Tag Archives: Cycling

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Repetition and Metaphors

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It kicks like a sleep twitch. I just been listening to a few songs on repeat, yesterday and today.

I listened to The Xx for the first time two days ago with GF on NPR and really liked them so I’ve been playing Crystalize and Angels alternately three times, and then Anyone’s Ghost and Conversation 16 by The National, and then Crystalize and Angels again, and then Papillon by The Editors just to mix it up.

Most of the time I write in silence or else I’ll start to put in lyrics of the songs because I just can’t help it. But I played this little playlist like 10 times yesterday before work and I’m on my way to doing the same thing today.

And I’m doing almost exactly what I did yesterday.

And it’s awesome.

I’ve been really sore from riding my bike to work and apparently a lot of the pain has to do with the bike being too big for me. I’ll let you figure out the metaphor in there.

But other than the fact that it hurts to bend over, working at the bar has been pretty cool. I do have to suppress my ego like a mother fucker as people treat me like a non entity, both on the road and at the bar, but that’s a good exercise anyway.

I finished reading Blown Away by Caitlin Kelly a couple days ago. I meant to get up early today so I could get some reading in but I went to be at 2:30 and just slept through all my 9:30 alarms. I wouldn’t have gotten up if American Express hadn’t called me at 10:30. Thanks guys!

I got enough money this paycheck to almost pay the rent, so that’s good.

I made an omelette with chicken sausage and cheddar and peppers and it made me want to throw up, so that sucks.

I’m going to make some coffee soon, that’s going to be sweet, in a non-literal way.

I’m about halfway through my second reading of Great Expectations. It’s good.

I don’t know, in this part of time I’m feeling less realistic and literal. I feel like expressing my emotions and ideas at this moment all comes out in absurdist bullshit or song lyrics. Fuck it I’ll just go with it for now. It’s working okay anyway.

Live on coffee and flowers.

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Holy Shit

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I’m trying to tell myself that I don’t have to get everything done in a day. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Sometimes I feel like life begins when you wake up and ends when I go to work, or when I go to bed, like whatever I have to do in life I have to do it today. I think it’s from always telling myself to carpe diem and thinking I could die at any moment. Well unless you’re going to get crazy and steal some cars and hike the Appalachian Trail and try a back flip off the roof I guess you’re not really living up to your full potential. I guess I’m not living like every day is my last, anyway, so I might as well not think like it.

It’s almost time for me to go to work and I’ve spent the day doing all manner of trivial things that need to get doing and right now I don’t feel that usual sense of accomplishment. I guess some of that has to do with the fact it took going to Comcast and messing with wires for three hours to fix the internet, which I didn’t know was going to be broken today.

It’s funny how I always think of things to write about, and then write them in posts to write about later, but then I never write about them again, because I never really read over the last post, and in fact would probably rather never see my writing again. Until like ten years from now to see what was going on in that year or whatever.

I applied for a credit card today in case I ever need to rent a car or whatever, I should have one, and Capital One keeps sending me offers for a car that “gets you back on track.” Bank of America offers a card that you pay a deposit and that’s your credit limit. Then you use the card, and it builds your credit. So Capital One, well I figured it was some shit like that. Anyway I don’t have any credit cards because they’ve all practically gone to collections so I figured I might need it. Basically for renting a car. I figured I’d get like a two hundred dollar credit limit. They approved my application right away and gave me three thousand dollars. Now what the fuck kind of sense does that make? Don’t they see all my other cards aren’t getting the money they gave me back? Well, I suppose they hope to make enough in interest, as the rate goes to 22 percent in November. I guess they figure if they can keep me paying minimum payments for three years before it goes into collections they can get a thousand dollars or something. I don’t know but that shit is crazy.

Soon as I saw the number I was like…oh shit…I’m going to the Caribbean motherfuckers! Hell yeah getting my tiki on bitches! Shit I probably will, these dumb bastards giving me three thousand dollars. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve eve seen. Not really.

But yeah, shit, just wanted to roll up on here and type some shit out real quick and let ya’ll know I’m alive, I know you missed the rambling these last two days.

This world is crazy.

I got mad preparations to undertake for tomorrow and I’m not even doing anything that fancy. I’m putting together a tart from a recipe by Once Upon a Tart, that pastry shop in New York. And we don’t even have reservations to the place we want to go to, we’re hoping to just sit at the bar. That shit could be a complete disaster. But anyway I took the night off, which is something I haven’t done for years so, how bad could it be.

My reading time has really taken a cut with this riding the bike thing, since I can’t read like I did on the bus. Shit. And the customers are really starting to get on my nerves, and I’ve been off work for four days. Yesterday was the first day back. So that’s not a good sign. I better drink some coffee or something today. Shit I thought I was over substance dependence but I guess not. I wish I could drink margaritas on the job. I’m really about to start bringing a flask.

But shit I don’t have a flask and I can’t buy anything until mid-March, since I won’t hardly make enough in the next paycheck to pay my rent and then the one after that is already ear-marked for student loans and credit card payments.

Fuck it I’ll put it on the new card.

Be easy, ya’ll. I love you.

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A List of Things I Did This Morning

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Last night I had a couple drinks and rode home. So when I got up this morning, about three hours after I had gone to bed, to say goodbye to GF, I was sure I was going to be a little hungover. I had drank two glasses of water before going to bed, and that turned to be both good and bad. Good because I was only a little hungover. Bad because I woke up like four times to go to the bathroom. And usually if I have to go I just hold it while I’m sleeping. I’m like a camel. But this shit was intense every single time I just couldn’t hold it. So that was my night.

Then I woke up and it’s supposed to be another Snowpacalypse out here in Boston. So GF wanted me to get some bread from the convenience store. So I got up with a mission at around 9:00, putting my sleep hours at about seven. Put on the same clothes I had on yesterday and said, “Fuck it. I’m going to Trader Joe’s.”

I pulled the bike out of the basement where I had put it last night for safe-keeping, out of the splash zone. Put on my REI facemask and put on my new, ridiculous looking forty-five dollar helmet and hopped right the fuck outside.

I didn’t eat breakfast or nothing, which on hangover days is usually bad news. I just rode, man, thinking God damn if this isn’t the greatest thing since blogging. Just fucking going over the river to TJ’s in a snow storm without having to look at bus schedules or anything. Of course, it’s just my luck that a fucking 64 bus was leaving at the same time as I was.

But no matter. I was doing it for more than convenience. I gotta say once I hopped on that bike I felt like a 98 pound weakling. I don’t use those thigh muscles like that. Hills are killer. But anyway I made it.

Rolled up in Trader Joe’s just as happy as a lark. Shit was a madhouse. But they still had bread! Couldn’t believe it. Got some other shit and stood in line, listening to this mom and her kids and they were all pushing up against me in line and shit. Then the dude, I paid him in ones and he said, “I hope this isn’t stripper money.” Well shit, what if it was. He’d feel like a fool. So I told him it was. Then I said just kidding I’m a bartender. But he didn’t give a damn either way I guess.

Oh on the way there I gave a homeless man a dollar and I never do that, mostly because I can’t afford to give any money away. But I just happened to have a lot of ones so I hopped off the bike and chased him down and gave him a dollar and he was super cool about it. I felt good about that.

And while I was at Trader Joe’s, and I guess all last night and to that homeless dude too I was calling everyone “brother.” I thought it might get annoying, but when I say it I feel connected to them. I haven’t called anyone sister yet, so I don’t know how that will go. But people seem to be taking it well, they seem to like it.

And then I jumped on the bike and ran into a trash can. Knocked the whole shit right over, banged up my knee, right in a crowded parking lot. Well no one gave a shit about it, didn’t laugh or even look at me, and I gaurantee you that shit was funny looking. It was a huge empty trash can and it clanged and fell into three pieces. So I guess people were just worried about Snowmageddon.

Yeah they closed my restaurant down today because nobody would show anyway. It’s great in one way but it sucks to lose that money.

Well I rode back real leisurely as I couldn’t really muster any more effort than that. And I cruised on home and rolled up in this bitch feeling fine. It was a bitch getting the bike back downstairs but whatever.

I ate some banana bread and called Wells Fargo and closed my account, finally! The damn thing keeps getting overdrafted so I can’t close it but finally I caught it at a zero balance. And then I made a big payment to my student loan so they’ll shut up for a while. And I kept a little money for myself! Which I never do, but I think I’ll bank some of it. Start “paying myself first” like you read in all those Robert Kawasaki books. Is that his name? Shit I forget.

It’s Kiyosaki apparently, I just had to look it up and thus broke one of my rules but now it’s pretty funny that I said Kawasaki.

And then I got on here and started reading some blog posts. And then I started watching NBA dunk contests because someone was talking about Spud Webb.

But I have a lot I want to write about and time is dwindling. I was thinking I might start a whole blog about biking, too, but I guess I’m starting to spread myself thin.

Alright I’m going to eat some lunch and make some coffee and see what’s what.

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The First Ride

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Well it’s 2:00 in the morning and I have to get out of here quick before GF hears me typing and can’t sleep before she has to be at work tomorrow at 5 AM and the blizzard of the century is on it’s way.

But I wanted to get some things in to write about tomorrow, so I can remember them.

Buying the helmet…45 dollars…son of a bitch.

Bike parking lot…didn’t know that was there….sweet!

Leaving clothes at work…awesome.

Family meal = shit.

Tired…then fine…then do you want to go out for a beer? Biking there together.

Biking home…own the roads…no one around…using muscles I don’t ever use.

Aunt Dot Gloves.

The Druid…guy with Appalachian Trail hair…crazy music…coworkers still there.

Regulars trying to stay late…demanding customers…ego…waving arms when you know what they want but are doing something just wait one fucking minute!

People dancing at the Druid…terrible.

Coworker = Kurt Cobain?

Biking = Awesome.

Dude came in and stood next to other coworker…masturbating?

Putting bike downstairs.

Ok I guess I’m going to take a shower and go to bed now. See you in the morning.

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Bike Project Day One

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It’s been a strange morning. Outside the cold is enough to bite your nipples off. The cold is like a son of a bitch bastard with a vengeance. Like Hurley Turley and the Run Around Gang all came down from the sky with a nipple ripping fetish. And what it really gnaws on is your fingers. My fingers, to be more exact, since I’m the one around here with no gloves. Or rather, one glove, and that’s about worse than having none.

We woke later than usual. Or at least I did. I don’t know when GF got up. I got up at 9 and I felt like I had to piss a river. But I also felt tired as shit. But what I didn’t feel was the least bit sick. I guess last night’s nose hi-jinx were just a fluke. Either that or the wine, red meat, Emergen-C, and mysterious pink pill put the virus to bed.

I was having a dream that a blogger made this cartoon about penguins killing a lion with a cannon. The lion was holding a gun up to them and snickering but he didn’t know they had a cannon. Then a million penguins came out of the cannon after they shot him with it and they all chased him down this hole. But then the lion rallied, and he was after all of us, and it wasn’t a cartoon any more.

It was cold as a bitch. Somewhere in the middle of the night I had taken my clothes off. How is it hot in the middle of the night and then cold in the morning? I don’t know.

Then I came out and was hungry but couldn’t think of what to do and it was almost time to walk GF to the metro anyway. The “T” rather.

I put on my thermal long sleeve shirt and about thirteen hats and we went out there, into the blinding white. And it’s supposed to snow more tomorrow. Things weren’t looking good for the start of my biking to work deal.

Coming home I tried to notice a few things that I could write about. All I noticed were that some of the trees had no leaves. And some of them were evergreen coniferous trees or some such, and I remember two leaves blew across the road. And a man nearly killed me when he made a maniacal left turn in front of on-coming traffic.

When I returned home I set to work at once on figuring out this bike situation. I turned the key in the lock. They’ve been sitting outside for months with that lock around them, so I wasn’t the least bit surprised when it didn’t turn all the way. I came inside and got a hammer. I read that this particular lock, “OnGuard,” was notorious for rusting out or some such. I cursed my misfortune. I looked up bikes on  Craigslist. I gave up and read some Hunter Thompson essays.

Then I went out and tried the lock again. Well, I had been using the wrong key. The lock came easily undone when I used the key that said “OnGuard” on it. Son of a bitch.

Then I tried to ride the bike, but the tires were flat as shit, so I still need to go to the shop. And the rear brakes don’t seem to work.

It’s nearly twelve now. So I’ve got about two and a half hours to figure out if I can get this bike working well enough to ride to work. Not exactly what I want to spend my day on, but the days go by so fast anyway, it’ll be Monday before you know it.