhaps the anchoring of personality to accessory was the reason why it chafed so much when a classmate suddenly started to do the same. Because for me, back then, that dog collar was akin to a distinctive shade of lipstick, a signature cologne, or a one-off team kit designed for you and your buddies. It was more than a simple fashion statement, which made the appropriation, done so casually, hurt even more. In hindsight, this classmate was probably acting under the misperception that I was actually cool, but all I could feel was resentment at her for reducing all those hours picking at a bass guitar and digging for music into a mere accessory. Open to be acquired by all.
Since then, I’ve been told that copying is the highest form of flattery, but depending on the day, I think that this statement is pure bullshit, somewhat true, or something in between. On one end of the spectrum, when the imitation is subtle and flavored with a twist of originality, it’s a nod towards an inspiration, or a shy glance at aspiration. An acknowledgment that you thought something was cool enough to risk duplication. At the other end - oftentimes coinciding with “copying” becoming “counterfeiting” and thus pissing off enough wealthy and/or litigious individuals - it dilutes authenticity into what David Sedaris once defined as “fantasy.” Something that lets you “skip the degradation and head straight to the top.”
I remembered that dog collar recently, upon Josh’s discovery of Torm, Pistard, and Road Holland. The two-tone jerseys, the distinctive slanted back pockets with a zipper on the outside of the right side pocket, sometimes coupled with photographs of men climbing out of the saddle in said jerseys on seemingly deserted roads at high altitudes. It is the stuff of [a Rapha-filled] fantasy made real, the higher-end version of the classmate who came in one day with a black dog collar of her own.
To be honest, it’s not the act of copying itself [the law, if not in the US, at least in the EU can take care of that], that bothers me the most in this original/copy debate, but that the copying signifies giving up. Throwing energy into everything but the very thing that’s important: the products themselves. It’s premature ejaculation taken to a corporate level where a business is incorporated, people are hired, materials prepared...only to result in something that isn’t quite unique. If the aforementioned companies were off-the-back-of-a-truck operations, set up and dismantled with the shady stealth characteristic of a Chinese counterfeit enterprise, I would almost be more okay with it. At least, then, the provision of a copy would be in acknowledgment of the luxury status of the original and no one would be attempting to claim ownership [just a few quick bucks, with the understanding by both parties that the product is a mere imitation with no brand or status of its own]. As it’s set up now, though, there’s almost too much [albeit commendable] hard work and courting of financial investment to excuse the lack of originality. It’s a promised good time with a cute guy who spends the evening trying to be something he’s not, because he has somehow convinced himself that that’s what you’re looking for.
The thing is, if I want Rapha, I know exactly where to find him. And if I’m not knocking on his door, I’m looking for something different. Something fresh.
Because, as I eventually discovered, different can sometimes be predictable [and the predictable, different]. I held onto that dog collar until then, fearful in trying the unfamiliar while telling myself that nothing else could truly represent me. Variety - colors, shoes with heels, belts without studs - gradually made their way into my wardrobe and brought with them the challenge of presenting myself to the world without easily categorized visual aids. To be [as a South Park episode once put it] nonconformist by not being nonconformist. It’s a route that can be riddled with fashion faux pas, but like a long, hard ride, there’s also something exciting in having the confidence to try. The knowledge that you invested enough time, thought, and frustration into it to make it solely yours might not make you an overnight success, but it alleviates the pain of those prolonged periods of degradation.
Ironically, the interest in attempting to be fashionably interesting has given way to my current lazy outfits; a result, I tell myself, of my inability to think about properly dressing myself after a ride. But like those who choose to confine themselves to imitation, it’s a shame. It’s not like I’ve lost my closet full of clothes that I could be mixing and matching. I’m just letting the opportunity slip by.
sun block and punishment
To my best friend [and her wedding in September],
I know I said that I would use sun block every time I rode, but I may have forgotten yesterday.
But if it makes you feel any better, a giant fly flew into my eyeball at approximately 16.7mph. Well, flew into and bounced off of. It was weird. I never knew an eyeball could feel bruised.
And yeah, I won’t forget the sun block next time.
of mice and men
It was like any other Friday morning: I was up too early but still hustling to get out the door. It looked chilly out so I went back into my bedroom to grab a sweatshirt when something hit my foot. And there it was.
A dead mouse.
I’m not talking about those tiny rodents that you might see bust ass across your floor, moving so fast and low to the ground that you think for a second it might be a roach. You reach for some kind of weapon, but once you realize it has fur and a tail, it becomes cute. You let go of the can of Raid you McGyver-ed into something that resembles an AK-47 and grab the alumnium foil to plug up the tiny hole it ran into. Then you get on with your day. These tiny mouse sightings happen. No big.
But this one. This one was big. Too big for deluded comfort. And it lay there, dead by my bedside.
Predictably, I started to mentally hyperventilate. I ran down the list of people I could call, before I realized that not only was no one awake, I was probably running close to the limit of acceptable number of times you can make panicked calls to your good friends. I seriously considered calling my parents, before reluctantly acknowledging that my mother might suggest picking it up with a paper towel and that was simply unacceptable. I heard my best friend’s disgusted exclamations in my head and made plans to buy buckets of Clorox. I wondered how to most effectively disinfect my foot and/or my entire body.
Once the capacity for logical thought returned, I managed, but the unsettling events of the morning followed me for the rest of the day. Because - and here’s the most disturbing part - I have no idea how it got there. It wasn’t there when I went to sleep or when I woke up and got dressed. Like a flaming bag of dog poop, it was an extremely unpleasant surprise, seemingly dropped off by the karmic equivalent of unvanquished adolescents. Unable to remember anything I’ve done in the past few weeks to merit the deposit of dead rodents onto my floor, I attempted to rationalize where it came from instead. The possibilities are as follows:
Scenario 1: It just ran across my room and spontaenously died.
This has been the scenario advocated by most of my friends, who are smart enough to know that proposing anything else would mean uncontrollable panic on my part. Mike suggested it “probably ran across the room and croaked,” while Josh offered a slightly more plausible option: that it “probably saw your new shoes and died.” I’ll take either because, most importantly, both mean that it had no physical contact with me [other than it hitting my foot although let’s agree to pretend that never happened].
Scenario 2: It died under my bed and appeared when I made my bed that morning.
The thought that a rodent died beneath me as I slept is upsetting not because it opens up the possibility that there is a colony of them near my bed, but because I resent the implication that I live in filthy conditions. To be fair, I’m not fanatical enough to be able to consistently pick up after myself. This once led my mother to tell me that she had once read a study where sloppy people were also fat, but that fastidious cleaning could somehow lead to double-digit weights. Needless to say, it didn’t work. Slovenliness aside, this scenario also means that the mouse in question has touched both my bare foot and my comforter. Mental images of lice and other insects defecting the corpse to burrow into my comforter are also necessary under this scenario.
Scenario 3: It climbed onto my bed while I was sleeping and I crushed it to death/suffocated it in my sleep.
Yes, full body-to-body contact. It goes something like this: mouse is drawn to my admittedly really comfortable bed. Mouse lumbers over to my warm sleeping figure, looking for a place to curl up and nest. Giant human body rolls over and onto mouse. Death ensues. Comforter, bed, and entire body are contaminated. This last one’s hard for me, because it makes me feel extremely disgusted with myself: both for killing a living thing and for touching it long enough to kill it. The mental images of lice and other gross insects scuttling up into my hair make me consider washing my head in turpentine. I fight the temptation to call an ambulance because, who knows, the thing could have pooped - numerous times - in my mouth while I was alseep before I killed it.
Rational thought suggested I apply Occam’s razor, but given that each scenario involved several assumptions, it only served to slowly shred that thread to which my state of normalcy was clinging to. Only that goddamn mouse knew the real details, but my ignorance didn’t keep me from shooting dirty looks at the spot on the floor where I found it.
A few hours later, as I was considering mopping my walls with bleach, a package arrived from Pennsylvania. Enclosed were two notebooks and a magnet, courtesy of Bill Strickland. No explanations, much like my mouse. Hoping to avoid the confusion, fear, and hyperventilation of the morning, I point blank asked him what it was. His reply came moments later:
“Well, the not knowing is the fun.”
Maybe. But when it comes to mice [and on occasion, men, too], sometimes, it can be nice to know.