I’m salty. The conditions are right for me to be salty, and I am. It is early fall, I am wearing my long-sleeved, red jersey and shorts, the speed I ride, the humidity, my late season level of fitness, all come into perfect balance this evening. I sweat, exposing liquid just above the dew point, to dry air moving at 18 to 20 miles per hour. The sweat does not drip or pool, it is produced at exactly the right rate for the water to evaporate, leaving behind a visible brackish crust on my face and on the surface of my clothes in all the areas that one would expect sweat to be produced..
I should be riding slower to make the transition between active and sedentary more manageable, but the fact is that I’d like to make it home before it rains, and get a shower to wash away the salt that tightens my skin. The irony is not lost on me: when I ride slower, I sweat less, and the rain will cleanse me, but if I give weather conditions the opportunity to precipitate precipitation, I might also lose the last of this day’s light.
Logic falls away, and I ride fast to top an overpass, the overpass which tells me that I am less than a mile from home, the one still paved with the bricks of last century, maybe even the one before that, back when this town made and the world took. Now, the only thing that this place produces is itself.
I allow myself to gain a little speed, feeling the earth give back what it has taken from me every day of my life. The sky rolls on with me, like a stroller built for triplets, but containing only one huge baby.
A block in front of me I see a police car attempt to do a U-turn. The maneuver they end up completing looks more like a lower case “g”.
First, the driver pulled perpendicular to the curb directly in front of me, and I notice the reverse light come on. With the gap closing, this vehicle is now a complete hazard to me, they seem prepared to back over me if I pass on the left, and they have left me no option on the right.
I think of the beautiful ride I have had this afternoon. I rode on Cold Soil Road and Elm Ridge and Cherry Valley and Woosamonsa, beautiful names referring to bucolic places.
When I left home this afternoon, I stepped outside, looked up and said:
“What a beautiful day to die on my bike”
It is always a beautiful day to die on my bike.
I started riding my bike seriously when I was 14, and since then I have been middle aged. I could never imagine being more than twice as old as I was at any given time. 38 years old, my current age, seemed foreign to me when I was just out of high school, the same way that I have difficulty imagining a time when I will no longer work.
Twenty-four years of bicycling will net many things, in my case: scars, lots of them. My body is covered with reminders that people do not always signal, or often even think, before they turn right, nor do they stop for red lights with any sort of predictable regularity.
I have a computer on my handlebars that will tell me exactly how far I have traveled, and how fast, but another thing those years of cycling has given me is an innate sense of distance and speed. I can tell from the feeling in my legs that I have gone 34.4 miles tonight [within 1/10th of mile] and that right now I am traveling at 26 miles per hour [plus or minus ½ mph] toward the passenger door of a police cruiser about 100 feet away.
I wait another half second to allow oncoming traffic to clear, and swing into the other lane, stand up and sprint. With deference to the worst-case scenario, I give them wide berth to back up unimpeded by the insignificant likes of me.
Right on cue, the car lurches backward and then forward with the squeak of tires associated with excess acceleration. They are once again traveling parallel with the lane of travel, as I pass, sit, and lean in to say:
“Nice driving, punk!”
I turn back into the right lane. Seconds later, the police car is along side, and the policeman sitting in the passenger seat inquires as to the nature of my dilemma. I answer using a hand gesture known to incite, but, unsatisfied, I add:
“Do you have a problem, punk?”
The driver has fallen under my spell and pulls in front of me, carried by the chariot of tin and internal combustion by which a person in his line of work is allowed to keep up with a person like me. He pulls into my path, and I gather that they would like me to stop. Desirous of a word, I decide to stop and chat.
When I pull to a halt, the typical twosome is extricating themselves from their machine. I coast up close, and, nose-to-nose with the nearest boy in blue I ask:
“Can I help you with something?”
His reply seemed to come without any time for thought at all.
“What’s your problem?”
“My problem? You cunts almost ran over me right there, what do you think my problem is?”
“We were responding to a call…” The driver joined in.
“I don’t give a fuck what you were doing, you pulled in front of me, stopped, and then you tried to back over me when I passed.”
“This is an emergency vehicle, and we…”
He began an obviously well practiced yammering rant about some purgative or other. Meanwhile, I mused on the number of times I had met this exact set of individuals in my past. The passenger was about my age, with all the skinhead charm of a stump, who had been groomed his whole life for this job, beaten down by an overbearing cop father, until he finally realized that there was no other job for which he was qualified. The driver was the buff one, probably shaved his chest, and still sought reprisal for all the girls in his high school who noticed his resemblance to a jockey.
His mouth finally stopped moving, so I took the opportunity to point out the fact that such maneuvers as these are usually concomitant with concern for the public welfare, as well as flashing lights, and/or sirens. I then referred to his driving skills in a manner that would call his gender into question, and then pointed out that he would not last long in jail.
Seemingly out of rhetoric, they began stuttering and repeating themselves, getting more agitated by the second. I told them that it was past my bedtime, and that I hoped that they could get on with their emergency without me. I pushed my pedal to punctuate my point, but before I got three feet, the fat one kicked my rear wheel. He must have felt as though he had employed the paramount paradigm of parliamentary procedure, that he and his partner had carried the day, because they were grinning as they reentered the car. I leaned my bike against a pole, and stomped back toward him.
To the best of my knowledge, I have never touched a cop, there would be swift repercussions for those who did, but I swear I sensed his nose compress beneath my finger, and I know for certain that I spat on him six times when I delivered my final retort:
“Don’t you dare touch my bike, you fucking fascist!”
