Bicycle Excursion #2

Saturday was one of those teaser days that happen in late winter when Spring is in the offing. It was warm or at least warm enough (in the 50's) and sunny. So I got dressed and took my bicycle along in the car, drove to Libertyville train station and caught the 9:10 weekend METRA train to Chicago. These trains are not only less frequent but they have fewer cars, so you end up on a train just as crowded as on a weekday. I badly misjudged where it would stop too. The weekday train or the 5:37 I catch most mornings has 7 cars followed by the engine. This weekend abbreviation has maybe 4 cars and they pulled about 100 feet past me entirely so I had to sprint to get on the train on down the platform (which isn't a platform at all, but just a strip of asphalt bounded by a cute little station and a parking lot.

With the 5:37 I know from experience exactly where to stand to get into the last train car. We even have a little Greyland station club, as everyone who gets off at Greyland kind of knows each other and we trade about a minute or two of repartee before we all scatter when the train gets to the stop. When I get on in the morning I always get the last seat on the right so I have a seat facing me. Occasionally some interloper gets that same seat but in general that seat is mine, and the conductors know it. They know I have a monthly pass so they sometimes don't even ask to see it.

My folding bicycle was folded inside its bag and in the forward part of the handicapped car with the jump seats and the bathroom spacious enough to roll a wheelchair into is where I chose to sit. I don't like the jump seats as well as regular seats, because when the train stops and starts it is jerking you to the left as it starts up and jerking you to the right as you stop. The stop is always a prolonged leaning to the right followed by a little jerk as the train comes to a complete stop. Two young black dudes were sitting across from me obsessed with their ipods. A young family was farther down in the car and a childish voice was laughing in the curious way they have ending in a hiccuping sound. Worse you have to listen to valley girls (they're everywhere, even in Chicago) gassing on and on ad nauseum on cell phones. Listening to some of the conversations you are exposed to on trains does not make one bullish on the future of America. Nor is the older generation more charming, although they seem to have less to say. Some old dude was clearing his passages all the way back from Chicago. (please stop that, I thought as this guy thrashed wetly behind me, either die or get off or something). Earplugs are handy. It keeps the noise down.

Arriving at Grayland Station, a dreary stop in an industrial area where Magenta Closure Corporation holds forth to the North, and to the South you have Slidematic Corporation in its handsome tan brick building. What do they make at Slidematic? God knows. Automatic slides I guess, whatever that is. There is a little rustproofing outfit and another metal fabrication company on Kilbourn near to Addison Street. I unfolded my bike and pedaled away. It was much better than the weekend before. I don't mind streets with parked cars. As long as no one opens a car door, there is kind of an unofficial bike lane between the parked cars and the curb, and as long as no one opens a car door or you get in the way of a bus you are okay.

Unfortunately, my seat kept sliding down and in an overzealous effort to tighten it I broke the lever. It did seem I was a much stronger peddler now than I was just a week ago, however. At Lane Tech I paused to take pictures of the huge Gothic structure that was built in the 1920's. There were some kids playing with their skateboards and some goth looking dude standing around looking bored over by the cafeteria entrance. I stopped because my batteries needed replacing in my camera. While there I saw something that reminds you that you are in a city where weird city like things happen from time to time. This was a driver's ed car with a hole smashed in the rear window. On the front windshield was a bumper sticker that said "This car Donated by General Motors for Educational Purposes". Nice.

I went to the Walgreens nearby and bought a pair of pliers so I could continue to tighten my bicycle seat even though the lever was broken and I proceeded east down Roscoe Street. Roscoe Village is there and it is Yuppie Heaven. I stopped in at the Starbucks there and had a frappuchino and went to work grading papers. I locked my folding bike to a parking meter in front and when I came back two hours later I found two Golden Retrievers tied to the same post. But then I guess there are worse things than having your bicycle watered by yuppie dogs. They at least did not bother the seat. Inevitably there was Bob Dylan crooning atonally in the background. It was "Desolation Row". It wasn't Desolation Row on Roscoe Village however. I sat at a table and it seeme that half the patrons had their young children being wheeled in and out in strollers. If one must grade papers all weekend, at least a starbucks is a pleasant enough place to do it. Now where is that white whale? Starbuck! Starbuck damn you! Get me my harpoon! Oh wait I guess I am the white whale.

About two hours of Bob Dylan and his friends was all I could stand. I thought of lunch. I got on my bike again and headed farther east. I knew the BROWN line was somewhere over there and after a little back and forth I found a station, got on and spilled half my cup of coffee in the process of getting myself and the bicycle on the very crowded brown line car. Eventually I got to the loop.

I keep forgetting that the Loop really is nowheresville on Weekends. The place is a ghost town. Maybe North Michigan Avenue is happening but it ain't here in the loop, fellas. Traffic was light however so riding a bike through the cool canyons of the loop was not a problem. I knew that there was a Chen's Orient Express in the Ogilvy Transportation Center food court. I ate there all the time last year. Though many of the businesses were closed up for the weekend the food court was open for business down the escalator. I secured my bicycle and left my $600 investment there on the street. The kryptonite lock was installed and it was still there and functioning when I came back, although the panhandlers who direct you to your train (then hit you up for change) were out in force.

Unfortunately Chen's Orient Express had steamed off into wonton oblivion. It was boarded up, and so I once more went to McDonald's. The furniture is bolted to the floor and the whole place seemed to full of the kind of people who like me had nothing better to do than hang out at this godforsaken food court. It would be an ideal setting for Jay and Silent Bob. I did not have the heart to grade papers in such a place for even ten minutes so I caught the 2:35 outta there, otherwise I would have been marooned there for another two hours.

When I got to Libertyville I took my bike back to the bike shop and had the guy who sold me the thing repaired the broken seat lever. It was done free of charge.

Steve Martin's "The Pleasure of My Company"

This isn't really a funny novel so much as a novel about a nut. Specifically about a character living in Santa Monica named "Daniel Pecan Cambridge" who lives on disability checks and has a bad case of obsessive compulsive disorder. Daniel lives in a world of restrictions such as street curbs and light bulb wattages and chronic unemployment. He scrapes by by getting checks from Grandma in Texas and disability checks, yet he longs for a relationship with the women he sees in his life, Zandy his pharmacist, Clarissa his visiting psychologist, and a sharp-looking real estate agent he sees across the street repeatedly trying to rent property.

As the story progresses we are gradually let in on Daniel's world and we get a vivid picture of the women in his life, all the more vivid for the psychological restrictions that keep him chaste. Daniel is an observer. He sees and analyzes from his apartment window, from his building stairwell, from chance meetings with neighbors. As such, from his perspective we get a vivid portrait of his world, as the mystery of himself and those people around him is revealed.

Steve Martin, of course, has been known for years as the "wild and crazy guy" with the arrow through the head, or the King Tut headpiece, and the banjo. He has gone on to make numerous films which run the gamut from masterful to awful. However it is nice to know that when he has full creative control, as with his writing, he is truly an artist. I have enjoyed everything I have ever read by Steve Martin from "Cruel Shoes", "Pure Drive", "Picasso at the Lapin Agile", "The Underpants" to "The Pleasure of My Company."

The Stupid Academy Awards

The whole idea is kind of retarded, frankly. I guess it sells movie tickets. After all, if I was paying ten dollars to see a film, IT BETTER BE GOOD. Often they are not good. Often it is just a symptom of who's in and who's out in Hollywood, a place where a whole industry is based on fantasy. Why should the fantasy stop at the studio gate?

The whole idea that there is an objective BEST anything out there is nonsense. Art is a personal thing. What I respond to as a moviegoer has a lot to do with where I am in my life. Just because I like movies with lots of explosions, gunfire, and car chases doesn't mean I am not just as sensitive a human being as someone who likes movies with people sitting around and talking, and going for walks and talking some more.

New Dahon Folding Bicycle

Living here in Chicago many of you do not realize how profound is the desire for spring for us Northerners and to get out of our cabins, out from behind our screens, scarred from bloody battles with software, stupid programs, and other ailing machinery. And while our computer skills grow ever stronger, our behinds grow wide and our muscles flabby. The only machine of mine that has behaved is my 2003 Toyota Corolla. I feared it needed a muffler, but I was wrong. I resisted an impulse this morning to go off to Milwaukee, but then I reflected "What's in Milwaukee?" Unsure I turned south again. What is in Milwaukee indeed, a city that looks even tireder and dirtier than mine in spite of better beer and better baseball.

So, with some extra money that had come my way I bought a folding bicycle which folds and retracts until it is only a bundle of wheels and gears. My first real bike ride of the season was this morning. Boy was that depressing. Oh well, what did I expect? I haven't done any cycling since last summer and even then only now and then. I stayed in first and second gear mostly and stopped from time to time to catch my breath. The wages of sedentery darkness is this. And I had a stationary bike at home. No excuse.

And though it is sunny it isn't especially warm. It was 19 degrees going up to 35 this afternoon. Dress warmly and remember the wind chill.