Ode on a Grecian Urn
(With apologies to Shelley)
It’s my sixty-sixth birthday.
I sit outside a downtown watering hole on a fairly sunny day drinking an eight-dollar glass of Sauvignon Blanc, reading a book and watching a subset of the world pass by. My friends in New York City should be aware that most of the time an eight-dollar glass of wine in Troy equals a twelve-dollar glass of wine in Manhattan. Possibly fourteen, if you catch it just right.
Not this one, though. It tastes like the bartender ran out of Sauvignon Blanc mid-pour and just filled the rest of the glass with eight-dollar Pinot Grigio. There’s no one to blame but myself, however, since I ordered it with the full knowledge that it always tastes this way. And besides, the older I get the more I like a little sweetness in my wine.
I realize that my bicycle, chained to a nearby lamppost, is nineteen years old (possibly twenty — I can’t do math the way I used to) and a shadow of its former self. Its Celeste green steel frame — Celeste green being the most famous color in all of bicycling, conjured some one hundred years ago by Edoardo Bianchi to match the color of the Queen of Italy’s eyes — has at least three dents I can see and too many scratches to count. Still beautiful, though, and beauty is truth the poet tells us.
Brief aside: The actual line reads, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Which, though beautiful, is not, I’m thinking, necessarily true (which gets complicated quickly) and perhaps instead a conspiracy cooked up by attractive people to lord it over normal-looking folk. Also, the urge to ram a semicolon in there is almost overpowering.
The front forks are carbon fiber, which was leading-edge stuff in the last century but a little sad in this era of fifteen-pound plastic bicycles. And although the Campagnolo running gear remains a magical collection of forged aluminum wheels and gears and sprockets and levers (every time I look at them I’m filled with joy), it struggles like the now-disgraced Placido Domingo to hit the same High C that used to be business as usual whilst singing Don Giovanni.
Greek Chorus: “Whilst” seems a bit out of place there, don’t you think? Going all Downton Abbey on us just out of the blue like that?
Me: You’re suggesting that it might be a bit self-indulgent?
Greek Chorus: Yes.
Me: Even though self-indulgent is, like, my middle name?
Greek Chorus: We worry about your readers.
Me: Fuck my readers.
Greek Chorus: We also mention it by way of observing that your otherwise hard-bitten, Chandleresque style seems to be softening with age.
Me: Like cheese?
Greek Chorus: Yes. Limburger.
Me: You’re saying my prose reminds you of stinky cheese?
Greek Chorus: Yes.
Me: Then fuck you too.
Some years ago, when I blew up my Campagnolo rear wheel in a Trojan pothole and didn’t feel like spending the $400 required to replace it, I switched to Mavic. Which is only amusing because Mavic sponsors the neutral service car at the Tour de France and whatever is good enough for Lance Armstrong, so long as it doesn’t involve a syringe, must surely be good enough for me. At the same time, I swapped out my 23 mm tires for Kevlar-lined 25s, which give a softer, albeit slower ride and felt, for the thousand or so miles it took me to get used to them, like I was riding a Schwinn beach cruiser.
Halfway through my second glass of wine I embrace the idea that a person could live with all of the above-listed indignities and still be able to look oneself in the mirror. Then I spy the front and rear lights, strapped on a couple of years ago in the interest of safety (which is just downright sad) and melancholy carves deep blue ripples in the tissues of my mind.
[Rest in peace, Peter Edward Baker. Known to his friends, of which he had few, as Ginger]
And of course there’s the seat. I use the word seat because it feels more like a sofa than the saddle on which I used to ride. It’s one of those split-cushion styles designed to keep your balls from getting numb on long rides and maintain positive, motile sperm (I will spare you even one of the multitude of jokes that spring to mind so quickly I’ve already lost count). The guy at the bicycle shop said it would be the most comfortable seat I’ve ever ridden on, except that it isn’t. And adding to the humiliation is the Rx symbol printed on the side of it, like I needed a prescription from my gerontologist to purchase it. Who thought that was a good idea? And just typing the word gerontologist unleashes another swell of blue ripples.
I could go on, but here’s the gist of the thing: Bicycles — real bicycles — are weapons. Blades made of Valyrian steel. Instruments of anger. Predators. Ferraris, not Volkswagens. Falcons, not sparrows. Wolves, not puggles. Panthers, not housecats. I order a third glass of wine and find, if I close one eye and peer at my bicycle through the lens of the pale green liquid, that I can still see the panther it used to be.
Perhaps I’ll order a quesadilla.
