Futile



Two nights prior, I played music with a Grammy winner and a mutli platinum producer. I also played with my long time bass player. No one outside this city knows him, but he could play with anyone. The music is deceptively difficult. Little subtleties that hardly anyone would notice, but they all add levels of texture, that would otherwise diminish the songs. I should be over the moon, but really, I just want it to be over. I live in mortal fear of missing the next syncopated claymore. All ends well. I actually play the only tasteful drum feature of my life. A raised eye brow from the Grammy winner, a knowing smile from the bass man, and a nod of acknowledgement from the Maestro....better than applause or money. Still, all I can think about is getting to the bar.

"Irish handcuffs please. Thanks. Again. Thanks."

 Finally, a breath taken at room temperature and not from the open door of a furnace. 

Saturday; four hours sleep, lunch with my girl, nap, stationary trainer torture, movie, bed. 

Sunday: Tuning drums for a session with the Maestro. All the while twitching like a worm on a hook. The bike is on the car. Munson is surely prefect, gripping, damp clay and white under belly. I escape two hours later than promised. Something with the files and the pre-amps, and a ringing noise in the snare I couldn't eliminate, while maintaining the pitch the Maestro wanted. 

Scramble out of clothes, forget glasses, triple check the car doors. Hammer into paper cup way to fast, way to anxious, and way too pissed off. A thought occurs that, the current meth like state of mind, could lead to a few PR's on Strava. I am full cry in the big ring, railing a corner when I see him. Jeans, flat pedals, no lid, holding his phone attached to his ear buds. Off I go into the thicket to the left of the trail. Thank god it is full of thorns. He says; "Duuude". I ride away from him. Two corners later I run into a couple of riders I know, faces full of teeth, having the ride of a life time. They force me over a berm and yell my name as they blaze by. Instant Karma. Not stoked. I am less than a half mile into the ride. 

I finish the lap and it is getting colder by the minute, but also dark and the lot at the trail head is nearly empty. I try to hit the reset button. This time there will be no traffic. I will hammer out a clockwise lap in total solitude. I can feel my center coming back. The sky is an airbrushed license plate from 1985. I cross the power line to a long set of curving climbs. Still in the big ring, still have legs. Just before coming down the to cross the power line for the last leg of the lap, I see him. His bike is upside down and he is looking at his front wheel like he found a piece of alien technology. He has no tire irons. To my surprise, I don't either. I get the stiff tire off with a screwdriver from my multi tool. I put his tube in and its bad too. I try for ten more minutes to get the tire off, so I can put my spare tube in, but it will not budge. He mumbles something about how he could have walked to the car by now. I hand him his wheel, and ride off.

"Some days you can't do good."
He says. I wish him luck.

I fumble back to the car, in the dark, with no lights. It's the first time in years that the ride was not the cure. It was like running on a trampoline. 

Tour de Felasco looms on the horizon. I should be over the moon, but really I just want it to be over. 

W.B.Z.N.        

Wild Horses

It's 5:30, I wake up to the alarm in complete state of forget. It is a haze I stay in for less than two seconds. I rise quietly, grab my phone and head out of the room. The dining room table is covered with a grid work of bike clothing, food and accoutrement's for the Spaghetti Dirt Epic; 62 miles of clay and paved roads. I am ready. I know it. I have done the completely undramatic work. I am surprised by how confident I feel. Fear still walks with me though, and it knows better than anyone all my secrets; How badly I tend to handle mechanical failures, how panicked I change tires, how childlike I become during asthma attacks. It whispers to me at moments like these when I feel good about myself:

"What if you have an issue? What if you have a migraine or asthma attack? What if you get too excited and blow to pieces in the early chaos of the start? What if everyone sees you bent over and retching for breath?"

I have a new answer for all those questions: "Fuck it, I'll ride alone. That's how I got here." Because riding alone was what I have feared most, that's what I have been doing. Long rides on the road, learning to navigate, intentionally getting lost, and making it back, which in many ways describes my life in a perfect little nutshell. I just want to be good enough to ride with my friends. I don't want to beat anyone, or prove anything, I just want to be part of story, instead of hearing the recount.

The start is the typical  mock opera of knuckleheads. Mountain bikers moving to the front and causing all kinds of expansions and contractions in the school moving upstream. Twice I have to speak up to people fighting for Big Worms wheel (which is the most valued piece of group ride real estate in cycling). They want me to give it up and that is not an option.

We turn onto the first section of dirt, the one that Ricky Silk called; "kinda sandy and soft". He said it with raised eyebrows like it was a secret. The underscored subtlety was not lost on me. Once he described Oak Mountains Blood Rock section as "kinda technical". When a guy that can ride anything says something like that, its noteworthy. We hit the sand, I am on Worms wheel, about twenty five people from the front. It's Braveheart on bikes. People and bicycles are performing a dance that would make sub atomic particles blush with envy. The yelling starts behind me as things begin to go wrong. I follow Worm into and ankle deep section of fine brown sugar. Worm shoots far left into a hard part of a little ditch and powers though. I put a foot down and Fred Flintstone for dear life. In the process, I stop roughly fifteen riders behind me. Fifty yards away I see Worm out of the saddle on the first dirt climb, no sign of looking back, no sign of stopping. I am on the edge, breathing like a whipped plow horse, and start running in the brown talcum, with all I have. It is like a bad slow motion dream. I jump on and attack the hill, knowing that if this keeps up I will not stay with the group. I crest the hill and make the catch. We settle back into a hard pace with a little more organization and no talking. There is only heaving breath and the wheel in front of us. As I realize I am going to have to give up and go off the back, Worm tells me, we need to start riding smart and let the leaders go.

 I am saved.

We settle into a rhythm, and the drama resides. Worm  and Storman are pacing us and I recover. We chat about the melee, and laugh about how Cliffy couldn't resist going with the leaders after swearing he was going to "take it easy, have fun and ride with us" (so generous of him). We see a lone rider ahead going the wrong way. The sight of the bright yellow vest, and barbaric beard, sets all laughing. Cliffy comes into view talking to himself as we fly by. He turns and catches us with out any effort we can detect and now the ride is shaping up like we planned. We make lunch, and roll out with a few more strays heading into the second leg for home. I know now, I am going to be alright. I even do a little work at the front (a first in my career on this type of ride, where I hide from the wind for fear of death or getting dropped). Back in the first dirt section after lunch, I am again defeated in the powder and this time I take Jim Smart out. We fight our way through and I pull as back to the group, pissed and exhausted. *I really need sand skills on the cross bike.

Nearing the end of this ride (as all endurance events) when the pack smells the barn, the alliances break and the stronger gently move ahead. The talking devolves to grunts and communication via expression. Future TMBA President, Mike Yaun, stays just off the front of Worm and I and the others are specs in the wavy distance. We are almost home. The three big dirt climbs, come and go, with Worm and I cursing our way over the tops. Back on pavement, we pick off some low hanging fruit from the forty mile ride. I help on the climbs and Worm turns the pistons on the descents and flat tarmac.

We arrive in three hours forty five minutes, a time Worm and I both agreed would be a great number for the day. Beers are opened, spaghetti is eaten and for the first time in four years I am hearing stories about a tough ride, I was actually on. It all seems fine and completely mundane. The best mundane I have ever experienced. A mundane I remember from old days before the storm, before I chose to let anger steal my life. A mundane I hope to keep as long as I am able.


W.B.Z.N.

*Photo Brian Pierce (my nominee for "rider of the day")

 

Time Flies

I hate getting ready to ride. I grumble and hope for rain and dig out clothes and cuss when there are no clean water bottles. I hate my old pump and I am out of tubes. My gloves smell like a dead body. Somehow I mange to throw a leg over.

There is no way in or out of my hood with out a climb. It is a bitch at the beginning of a ride. Crawling up to the Thomasville Road light where the cars always pinch off the curb on the right turn. People come over the hill there at warp factor seven, running from the jobs they hate, rushing home to the television. I am a pissed off cyclist but at least I am not them. I hop up on the curb and then back down at the front of the right turn line. Stink eye from the lady with too much hairspray. I spot a little opening in traffic and in a supreme act of faith, drop onto Thomasville road and hammer towards Hermitage. I catch the light and lean into the great right corner with no traffic. You can hold all your speed going wide and stay around twenty five miles per hour, to the base of the hill. The missing twelve pounds in my jersey are the difference between now and the last time up this hill. I got dropped by my son here in a wheezing stagger, two months ago. 

Over I-10 and into the safety of Kilearn Estates. Drink water. Trying to ignore the smell of food I can't eat. The A.J. decent is next. A van follows me into the the first sweeping left a little too close. I drop him. The scary corner is more blind than ever with fallen trees blocking the vision of potential cars coming up the hill. The climb up to Shamrock isn't bad. Drink water. I have a line from a song I can't stop repeating in my head: "but after a while, you realize, time flies...."  

At the top I see a cyclist go by. I am still half way up the climb. I speed up involuntarily. By the time I get to the stop sign he is a half mile away. He doesn't know it, but we are racing now. He is a fake rabbit on a stick. By the church I am closer to him. He looks over his shoulder, as he starts the fast section. I get out of the saddle. On the fast climb, he is fifty yards away. By the bricks I am on top of him gasping, but I don't come around. I don't have to. It has been a very long time since anything like this has happened. I turn right on Bayshore and disappear. 

A couple climbs and a I am dropping into Hermitage. No traffic. Forty two miles per hour at the base of the descent, I sit up and ease onto the sidewalk and back up the last hill to home.  

The dog is happy to see me. I smell dinner. I want to write. I want to sing. I never thought I could feel this way again. Nothing in the future is written. 

W.B.Z.N.    

     

Don't Crack Up



You ride too much. You quit riding. You come back but don't commit. You start playing music again. You turn fifty and question every decision since the summer of 79. You remember who your friends are and that they will not wait forever. You write a story (you are not sure why or what it meant). It takes a year, and runs off the folks that like to read about how shitty you ride bikes. You are blessed but you struggle.

The calm returns one day on a solo ride, to the coast and back. It is a ride born from anger. You are angry with yourself, for not being able to ride with your people. A dusty switch flips and a rusty machine churns in the wind, on the burning lanes of Capital Circle. You are out of water, food and grinning, at the ride you didn't think you could finish.

You remember that you ride bikes. It's not what you do, it's who you are and not doing it makes you an unbearable, bi polar, fuck face. You start riding more and have a couple small victories: Complete a group ride with the crew. Finish a Chaires ride (thanks to luck and a friend that pulled your carcass home). You get invited to a ride that you normally would have been on the "no call list' for. It starts to come back a little. You get the shit kicked out of you at Munson for the uncountable kabillionth time. It's not supposed to be easy.

The cross bike is aptly named, it is the crucible of truth and the revelatory place where the spirit was waiting. It is the cave where the visions come. The trip you hated that you can't wait to make again. It's "the fucking bike" you are going to ride back to the fold.

I cannot promise I won't start some convoluted story here again (if the ghosts start talking, I must write) but for now, I am back on the bike, and blah blah blogging about it.

Tell your friends.

W.B.Z.N.

Never See It Coming

seventeen

Floyd's Music Store, May 3, 2003: The young opening band for socialburn just finished their set. They are elated. They high five each other, in front of a sold out crowd. They start wave to their friends and family. A loud, rude voice comes from behind:

"Hey what the fuck are you guys doing? Get your shit off the stage!"

The young guys scatter like recruits in boot camp. They are grabbing hand fulls of cables and guitars and pushing gear off the stage as fast as they can move. I look over at Neil Alday (the socialburn singer that I manage) who is laughing so hard, no sound is coming out of him.

Tallahassee, April 18, 2013: I am rolling an old road cases off of the red and blue rubber mats of my garage. This area was for bikes and a work stand for the last fourteen years. Since the day I gave up playing music full time. Since the days I stopped managing bands. This was the sanctuary where the arsenal was kept. The weapons that kept all my demons at bay. The desire to play music and sing was beaten back with sweat, bikes and tools. This shop was kept spotless, the vigil was never forsaken, the watchman never slept and the past was a distant dream. 

Now the space was full of road cases. Cases that had been flown around the world, and dragged into every rock bar in Tallahassee. The old blue drum set inside was beaten and chipped. The cobalt piano finish was pale compared to the day they were new 1988. But they are cleaned, lubed and wearing fresh drum heads. A horn beeps from the van out front. I smile and roll the bass drum case down the driveway.

One year ago this week I had taken my first ride after breaking my right collarbone. A year and a half before that, I had heart surgery. One month before that, I'd had a stroke. I had trouble talking. I couldn't write my own name for a week. I thought I would end up on disability. Slowly it all came back, but no matter how hard I tried, I never felt right on the bike. I felt funny around my friends too. It wasn't anything they did or said, but my world had changed and nothing was the same color anymore. Some part of me never came back from the hospital. August twenty first, and that tiny blood clot changed me forever. The Bike Chain Crew were all different too. Life had caught us all unaware. The difference was, they could still ride. I still rode too, when I could, but it wasn't the same. I had to accept the fact that cycling was not the central thing in my life. I look at my BC jersey, hanging on the bike stand, as I load the last case and shut the garage door.

The light guy tells me to wait for the fog. I hear the intro music start. First the sound of flipping through radio stations, a few seconds of a socialburn song, then "You'll Have Time" by William Shatner starts to play with the opening lyric: "Live life like you're gonna die...cause your gonna!"

"Amen Brother!"

I say under my breath and walk out a little ahead of the rest of the band, to put in my in-ear monitors. I start playing the drum intro to "Save Me" the first song of our set. Eight hundred people stare up as we go from song to song. The applause increases after ever tune, and slowly the crowd warms up. I see the silhouette of Neil, my old friend. I watched him play for huge crowds from the side of the stage as his manager and now I am playing with him. Life is strange. I never saw any of this coming. I count off the last song and look over to see the drummer and bass player from Blackberry Smoke watching. Their arms are folded and they look tired and unimpressed. The drummer is tapping his foot. We finish the song. I give some drum sticks to a few people that ask for them. Blackberry Smoke's stage manager is screaming at us to get our gear off the stage. I start laughing.

"Calm down Sparky."

I say to the twenty something manager.

"This ain't our first rodeo."

I move him out of the way with my left hand and walk by with some cymbal stands.

The gear is all cased and in the van. I am drinking a beer outside the back stage door, soaked in sweat. I  look up and see Charlie Starr from Blackberry Smoke.

"Y'all have a good time? The crowd treat you right?"

"Hell ya man. Thanks for letting us play the show. We are huge fans."

I stop talking because I know the drill. The singer was just being nice. Headliners hate talking before they walk on stage. They want to be left alone. I tell him to have a good show and walk over to our van, sitting in the shadow of a forty five foot Prevost Touring Coach. I change my shirt next to a dumpster and climb in the front seat.

"Well Eddy?"

I say to my old friend and sound man.

"Sometimes you are on the bus and sometimes you are in the van."

Eddy turns and laughs out a cloud of cigar smoke.

"Ain't that the fucking truth!"


W.B.Z.N.