The Stuff (Unfulfilled) Dreams are Made of.

This is what a 1966 BSA Lightning shouldn't look like. So beat I got it from a hardcore California biker for just fifty dollars about six years ago. While it has only continued to rot its decadence festers in my soul. It's beauty has tortured me as I am so enamored by its 650cc twin engine. It ranks just third in my engine-aesthetic behind a knuckle-head V-twin and Flathead V8. $3000 worth of new parts and a couple hundred man-hours of work later and maybe it could be a ride-able motorcycle again; with a little more maybe just maybe it could be the cafe racer I've always dreamed of having. The cafe racer I really wanted while throwing clubman bars on the 1978 Honda CB550 I loved dearly but I had to give up too when my life went to shit after college and even with two degrees I couldn't earn enough to keep up the insurance on it.

There's far too much resignation in my life these days...spent biking at night, broke and dispirited, wondering how in the folly of youth and in university I ever let myself dream it could be better than this; losing (slowly) my connection with the people, things and activities that I have loved.

Or my days spent trying to cobble together something useful from the mountains of accumulated trash that actually is my life now. And while I'd like to hope for better, something tells me one of these days I'll be pedaling a busted blue and red bmx bike down a Shreveport street still grumbling about my lot. Even then I probably won't be rid of my foolish dreams. I'll be on the look out for the smile of a pretty girl to melt my heart, solicited by the caricature of a bike rider I'll cut with my six foot frame on a 20" bike.

Grow My Love in Near Alliteration; The Girl Who Broke My Heart in Golden Gate Park (by Speaking Japanese).

Fresh off a plane and a good night's rest I finally made my way into San Francisco proper; left on Broadway climbing into Chinatown I glance to the left and like magic the first landmark I see is City Lights Bookstore and I could not be more elated. I felt as if my initiation, my introduction to San Francisco, its acceptance of me was complete.

But there is another story more perfectly encompassing the whole of my experience there:

Quixote y Sancho

This is a self-portrait taken in Golden Gate Park; a picture of my head and heart. My heart is the taller more willful man burning to tilt the windmills of this world, raging against the mediocrity of this life. And my head... for all its pessimism, all its knowing-better it colludes in all my hearts foolish, optimistic desire for love and happiness. Indeed just moments before this portrait was taken my heart, in spite of my head, had been broken at the Tea Gardens by a Korean girl.

I had emerged from the shaded hiking path off Fulton Street into the beauty of a setting sun; quickly surveying what the park offered in the superficial way all tourists are condemned to see their destinations of interest by the duress of time. The trees were giant, the buildings austere and everywhere was a bustling distracting mass of human activity when out of the morass she caught my eye with her immense beauty stayed by a subdued sense of style (mostly middle gray) and understated radiance.

 Contemplating the entrance fee of the Tea Gardens I turned to leave, saw her and smiled. She paused and replied in kind and my heart leapt. I desperately wanted to talk to her and used my roommate's curiosity about whether or not the trees we were standing under were cherry blossoms as an excuse. Telling him to hold on while I asked someone (she had forgone the fee as well) timing her perfectly in my peripheral vision I turned and asked idly, "Sumimasen, Nihon-jin desu ka?" She only seemed trouble for a moment before she replied in far superior Japanese, "Iie, Konkoku-jin desu." I froze. Here was my perfect-in to strike up a conversation and I don't know what I was expecting. I had asked a question and she was sure to respond in some way even if it had been just to blow me off.

That's the humorous juvenile tragedy of my adulthood, that even in my late twenties I can still be struck dumb by the prospect of conversing with a beautiful woman like some prepubescent teen too terrified for the attempt at his first awkward kiss. All I wanted was to talk to her, to share a little bit of this life in conversation, to find out how she spoke Japanese so well. She had learned in school no doubt, but what had that been like for her? What was it like to be a beautiful foreigner touring Golden Gate Park alone? Could I have been witty and winning, could I have made her laugh? I lost the opportunity to find out when in my silence she faded away into the mass flowing into the Botanical Gardens, lost to me forever.

I wondered if I could live like this; amidst this. Was this a livable city? Could I tolerate all the unpalatable coffee everywhere save for Cafe Trieste and that lame old stand-by, Starbucks? Could I live in a place that tolerates so obvious an evil as Pier 39? Which is everything ugly and wrong about American tourism: theme restaurants, extremely overpriced souvenirs like the pop-art postcards of Che. All authenticity, anything unique about a new place sacrificed on a dual altar to the Gods of convenience and familiarity.

The city was filled with such beautiful women, so many more than I was expecting...like when biking the Golden Gate I kicked it up to the 14 tooth gear and bombed the downhill into Sausalito at incredible speed; running into a New Zealand-er named Amelia in the country doing a work study in the hospitality industry. Sitting outside the bay side coffee shop, sharing a laugh with me (read: at me) when I choked on the glass bottle of beer I had bought and shotgunned worrying I was running out of time. Or the pretty little German girl visiting from Singapore who I met on the ferry back with her endearing accent and eyes begging me to save her from the family vacation she was on while subconsciously she thought of her and I. Could I stand this grinding daily monotony , the destruction of my heart at the hands of their beauty?

In the end I decided that I did want this life. I wanted to be worn down by the constant heartache of so many gorgeous women. I wanted to be weathered by the sun and spray, I wanted to spit in the (Pacific) Ocean and have a sandwich on the shore. I wanted this life always, for San Francisco to be my perpetual heartbreak. But, it wouldn't last. Because my mind knew that there will be no American Dream for me, not even an American life anywhere in this country. No matter how much I rage at the margins of it, no matter how often I charge at it my heart armed with a make-shift lance this country will never take me seriously or let me in. Still the collusive incorrigible optimism creeps in; knowing my life is a descending ladder of disappointment and every time I smash my fucking face on the next rung down (evey time my heart is wounded again) my mind thinks happily, "Finally, I've hit rock bottom."

Mounting the Saddle and Reminiscing.

I got the Brooks installed on my Raleigh and I am absolutely thrilled with the results:

I have also installed some Fyxation brown tread white wall tires and some Wellgo bmx pedals (because I couldn't find any Odyssey's in an appropriate color). Unless it is brutally cold outside I only ever ride my bicycles in flip-flops and wanted a solid platform pedal to make that shoe choice more comfortable. The Wellgo(s) have conformed to that requirement quite well and were thankfully very inexpensive; only $11.

At 100+ miles the Brooks saddle is no where near broken in, but it was comfortable from day one. I did notice that to even begin breaking the leather into an ergonomic shape I had to ride at least 10 miles at a time and literally sweat my ass off on it. Hopefully I'll have several hundred miles on it by the end of summer and the process will be complete.

Though I love bicycling I have begun to long once more for the other means of conveyance from my youth, when all of my failure seemed short term and I could view my future with at least a margin of optimism. I am speaking of horse back riding and sailing. I lived in Del Rio, Texas until I was eight years old and while there I frequently rode horses and when I was six, my dad bought a beat up Vanguard Sunfish from a sailing school for $200 and taught me how to lay fiberglass and sail it on Lake Amistad part of the Rio Grande (his former profession being boat building/ repair in Cocoa Beach, FL). While in Louisiana I bought a 16' Hobie Catamaran for $400 and sailed that until college when I joined LSU's poorly supported Recreational Sports Sailing Team where I raced Vanguard 420s. Though I am a poor sailor I have always dearly loved it and am now, after 4 years off the water, dying to return to it. While in San Francisco a few months ago I fell in love with a seemingly popular local boat design from there, The San Francisco Bay Pelican:

It has a bowsprit and lug-rig that recalls, for me, a boat of much older design than the 1950s and I aspire to and consider myself capable of one day building it. However at this point the expense of it would be prohibitively expensive so I set out to find a more approachable design (I am badly in need of a win). While searching the internet for free boat plans I happened upon a cheap, race-able, home built, one design class boat called The Puddle Duck Racer: 

It may be a little bit ugly, but I am attracted to the egalitarian ethos of it as well as the freedom above the bottom ten inches of the hull and ability to run any rig you want. I could put a bowsprit and lug-rig on it to be an ersatz Pelican until I am in a position in life to build that much more sea-worthy vessel.

Tanned Hides and The Cold Shoulder.

I spent Memorial Day in New Orleans celebrating our servicemen by almost going to the D-Day Museum only turned away literally mere feet away when an NPR report came on about how busy the place was with a "record-breaking crowd."  Instead I indulged in some pure old fashioned American consumerism which is probably just as good an homage to our brave heroes and the American way of life.

I started it off on Oak St., now a beautiful example of post Katrina resurgence. In my pre-hurricane memories it was a sparsely business-ed street book-ended by the great Rue De La Course built in the marble husk of a bank on the corner of Carrollton and a (word of mouth) popular Asian restaurant, Ninja on the levee end. I would spend beautiful Saturday mornings there with an easily bored LSU med-student girlfriend that, in spite of everything, I still cherish today. A good Saturday morning, a cheap one held in the afterglow filled with (beignets which are not offered at  Rue De La Course and) good coffee is a far sweeter and more romantic thing than any expensive hotel or exotic vacation. The street is better paved now, it's roughness gone the way of the high water mark lost to reconstruction; new drywall and hot asphalt. It feels like there are more businesses there now: a comic book shop, another cool new coffee shop (Zotz), a dollar store, a bicycle shop, etc. There are even new condos; and many of these things could pre-date the storm they just aren't in my memory of it. The street is now in possession of  its very own Brooks Saddle dealer, Wallingford Bicycle Parts.

I had never been to the store in my past wanderings on this street, but had tried before on two previous trips. It is a small unassuming white storefront with an oval sign you have to be on the look out for. I was reluctantly received and shown B17 specials in Honey, Racing Green and Black. I adored both the Honey and Racing Green colors but thought the green ill suited to the light blue of my Raleigh. If I owned a Surly Pacer however there would have been no question of my preference. I looked at some Swifts and Swallows too but found them prohibitively expensive. While I was there I could not help but feel I had inconvenienced them by walking in; it is obvious by the minuscule counter front customer space that most of their business is done online and the sole associate I had interaction with seemed pressed for time. I bought a B17 special in Honey to support them anyway. It must be said of the Brooks Saddle that it does come stylishly packaged.

Supplied with its own spanner

and a rain cover.

The Wages of Underemployment; herramientas nuevas.

Recently, I was lucky enough to finally be able to afford some long desired bicycle tools. I had wanted a cable-puller for sometime but was never able to find one in a bicycle shop. I shopped around online and though I would like to have purchased the Park Tools brand cable puller (it is made in the U.S.A.) it was more than double the price of other options; so I settled on the Pedro's brand probably out of an affinity for its vibrant yellow color.

 

No longer satisfied with my universal coin shaped spoke wrench I also found a pro set of spoke wrenches (that contact the spoke nipple on all four sides) also made by Pedro's on close-out and got those along with the cable-puller for less than thirty dollars before shipping. I was very impressed with this set that came clustered on a carabiner and included a star shaped wrench for some strange breed of Mavic nipple that I doubt I will ever lay eyes on.

 They each have both the more traditional, less secure nipple opening that contacts just three sides of the spoke nipple as well as the four sided contact opening...

and I got four of them plus a carabiner for less than the price of one Park Tools (four sided) spoke wrench; and while I don't have the satisfaction of supporting American manufacturing jobs I still received a quality tools at an affordable price and I'll just have to make my peace with their foreign origins (and with the fact that none of the four are anywhere near large enough to accommodate the enormous, industrial sized spoke nipples of my Atlas cruiser).

Painful Regression

I've been back from San Francisco nearly a month now and am slowly easing out of the doldrums. The city was fantastic and were I a man of means I probably would never have come back. I hope to write more about my experiences there but have not yet invested the effort.

Back in Shreveport I began working on another vintage Peugeot.

This one is a 1986 Peugeot Corbier and it is in much better shape than the last one I was involved with. I did a very minor tune-up on it and de-cluttered it of its light generator and other superfluous objects.  The only major stumbling block was the rear derailleur which was fouled up to the point that the spring in it would not snap the pulleys back into tension against the chain; if you pedaled it backward the chain would come off. While pulling that apart I notice its brand:

It made me wonder if it were manufactured by the same Sachs that used to manufacture mopeds in Germany (and now again in China).

I also found this front page for an old Peugeot catalog which was for me at least immensely amusing:

I don't know if it's the castle or the hideous bike but something is screaming bad fantasy novel. I found this cover as well as the vintage of this Peugeot here.

Injured Vanity and Chapped Lips.

I have been in San Francisco this week.

Using Bikes and the City as an informal guide I have found my way to several coffee venues and a group ride, The Butter Lap.

college roommate

 

The group was small enough and reasonably friendly; reassuring me that the ride would be "relaxed" and "casual." After a twenty minute wait we were off.

We began to fall back very early on.

the last we saw of the group

This is what happens, you come out West trying to help your friend mend a broken heart and end up getting dropped like an old lady a mile in on the first hill at Fort Mason. 

My friend was struggling more, but he's no cyclist. My second excuse would be to try and blame the hybrid bikes we had rented  (hybrids are the bane of my aesthetic existence within bicycling). Maybe my eyes were so sore from looking at the ugly things that I just couldn't pedal fast enough. It was simply a pathetic display on our part. We embarrassed ourselves and our community and in the end all I could do was take these (tourist-y) dusk photos: 

and roll over to Safeway for some Chapstick to balm my heart now broken by these latest failures...or at least my lips anyway.