My next-door neighbor

...Comes back from his weeklong family trip.
Before he left, he was gushing about a girl he was dating for the past three weeks. 'She's the one,' he kept telling me, in a dozen different alliterations. 'Oh, she's a businesswoman, she's starting her own restaurant, etc etc talking her up to me. He even shows me a photo. Busty Brazilian Brunette, she was definitely a looker.
'I've waited 15 years to meet her, and I just know she's the one.' he says with animated enthusiasm.

After three weeks, you know how much is wrong with that statement.
He is 67 years old. She was 23.

Of course I can't do anything but warn him, 'I'm happy for you but...'
Aww christ, you know, I couldn't even tell him. What could I possibly say.

Well, he comes back deflated, tells me it's over, his family talked him out of it.
The week before, he neglected to divulge one crucial detail:
She was a stripper.
Now not to be judgmental, being a stripper is not a dealbreaker, but it was combined with the rest of the story he had told me about her ruined the math.

He was bummed but lucky. He got out before he got burned too bad.

I wasn't so lucky in my day.

the classics

I was never a book reader. Back in high school I never read anything besides People magazine, and maybe Readers Digest that my dad gave me a subscription to as a Christmas present. (Thanks, Dad.)
I never expressed one iota of interest in Readers Digest either.

On top of that, having no discipline, I was awful at doing book reports. In prep school we had six weeks to do them from the time they were assigned to us.
So in 9th grade, Russian Roulette-style, I ended up with To Kill A Mockingbird.
Right off the bat I judged it by the title and immediately took a disliking to it. Part of the fact I was 'forced' to read it also made me not want to read it. You know how that is?
I looked at most Kurt Vonnegut books that way too. Everyone around me always had a dog-eared copy of some Vonnegut book for one reason or another. And me with my anti-establishment mentality, in a way I saw my classmates as mindless sheep being programmed by society by all reading the same narrow list of authors, the same books.
So just the fact of being assigned to me, To Kill A Mockingbird became the 'programmed' reading I was trying to avoid. Yeah I was so smart, I could see through their evil subliminal plan of trying to teach me some lesson that I already thought I knew.
And yet like an albatross it still somehow hung over my shoulder.

Six weeks came and went, and I never did that book report. I never even opened the book. My teacher threatened me with failure of English class if I didn't hand it in, so I said I was working on it to placate her. But I never did. I graduated without doing it, so I felt absolved.

But in the back of my mind, every so often I would think about that book.

It's funny because when I was that young my mind still wasn't emotionally developed at all. I took everything at face value for years and I couldn't see anyone's ulterior motives or read body language or read between the lines. I wouldn't have understood that book if I had read it anyway.

It took me years to realize it was mostly because I was such a loner and my parents were never around to raise me or teach me the subtleties of people's words or actions. My mom never taught me anything about people, she kinda stayed back and let me develop my own opinions. It's good in one sense because your mind doesn't get poisoned with prejudice, but at the same time it's like being thrown in the ocean with just a rowboat and a pair of oars, not knowing how to fish or how to navigate. That was my level of social skills.

I remember once in my early 20s when I was hanging out with my close friend Lisa, I met a girl that I took a liking to and was talking to for a while, and after we parted ways and I felt pretty good about myself and my chances with her, Lisa turned and said to me,
"She doesn't like you."
"What do you mean?" I just couldn't understand it. I thought I totally hit it off with this girl. I considered in my 20 year old mind that maybe Lisa was jealous, but then we never had that kind of relationship.
"She just doesn't like you, couldn't you tell?"
"Really?" I said, slightly crestfallen at this point. Again, I didn't see it.
Lisa started to explain to me all the signals this girl was putting out that I was totally not picking up on. At all.
It was also at that moment Lisa became the Mystical Decoder Of All Things I Didn't Understand.
Only later in life does one completely comprehend the weight and gravity of such a person in one's life.
Consider yourself truly blessed if you ever have a friend willing to be patient enough to teach you stuff you have no clue about, in a way that isn't condescending and insulting to your (perceived) intelligence. My infantile mind until that point just could not see the nuances of things.
She taught me to read between the lines.

So anyway, fast forward to the present, over 30 years later. Consider that for the past 16 years I have been umbilically tethered to the internet. I have a shelf of books I never touch. Some Vonnegut too. "One day I'll read them," I halfheartedly promise to myself when I'm cleaning and forced to confront whether to keep them or donate them to the local Salvation Army.
Usually, while I'm surfing the internet, Leslie reads voraciously next to me. Harry Potter series. Vampires. Some fluffy stuff sometimes. But always reading. I tell her she should do book reviews because of her unbiased and razor-sharp critiques.

But then one day it hits her to read The Classics, meaning basically, 'all that stuff from school.'
And the stigma that hung over me about that time, and those books and what they represented has faded and replaced with a genuine curiosity.

Yeah, OK, I honestly feel like an idiot writing it like that, I can see how you're reading it, like with an, "Are you kidding, what took you so long?" Like I never knew what velvet or silk felt like.

But yeah. It's a great book. I admit it. I missed out, OK?
Watching the movie always helps me visualize things too.
It was also completely fascinating when Leslie found out and told me Dill was Truman Capote.
That just adds a whole 'nother layer of interesting. Need to download Breakfast At Tiffanys and In Cold Blood, and of course read those too.
In the movie, they downplayed him but in the book you can tell she's really fond of Dill, waiting the entire year for him to come back. I did think it was really cute and affectionate in the movie when there's a shot of Dill passed out leaning on the Reverend as everyone else was riveted to the trial.
I also loved reading about how everyone who made the movie stayed close for the rest of their lives. Gregory Peck was very close with the girl who played Scout, as well as the actor who played the accused man Tom Robinson, Brock Peters.

Anyway, there's something more valuable to me in 'borrowed' books. I appreciate them more knowing I have to give them back at some point. (god, why is my head so fucked up sometimes?)
But it's really fun to share the experiences with Leslie. Kinda like biking together.

Next up is Catch-22. I think we're gonna need the movie first.

insight

So explaining on my life a little:

Business and just working in general, not one of my strengths. I have either quit or been fired from dozens of jobs in my lifetime. (usually the latter though.) I don't stay at jobs long if the work environment doesn't suit me.
I don't put much weight into jobs, they don't mean that much to me. The people I choose in my life come above all else.
You can find a job anywhere. But people like Leslie don't come along even once in a lifetime.

I didn't realize until the internet came along, when people started revealing their deep feelings online, that most people are lonely and bored. Alot more than I ever was.

First off, I'm a certified loner. I really don't need the presence of other people, I never get bored. THe reason mostly was because being a latchkey kid, never having my parents around, you learn to not depend on anyone else for things. If something breaks, you learn how to fix it. If you're bored you find something to do.

I remember when I was 10 years old living in New Jersey, instead of doing homework, I'd be in the garage for hours fixing up my bicycle.

My dad was never meant to be a parent.
My dad left me with a bad taste in my mouth about alot of things. He would put his work above everything else, including family. Jobs he would be neurotically punctual to, but to see his kids, not so much.
His actions spoke louder than any words. So my parental role model was set.
Actually, my anti-role model.

I vow never to have kids. I know I'd be an awful parent. I have no one positive to base it on.
My mom tried the best she could but she was never around, she had to earn the money. I don't hold that against her, but it caused alot of friction growing up.

So that's why I put my one personal relationship above everything else in my life.

That's why I could never work retail, why I refuse to give up my weekends.

Minstrel Cycle

... I told a mandolin-playing clown unicyclist he should do women's parties once a month, and call it that.

Anyway, so I bought another bike last week, a matching Trek Drift for Leslie's other one.
That will make 26.

Somehow I got past some unseen unknown obstacle and I'm finally finishing some project bikes. One is a Schwinn I bought from Walmart a year and a half ago, another is an Electra I'm trying to make as light as possible but its somehow just not.

I have to learn so much. Aluminum welding and then hardening (you have to harden aluminum after you weld it or it's as soft as overcooked pasta, but I have no idea how... chemical? Heat? Usually YouTube has answers.)
There are things I need to make myself because as huge as the internet is, I can't find big handlebars. Well, I can but just in steel, I want them in aluminum of course. So I need to make them.
And I need to learn to make comfy banana seats. In leather. A couple of years ago I had two made at a shoe place and they were beautiful but they were kinda hard, I was trying to explain to them to make it soft but they didn't. Leslie didn't like it.
You want things done right, you gotta do it yourself I guess.

I know what you're thinking: "You have what, 26 bikes, why don't you open a bike shop already?"

I've thought about it.
Alot.

There's this bike shop near Leslie's house, we pass it every weekend going to the post office. Sometimes I go in and talk to the guy, he's this old crabby man who has been there since probably WWII. I'm trying to feel him out, and the more I talk to him the more I totally disagree with him about his whole philosophy. He runs the shop alone.

For one thing, he is never open on Sundays. And sometimes even Saturdays. In the summer no less.
I ask him, 'why don't you have some kid run the shop if you don't want to be here?'
"Naaaah I'm not gonna do that," he waves his arm dismissively in that patented old-man wind-up that old complaining men do.

If you want to survive in the bicycle business, you NEED to be open on weekends. That's like saying you don't feel like commuting to the ski shop because it's snowing out.

It's why I don't want to get into the bike business myself. I like my weekends. I have always hated working retail. Leslie's been at her job for eight years, and she's not going anywhere. Nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday.
And I'm a firm believer of being a hands-on owner if that's what I'm going to do. I wouldn't trust my business to anyone else either.

So I'm riding home on Thursday and I'm 'racing' this other biker riding an expensive Italian Pinarello and dressed in biking tights and gear. His bike must weigh 15 lbs.
I'm riding my customized Schwinn cruiser and carrying 50 lbs of gear, meaning all of my tools and work-related stuff, and my bike lock. And I'm wearing khakis rolled up to my knees to keep the grease off. This is how I get around, biking to clients in the city.

Why do I bike? It's the only exercise I get, and it frees me from the stress of the subway: The crowds, the non-existent trains at rush hour, the smell, the feeling of being treated like cattle. Also alot of our clients are always 'luxury' buildings several blocks from the train, and the walk from the station alone always takes longer than the actual train ride.

I also build my bikes, something I derive alot of happiness from. I love finding and buying parts, I love the satisfaction of knowing I ride something I built.

And sometimes I tend to get 'competitive' in my mind, especially on the 59th street bridge, this 3/4 mile uphill climb that tests your endurance and strength and strategy against other bikers.

So back to Thursday, after he's crushed me up the bridge and I've finally caught up to him going downhill, me and Pinarello are waiting at a light.

"Nice day, huh?" he says.
"Yeah, finally" I reply. It's been cold all week and its a sunny balmy 50 or so.
"Hey, I bumped into you last week," he says.
I never talk to anyone. This is NYC, bikers don't even say hi to each other. So he obviously must be mistaken.
He surprised me when he said, "Yeah, you yelled 'I've got 50 lbs on my back!' at me when I passed you."

He was right. In a moment of defeat I did indeed. I had to laugh.

I'm not sure if I should be a little more social with other bikers. None of them say Hi, nor do I ever say anything to them. It's a snotty-biker thing I guess.