On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 12/1/2006
Resurrection
A man sits in bed, late at night, propped up on the pillows, reading. To his left, his wife lies sleeping. To his right, his other wife, his bicycle, leans against the wall.
He lets the book slip to his lap and his eyes wander over to admire the bike, as they so often do. His trophy bike; his trophy bride. His gift to himself after a lifetime of cycling. "You deserve it!" his real wife had said. He's not so sure, but what the hell...it's only money, and you only live once.) The lovely machine gleams in the soft glow of the bedside lamp. Its voluptuous carbon curves that shine bright blue out on the road, in the midday sun, now shimmer an irridescent aquamarine, as might the carapace of a scarab beetle. The components glitter like a cask of gems and doubloons in a pirate's cave. All cutting-edge, all state-of-the-art; carbon this and carbon that; twinkly bits of metal; whippet-thin rims...a definitive example of the bike builder's craft at the dawn of the new millenium.
She's a beauty, but she has more than just good looks going for her. She's got the chops too: climbing, descending, sprinting, cruising...she can do it all, with never a bit of fuss. And like a noble thoroughbred, the bike knows she's special. She's heard him say, many a time, that she's more bike than he can ever make use of, and with a touch of complacent pride, she admits to herself that this is true.
Outside the bedroom, across a brick courtyard, is a little outbuilding. It's a workshop and potting shed, and on one side, with a door of its own, is a small storeroom. This is not where the everyday tools live...the saws and shovels and drills and rakes. This is deep, dark storage for those long forgotten, out-of-sight, out-of-mind objects. A croquet set. A pair of children's stilts (the children now well beyond stilts...well beyond college, even). A stack of rusty, second-string lawn chairs. And a bicycle.
This is not a state-of-the-art, cutting edge bicycle. This is an old-fashioned rig: a very basic lugged steel bike, built back in the early 80's. It's a good bike. Not a great bike. Not some fancy pants, hand-crafted, artisan-built treasure. Not a Columbine or Bayliss or Eisentraut. Just a mid-priced, mass-produced steelie from across the Pacific rim. And yet it has its charms. The geometry is classic. The lug work is handsome and competent. The paint is very attractive: a snappy combo of red and white. Red top tube, down tube, and stays; white seat tube, head tube, and forks. Tasty, hard-to-find 3TTT bar tape fading from red at the stem to white at the bar ends, which looks just right with the paint scheme. She's rigged out with a Shimano 600 gruppo. (When she first hit the street, the word Ultegra had yet to enter the velocabulary.) She has index shifting - the hot new thing in her day - and the brake cables are tidily tucked away under that dapper bar tape.
She may never have been absolutely cutting-edge, but when she first rolled out onto the showroom floor, she had been considered a very good value...a classic frame, reasonably well turned out, at an attractive price point. When the man brought her home, she had been the apple of his eye...his darling. He took pictures of her. He sat and studied her and polished her and kept her lubed and shiny. He stuck Q-tips into her most private little places and squiggled out every last smidge of dirt and grime.
When she showed up, she had taken the place of a tired old French touring bike. She remembers feeling a little bit sorry for that old drudge, with her chipped green paint and loopy old brake cables. But hey, that's the way it goes. Out with the old; in with the new.
For several years she had occupied center stage. She had rested next to the man's bed, in pride of place. She and the man had gone everywhere together. They'd logged a lot of miles; had a wide world full of adventures. But then, suddenly and unexpectedly, those happy, halcyon days had come to a screeching halt. A new bike showed up. Looking at the new bike, she couldn't quite see what the attraction was: just an unpainted grey frame with no lugs and no embellishment. By her standards, rather dull. But everyone was whispering the magic word: "titanium!" And "Dura-Ace," whatever the heck that was. And that appeared to be that. Overnight, she went from the bedroom and the back roads to that black back storeroom, hung up on a hook next to a tattered old poster of Sean Kelly. She thought then of that old French bike--gone, long gone at a garage sale, years ago--and she felt a bit sorry for both of them now.
Year after year, she hung there. She wasn't sure how long it was. Time does funny things in the dark. She thinks she may have dozed off from time to time and slept for a year or two at a stretch. Gradually, quietly, her tires gave up their air, one psi at a time. She marshalled all her metal molecules to keep the rust at bay, for it was at times a bit damp in that unheated shed. For the most part, she succeeded. But try as she might, she couldn't keep the moisture out of her cable housings. Everything stiffened up, like arthritic joints. It made her a little sad, but she never lost hope. She was sure the man would come back someday. She knew she was a good bike, and she was pretty sure the man still appreciated her. She was still here, wasn't she? No garage sale for her! She knew for a fact the man still had a picture of the two of them together at the Davis Double, up on the wall in his office. That counted for something, didn't it?
Every so often, she would be roused from her slumbers by the sound of the lock on the storeroom door clicking open. Then the sun would flood in, and her hopes would soar. "He's back! We're going for a ride!" But no, the man would briefly step into the storeroom with a tool in hand and strip some little part off of her...a chain ring bolt, perhaps. In fact, over time, all five of her chain ring bolts disappeared this way, and the two rings were left dangling on her crank arm. It was rather discouraging, she had to admit. But whenever she got depressed, she would repeat a little mantra to herself: "Steel feels real! Steel feels real!" She wasn't even sure what it meant anymore, but it sounded good and bouyed up her spirits and made the dark not quite so murky.
Over the years, between her long naps, she kept up a rather desultory conversation with the other occupants of the storeroom. The croquet balls were especially talkative, although not very bright. And as some of the items in storage did occasionally get taken out into the light of day, they now and then returned with news of the outside world. One day an old chair joined them, and he was able to tell them, among other things, that that usurping, satiny titantium bike was gone! Had in fact run off with another man! For the briefest moment, the old bike thought her moment had arrived. But no. It seems the ti bike had been displaced by an even newer, even fancier bike made of...what the heck is carbon fiber?
This may have been the low point for her. She became resigned to the notion that he was never coming back. There comes a time when hope alone is not enough. She began to accept that she might have reached that point...that unhappy state of complete and utter uselessness, when trust gives way to rust. But as is the case with all good tales, just as things looked as bleak and as dark as could be...
One afternoon, almost 13 years to the day after she had been locked into that dark storeroom, the door opened and the man stepped in. But instead of stripping more bits off of her, he lifted her off the hook and wheeled her around to the workshop. There, all of her missing chain ring bolts were replaced, her ancient chain was cleaned and lubed, and new tubes and tires were fitted. She was given a light dusting to remove the cobwebs and fly specks, and then--wonder of wonders--the man hopped on and they went for a short ride around the neighborhood, just to see if she could function at all anymore. Quite to the surprise of both of them, she did okay. Not great. She was stiff and klunky in some ways, but not terrible. Oh, it felt so good to be back on the road, moving forward, the blacktop kissing her tires, the wind whistling through her spokes! She had almost forgotten how much fun it was to be in motion, doing what she was designed to do.
The next morning, the man came out in his full riding kit, popped a couple of water bottles into her cages, and off they went for an all-day ride...a century, no less. Just like old times! It wasn't a complete success, she had to admit. She broke a spoke. But you could hardly blame her for the failings of that old wheel, could you? And she threw her chain once. But hey, she'd been hanging in that storeroom for 13 years! She could be excused for being--quite literally--a little rusty. And the man seemed to agree. She heard him tell a couple of his riding buddies that he was quite pleased with her performance, and that he planned to put some real work into her to bring her up to speed.
That night, she went back on the hook in the storeroom--but only temporarily--and all the other residents of that dark dungeon were eager to hear what she had to say about her adventure. In answer to a barrage of questions from the twittering croquet balls, she reported, with some pride, that she had gone out and done an entire century on her first real ride.
"What's a century?" asked the blue ball.
"It's a hundred miles."
"What's a mile?" asked the yellow ball.
"What's a mile...?" she replied. "My goodness, you boys don't know much. What do you know about distances?"
"We know feet!" said the red ball, picturing the stretch of lawn between two wickets.
"Well then, a mile is five thousand, two hundred and eighty feet. So a hundred miles is five hundred and twenty-eight thousand feet."
It took the balls awhile to wrap their little wooden heads around a number that big, but eventually they seemed to get the idea, and they were suitably impressed. "Boy," said the green ball, "if I rolled that far down the road, all my paint would be worn off!"
The bike replied, with a return of her customary modesty, "Oh it's not that difficult for me. It's what I'm made for."
"It's a funny thing though," she reflected, more to herself than to the balls, "That century took a long time. I recall we used to do those in six hours, or sometimes even five. This one took more like seven or eight." And then she realized with a bit of a jolt that she wasn't the only one who had grown 13 years older.
"But listen...I found out why I was out there on the road at all: it seems that precious princess from the bedroom stubbed her toe in some improbably catastrophic way and had to be stripped down and shipped back to the factory for expensive reconstructive surgery! Can you imagine? I would be sooo embarrassed if I were her! Well, her loss is my gain. The man says he's going to fix me up with some new parts and ride me a lot more now."
Sure enough, over the course of the next week, she was treated to a complete makeover. New chain, new cables, new housings, new Italian saddle with titanium rails. Ooh la la! A shiny new 3TTT stem to go with that classy 3TTT bar tape. New cyclometer, new pump. New wheels. New Dura-Ace 8-speed gruppo with paddle shifters. She felt so deliciously indulged, like she'd spent the weekend at a spa, or maybe like the tin woodsman getting buffed up by the Wizard's minnions. And she looked as good as she felt. When the man stepped out of the workshop for a moment, the table saw across the room looked her over and growled, "You clean up good, babe!"
The truth is none of these parts was really new. They had mostly come off that ti bike, left behind when she had gone off with the other cyclist. But the man didn't tell her that. The parts were well kept and looked almost new, and he didn't think she needed to know that she was being tricked out in hand-me-downs from her former rival.
The next time out on the road, both she and the man marveled at how well she performed. Her shifing was quick and precise; her brake action was light but firm. All of her new parts looked good, saved weight, and made her feel nimble and youthful again. She felt almost as if she had been reborn.
At a rest stop on their next club ride, a few of the man's friends were looking her over. Most of them had never seen her before. One guy especially admired that natty red-to-white bar tape and said, " That is very cool! You're stylin' my man...you're stylin'!" Another said, "Yessir...that is one very good looking ride you've got there!"
Hearing this, on top of simply being there, on the road, in the mix, was almost too much for her to bear. She was suffused with a simple, transcendent joy that knows no words. She felt as if she were burning up with happiness...so intense that her white tubes must be blushing a rosy pink and her red tubes glowing like neon.
Still, all those years of waiting in the dark had made her a pragmatic realist. She was not so intoxicated with the moment that she could forget the facts of life: that as soon as that high-priced prima donna got back from the factory, she, the trusty old steelie, would be back in the storeroom, hauled out only now and then when the forecast called for rain. But she could be content with that. She knew now she had not been forgotten after all. She knew she had come off the bench and performed better than anyone expected. She knew the man would not let her languish for another 13 long, dark years before taking her out again. And if those future rides included a little rain water now and then, well, she could handle it. Being out on the road, even singing in the rain, was better than hanging on a hook in the dark.
Back in the dark storeroom, the yellow croquet ball let go with a wistful sigh. "Gee, do you think anything that wonderful will ever happen to us?" And the red ball, always the cockeyed optimist, replied, "Are you kidding? Of course it will! Just be patient: haven't you ever heard of grandchildren?"
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net