
from Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, referring to the serpent Ouroboros.
On my ride into work this morning, I came upon another rider fussing with her wheel on the side of the trail. Being the noble gentleman that I am, I stopped to ask whether she needed help. She did. Seems she had flatted twice already this fine spring morning on her way to work; once earlier with the rear wheel, which she fixed using her only spare tube, and again just before I found her.
The front wheel was the victim this time, its innards pierced by some invisible trail missle or friendly fire from an unfaithful rim. As McFate* would have it, I had two tubes in my pack, so I offered her one. She accepted it, but only after asking to buy it from me, a polite enough gesture I suppose, but one that destroys the karma of the gift. Of course I refused, thinking some random good luck in the near future was far more valuable than a few bucks in my pocket now.
I waited while she began installing the new tube after pulling out the old one and dropping it in the grass beside her, where it lay motionless like a dead snake, tail in mouth. She had only a CO2 inflater, no pump, and I wanted to be sure she would be on her way after the fixthose micro inflators can be capricious sometimes, and a new tube is no good if you can't breathe life into it. She seemed willing to chat a bit while she worked, and the day being as nice as it was, I was in no great hurry to get to the office anyway. The way I see it, time spent idly is never time wasted, and he who finds work for idle hands is indeed a devil, to paraphrase an old adage.
She was petite and young and attractive, clad in winter racing lycra that must have been a bit warm for the mild temperatures slowly heating up beneath a brilliant sun already high in its climb. Her hands were tiny and her fingers thina combination that seemed to offer little hope of success against a reluctant tire beadand the nails were short and rounded, suggesting in their shape a sort of deliberate utilitarianism, like they were used to things like this. Her bike, upended with fork legs stabbing skyward like some rigor-mortised roadkill, was a light-blue Cannondale with those delicate looking, sparsely-spoked race wheels whose lacing pattern resembles nothing so much as an Iron Cross.
For the next few minutes, we talked about riding and flats and commuting and racing (yeah, I was lost on the last topic), about the privilege of being able to enjoy a ride on a morning like this one, and when it seemed she couldn't get the last bit of bead over the rim despite her best efforts, I offered to help, and she let me. The tire was slick from the dew on the grass, making the process tricky, but I strummed the stubborn bead into place, taking care not to pinch the new tube. In the meantime, I learned that she commuted from Vienna to Georgetown and back, some 26 miles in all, besting my daily jaunt by six miles, that she raced road for a women's team, that she hasn't strayed into mountain biking yet (but wants to), and that her name is Leslie. And then I handed the wheel back to her.
She thanked me and slid the wheel into the dropouts. I mounted up, said goodbye, and took off, with the idea of giving her some space to ride alone.


Credit, second image (B&W invert): Jen Woronow
*Humbert Humbert's term personifying the series of uncanny coincidences that Nabokov throws his way in the literary masterpiece Lolita.
1 comment:
ground work...
that is what I call ground work
get in there my son...
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