Not at all Like Riding a Bicycle

There's an obnoxious little phrase: "It's like riding a bicycle ..."
Usually the bit about "... you never forget how" remains an exercise for the listener.

So after some years of listening to it without thought I realized that in fact the open end of the aphorism made for some interesting rejoinders:

"... you can get your trouser leg all greasy?"
"... you can ring a little bell and people will get out of your way?"
"... it's easiest when you're going downhill?"

It is this obnoxious phrase, O Avid Fan, upon which I wish you to reflect today, as I share with you:

Metro's First Bike Ride


So technically it wasn't my first. I don't recall how old I was when I first rode a "two-wheeler." I know there was a kid in our apartment block in Hamilton who owned a small one--It was painted sparkly gold, as most things were at the time so it seemed. It may or may not have had training wheels.

I remember vaguely, in that dreamlike haze all childhood memories have (For me--Yours may be perfectly clear, in which case you may freely assume your memory is lying to you) riding this bike about. I could frickin' fly on that thing. It was too small for me, even at five-ish. It had no gears. And I had to stand on the pedals because the seat was set so low my knees would have been pistoning into my forehead. Ah, how flexible we are as kids!--But I digress.

When we moved east, a schoolmate of mine took me home one day. She wished to go for a bike ride. I'm guessing I was about six, maybe just turned seven. The trouble was that while she had a bike, it wasn't suited for "doubling" (Young people ask your parents--Doubling was an astoundingly dangerous practice in which boys and girls risked life, limb, and testicle in an attempt to prove that all bicycles were in fact built for two).

There were two bikes, her mum's and her dad's. But as I recall with my lying memory, we knew the ones with dropped crossbars were for girls. And it would be wrong for a boy to ride a girl's bike. It made perfect sense at the time.

So we decided I should try her father's bike. On the surface, to any observer over the age of about ten, this would seem absurd. Her dad (whom I cannot recall now--Hell, I don't think either of her parents were around, but then what was she doing home alone?) obviously had an inseam about the same as my height.

Still, we pushed his big blue bike to the back steps of her house. It was a typical, probably CCM, sit-up-and-beg bike, painted sparkle blue, as most things were at the time, so it seemed. It definitely did not have training wheels. And with serious trepidation, I mounted. I balanced wobbly-ly atop the seat. My toes could touch the pedals until a little way short of their lowest point. After some discussion possibly involving the questioning of the wisdom of our actions (but I doubt it), I pushed off with a toe, and set off down the back alley behind the rows of tiny fenced yards.

The bike spun readily away, picking up speed from the slight downhill, and from my full weight against the pedals. I was probably going about fifteen kilometres per hour, approaching the point where the alley I was in T-ed to a stop at an intersecting alley, a garage door across the alley providing an emphatic full stop. I would need to slow down to make the curve, so my instincts told me.

At what I figure was about eighteen kilometres per hour I stepped backwards to slow the bike--the common practice on the coaster-brake-equipped units I was used to. The pedals rotated freely. I tried again, harder. The pedals flew counterclockwise, the left one turning upward and striking my shin while my right foot lost contact and flailed at empty air. At the same time, because I had been standing up to pedal, I slipped down, with the result all young men have experienced. Young ladies, I cannot explain, but if you hold a pair of baseball bats with the end of the handle against the point of your abdomen containing your ovaries and run at a brick wall you may get a similar sensation. The discombobulation led me to look down, attempting to untangle myself and regain control whilst trying not to retch too loudly and relieve the hideous pressure of my probably-about-fifty-pounds from my crotch.

At this point the die was cast. I looked up and saw the phone pole, swerved late, ang glanced off of it, then careened, brakeless, across the end of the alley and fetched up with a "CRUMP" and a rattle of ironmongery, in a heap against the garage door, curled around my private pain and experiencing a series of novel sensations, including my first real case of road rash, as well as some old ones--the scraped knees and elbows, the sensation that I wanted to "$#!7 myself and blow lunch simultaneously" as Stephen King put it so gracefully in "Christine" ...

My friend seemed to feel responsible for my injuries. That's probably why she waited until I had gotten up and brushed myself off and more-or-less stopped crying before she checked to make sure her dad's bike was okay. Then she led me off to her mother, who did whatever magic other people's mothers do when a boy's knees, elbows, and testicles are bruised. I don't really recall much beyond that. The girl and I stayed friends awhile. She may or may not have attended my next school.

Oh ... And the reason the brakes didn't work was that I hadn't noticed the odd little levers protruding from the handlebars. I'd never ridden a bike with hand brakes.

And that's really all I recall. But it's the incident that springs to mind when someone says "Hey, it's like riding a bicycle ..."

And I finish for him or her: "... if you fall off it's really going to hurt."

Gratitude

So when we moved, I transferred. Managed to keep with the same company. But sadly, I'm pretty much the most junior guy in a shop where instead of four guys, there are thirty.

So I'm on the spare board. This means I take the shifts no-one at all wants.

So last week I was slated to work the lowest-paying job in the shop on Monday and Friday, and that was it. Then they called me in on Wednesday and Thursday.

Thursday arvo I come in and notice my name's off the board for Friday.

Oh well, I oh-welled, No worries. I don't need the hours and I don't exactly love that job anyway.



At six-something-ty this morning, the boss phoned. They want me to come in. To do exactly the job they pulled me off of yesterday.

I am not thrilled. My back hurts a bit, I had bad sleep and wound up being awake three hours last night ... Wah, wah, wah.

Somewhere out there, a person possibly named Miguel, or Rosa, or Frank, is dragging himself (or herself) off of his bed (or her bed) and putting his feet (her f-- ... You know, I'm gonna stop this now) on the floor.

Miguel is undocumented, and so makes less than minimum wage. The work is physically brutal, the shifts, while officially ten hours long, run twelve to fourteen, but nobody complains. There are no health benefits. The workers have a joke about "work 'till your break or work 'til you break." There are no benefits, and no breaks. Frank blew out his back last week--He's worried one of his discs may be ruptured.

Last year, a guy named Fidel started a drive to unionize. He and six other workers got a sign-up sheet going. Fidel got picked up by Immigration last month. And five of the other six haven't shown up to work since. The sixth guy just got promoted to shift supervisor, night shift--A position understood to mean "Company Stool Pigeon, Third Class."

Miguel can barely make rent, and can't afford to go to a doctor to get his back fixed. Besides, under new Immigration laws he thinks the doctor might have to report him as undocumented.

So he rises, grimacing, and slouches down to the bus stop with a cup of coffee in hand, trying to shift as he walks to ease the pain.

As he waits for his bus, he takes out the letter in his back pocket:
"Dear Husband:

The baby is better, but we miss you so much. Thank you so much for the money you send ..."

The bus hisses and chuffs to a stop, and Miguel grimaces, rises, and goes to work.

My job is unionized, with benefits, and I make a good bit more than the minimum here in Canada, and a $#!7load more than the minimum in the US.

Gratitude. I haz it.

Abominable Things From the Depths of the Net, #341

Once in a while we who haunt the interwebs run into something so vile, so wrong, so against the laws of gods and nature that we wish we could un-see it. Here, then, from the "cultural blog," "dog's breakfast," and unholy lair of the Forgotten Ones that is Nag on the Lake, is one of those things.

I urge you to hide children, lock doors, douse your monitor in holy water, and ideally blindfold yourself prior to watching. At least put on some goggles: They'll keep you from clawing your eyes out.



You can't unsee that, can you?