Sprint PCS Tazer (Archer Nelson)

Sprint PCS Tazer

I really need to learn to not put my cell phone's ringer on the loudest setting, with vibrate, when I'm riding. Habit. When the boys were little and cell phones were new technology and I cared about how much my bike and my gear (and my self) weighed, its seemed like a decent tradeoff to carry the extra pound or so of cell phone so that Janie or the boys could reach me, even when I was out training.

And there have been a couple of times when I've swallowed my cyclist's pride and used the phone to call for a ride. Once when I had slid out turning on a sandy Wisconsin county road intersection and snapped two bones in my right hand, and once after I let a riding companion I had met on the road that very hot August day convince me that it would be okay to stop off at Lerk's Bar in Afton for a beer and then finish the ride. Both times I tried first to press on despite my diminished capacity.

I did all right with the broken hand for a few miles, on the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix, but after crossing into Minnesota at Stillwater and climbing up out of the river valley, I found that one-handed climbing--particularly when the unused hand is broken and throbbing--is tougher than I expected. I'm no Tyler Hamilton. I think I could have made it to the Lakeview ER, but I was so focused on just climbing that I missed turning south and I wound up near the top of the valley, but on the wrong side of the ravine. It would have been way too much riding to get home or to the hospital without going back down into Stillwater, so I phoned my friend Austin, who lives in the Liberty development near where I was by then, and he came with his Jeep and brought me up to the Lakeview ER.

The other time wasn't as dramatic. I had met this guy while riding through St. Paul, and our paces happened to match, so we paced together, exchanging comments on bikes and gear and commuting and also politics and spirituality. We would be parting ways in Aton--he heading south toward Hastings; me north toward Stillwater, and we agreed to finish our conversation over a beer in Afton. I know, generations ago Tour de France racers would fortify their heroic efforts with flasks of wine and when they got tired they would perk up with cigarettes, but I couldn't fool myself, trying to step up the crazy-steep pitch of the Afton Coulee. I didn't feel fortified, and I had no cigarettes and I couldn't pretend that either would work. I bonked. I called home and Janie called a neighbor to go fetch me--because the boys, toddlers then, were napping.

That's all a long way of saying that in all the years of riding with a cell phone in my tool kit, I've never received a call that couldn't wait. But nineteen years of parenting has trained me to be reachable at all times if at all possible. Maybe I've harbored a subconscious fear that the first time I turn the ringer off before I ride will be the time that one of the boys will crash his car only blocks from where I happen to be riding and I'll miss the call, speed-dialed out with my son's last conscious muscle twitch, moments before slipping into a coma, waiting for the jaws of life to arrive. Who wants to get home after the evening commute to check his cell phone voicemail and hear "Dad . . . dad . . . ?"

So I worry about stupid shit like that. I've been trained to worry about statistically stupid stuff by Janie, the worrier queen. If I didn't keep my cell phone with me and turned on and set to ring loud when I ride, I probably wouldn't be riding at all. I haven't dared test the theory. But tonight it was nearly tested during my ride home from work.

It's been crazy warm this week. Yesterday it was in the upper thirties when I rode in to work and it was close to fifty when I rode home. Yesterday the shoulders were awash with the melt of the very little snow we've had this year, to and from work. Today was not quite as warm, and some of the melt that made yesterday's ride so wet and gritty hung around as frozen puddles on the shoulders in the depressions between the hills on my route to and from work. (Yeah--you can see what's comin' here, can't you.)

So I start my ride home from work after 6:00 PM and it's dark already and in the winter I just use this dinky little Cateye LED handlebar mount light with four AA batteries because in the winter there's usually a lot of snow on the ground this time of year and all that snow reflects all the light from dinky little LED unit and it's good enough and it's a lot easier to deal with that the big rechargeable packs that I used to strap to my top tube and bring inside with me in the morning to keep warm enough to work again for the ride home. Except that now all the snow is melted. I'm past halfway home, cruising down the steepest hill of the ride, really enjoying listening to John Hiatt's new album with my iPod (volume low enough so I still hear every car that creeps up behind me, but I bribe myself with ear candy to get myself to ride in the winter when it's cold). I'm trying to focus on the music and relax because I really can't focus on much of anything else because there are no lights on this stretch of road and I'm way outriding my dinky headlight and it's getting to be kind of a a sphincter-clenching ride, but if I let myself get tense then I can't feel the road as well, and I'm really going on autopilot, senses of touch and smell every bit as much as vision right now--nearly a pinball wizard whizzing down a pitch black and ocassionally icy country road, and my cell phone goes off like a tazer in the jersey pocket against my lower back.

I imagine myself jumping briefly off my saddle, clenching, flinching, crashing. In my mind I go completely tense and lock my arms and squeeze brakes and hit ice and slip-WHAM at 40 MPH. I let myself imagine the road suddenly fully lit as a semi crests the hill behind me, arcing its halogen lights across the sky, the Scotch pines lining the road, the frozen ponds on either side at the base of the hill, and the patch of ice and the solid double yellow line I'm skidding across just before the truck jack-knifes over my bike. I let myself imagine all this so that I don't actually do any of it--somehow vividly picturing all of it helps me relax and ignore the ring and buzz of the phone and instead sprint to the bottom of the hill, coast carefully over the ice patches, and then squeeze to a stop on dry pavement rising up the next hill. One foot on the shoulder now, I pull a glove off in my teeth, fish the phone from the pocket beneath two top layers, flip it open, then unclip my helmet, pull up my balaclava and pluck the earbud from one ear. "Hello?" I pant. John Hiatt is still singing "Master of Disaster" in my other ear.

Silence for a moment, then, "Um, Dad?" It's Chance and his characteristic seems-to-have-forgotten-why-he-called pause.

"Yes, Chance."

"Um, I'm studying but I was wondering, do you think I'll have to file a tax return this year?"

Chance is like that--a brilliant pre-med student at UW - Madison--but sometimes he latches onto some random thought and he can't regain his focus until he resolves it.

"No, I don't think so. You only made a few hundred dollars this year, right?"

"Yeah."

"Did you write 'Exempt' on your W2 form?"

"I think so."

"I'll check into it for you, but I don't think you need to worry about it."

"Okay, thanks. See ya."

My bare hand is now freezing. I return the earbud, pull the balaclava and helmet back on, return the phone (its ringer still set on high plus vibrate in case Janie or one of the boys needs to reach me for something important) to its spot in the jersey pocket nested in the small of my back, get the glove back on, and start the dark climb up the last long hill between me and home for the night.

Posted by Archer on February 22, 2007 10:56 PM | Permalink

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Archer Nelson

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Sprint PCS Tazer

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