Kiko and Mike Ride (& great news)

So Sean FILED his Diss back at Berkeley.  Some very few of you know what it is like to have a dissertation from a prime piece of academic real-estate hanging over your head.  SEAN MAC, my main man, with whom I rode Northern California compulsively hiding from my own dissertation, finally filed.  He has a great story of bureaucratic fumbling and near-misses and the usual luxury horrors (he does have a Ph.D after all) that you’ll have to ask him about.

Holla at me. Here Kiko rides with Mike, which is VERY intimidating when it comes right down to it.  I want to speed up the pace, but I am mad-busy (don’t tell Mason I said that).  And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

Kiko, wanting to try this thin and expensive bike, to see what he could do if he had a chance on something that was good, docilely tried to understand Mike’s instructions, completely understanding the measure even if the theory escaped him.  He understood why his seat was too low on his work bike, and how the straight mountain bars pushed him up into the wind, slowing him down from Jamaica to Wall St. In Mike’s tontería Kiko found the answer to lots of questions he hadn’t thought to ask yet, and this made him trust the angloparlante.

Finally, once they had finished the adjustments and locked up the delivery bike, they set off towards the East.  The bike that Mike had brought for Kiko was a bit vintage, so the shifters were on the tube that ran from the headset to the crank and it took Kiko a while to be able to stay in his tuck, hold his line and change gears.  There were other riders out there in matching team kits, and they looked at Mike in an older Discovery Channel jersey from the Tour de France three years ago and Kiko in jeans and a t-shirt like the mismatched pair that they were. 

Mike was trying to make clear the theories surrounding shifting (“start easy, shift down once your cadence, RPMs are over 90 or a 100”), drafting (“if you stay right behind me there is less resistance, and you can rest”), sprinting (“you only want to thrash around site-to-side to keep people behind you, otherwise it is a waste of energy”) and, most importantly, pack behavior (“you want to keep going straight, hold your line, it’s like being in a band, the drummer doesn’t pay attention to what the guitarist does; keep your beat”).

They went out practicing these ideas to a bit past Old Westerbury, and on the way back they put them into practice.  It was a bout noon and the riders from Long Island who had looked at this odd couple on their ride in saw them firing on all cylinders on the way back.  Kiko was drafting off of Mike and then, when mike pulled out of line, he charged up and offered his draft to Mike, though he rode so hard and fast on that slim little bike that it was hard for Mike to hold on and keep his draft.

Kiko and Mike V

 

 Holla at me. Here Kiko continues to re-meet Mike, which is how things start to happen in a linear way again. I want to speed up the pace. And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

Second were the bikes hanging upside down in the loft, they were thin and light like Mike’s.  In fact, thinking back to where the egg white feta omelets go they were like spider webs floating gently over the thin strong woman who over-tipped him in that loft.  There was so little bike there that he thought that they probably floated up to the ceiling, rather than hanging there, Kiko thought.  But were those webs a trap for a fly like him, or the fairy-dragonfly wings spouting out of the back of the omelet-bicycle lady?

And finally, he wondered how he had beaten Mike, on his sick-slick-skinny-little bike and funny clothes, up and over the Queensboro Bridge.  Kevin had also asked how he went so fast.  Kiko just knew that he could ride well, but he had no idea that it was phenomenal, and Key-Vin and Bridge Mike’s attention just made him self-conscious and suspicious.

On Sunday, Kiko’s day off, after a fair amount of negotiation he agreed to meet mike and go for a ride.  According to Mike Central Park was too busy, so they met out on the LIE service road and rode out of Flushing towards Long Island.  It was there that Mike had a proper bike, “una bicicleta flaca muy bonita, Gracias.  Estás seguro?”

Reassuringly, “yeah, sure Kiko, this is one I no longer use,” as he took out an allen key set and adjusted the seat and handlebars to Kiko’s height.  Mike explained the mechanics of a proper fit on a bike in Queens English that went by far too fast for Kiko to understand: “The heel of your foot on the pedal when your leg is stretched out will keep you from rocking…  Bent over enough when in the drops to stay out of the wind while not interfering with your breathing… Head-up, shoulders down….”

Kiko Meets Mike IV

The Hipster Antidote, Eccentric Gear

When we went to Staten Island there was a race jumping off. It was one of those post modern messenger races, that of course, because it is full of young well organized, well equipped and, yes, white people, gets lots of press. As Scott and I got off of the ferry we noted all of the tattooed hipsters on fresh track bikes, and Scott said to me, “there’s some sort of a messenger race happening here.” It reminds me of when we used to hang out in Washington Sq. Park in ‘80 or ‘81 and it was apoint of honor not to wear your messenger bag (“no, I’m not working”), which also helped to avoid criminal justice attention, because messengers in the village often got sussed. They had beautiful new track bikes in really good shape. I doubt that any of them were used for deliveries 40 hours a week. I didn’t see many helmets, though there were a fair amount of pork-pie hats (Sigh, I’m a hater: how the mighty have fallen.)

I wrote to cynematic

Yeah, the funny thing about that race was that Scott and I got off the
ferry at the same time as alla them young’uns with our kids for a
flashback birthday party. I was going to post on the blog about it, but
I am swamped.

We saw some of them on the way back to “Manhattoes,” and were waxing
nostalgic for our days before the wheel. But there we were with our
five kids amped on sugar and a ferry ride, and you know, I’m just glad I
survived (the party and track bike messengering in the 1980s).

I gave the whole track bike messenger thing all I had, but you can’t
stay cool for ever. Hell, I’m just glad tattoos and piercings are a late
addition to the whole messengering thing, because the last thing I need
is a saggy tattoo of a track bike on my tuckus.

But, in fairness, I have to say that this was in the Times, about recycling (or re[cycle]cycling), which gives me hope. Not everybody runs out and buys the new new thing, some people -my heroes- try to reduce, reuse, recycle (and I do love the thrift store stylings). My favorite track bike was a chrome-steel metro track bike with straight bars and no brakes. I doubt I have a picture of it, but it often lived outside and worked flawlessly for a year or so, ’til my life caught up with me.

Holla at me. Here Kiko continues to re-meet Mike, which is how things start to happen in a linear way again. I want to speed up the pace. And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

Kiko told Mike where he worked, and gave him a menu bungee-chorded in the basket, thinking no more of Mike’s proposition than the Salvadoreño borracho who opens the door to the Pastilleria Colombiana on Sutphin Boulevard.

—

At four that day Kiko was shocked when, upon returning from a delivery, Señora Choi called him over to the register and gave him a phone message from “Mike on Bridge.”

Kiko immediately knew who it was and was now suspicious of the thin guy on the skinny bike. Was he un maricón, because Kiko knew he had no money to take compared to the man on the thin bike with a matching skin-tight outfit. He was also suspicious of Juan Valdez, the cartoon campesino on his back. Was Kiko some sort of noble experiment to this white guy with a fake wetback on his back? He thought long and hard whether he would call the guy on the bridge before dawn. Before he through out the number peremptorily, three things ran through his mind.

First was Key-Vin, the Chinese guy who asked him about racing bikes, and helped him to appreciate how much better a well maintained bike would ride. He had describes the clothes that Bridge Mike wore: “Tight-bright-picture-writing-clothes! Funny clothes!” He wondered why anybody would wear suck skimpy clothes in New York, a city that prized appearances, not understanding the aesthetics of boutique sports.

Kiko Meets Mike III (& Astoria and Red Hook Pools)

Yesterday we did the grand tour of the premier public swimming pools in Brooklyn and Queens. We started at the Astoria Pool, which I believe is the first in the New York Parks system. There is a good passage on it in The Power Broker, and it figures prominently in Salk’s search for the Polio Vaccination also, though I don’t exactly remember how. The pool is huge and well maintained, with the exception of the diving platform and pool, which are closed with a hurricane fence around it that sports a sign, “danger thin ice.” In many ways the pool is still like is was when it was built in the 1930s, huge locker rooms, a grand pool, great views of the Triborough and Hellgate bridges straddling the East River, and the two platforms for the Olympic flames from when the pool was used for tryouts once upon a time. They even had a snack bar. There were stadium-like benches on two sides wide enough to lay your towel out on, which is where I spent a lot of time reading Killing Pablo. I started reading the book about the US government assassination of Pablo Escobar. I had started it last summer, and thought I’d keep up with my Colombian Theme after Rosario Tijeras. Lennox was able to walk in and spent much of her time holding her nose and “swimming” underwater. She had a blast, and the gradual deepening made it so that she could get to the right depth and “swim.” Glorious!

Red Hook Pool was just about as crowded, though smaller, so there might have been fewer people. The entire pool is too deep for Lennox, and that presented a problem for her (& us) that had a nice resolution. The pool is chest deep (4 feet?) and is a bit cold, but you can swim anywhere in it. Red Hook pool has a part separated for lap swimmers, which is great. When I called Astoria pool larger, it might only be in surface area, not volume. Here in Brooklyn, in the shadow of the behemoth Park Slope, there were tattood hipsters aplenty. I wish that I was more cynical so that I could make a snarky comment about how “pure” Astoria was, with less Manhattanites, but it was really nice to have the mix at each pool. There seemed to be more young people (of the courtin’ and sparkin’ age) in Brooklyn, but the family vibe was strong at each pool. One negative note about Red Hook: the locker room is mostly taken up with a weight room and while my son, brother, 3-year-old niece and I got changed in the men’s Locker Room one of the workers (white guy, balding, in a Parks polo shirt) watched us from about 3 feet away behind the barricade that separates the weights from the lockers. As my brother said, “now I know what it must be like in prison.” Another Negative about the Brooklyn pool (are you reading Marty Markowitz) was that it closed 15 minutes earlier than the posted time (so that the workers could leave early. While the Astoria Pool asked to see the lining of my suit, to prove that it was hygienic, and did so brusquely, they did so professionally, without the sense of domination that the Red-Hook guard did. All-in-All, not Bad.

Bikes are fast. Holla at me. Here Kiko continues to re-meet Mike, which is how things start to happen in a linear way again. I want to speed up the pace. And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

Mike, who had been looking for Kiko for the month or so since he had first been passed by him, got up out of his saddle and chased him up the bridge in the dark. It was difficult to catch him, but once Kiko realized Flaco on the thin bike was trying to get his attention he eased up and let the North American catch up and ride astride him. As he caught his breath Mike looked at the bike Kiko was riding, “I don’t know how you go so fast on all of that junk.”

Puzzled Kiko responded with interest about Mike’s razor thin bike and its specifications: “that bike it no weigh much, how much?”

“Oh, about 20 Pounds,” mike responding humbly, and a bit embarrassed thinking about how much it must cost per pound: with two full water bottles, he thought.

“My bike maybe two of yours,” Kiko went on chatting for politeness sake.

“Yeah, and even if you didn’t have the basket, tape and –are those zip ties?- that erector set you’re riding would be heavy.”

Missing the put-down, “Señora Choi, my boss, she buy for me and let me ride it home,” explaining his gratitude, “save me $4 a day!”

“Where d’ya ride from?”

“Ha-May-Ee-Cah, by Suphin Boulevard”

After a few minutes of small talk, as they descended the bridge into Manhattan Mike got to the point, “So Kiko, I race bikes, and I think you’d be good at it, would you like to try?”

“Race? Me? On this?”

“Well, no, and you’d have to come learn how, and I could lend you a bike that you’d do better on,” like a teenager asking for his first dare he babbled on, “and there’d be all kinds of other things. Where do you work? What is your phone number? How can I reach you?”

Blog My Life

8/11/2007 7:17 AM

(This is a collage of some of the houses of worship in my hood, when I could run I ran past all of these)

I finished Rosario Tijeras, and started reading the book Killing Pablo about the US government assassination of Pablo Escobar. I remember liking the first half of the book that introduced Pablo Escobar, flawed human, failure, and eventual drug baron.

I finished Harry Potter the Seventh. I think that that with the summer class I’ve been teaching Contemporary Black Literature (ENG269) ending, will mean that I have more time. Finishing the Potter book leaves a gap in my life. There is a big bright hole that was filled with a good book, and now will be sucked back into my usual negocios seculares (tv, cooking, etc).   I haven’t been writing here or thinking about my life and goals, I’ve just been holed up watching the war between good and evil in the Harry Potter land of make believe. Though it reminds me of how much I like reading (and Harry Potter), the book was like dessert before dinner, it is a fun read, but I miss having a pencil handy to make marginalia in preparation for wriing about it. Of course I have to be careful not to spoil the ending for anyone else coming down the pike, so we who have finished it have a sort of secret society, one where once we’ve established that we are both “completers of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” we can converse upon the arcane knowledge of the book, the series, and the new information therein.

I have been playing with Kiko’s story a fair piece, perhaps inspired by a good Novel. I’ve got to start making more things happen and have less texture and color. I have him meeting the guy who will bring Kiko to racing, but I need to get him into a race (informal) and then actual. The trick is that soon Kiko will be winning, and I hope that this offers more momentum, because I think I’ve been bogged down recently.

One of my oldest and dearest friends in the world left a message on one of my photos on my other blog yesterday. I’ve got to write her a letter, call her and maybe visit her this summer. Last summer we went to Fire Island, and the summers I spent with Leisa are among my fondest memories. I love Leisa like very few other people in the world, which is an empty boast because I rarely call her. I want to spend more time being a friend and less on this computer, internet, TV and in books (I can’t short the kids at all).

Kiko Isolates and Commutes

This is an attempt at illustrating the broad daydreamy expanse of riding in New York City, with constant stimulae shaping and deflecting your daydreams. If you ride in NYC -without headphones- this is what happens, it is an altered state afforded to the hearty. Holla at me. And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

While it took all of the down-time out of his day, time that would be spent eating in the back with Señora Choi and Santiago trying new hot sauces to make the food palatable, laughing about the hardness of New York Life and reminiscing about life in Oaxaca and Cheolsan, where there was a fair on the outskirts of Seoul where Señora Choi grew up. The dishonesty of the games at Coney Island had them laughing for the time when there were no orders in the afternoon. Through it all Kiko was running in and out working on the bike, neither really fixing it, resting, or building any kind of credit with the boss: which was the only reason to compare immigration from the bosses Korea and the cook/cleaner/dishwasher/delivery-guy’s Mexico.

Kiko had ridden back to Jamaica Queens for a few weeks, each and every day. He liked the ride, which was refreshing because of the distance, and the fact that he didn’t need to stop and lock up every few blocks made the solid hour of riding a nice change. In the longer rides he could feel a new power, one that came from deeper within him. In the short rides at work he could always get going; he was fast. But as soon as he got some momentum, he’d have to stop for the delivery or jaywalker or cabbie. On the ride out of Manhattan he started and kept pedaling as hard as he could for a while. Some mornings he’d ride the first half hour or so to the bridge on a straight shot, running the occasional light when it was safe, but otherwise spinning and spinning his cheap steel replacement pedals (he had shot out the original black nylon plastic pedals that had come with it, riding the skewer within on the ball of his foot for a week before Señora Choi relented and let him buy her bike a new pair of pedals).

The ride, along Queens Boulevard in the dark before dawn, was relaxing. All he had to do was stay away from the cars and keep his pace up at the speed the lights we programmed at 26 miles an hour. Weeks and weeks, every morning, he had this long stress-free ride where all he had to do was get up to speed, shift up into a fairly high gear, and keep his legs moving at a comfortable pace. He really came to look forward to his time riding to and from work. The long, (mostly) undisturbed ride was more relaxing than tiring. Indeed, he found that the ride itself was refreshing in a way that no one seemed to understand. When he tried to tell Santiago about it all he got was the rolled eyes of “estas loco, guay.” His day-worker roommates, who rarely saw him anyway, thought that the idea of riding from far-distant Manhattan was a waste of energy that only someone who had a regular job could afford. They spent all of their time following the shade around various intersections in Queens, sitting on fences or their haunches, using up as little energy as possible.

Kiko Delivers a Big Question

Here’s the latest installment of Kiko’s Tale, and he’s back. More observations of work in NYC, and not the kind for people who go to college.

And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

The day continued with delivery after delivery interspersed with chopping and cleaning. Out with an omelet, back to the basement to prep more onions; two cheeseburger deluxes to an office, come back and shred another three heads of iceberg lettuce; fried eggs on toast, clean out the pickle bottles: He had known that this was his job, but he was beginning to think more and more about his bike. The next time he came back (French toast and sausage at 4 in the afternoon!?!) he asked “Señora Choi, por favor, please I can fixing my bike?”

“It no look broken,” she observed, “what you need fix?”

“I need tighten this,” he said, squeezing the calipers of his brakes to the wheel’s rim and pantomiming crashing because he couldn’t stop. “Gears no work” he said spinning one leg as though he were unable to shift out of first gear, with a mock pant or two to show the energy that swirling your legs ridiculously costs. Running around to the back he pointed out a bubble on the sidewall of the balding knobby tires meant to shred down ski-slopes: “soon pop -late food or late come back.”

Dubiously, “OK, you fix, but flatten boxes and refill fryer when done.”

In this way Kiko spent more time out in front of the shop working on the bike, and he began to understand why the bike she had bought him wasn’t very good. As he tightened up all of the nuts on the bolts that he could squeeze the Vice Grips around he saw how weak the metal was on all of these parts. The tool left marks on each piece it touched and close inspection by anyone who “knew” bikes would have shown an outbreak of the viral acne of Vice Grips. Kiko felt like his uñas –fingernails– would be able to leave marks in most of the fasteners that held the department store bike together.

While

Kiko Delivers More

 

 What a romantic moment I stole from them on Flushing Avenue by the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  My camera is sick and in the shop as you can tell from the focus on this.

Here’s the latest installment of Kiko’s Tale, and he’s back. I’m self conscious about dialog, and this one really should end up on the cutting room floor, but the life of a delivery person is full of these sort of observations.  They give the tale its space and breadth, though I wish I was just rushing ahead to where he races and wins, but I’m trying to tell a fuller tale, and I’m enjoying it.  There’s more the pipeline, though if I don’t start getting some feedback… (It’s hard to keep going without hits and feedback, of course it is possible that it sucks.)

And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

 

Since he had met Ke-vin on Calle Canal, he had been more interested in bikes.  To avoid looking at her t-shirted childless breasts he looked over the woman’s shoulder at las bicicletas flacas that hung from the ceiling like stalactites as she collected the food and paid for the egg white and feta omelets con cebollas verdes.  As she overtipped she followed his eyes to their bikes and told him something too quickly to understand.  Clare slowed down and explained “these bicycles are our racing bikes,” noting his curiosity, “our everyday bikes are outside on the pole.”

“Bicicletas carreras—racing bikes: they are so much thinner than mine.”  He thought as he walked down the corridor and stairs that hadn’t been painted since Koch was the mayor, “like the man on the bridge, straight line, thin, light.”  Outside in the bright light of the day, which always shocked him when he came out of old dark buildings, he saw two bikes locked up with strong chains inside of black logo fire hose material.  He went over and looked at them and neither had suspension or una silla gordo, they were both thin, without writing though they had think rims like his bike, there were no knobs or bumps on the tires.  Las gomas were thin and bald, and other than that the bikes looked like his, chipped, nicked and dirty-dinged.  But they had those bikes on their ceiling.  This was a mystery that Kiko was having a hard time unraveling: “Why would they have such nice bikes and bikes outside that looked like his?”

Kiko, being a quick study, figured out the logic of having beater bikes outside as he admired their locks and the bicycle chains in a short circuit beneath the crossbar that kept their seats attached.  He figured out how and why they locked the bikes at some distance from their loft, which being in the middle of the block, offered too much privacy and shelter for thieves to work on the locks, cables and pole that wove their bikes to the city.  The bikes didn’t look like much spray painted a basic dark blue, they were the opposite of the shiny stickers and logos that the months of chaining his bike had chipped, ripped and eroded off of the frame that was so flashy when Señora Choi had brought it to him.  They looked like the taxi cabs that have had their medallions taken from them with yellow paint covering the stickers that they owner couldn’t pull off: flash free function.

Kiko Delivers

Here’s the latest installment of Kiko’s Tale, and he’s back. Here he starts to think about his station as a messenger of greasy food.  I hope that this proto-resentment makes it logical that he would take a chance on another way of life.  I think that this sort of class analysis is universal, though I’ve sharpened mine with too much schooling.

And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

He resented the time it took him to stop at the security sign in and scrawl something that meant him, that meant Kiko, that meant the guy that brought the food, that meant, finally, nothing to the people who collected the signature. The Black or Puerto Rican guys who wore the uniforms didn’t care, the white guy behind the desk by the elevators didn’t care, and the secretary that collected it on the 4^th floor, didn’t care and the person who ate it, who just left money with the woman at the desk on the 4^th floor, definitely didn’t care.  But all of these people who didn’t care helped him to get in and out and earn money. 

As he walked out, counting the money he owed for the two deliveries he just made and separating his tip with change from another pocket, he realized that there was someone else who was putting Dave or Carlos and Mr. Eugene in between him and the office upstairs where the food went and the money came from.  La Señorita where the food went to in this office, though polite, looked through him and saw only Santiago’s well packed bag with lunch in it.  They were more interested, as a rule, that there was cardboard separating the hot from the cold and keeping the cups upright, than who the man delivering it was.  “Si fuera yo que les interesa –if it was me that they were interested in, he thought– sean canibales.”

It’s just like I don’t care about them.  La oficina fuera –the office was, he racked his mind– law, accounting, private detectives, management; Kiko used to keep track, when he was new, but had learned the city way of not caring.  He focused on getting back for the three breakfasts that were waiting, at lunch time, to go to the loft above the locksmith on North Moore Street that used to be the garment factory.  There used to be those 20 Chinese ladies with sewing machines and now there were just the blond couple with the bikes on the ceiling who ate breakfast at mediodía.   Now only el jefe ordered lunch from la fabricante de vestidas, but there were so many more people then.  He was sad for la chinitas because he knew they had lost their job even though he knew that he should be happy because these two ordered much more food from Señora Choi’s restaurante. And they tipped really well in their proud laziness. 

Kiko and Kevin

7/31/2007 6:26 AMI played soccer with Mason yesterday morning (and the day before) and twisted my ankle really badly. I was OK yesterday, with a brace, but this morning it really hurts. I hope that I don’t have to go visit the doctor about this.

Here’s the latest installment of Kiko’s Tale, and he’s back. I’m self conscious about dialog, and I’m trying broken English, so let me know if it sounds too much like a minstrel show. There’s more the pipeline, though if I don’t start getting some feedback… (It’s hard to keep going without hits and feedback, of course it is possible that it sucks.)

And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

“Señora Choi, she like watch me like I bad movie,” he continued, “everything need fix. But she happy to see me go. Bring out food, carry dollar back.” Thinking, Kiko continued “I like go, I like outside, I like ride, I like Señora Choi no watch me, no fix me, and I like tips.”

They both smiled in secret agreement of the importance of both getting out of the bosses sight and earning money that was their own: “I like tips I no share,” Kevin said explaining how he was expected to pool his tips with the other cooks while the waiters only gave them 5% of the real money.

“I like tips” Kiko agreed, thinking more kindly of Señora Choi, since she just let him keep his.

Kevin, as they told each other where they worked and got back on their bikes asked Kiko if “You evah see bike race? Fast. Many-many ride bikes close-close fast-fast. Tight-bright-picture-writing-clothes! Funny clothes.”

And Kiko thought of the man on the bridge that morning. On his way back to the shop, where there were two more lunches packed up tightly in brown paper bags by Santiago waiting to go out, he became more aware of riding. He thought about how he rode, which way he went down an avenue, when he shifted gears, how he leaned and turned. He thought about riding as an activity for the first time and was a bit more aware of his pleasure as he rode. And of course he was happy to be the one who did all of the deliveries where he worked, and to protect that he had to keep moving. He came back and got the two deliveries and went to the Fire Station on Murray Street and the office up on Duane and Broadway where he had to sign in.