It's August in Texas and therefore fucking baking, but so far I've just about managed to avoid my annual psychological meltdown arisen from ordinary daily pressures amplified in the heat. I've found that the twenty daily miles I cycle from Monday to Friday helps to keep everything nicely balanced - mentally speaking - and this year I've managed to get out each day before the heat gets too much, although it hasn't been easy. I cycle along a local greenway called the Tobin Trail which runs a circuit around most of the city but for a few places where different stretches are yet to fully connect. I cycle the Tobin Trail because Texas roads are frequented by shitheads in trucks the size of fucking houses who believe that running a cyclist off the side of the road represents a blow struck against the forces of both communism and anyone who ever laughed at your tiny penis.
Sometimes it can be difficult to cycle along the Tobin Trail due to repair work. For example, the end of Holbrook Road has been impassable for at least this last year, possibly two or three. This is due to renovations being made to the city's drainage system. I watched as a massive hole was dug in the road opposite the Black Swan Inn, a hole of volume sufficient to conceal a truck. Reinforced metal sidings were lowered into the hole, then pipes of the kind along which rebels traditionally flee for their lives in dystopian science-fiction movies, and then they filled it all in. About a month later they dug it all up again and repeated the exercise about fifty yards along from the first hole. They're now on their third hole, and it's beginning to look one hell of a lot as though they just can't decide where to bury the fucker.
I lived in London for twenty years and I saw a lot of road works in that time, but I've never seen road works which suggest that someone got the map upside down, necessitating whatever they buried being dug up, then reburied a little further on. It's almost as though fucking idiots are in charge. Some mornings in London I'd walk to the shops, passing workmen just getting started on a hole in the road, and the thing would be all done with tarmac being rolled flat by the time I came back the other way, heading home.
Part of the Tobin Trail runs along Salado Creek, which is dry at this time of year. This stretch comprises nearly a mile of raised wooden walkway named Morningstar Boardwalk. A few months ago I noticed a sag at one part of Morningstar Boardwalk, presumably where the supports had given way underneath. Then last week temporary signs appeared at each end informing us all that Morningstar Boardwalk would be closed for repair from Monday to Friday. The damage really didn't look like five days work to me, but then what do I know?
So it's August in Texas and therefore fucking baking, but I'm doing okay. I'm due to fly back to England in a couple of weeks time but I'm not thinking about it. I don't like flying. I don't really like England that much. I don't like my connecting flights being cancelled, distending the misery and discomfort of long-haul travel to forty-eight hours or more, and my connecting flights tend to be cancelled two out of every three times.
Like I say, I'm not thinking about it.
I deduce that I can exit the trail before I come to Morningstar Boardwalk, head through the subdivision along Astronaut Drive, then out onto the common land following the electricity pylons at the end of Luzon Drive. My theory is that I will be able to get my mountain bike down to Salado Creek from there, then across to rejoin the Tobin Trail at the other end, bypassing Morningstar Boardwalk altogether.
Monday is a bit hairy. The land across which I end up pushing the bike on foot is dry but overgrown with reeds and the like. I go slowly so as to be able to hear rattlesnakes, having seen at least one in this general vicinity. Then I recall I've also seen a wild hog down here, thankfully from the safety of the boardwalk at a distance of several hundred yards. It was too big to make sense. I couldn't tell what I was looking at and was momentarily reminded of interviews with people who claim to have seen Bigfoot. I'm told that wild hogs are to be avoided in the same way that mountain lions are to be avoided.
Nevertheless, I make it to the other side and I'm back on the trail. I can't quite face more of the same when coming back, so I wheel the bike parallel to the boardwalk, half suspecting that the promised workmen won't yet have turned up to effect the proposed repairs and that my detour will have been for nothing. There are a couple of trucks parked as I come to the damaged section. I expect someone to tell me that the boardwalk is closed and that I'm trespassing, but they only look at me and shrug.
I follow the same route on Tuesday, albeit later in the day. I explore the creek along the cracked, dry beds of water courses, eventually finding one which, if longer, seems less hazardous with less places which might conceal a rattlesnake; but it's way too hot so I turn around and head home, making up the usual mileage by doubling back on myself at certain points.
Wednesday is better - across Salado Creek and then back again as planned, although I still have some trouble remembering which dry stream to follow and end up getting lost in the reeds.
Boris Johnson suspends Parliament, and I add it to the other stuff I'm not thinking about right now - the Amazon in flames, the probability that Donald almost certainly will get a second term, everything turning to shit.
My sleep is restless and I dream about getting back somewhere or other, and I'm racing against the Beatles in their moptop incarnation in the matching suits with weird collars. I'm puckering my mouth and giving McCartney the thumbs up, mocking him by singing nursery rhymes. You know that Bah Bah Black Sheep - that's one of your songs, that is…
People I don't know are defending Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament on facebook, proclaiming that he's a guy who gets things done, and I remember how much I'm not looking forward to whichever Sun opinion column my dad will be recycling for my benefit when I return to England in a couple of weeks.
I try to feed the cats as usual. Grace won't come in because Gary terrorises her. I pick Gary up and try to take him inside but he scratches my face, drawing blood. I'm really beginning to tire of his bullshit.
I hit the trail, then Astronaut Drive, then I cross Salado Creek. I'm cycling across rocks and dried mud. The ground is uneven, so I'm in first gear. I notice the bike has slipped into third for no fucking reason as I attempt to scale a particularly annoying mound, so I flip back to first and there's an agonising crunch. Everything stops.
The entire gear array - the derailleur as it's known - has somehow chewed itself up between the chain and the rear wheel, consummating damage first implemented by Ian the arsehole back in November. I dismount, which isn't easy on this ground, and make an inspection. The thing is beyond immediate repair and will need to go into the shop. I'm fucked. I'm about six miles from home and I'm fucked.
I push the bike towards the boardwalk, planning to follow the route I took on Monday. It's still closed off for repairs. The repair team is one fucking bloke sat in his truck, which doubtless explains why the work was estimated at taking a full week. I pass the section of boardwalk currently under reconstruction, at least in a general sense. Unless I'm missing something, the work is such that it should have taken a morning to complete, but maybe it's special wood which only grows on the planet Venus and the one fucking bloke sat in his truck is waiting for the next shipment.
I have 2Pac's posthumous Better Dayz playing on my Discman, and now I turn it off because I'm irritable and it's begun to get on my tits. I've been listening to a lot of 2Pac over the last week, mainly because I've realised that I have all of his CDs and I'm only really familiar with a couple of them; and now I realise that this is because, truthfully, he was a bit of a berk. In the wake of his undoubtedly tragic demise, 2Pac has somehow been held up as the black Noam Chomsky on the grounds of having read a book or two, even if one of those books happened to be Linda Goodman's Star Signs; but if his heart was in the right place, he still had some way to go, and simply repeating wisdom and understanding over and over whilst pulling a wise face is not the same as having depth. This is the man who decided that NIGGA was an acronym for Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished, who insisted on a new, more positive meaning for the word thug, and so Better Dayz is all thug life, thug nature, thug passion, thug this, thug that, and by the time we get to the thug hot water bottle* I've really had enough of this shit
Once past the section under repair, I haul the bike up onto the boardwalk. I call my wife on the phone but she can't get away.
'Never mind,' I say. 'I just needed to vent. I don't mind walking home. It's all exercise.'
A trail steward stops as I reach Ladybird Johnson. 'You doing okay there, buddy?'
'My gears are knackered.' I point to the scrap metal wrapped around my rear axle. There's nothing he can do, and I can't be bothered to have a conversation about either bicycle repair or how I'm from a different country.
'Sorry,' the steward says.
'It's okay.' I tell him. 'It's not your fault.'
My phone pings with text messages. It will be Bess, but I can't be arsed to go through the rigmarole of stopping, finding my glasses, finding some shade then reading a text, whatever it says. I call her back once I reach Los Patios.
'My co-worker says she could pick you up,' she suggests.
'It's okay,' I say. 'It's only another couple of miles.'
I stop and take a look at the derailleur. I manage to unscrew it so that it's at least no longer wrapped around the chain. The chain now hangs loose, but I am able to cycle. Unfortunately I can't go much further than twenty feet without the chain slipping from the cogs and jamming, so I freewheel or walk the rest of the distance. I wonder if I'm sufficiently stressed to resume smoking again.
'You doing okay?' the black dude asks.
I've seen him enough to nod some vague greeting. He's about my age and is usually walking five or six dogs of various shapes and sizes. I can never tell whether they're his dogs or that's just his job.
'Yeah,' I say, and a minute later I notice that I've launched into a barely coherent summary of my life up to this point. I'm waving my arms wildly like Suzanne from Orange is the New Black and have made an embittered reference to the one fucking bloke sat in his truck.
'Well,' says my audience, 'I hope the rest of your day goes better.'
He means it, but you can tell I came across like a crazy person.
I'm less than a mile from home and I guess I feel better, having sobered up on the viscosity of my own mania.
What a fucking day.
*: This stands for Brothers Only Try To Live Excellently, y'all better recognise.
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