Spinning south through the clouds, working on base miles again, strengthening my cycling skeleton. Heart beats a calm 69%, 145 beats per minute, winter of love. I roll through the montage assembling strands.
In downtown Oakland three artificial red heads come crosswalk, swaying bags of McDonald’s beside big butts in denim skirts. No kingfisher on either three bridges but a dead skunk becoming oil.
Coots fly buzzing 2 strokes on leashes at the model airfield. Nippy planes travel upside down, twist tight circles. Pilots wear matching windbreakers, coaches’ jackets. Birds smirk from far away.
Sneaking through the fence between the Firing Range and the Dump I startle a wounded seagull. His right wing is exploded, a snarl of feathers. He hops away from me on the dirt road as on the other side of the barbed wire fence jerks detonate Magnums.
A twist of paper narcissus grow in the center of the marsh. A naughty pitbull leaps over the top, pursuing a jack rabbit. But the rabbit is too fast, a nuclear grasshopper. Darn dog gives up, decides instead to interrupt a pair of mallards necking in the weeds.
I pause to stretch my skeleton, half way done.
Three young fellows with proto juvie fuzz ’staches batter a bomb shelter with an oversized Snoopy baseball bat. They’re testing its tenability, they have nothing else better to do. They’re waiting impatiently to grow bigger, begin lives of crime when they may jack me off my bicycle with a shoplifted aluminum bat.
The wind blows North, opposite of normal, pushing storm. I sit up to ride no hands, arched like a sail. Out at the Raiders’ Headquarters a tasteless soul examines his white Hummer H2.
Approaching the Bay Farm drag strip I am intercepted by a pair of frosty racing lesbians in a pace line. They’re riding carbon fiber Serottas with titanium lugs, fine Italian drivetrains. I spin cautiously, not wanting to push too hard, but wondering just how fast they are. I linger far off their wake, not wishing to be seem rude or venture in their slipstream. My inner coyote emerges and I pull aside, exclaim, “Nice bikes!” They nod; they’re wearing matched Colnago jerseys. They’re listening to mp3. I spin a while, wonder if they’ll accept the tacit challenge. It’s an inherent challenge that goes out to anyone who meets anyone else on a bike: So hey, how fast are you?
Coyote says, “Go!” and I make a break, drop them far behind. Now they’re the coyotes and I’m the rabbit. (Actually, I’m the jackalope.) The jackalope gets excited, feels like he’s driving a rented sportscar. He says, “How fast can this thing go, anyway?” I shift into my big ring and floor it, take my customary sprint from the line of pines to the ferry lot. My tongue is out, I stand on the pedals and start to growl. I’m pushing so hard it feels like I’m burning bone marrow, I pass 30-something on the speedometer as a gigantic AC Transit bus swings wide out the lot, blocks the finish line with a steel glass wall.
I’m sitting on the sidewalk drinking soy chai. I’m thinking about riding the tail wind North, earn an easy sixty miles. Or seventy. “Eigh-eighty!!” ventures the coyote. Wha-what?
Mopey clouds emerge, start to drizzle. I dart home through the Tube on the catwalk, circle the Lake amongst big, spare drops that seem like spit. 40 miles home and my key won’t work in the front door; I don’t know why.
I came in the back.
