VIRB

I get off the bus.  I'm already wearing cheap rainpaints rolled up to the knees over my jeans, similarly rolled.  Two thin neoprene toe-covers are stretched over the first half of my scuffed black and white sneakers.  My helmet, huge and red and hated, is already damp from being left outside all day.  A tight black cycling cap under that.  Sleeveless wool undershirt, white cotton t-shirt.

Waiting for a break in three lanes of commuter traffic.  LEDs blink brightly (one hopes) in the heavy raincloud light.  One foot shoved into a shiny metal toe-clip with a cheap strap.  Looking over my shoulder at the white lights of oncoming cars it begins to drizzle.

Cutting diagonally across the moistened black road thunder cracks so close and loud I duck over the handlebars.  Behind me a smattering of cars approach as they float down the bridge.  The wind can't decide which direction to blow.  The air is cool.  I'm behind a line of cars, waiting to turn onto a more quiet street.

The light changes and we're off.  I consciously tell myself "Drop, drop, drop" as I drop the weight of my body down on each falling pedal, trying to let gravity boost my acceleration and save my knees.  I try to rotate my ankles just so, spreading the point of pressure over the axis of the pedal.  There are as many different ways to pedal as there are variations of people's walks.

Cars pass me, hissing rain under their glossy tires.  I eye every parked car's door suspiciously as I skirt the line between giving the cars that pass enough room and keeping some for myself.  The rain has picked up a little.  A fucking SUV pulls out of the curved intersection in front of me, accelerating faster than average, scurrying out of my way.

Rainfall ramps up smoothly but dramatically in a few minutes.  I pull over to the empty parking spaces along the two-way street.  No decent trees.  I lean my bike against some sign I can't read.  Sliding my bag off, I remove my hat and helmet and pull the now transparent cotton t-shirt over my head.  My shoes are already soaked through.  Unrolling the red rain jacket from my bag and replacing it with the wet shirt I smile ruefully, making for my eyes an overhang of my brow against the rain.  A different SUV pulls into the side street in front of me, stops, reverses, and heads back the way it came.  Jacket donned, I replace my headgear and squish my shoe into the toe-clip.  It's raining so hard it feels like hundreds of heavy fingers drumming on the flat of my shoulders.

No traffic.  Kicking off the sidewalk and onto the pavement, alive and fuzzy with the downpour.  The rain is hurting my face, tiny disintegrating stones that threaten to split my lip.  I bare my teeth in a maniac's grin and the reduced surface area of my lips catch fewer blows.  My mouth tastes like I've lost a tooth.  Warm salt water, pain, and metallics.  I pass a ponchoed figure getting into his Jeep Liberty and he yells "Woo!", grinning and holding his hood as I go by.  Woo indeed.

I grudgingly talk myself into pulling in to a cantina parking lot, crossing the rivered gutter.  My mouth tastes so salty I'm sure something is broken.  Spitting into my palm I see nothing.  Again, nothing.  It hits me:  The collection of salt in my hat is being rinsed out into my face and mouth.  Back on the road I spit to my right for a few blocks before it stops.  I half wish it was blood.  There's no angle that allows me to shield my face and see at the same time.

Ridiculously, "This Is How We Do It" plays over and over in my head as I fight the wind and what must surely be torrential downpour.  There's no voice telling me to pull over, wait it out.  That voice died in infancy a year ago.

I love this.  This is the heart.  I'm a red blur of… I can't name it.  But it's in your face, jeering with a confidence and a finality that you've never known.  Racing down one side and up the other of an underpass at over thirty miles an hour, you wish you were me.  Peering out of your minivan window with envy at my freedom.  I don't even see you.  To me you are a metal cube that may be out to get me, and you blink out of existence as anonymously as you entered it the moment you're out of my personal bubble.

My wheels glide like salmon through puddles so deep the water swamps my feet with every revolution.  I'm laughing.  Part of me is already speaking these lines.  The largest part is effortlessly rotating the sphere of my multi-layered perception in al directions, taking in detail and danger.  Exiting an empty parking lot I lock up my rear wheel with my legs and slide across the matte blacktop, barely even slowing down.

Downtown.  I run a stop sign that's there for no reason.  No one honks.  Moving through traffic and construction the natural grace of my movement overtakes me and I become the smoothest motherfucker you know.  I'm God, I'm Jesus, I'm your misspent youth well spent.  I'm Clive Owen in Sin City.  I'm everything you want to be.  I'm a bright and burning reminder of all the things you've done wrong in your life, looking down from your office window.  Look at me.  Now look at yourself.  At this moment, I am magic.

A tree branch has fallen over my path.  I tilt my head back and to the side like I was peering around cigarette smoke as I speed towards it.  Everyone is huddled under the overhangs of buildings; my way is clear of pedestrians.  I'm panting so hard nerves in my shoulders are being pinched.  After a time I learned to welcome this as a good sign.

Alone save an impatient office worker atop the river ferry I look out at the five tall cranes that service a dry-dock shipyard.  If I were any wetter I'd be twins.  If I were any more calmly content I'd be enlightened.  I'm spent.  The beauty that only comes with this physical exertion overtakes me and I turn to sit on a bench.  Removing my glasses and pressing a hand towel to my face I sob hard four or five times, my torso jumping each time.

Thus finished, I replace my rain-dropped glasses and watch the water roll away beneath me.

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