The fluid built from today is lingering in my legs like vats of acid in a wooden bowl. Today was murder, the temperature wasn’t the worst… it was a tepid 46 degrees but the rain was always there. Whether it was heavy and straight or mist-like and sideways… it was always there, looming continuously over my shoulder, unrelentingly making all this expensive ass gear I have fail gradually over the course of the day. Nothing can stand up to nine hours of soaking, I don’t give a goddamn how waterproof your new spaceship fabric claims be, by the end of the day my last layer of armor is as wet as if I had ran a marathon in the Sahara with all of it on.
So, in this mush, I crossed two bridges four times. I rode from Manhattan to Brooklyn, Brooklyn to Manhattan, only to come right back to Brooklyn again because the idiot at the pick up gave me the wrong package. The moment I deliver it to our client, she recognizes it as the wrong fucking portfolio and now I’m chugging right back to the city with this waify, overdressed asshole’s fuck up and a whole ‘nother run consisting of about 35 pairs of Doc Martins, total weight ended up being close to sixty lbs.
I drop the truckload of boots off first obviously then head over to sunlight studios where Mr. Sunshine Peckerwood works. When I get to the front desk I tell the receptionist what the deal was and ask her to relay it to him in detail and in as plain of English as she can muster up.
He finally gives me the right fucking portfolio; it’s about fifteen pounds heavier than the first one.
My legs are not only screaming at me at this point, they are actually communicating with each other, planning to break off from the rest of me and run to easier climates, or maybe they are staging a coup…?
Well, the day is behind me now. All I’m left with is the achy aftermath. My erectors are binding up and stabbing inwards like a butcher knife left on the stove gunning straight for the base of my skull. The fact that I did all that work, that I put all those miles down in that unforgiving city of pure motion feels like an achievement.
When you stop and realize that you are the fastest moving object in the fastest city in the world, an odd appreciation forms around all the pain that is shooting its way in towards your entire understanding of reality. Not everyone can do this, there aren’t many in their right mind even willing to try. Hell, I don’t blame them!
After the pick, I find myself panting and puffing my way back to Brooklyn for the last time, my eyes flinching, my mouth sneering from the torture being carried out below my waist. I’m carrying the correct and bulky as shit portfolio back to our client. She was very apologetic and appreciative. The smile was wearily on my face…
“It’s no problem at all, this is what we do.”
This IS what we do… suffer while cleaning up the busy mess of this city and smiling about it. We tell about it later over a pint or two… or eight with others that have seen much of the same inside of those death maze streets.
I mount back onto the bike and head for the Levee to find my friend who has something for me to calm the nerves. There are two tattooed white kids in their mid-twenties with their shirts off six feet away from me at the bar, it’s seven p.m. mind you. One has a six inch beard, the other a mustache and horn rimmed glasses, both are sagging just a bit. Horn rims is admiring the other’s black sleeveless jean vest covered in metal patches. Beirdo lets him try it on, Mustachio grins with glee. The bartender and I have traded more than a few glances in regards to the bobsey twins and their all too obvious efforts at cool. It’s all entertainment to me, hell I’m sure I’m more than a chuckle to most people that are not used to all of this.
“They work at the restaurant down the street in the kitchen… this is not a singular occasion.”
I’ll take this form of entertainment over watching t.v. anyday. It’s hard for me to take a drink without laughing at this pair of numbskulls.
I ask for another whiskey neat, buy my weed and head to the drug store close to the hut to pick up a big bag of Epsom salt. The only thought in my head right now is me in that tub, with that spliff and that classical music flowing in the air not thinking even in the least bit about bicycles.
Hope I don’t fall asleep in there.
