Night Rider

I have a new favorite cycling memory! For those of you (both of you) who don't remember, this blog used to be under a different name and focus. Actually, it had focus, and a specific subject matter: cycling (riding bikes, to the layperson). I was just getting into cycling, and had just moved to a new town, so I combined the two into one adventurous blog: Crash Cycling. It was fun, but it went the way of so many things I do: it got lost somewhere in the attic.

But I still ride!
And I still like it!
So that stuck with me, even if the blog had fallen into disrepair and ended up getting re-launched. But, an earlier article I wrote therein was about cycling at night. I won't just push my old entries, though, I only want to share that surprise I found in myself that I wanna write about it again!

This time, however, instead of riding around a minute little town with not much more than a cellphone light, I raced through downtown Green Bay (shut up -- it has a downtown!) with proper equipment. Okay, cellphone light was an intense exaggeration, but the light I had didn't do much except inspire faith-based riding through the dark. As in, I couldn't see much. Since then I had gotten a really kickass light that inspires safety.

That's my fun way of saying I rode real frickin fast down well-lit night roads!

It was a blast! It reminded me of mountain biking, in which I have minimal path-finding abilities and have to have a good grip because I can't see where the hell i'm gonna go any given moment. Like that, but WAY faster! Riding in the dark added a nice level of difficulty to my ride, and really upped the intensity of the experience. The world's really a different place at night; the cooler air is lighter in the lungs, and light is a manufactured rarity in fresher tones than what you're used to. I highly recommend trying it out for yourself. Just make sure you get a really bright and broad light in front, and a blinking red in back. People will avoid you, don't worry. You just need to make sure that they SEE you so they can avoid you. Savvy?

I think I'll leave the post like this; let it be a shorter, lighter one. Just click the ads like y'all's do.

Triple-Stamped, No Erasies

Hokai, so, I had a job, selling mattresses, but I don't any more. So I have a lot of free time to look forward to these next few months of unemployment. See, I'm terrible at personal discipline, so this is a problem. Seriously, I've watched Star Wars twice in one day, just because I started with the first one! It's not inherently evil, sure, but there's a certain point where inactivity warps you and you discover that all you've got left to prove your existence is a broken-in couch.

I don't want that for me. I want adventure , so this blog will stand as a re-branding of, well, me, as an adventurist. The idea is, have this as a public record of what I do, which will also give me reason to do adventurous things... like, I dunno, parkour or something (please no parkour, for the love of God). I'm also writing a novel, so the plan is make this blog wildly successful over the next few years (well, overnight would be great, but I am still pretty lazy).

Successful to the point at which people say "Hey, I love your words and want you to lie directly to me, but not on the computer, can you write a novel?" To which I shall respond, "Why yes, of course; here it is!"

And they'll throw money at me (and claim I can see the future, which I of course will not correct) until I can retire and do nothing whatsoever with my life. To the casual analyst, it would seem that I plan on taking a very long route to the same place (why not just skip the writing and the blog, and just do nothing but maybe working crap jobs?). However, they would be forgetting one thing: I have to feed my ego.
Yup, there it is. I like to think I'm important.

That there's my life plan. Subject to change at the drop of a hat, of course (see the rules... listed somewhere).

But, I want to write daily in this blog, because otherwise people will just forget that it exists (seriously, that's how it is with me). The catch is, I get bored, and I lose focus. My solution is to have seven subjects I can address in any given entry. Seven things I feel I can write about entertainingly (totally a word; suck it, dictionary!) enough to actually get people to read all the way through things and again, make them buy my book once it's written.

Here are the ideas I have so far:
1) Mind-jobs (at some point, I will try to convince you that circles don't exist)
2) Principles of a Dignified Life (living by a code, so to speak... seriously... like, tip even when you're poor)
3) Outright Lies (storytelling, of the freeform variety because thick fiction doesn't mix with the interwebs)
4) Cultural Analysis (how Star Wars episodes 1-3 should have been, and the implications of Twilight)
5) Adventureblogging (doing stupid shit for attention, like, unplanned bike trips)
6) People-Hacks (like life-hacks, but with people... manipulating people)
7) Beginner's Luck (I try something with little to no preparation or experience in it, like building a chair)
8) anything else

And lastly, I'll leave you, dear reader, with this thought: click on the ads!! please for the love of God, click on the ads! I don't care what they're for, just click on them; that's how I can make money out of this! Click multiple times! I don't care if you read the blog or not, just visit it ten times daily and click every ad that shows up on it! Make a game out of it somehow, like, how many different ads will Google put in there for you to click?

you'll think of something; you're creative

The First Long Ride

So, I like to name things. Inanimate objects, I mean (literally, things). My car, I named Isabelle, after a short story and its main character of the same name, written by George Saunders - look it up; it's heartbreakingly beautiful. But naming my car isn't so strange, and frankly, nobody wants to read a blog of the banal (vanilla mementos? chalk thoughts? hrm... those are some fun names).  So, I named my iPod Charlyn Marie Marshall, after the birth name of Cat Power. My computer I named Cormack after Cormack McCarthy, author of The Road. And my detachable Hard Drive I named after my favorite Watchman character, Rorschach.

So my bike, my recently acquired new love, I named Vigdis (nothing whatsoever to do with the World of Warcraft npc).

Yup, it's weird. But then again, to be exceptional, you have to be weird. That's my excuse.

That, and there's a story to it. She's a steel-frame Surly Cross-Check, a bike known best for being able to take whatever its rider puts it through and keep asking for more mud, grit, and asphalt. Think an A-10 Warthog: violent and dirty. So in order to respect her, I'd have to give her a name that evokes in me a sense of her potential grace and power: Vigdis.

It's old Norse for "War Goddess."

Now that's a bike I'd be almost afraid to ride. Afraid of how she'd change my life, of how hard I'd push myself to even meet her capabilities. A bike I'm a little afraid to look at on days I don't ride.

So I'll accuse my bike's inflammatory name for my pushing myself too far on our first legit ride together.

Before Friday, the longest I had ridden Vigdis, or any bike, was ten miles of rolling countryside. This ride, though, was more than three times that. Thirty miles isn't a lot to more seasoned riders, but just consider tripling your previous longest ride, and you'll get a sense for the scope of my trip.

It's a ride a local group takes on Mondays, and it is designated as "great for beginners." That phrase is very open to interpretation. I learned that twice. First, on my way out (it's a there-and-back route), I was feeling like a pro, blasting the average speed of the ride by like five knots. Then, I learned again of the vagaries of a "beginner" on my way back home, where I bonked into a headwind. Pretty sure that's what happened, because I was putting out twice the effort for half the results. Toward the end there were moments where I couldn't think, where the whole of my existence was my pedaling legs.

But I did make it back, wall and all. Even my throbbing nether regions didn't stop me! I have now invested in a padded chamois, btw. I'll let y'all make all the jokes you want about a Viking War Goddess pummeling my ass, that's only fair, and there are far too many to list here.

Vigdis made it the 34 miles easily. Easier that I did, anyway. Maybe I'll be able to take some solace in the hope that I'll be able to ride that route in a few weeks without dying (or at least without my index finger going numb - the hell?)

I have difficulty pushing myself, like, always, but it's good having my War Goddess keeping me riding the path to Asgard

Drum Song (Post One!)

I was on my way home from work today, and I drove past a group of five or seven touring cyclists. They looked like Gypsies, hairy and hodgepodge. From the tail to the lead, each bike was weighed down, heavy with spare clothes, tents, sleeping mats and one guitar to share. They carried each their own worlds with them, and it showed. Besides the grime building up on every man, woman, and bicycle, every rider had the same distant gaze fixed on their face; that look acquired only when one's goal is nowhere in sight, and hasn't been for miles and hours on end. Even,  their leader, built so strong from God knows how many centuries behind her cranks, wore that same worn, longing gaze.

Still, like a circus, I wanted to ride away with them (hey guys, i have a bike - like me!).

Sure, i was listening to The Temper Trap's "Drum Song," and i was hungry as a rabid dog, and have a brand new bicycle, and it was quite literally magic hour, but still, i'm not convinced i was entirely irrational. Well, save the image of them as a group of Arkansas-based gypsy-cyclists-circus clowns, and the urge to join them was quite reasonable.

Cycling, after all, is about pure, hardcore freedom.

Think about it; the very nature of every single race is to be ahead, to separate yourself, to see none ahead of you and be alone in your vision. Separation and the open road mean you aren't being bogged down (literally not bumping elbows with everybody else of average capability). Ergo, performance in a race equals freedom.

And what about our collective experience with riding? For many of us, cycling, riding that first Huffy, was our earliest experience with truly separating from our parents. Freedom. As we learned to ride, we learned to find our own ways to the grocery store, school (the arcade, honestly), or our friends' houses. Before long, we would come to terms with the fact that it was the ride itself that drew us into late summer hours, and we would find ourselves just... riding. Riding wherever flight took us any given day, till the sunlight fell short of our drive and we had to fumble home in thick twilight.

And then there's the very process of learning to ride without training wheels. Our parents of choice (dad, in my case) would hold us steady, pushing us along, swearing all the while that we could do it. It may as well have been magic, for all we understood cycling at that age (still is magic to me). But in that moment, when our parents let go, we faced all the fear and disbelief that Lief Erickson encountered when setting sail from Iceland to Odin knows where, on the verge of true freedom and revelation. Even as we pedaled, we turned our disbelief and fear (there's no way that's possible!) into reality, magic into marvel (it works, I don't know how, but it works!). I never wanted my training wheels taken off. Speaks volumes of whatever about me.

Bicycles don't come with kickstands any more, not once you're an adult. Their very nature as machines is violated when they're stationary. Even motionless, they seem to fly. Mine does, anyway. There is something about bicycles, good bicycles, that stirs in us something old, that flight for freedom. This blog is an exploration of exactly that.