http://www.archernelson.com/ A fictional blog en Copyright 2008 Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:55:58 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss By act of Congress, Daylight Savings Time came three weeks earlier this year than it used to, and for anyone like me who lives with a Seasonal Affect Disorder sufferer, this is big government looking out for the little guy, at last. I'm off from work this week, although we're not going anywhere this year. I've got plenty of vacation time accrued, and last Friday I finished the only proposal I had to write, and I have no current projects except for a few administrative things that got put onto my plan just to make sure that no matter how much I accomplish this year in business process assessment consulting gigs, bids and proposals written, contract awards earned and solution implementation projects completed, I won't complete everything on my annual performance plan, so I won't get rated above "meets expectations," and the corporate fabric will be safe from runs and snags for another year. So on Friday I decided to take the week off. That's the way my vacations work: I work like hell to get caught up and then once every year or so if I'm humping hard all the time, I actually find myself between projects, so to speak, with nothing (but the administrivia) to do, so I announce that I'm taking a week off and go home and putz around the house, get out on some extra bike rides, read books, watch movies, take naps. Yesterday was warm and rainy but today was warmer and sunny. I got up an hour or so later than if I'd been working, read the newspapers, and then poured an extra cup of coffee and dragged my Park workstand out to the driveway and clamped the Rivendell to it. Late morning, sunny, spring literally in the air. Winter riding has been hard on the brakes and drivetrain. I spent an hour or so disassembling and lubricating and adjusting the brakes, cleaning the chain and chainrings and sprockets and derailleurs. As long as the brakes were off the bike, dangling from the cables, I pulled the wheels and cleaned most of the frame and fork with a dry cloth, taking care not to scratch the forest green painted frame or the gold tracing that Janie had painted by hand around the points and scrolls of the Rivendell's fancy lugwork. "She did a nice job, didn't she?" "Yeah," I say, squatting down to work the cloth in behind the crank and chainrings, whipping my cloth with both hands like a shoeshiner across the bottom bracket. "She's done a nice job with the boys, too." "All of them, you mean? Not just Chance?" "Why do you ask me that?" "Deb," I said, hanging my cloth over the bike's top tube and standing to talk, but she was gone already, like she always is. http://www.archernelson.com/2007/03/spring_break.html http://www.archernelson.com/2007/03/spring_break.html Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:55:58 -0600 Out on Roosevelt Road my cleats click to my pedals and my mind is wiped clean of all but the ride before me. Today, Tuesday, my legs are shaved clean, my Masi Gran Criterium tuned and waxed special for this ride. I want to cover the distance today in new record time. The distance: ten miles. The time to beat: twenty-four minutes, thirty-seven seconds. There is no wind. I circle between cars on Roosevelt Road, waiting for the green arrow two blocks down to go yellow. It will, about four seconds before the main light turns green. I do not look at drivers inside the cars, but I know they are looking at me. My heart beats at idling speed. Coasting closer to the intersection, I go to the drops and caress the clinging handlebar tape with the two front fingers of each hand. I wrapped it myself. It is sexy. This is it. I'll do it today. It is all I need to think or even care about now. Yellow. The Masi's tubes flex and make a sound as I lift off my saddle. I'm at the intersection before letting go my first breath and the light is green maybe half a second before I hit the crosswalk, which is where I press the start button on my Cateye Solar cycle computer. There's snot on my mustache and I feel about a quarter second slow. My ass brushes the saddle and I shift and stand forward, knees bumping elbows, chin inches from the handlebar. My speed already is 32 mph, cadence 117. I'm riding the dark strip between the solid yellow lines and I pass my fifth or sixth car going in front of Fitzgerald's. It's five minutes to Cicero Avenue, and if I can keep this pace the light will be green when I get there. On my way to that green light I like to imagine I can burn the calories I drank at Fitzgerald's last night. Then I'll ease off for a little while. I had a professor when I was in graduate school who was kind of a flake. He took the El into the city each day from Evanston. So did a lot of professors. So did I, when I lived up that way in Rogers Park. But this guy said he liked the long train ride because it was the only time he had for meditation. Each morning he would take a seat on the Express and fix his eyes on a rivet or a dot in some graffiti, and let his eyes go to slits and focus his entire awareness on that spot as if to memorize it, burn it into the concave canvass at the rear of his skull. I concentrate on a similar spot each morning during my commute into work, but this spot is nothing you can see. It's the spot, usually just beyond my reach, where my heart nears 195 beats per minute, 200, and the split between my body and my Masi is lost. Sound is gone. Sight is a lightning strobe succession of traffic snapshots. Semaphore truck brokenglass cop pothole taxi sewergrate gravel tincan TransAm CTAbus DONTWALK drunkpedestrian and each snapshot is processed for the bodybike's response and then is behind and forgotten. The strobe oscillates between chest and eyes and is painful in a satisfying way. When the pain stops I stand off my saddle, chase after it. Through a yellow-red light, a horn breaks in, sprint to sneak in front of the truck. It may have nicked my rear tire. To make a new record today I've got to keep my average speed at 25 mph and only think of that spot in my head or chest or in front a little bit. The next light is red. I coast fast up to the intersection between two lanes of cars. At the front of the line is a People's Gas truck. I put my hand out to balance against the side of the truck. The driver, a black man with a gold earring and a couple of teeth to match, looks at me in his side mirror and doesn't seem to mind. I press the buttons on my Cateye. My average speed is 29. The light is slow to change, and the liquid-crystal number on the computer changes. 28. I suck huge breaths to keep the blood fed in my legs. I can feel both quadriceps stiffening. Green. I let the truck pull ahead. It jerks hesitantly while the driver shifts. I tuck in behind the truck and switch onto my large chainring as the driver shifts again. Drafting, I stay two or three feet from the white painted step of a bumper. The acceleration seems slow, but in two blocks we are going 35. Every couple of blocks I drift left and poke my head around the truck to get a look ahead—if this guy stops too fast I'll be wrapped around his axle. He smiles at me in his mirror. We clear three lights. I am being followed. I look back, sticking my face under my left armpit to see whether it's a truck. I have an irrational fear of being sandwiched on my bicycle between trucks going faster than the speed limit. After all, even compact cars can effectively crush a cyclist. But trucks make an expanded polystyrene helmet seem even less significant. This time it isn't a truck. It's a cobalt-blue '65 Mustang convertible with a vanity plate. I have to look again to read it, upside down: MIMICA. Heavy brakes squeal in front of me while I'm trying to get a look at Mimica through the glare on her windshield. I lean left and see a flash of red brake light peripherally as I dart out against the wind, a projectile from a slingshot. In front of the truck, I overtake a BMW that is sneaking through the red light, and keep even with it on the left, letting the car shield me through the intersection. The driver puts it to the floor to race ahead of me. Some drivers can't deal when they're passed by a bicycle. The BMW is waiting at the next red light, revving. I wheelstand next to him for a few seconds, then hop the curb and circle back on the sidewalk. MIMICA is idling by the curb a couple of cars back. She had to have run that red. Her top is folded down and I stop for another wheelstand on the sidewalk right at the curb, so close to the edge that if I lose my balance I'll be in her lap. I'm tempted. Brunette, busty, she's wearing a black bikini top and a black skirt. Mounted between the bucket seats is a cell phone. In the back seat there's a cooler and a couple towels, a bottle of tanning oil. I'd like to say something, I don't know what, but the light changes, and then she looks at my legs, maybe my bike, and lets out the clutch. I drop off of the curb behind her and there's a bumper sticker that says: How's My Driving? 1-800-EAT-SHIT I crack up. The laughing messes up my breathing and I start to cough. Mimica's car idles smoothly toward the intersection. I'm still coughing, but I stand forward and push to catch her. My chain is still on the large ring, and getting momentum again in too large a gear is killing me, but I want to draft Mimica. I can't do it. My cough is making me choke—I’ve inhaled some spit. I'm not getting enough oxygen. I have to downshift, and Mimica stays ahead. I think she was watching me in her mirror, but it's hard to be sure because of these white sunglasses she's wearing. I sit up, let a few cars pass while I take a squirt of water from my squeeze bottle, try to get into a decent rhythm to carry me to the next light. It's a pretty good stretch ahead. I'm going to lose some time now, but I need to recover. To make the record, I'll have to time the lights just perfectly, or catch a good long draft behind someone. I'm losing my concentration. I'm looking for flags to gauge the wind, and I'm paying too much attention to the road surface, swerving to avoid small potholes that I shouldn't be worried about. I look to the light at the intersection I'm coming up on, and the light is green but the DON'T WALK light, which is the color of a tequila sunrise, is flashing above the crosswalk. I sprint, sort of, to just make it as the light goes yellow, and I relax again, almost coasting through the intersection. I shift up one cog and try to bring my cadence back near 100, try to find a rhythm to recover with—there’s still a chance for a good time today if I can get it back before I reach Halsted Street, and if I can time the lights through the Loop right. I can see Halsted now, the third intersection ahead. The light there is green, but the two before are red. My average speed has dropped to 24.9. I have to gain a tenth of a mile per hour between here and the finish. I wait for the first light to change and the second one is still red when it does, and I coast between the first and second lights, and when the middle light finally changes, the light at Halsted is still green so I go like mad. I put my head down to the bar and pull so hard I can feel my shoelaces with the tops of my feet. I've got concentration again and the road is burning away under my tires and then it turns silver around the edges of my vision and the whole black road surface turns silver, then white and I look up—the light at Halsted is red, I didn't even see the yellow, and I'm already past the painted crosswalk lines—more than 30 miles an hour—and someone next to me, behind, yells "Hey!" and I'm going to be broadsided by a rusting Chevy with metallic green paint. I put my head down, accelerate so hard that my knees are going to pop off, and I feel the frame and handlebar flexing. A rush of air goes heavy over my back before I hear the horn and the rubber shriek of cars trying to halt and my cadence is over 140 because my gear is too low and I wish I had time to shift and somehow I'm through the intersection and nothing hit me and I shift into my highest gear to maximize this great adrenaline rush. The adrenaline carries me the rest of the way on Roosevelt to where I make the only turn this urban time trial route has, left onto Canal Street, which will take me the last mile or so north to the finish line at Steve's Deli on Randolph, a block from the building I work in. I haven't missed a light, and I feel terrific as I hammer up the small incline in front of the main Chicago post office after the turn. Then I'm under the bridge, up another short hill to Franklin, through a couple of lights and in front of Union Station. I love this final stretch. At River Place crowds stand on the curbs and sidewalk watching to catch busses and taxis. The street's about five lanes wide here and I command the center lane, out in front of a convoy of taxis. The road is mine. Everyone watches. Many of the same people have watched each morning all summer. Most of a block ahead the light is yellow. I'm flying. I don't even have to change my pace—I make it through easily. But traffic is backed up ahead—construction at Washington—there isn't an open lane. Without slowing I choose a line between a cab and a UPS truck. The rear view mirror on the truck tags my jersey shoulder. I coast. I push a button on my Cateye while I pick my way between vehicles. With the same hand I pound on the door of a car that nearly took me out trying to switch lanes. 24.30.2 is the time on my Cateye—less than seven seconds to finish. I can see the yellow and red Steve's Deli sign over the tops of the cabs and cars, but it isn't safe to sprint. There are streams of pedestrians mucking up traffic in front of me, crossing from the Northwestern Train Depot. "Look out! Coming through!" I shout, dicing my way through a mass of jaywalkers. I pounce over the crosswalk lines at Randolph in front of Steve's and press the stop button. 24:45.7. Almost nine seconds off. There are no cars in the tunnel where Randolph passes under the train viaduct, and I ride in the middle of the lane, sitting up with my arms across my chest. The light is green at Clinton and I coast out of the tunnel into the bright intersection. I stare at the black liquid crystal numbers on my Cateye. I was more than eight seconds slow. A cab honks behind me and, startled, I pull on the handlebar, and the bike leaps erratically to the right. I grab the brakes at the drops and pedal hard, trying to power through my sudden turn, but I've angled too steep and I feel the Masi's wheels starting to skid, then bounce sideways—I’m going down hard and whether I’ve given a moment’s thought to Nick and Nooshin’s wedding will probably not matter after this. Both wheels slide out and my right fist, still gripping the bar, hits the street first. I tumble and my helmet slams backward hard against a chrome bumper. Blind, vision is pure white-hot ringing static and the roaring brightness in my ears is crushing me into the street. Someone is trying to help me up but my bike is tangled between my legs and the first thing I can see again is my feet twisting themselves from my pedals without sound. I struggle to my feet, lean on the car I hit, yank the bike onto the sidewalk. I say I'll be okay because I think I heard someone ask. I find my helmet's buckle, pull the shell off. I let it drop to the street—it couldn't have survived this crash—and some of the deafening roar falls away with the helmet, a hollow, plastic clatter on the asphalt. On the sidewalk my Masi's handlebar is pointing away from the front wheel, the stem twisted in the front tube. My hand stings, the back of my shoulder and my hip throb. I get off the car to pick my bike up from the sidewalk. It seems oddly heavy—my head is light, vision still hurts, and now I recognize the '65 Mustang, cobalt blue and chrome burning, that I just cracked my head on, parked on Randolph in front of the building I work in. I miscalculated my layers today after all: I'm poached. I coast safely past a line of young coworkers shuffling from the parking lot toward the back of the brick building we all work in and I glide up the sidewalk near the loading dock to a stop beside the empty bike rack. I remove my helmet and balaclava, soaked with sweat. A tall young brunette stepping past on the sidewalk flashes a friendly smile while I'm releasing the big saddle bag that contains my laptop computer, clothing, lunch. "G'morning," I smile back. A large oily drop of sweat rolls off my nose onto the Kryptonite lock while I'm securing the Rivendell to the rack. Then I badge in and clomp down the stairwell to the locker room to shower and prepare myself for another day in service to the corporate beast.]]> http://www.archernelson.com/2007/02/the_urban_time_trial.html http://www.archernelson.com/2007/02/the_urban_time_trial.html Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:56:41 -0600 and the TV while the AC was running. But Chance slept better, once I'd replaced the honk and wail of Roosevelt Road directly beneath our window with the steady deep humming of Nancy's portable AC unit. My bedroom window looks out onto Roosevelt Road, a gritty, noisy street that comes from out someplace past the Tri-State Tollway, pushes through the western suburbs, past my apartment building and into the city, to an abrupt halt at Grant Park near the shore of Lake Michigan. For two years I have lived on Roosevelt Road. It wakes me up at night rumbling beneath the weight of semi-trucks hauling milk and bread in and out of the city, and each day it produces the strong current of traffic that sweeps me off to work in the morning and spits me back out later on. Most people who know Roosevelt Road want to spend as little time as possible on it. I am different in that I recognize and embrace the daily challenge of getting to my job as quickly as possible. For me, the twenty-five minutes between Oak Park and Chicago's Loop are the best of the day. I don’t have an alarm clock—I leave waking up on time to Chance. Every morning, as reliable as any alarm, my son wakes up hungry and cries for me to come lift him out of his crib. For a moment I lay in bed wishing he would settle back to sleep, wishing it could be Deb's turn to get up and feed him, but he doesn't settle, and it’s been weeks since I briefly forgot or thought in a waking dream that Deb might be here beside me in bed, but Deborah is dead, so every morning it is my turn and I roll out of bed and stumble to lift Chance from his crib. "Good morning, Chance," I say, smiling with one eye squeezed shut against the morning. Chance coos his morning greeting, bounces up and down with his little fists tight around crib slats, smiling bright. He lets go of the crib rail and balances briefly, his arms stretching for me. "Da! Da!" I scoop him up just as he is tipping back. "That's right, I'm Daddy. Did you sleep well?" I carry him tight against my hip and shoulder. Chance gurgles something that I interpret as, Yes, Daddy, I slept very well, thank you. "It would have been fine with me if you'd slept a little longer, you know. You don't have to wake up so early on my account." Chance gurgles happily again. "Da!" "I wish I could wake up so happy every morning." In the living room I kneel and change his diaper on the floor. "Whoopsie!" I say, lifting him by the ankles with one hand, swiping the old diaper out with the other, replacing it with a fresh one. More happy gurgling. I strap Chance into his high chair and spill a handful of Cheerios onto the tray to keep him occupied while I fill his juice bottle and get an egg scrambling. The morning news and weather play out on the radio. Eighty-two degrees and windless at six-thirty with a forecast high above ninety-five again. When the egg is ready I dump it onto a plate and jog back to my room, grab a jersey, socks, some riding shorts. Back in the kitchen, I sit at the table near the high chair and get dressed while Chance attacks the egg with both hands. "That's not going to be enough this morning, is it?" I say. I drop bread slices into the toaster. When his egg is gone, I move him from the high chair in the kitchen to the wind-up swing in the living room and give him a slice of dry toast. Chance sits there swinging and smiling at me, alternately gnawing on the toast and waving his juice bottle at me while I do my stretching exercises and massage my legs with a few drops of baby oil. I leave the oil on. I like the chiseled shine it gives my calves in the morning sun. “Is Yai-yah coming to see you today?”” Chance smiles and pounds an egg-filled fist excitedly on his high chair tray. Nancy, my mother-in-law, often comes to Roosevelt Road to look after Chance when I travel for work or to spend a weekend with friends. She rushes in now, as if she’s late but she isn’t, sets a suitcase down inside the door, says something about an accident on the Eisenhower, and pulls Chance up out of his chair, smothers his face with kisses and smiles and giddy little cheek bites. She has the same amazing rapport with small children that Deborah did, and each time I see her with Chance—how utterly fascinated and completely sucked in he is by her friendly attentive face, her huge green eyes just like his mother’s—each time, I am reminded how fortunate we are to have her. "He feels warm." Nancy has her hand across Chance's forehead as she breaks away from his wide-eyed gaze and turns only briefly to face me. "Has he been fussy?" "Not at all." I pull the straps on my riding cleats snug and stand up off the couch. "Have you taken his temperature? I'd better." She walks off into the bathroom, her face buried in Chance’s neck, kissing him again and puffing noisy little fart sounds against his skin. "Are you coming back here after work, Vic, or just going straight up for the wedding?" She reemerges from the bathroom with Chance in one arm, shaking the thermometer down with her other hand, as he giggles and writhes with excitement in her arms. “I’ll come back, but probably not ‘til late. Eric wants to get together after work tonight to talk about the bachelor thing. I think it’ll be easier just to get an early start from here in the morning.” I unlock my bicycle from the radiator near the front door where I keep it secured with a coiled six-foot hardened-steel cable and combination lock. “That’s probably better. Will you be able to make it all the way up there in one day, or will you still need to camp?” “Oh, I’ll still camp out one night, I think. It’s a couple of hundred miles, you know. I’ll take off tomorrow and try to get up there before sunset on Thursday.” “Are you still planning on being back on Monday?” “As long as the weather stays nice, I should be. The wedding’s Saturday, and I should be able to start heading back on Sunday. Should be back Monday night.” “Well, don’t take any chances—if the weather turns bad on your way back down, call and I can come get you.” “That’s really nice, Nancy.” I give her a hug and a kiss on her cheek. Then I grab my backpack and throw its straps over both my shoulders, then lift the bike, grasp the frame midway between the saddle and the chainrings, lift it off the floor like a suitcase. “But I don’t think I’ll need help. I really want to do this all on my bike.” Nancy carries Chance close to me so he can kiss me goodbye, which he accomplishes with prodigious drooling and smiling. "Where?" Chance asks, as he does every time someone appears to be going someplace. "I'm going to work now, Chance," I say. "You stay here with Yai-Yah." "Yai-Yah!" Chance says, smiling and yanking at one of Nancy's pepper-gray curls. "Oh!” Nancy says. “I almost forgot—I have a couple of bags of groceries out in my car—could you bring them up for me?" “No problem.” I put the bike down, kick off my riding cleats, kick on a pair of shoes and run down to the sidewalk. After depositing the groceries in the kitchen and tying my cleats back on, I kiss Chance again, thank Nancy once more, then clomp down the wooden steps behind our third-story apartment with my Masi under my arm.]]> http://www.archernelson.com/2007/02/chance.html http://www.archernelson.com/2007/02/chance.html Sat, 24 Feb 2007 19:30:59 -0600 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. ]]> http://www.archernelson.com/2007/02/sprint_pcs_tazer.html http://www.archernelson.com/2007/02/sprint_pcs_tazer.html Thu, 22 Feb 2007 22:56:42 -0600 The Urban Time Trial, more than twenty years ago. I described it then as a little-appreciated sport, not recognized by the United States Cycling Federation. Unlike an ordinary time trial, which typically followed an out-and-back route on an isolated rural road that had been closed, blockaded, and sometimes even specially cleaned for the event, an urban time trial was run in a major metropolis amid rush-hour traffic. There were no specific rules to govern the safe conduct of the sport. Traffic laws were selectively jettisoned, since cops on the west side of Chicago--where I lived then--hardly ever enforced them against (nor in favor of) bicyclists anyhow. Of course, the Urban Time Trial was mostly in my head. I was an angry young man and back then overly aggressive scofflaw traffic-jamming in and around Chicago's Loop on a fancy racing bike was my way of venting, even expressing my angst. Of course, I did have things to be angry about--I suppose I'll get to explaining that. These days, I still ride a bike--I commute nine miles to work when I'm not traveling and Janie still rides the tandem with me when the weather's nice. But instead of clenching myself like a fist over the steel knuckles of a bike and riding like I thought I was going to punch right through the sky, now on cold mornings I coax myself away from Janie and the warmth of our bed to get out there with layers of wool and windstopping fabric because Janie and my doctor tell me it's good for my heart, my lungs, my hips, and, mostly, because I know it's good for my head. Friday evening after I got home from the airport and only the dogs were home to greet me like a Dino Flintstone duo, I went upstairs to shower and found a new sweater in an open gift box on the bed with a small valentine card from Janie: I can return this if you think I should, but I bought it before I knew I was going to lose my job. Maybe we can pretend tonight that we still don't know about that? I love you and I've missed you this week, and I'll be home around 7:00. Can we pretend tonight is valentine's again? --Janie It's a beautiful Dale of Norway wool sweater. It probably cost more than my first racing bike did when I was a teenager. It probably cost more than the 60-Gig iPod I was planning to buy for Carl's 17th birthday next month. Black with a rich celtic-inspired pattern in orange and forest green across the chest, it's stunning. The high collar has a soft velvety liner, and Janie has laid a black button-down with thin forest green pinstriping--a precise match for the green in the sweater--beside the box. I shower, I shave, I spray my chest with Janie's favorite cheap woodsy cologne from Bath & Body, and I put on the shirt and black slacks and the sweater and I gel & muss my hair the way she likes it and I admire myself in the mirror for a moment before walking downstairs. Janie is sitting on the couch beside the fireplace, Chumba's large snout in her lap. "Do you like it?" she asks. "You're beautiful." Her big hazel eyes play beautifully with her earrings--deep green turquoise spades surrounded by her long, luscious mahogany hair shimmering in the firelight. Her dark v-neck sweater frames a necklace of silver and turquoise that seems naturally to direct the gaze to her modest yet inviting cleavage. She stands, smoothing her skirt and petting Chumba's head and shoulders reassuringly. She meets me at the bottom of the stairs with a kiss, her leather boots making her almost precisely my height. "Your sweater is beautiful," she says. "It is." And we managed a pretty good job of pretending we didn't know yet about the business with her job, although much of our conversation was enthusiastic banter of her better career opportunities, now that she was finished with Mario. "You've calmed down about all that," I said at one point, sitting near the big fireplace at Pier 509 in Hudson, nudging the last morsel of sea bass on my plate. "I almost called him back. After I realized how relieved I really was to be through with him, I was sorry I didn't just say 'Thank you' to the slimy old prick." I lift my Tanqueray & tonic in invitation and Janie lifts hers. "To Mario," we both say, clinking glasses. And today, this morning, I peeled myself away from Janie a little slower than normal. In fact, I got up and went to pee and then instead of pulling on my favorite wool baselayer I crawled back into bed to spoon with my naked Janie for a few more minutes. "I don't want to go back," Janie mumbled. "Of course not," I say, pulling her hair away from her cheek so that I can kiss it. "You're not going back to work with him again, ever." "I mean sales. I'm sick of sales. I need to do something else. Something--something completely--" she rolls over onto her stomach, buries her face in her pillow. "Completely what?" I ask softly. "Completely, just completely else." Downstairs in the kitchen I filled a water bottle with my favorite morning ride mix of half skim, half strong coffee. I pulled on the rest of my layers and wheeled my favorite road bike outside into the crisp February air to greet the dawn. Pedaling across the packed snow and ice and gravel of our driveway and then the dry salty frozen pavement of the county roads where we live on the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River Valley, I finally let my mind carefully wander to what Janie's going to do now. ]]> http://www.archernelson.com/2007/02/valentine_redux.html http://www.archernelson.com/2007/02/valentine_redux.html Sun, 18 Feb 2007 19:07:03 -0600 Dozer, behave! Down!" Then a sharp crunching sound in my earpiece---a new one I haven't heard before. "Chumba! Drop it!" Wham! It sounds exactly like being inside a VTech cordless phone being dropped by a large male Rhodesian Ridgeback onto a cold Italian tile foyer. "Sorry, Dozer just about knocked me over getting to her dish first, and then Chumba tried to steal away with the phone." "I'm sure he just wanted to say 'Hi.' He misses me. Hey, Have you spoken with Mario since Monday?" "No, not since he made his offer. The dickhead is waiting for me to call him back." "So, why not just call him and tell him you'll take the deal for now and see how it works out?" "Because he's an asshole, not an idiot. He knows I can't make enough to bother showing up on the lousy little commission by itself. He's just trying to make me quit. He thinks that if I quit instead of him firing me, he won't have to pay unemployment." "So, he is an idiot." "That's what the letter is for. It just says that I'm resigning my position because it's clear from his intention to take my salary away and just leave the stupid little commission that's only $75 or $100 a week won't leave me with a living wage. It's just to cover me in case I have to file for unemployment and he wants to fight it." "Smart." "I called the Unemployment people. They told me to -- it." I miss a word while Janie's other line rings. "Just a sec---let me see who that is. Uggh---it's Mario. What should I do?" "Answer it! He's still your boss." "Okay. Thanks for the card, Poop. Call me later. Love you." "Love you, too." And I would have called her later, after my meeting at the Will Rogers Building next to the Capitol, but Janie rang my cell phone while I was driving my white Chevy HHR rental into the city on I40. "Bastard!" She yelled. "Me?" "No, Fuckface Mario!" "What did he do?" "He told me he's moving me from Minneapolis to the Hudson store. What an ass!" "Hudson?" "Yes, redneck, seedcap, cheesehead Hudson-fucking-Wisconsin!" "Why?" "How do I know why---he's fuckhead Mario!" She's yelling. "What did you say?" "I wanted to tell him to shove his fucking Wisconsin showroom of speckled frizee carpets up his saggy ass, is what I wanted to say! Asshole---he was just afraid I wasn't going to quit, so he's making it even worse! Like I really want to go sell carpets in Wisconsin! Damn hunters and their cheddar-hipped farmwives coming in asking to see brighter shades of oatmeal---uggh!" "Right, but what did you say to him?" I'm clicking the side button on the little eTrex Legend GPS that I've jammed between the windshield and the top of the dash, getting it to tell me which exit to take. "Oh, don't worry. I just took my letter out of my purse and told him that's it---I'm done." "Don't worry---you quit your job?" My turn is approaching, the GPS advises, so I signal a lane change. "Damn right I did! I didn't get a college degree to sell Linoleum to rednecks---on a 2.5 percent commission! I told him I'm resigning and I'll mail my access card back with my letter of resignation. When are you coming home? Friday?" "Yeah, Friday." "Good. I think my last resume is on your laptop. Can you email it to me today?" "Sure thing." "All right. I need to call Jessie. He was meeting me for a housecall out in Nakomis. Love ya, Farty-Butt." I follow my GPS's instruction to turn on Sheridan and then sit for what seems like minutes behind a woman in a pickup truck stopped at a green light and craning her head both ways---left and right, then left again, then right again, before finally creeping slowly across the intersection through the light dusting of snow. ]]> http://www.archernelson.com/2007/02/janies_worst_valentines_day_ev.html http://www.archernelson.com/2007/02/janies_worst_valentines_day_ev.html Thu, 15 Feb 2007 12:49:04 -0600