Bad Bike Week- Part 2

So Richard fixed my flat for the standard $15, which brought my cash-spent-over-bike problems bill to $50 (the other $35 were cab fares.)

Monday, June 15th 

8:20am

I'm biking to work, turning from Gold onto Nassau street in DUMBO, which is completely torn up with construction. I'm a civic cyclist, and thoroughly want to obey all of thebicycle laws, both to express my desire to comply with a city that is showing more support and sympathy for the cyclists, and also to avoid another $150 fine for riding on the sidewalk.

So, it's a tough decision: risk another ticket for safe-riding on the sidewalk, or risk another flat for riding on a road that resembles Mickey Rourke's complexion. I rode on the road and had a flat on my front tire two blocks later. It's 40 minutes until my tour starts and I'm dragging my sorry bicycle to the High Street A train station to get to my tour on time, leaving a blue-streak of explatives all across DUMBO.

1:45pm

After a rousing 4 hour tour for girl scouts (who all wanted to know how the saga of my bicycle drama ended.) I'm back in DUMBO hunting around for Recycle a Bicycle, the local bike shop of the 'hood. I try to keep my bicycle repair-work to the same bike shop if necessary, but it's never that easy. When your bike malfunctions in the middle of a ride, there is a combination of a sense of being stranded, suddenly reduced to 10% of your transportation speed, and anxiety of watching your entire schedule for the day crumble. Instead of a machine that makes you move faster, you are now in possession of 60 lb albatross around your neck. The closest bike shop is the only thing you have to depend on.

So, Recycle a Bicycle fixes my tire for the requisite $15 (at $67 now, including the $4 subway fares) and they tell me it was a pinch-flat from not enough air in my tires. I could've sworn I just inflated them. . . Oh well, I guess that's that. One flat on each tire, and now they're fresh and new.

7:55pm

Ahh. After a nice hour-long class at my dojo: NY Jiu Jitsu on Bond and Broadway, I'm off to meet my tour-guiding buddies Tony and Matt to shoot the shit about the business and complain about the irritating clients we've had to deal with recently.

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK, THUNK, I'm biking along East 2nd street and there is clearly something wrong with my tire. The one that was just fixed. What's this? There appears to be a lump on the side of my tire, and it's hitting my brake-pads every time it rotates. Well, I better get that looked at ASAP, or else it'll-

POP!

So loud, everyone on East 2nd street heard it. And so, breathing heavily through my teeth, I'm hauling my bike once again, suffering the 2nd flat tire in a day, and my third in four days to the Three of Cups bar and restaurant on 1st avenue and East 6th street to bitch and moan and yell about my luck.

Bad Bike Week- Part 1

June 12th, 2009

6:15pm

"Um... I'm sorry, but there's something in your back tire." I'm on the L train at first avenue and I'm just slightly damp. This has been the rainiest year that I can remember, and global weirding is the only answer. (It doesn't just get "warmer" folks. . .) So I'm riding the subway again, which I grumble about every time cause I buy pay-per-rides now as a way to trying to make myself bike everywhere. Well, this weekend I was going to spend biking all over the Northside Festival and across the Pulaski to Astoria to make some honey-time and instead, I'm idiotically pulling a thumb-tack out of my back tire.

"Don't pull it out!" The skinny-dress wearing hipster-chick yelped. She was the one who first alerted me to the problem.

SSSSSssssssss Oh no. and my whole evening starts to cascade. . . 

7:02pm- I SHOULD BE

walking in my front door, ready to make curried-chicken quesadillas and ginger-mango cocktails as I ready myself for The Hold Steady at The Music Hall of Williamsburg

7:02pm- I AM

Pulling up to the bike shop as the lights go out and Richard, the portly Puerto Rican man who runs the place and shares my penchant for fedoras tells me I had to be there at least 15 minutes earlier.

7:36pm- I SHOULD BE

Pleasantly and calmly enjoying my quesadillas and cocktails

7:36PM- I AM

Sitting in the back of Spuyten Duyvil Bar The finest beer & wine bar in Brooklyn with my friend and fellow human sky-scraper Vanessa, bitching about bikes, taxes, and relationships. She sent me a very sweet E-card recently.

8:41PM- I SHOULD BE

Calmly bicycling through a curry-and-rum buzz in South Williamsburg while keeping a keen-eye for fully black-clad Hasids walking out right in front of my bicycle. I'll get to the Music Hall over an hour before The Hold Steady, easy.

8:41PM I AM

Shoving quesadilla and cocktail down my throat while buttoning my last buttons and wondering what second I should call the car service that I'll spent $10 on to take me a half mile, which I could have bicycled  in 10 minutes, tops.

12:31AM

I'm sitting at some Bar in Greenpoint with my two brothers, and bestest buds, bitching about how fucking tired we were at the start of a four-day music fest. For the elder Matt, it was working another weeklong Aussie-fest with the wonderful people at Contiki Holidays . Jonah had been juggling acting in a play, working on a web-series and working his first full spring-season of tour guiding, and I was bitching about my popped tire.

I missed The Hold Steady of course, but instead saw a sweet band called Discovery (don't love the name though) fronted by a hoarse-voiced blues broad who also serves up drinks at one of my favorite bars, Barette. Discovery, check 'em out.

Then I walked  by another band rehearsing called The Press. Pretty good as well.

Now how the hell am I going to get myself to Astoria?

2:31am

$35 and counting on cabs. 

But yeah, it was worth it.

PCT- Paid Chill Time

11:47am

I'm sitting in the Hayden Rose Planetarium watching an asteroid collide with the earth and in the burst of fiery destruction, the bits and pieces that kicked up into orbit coalesce together and form our moon. The best part about it? I'm getting paid to watch it. It's narrated by Robert Redford, and I'm surrounded by 8th graders from Cape Cod, accents and all, who keep asking me if I'm Jason Mraz. I understand, they're young, high on sugar and raised in a celeb-centric culture. The last handful of jazzed 8th graders from New England I had thought I was Dane Cook. Precious little hormone-factories think anyone interesting in New York City must be some someone they can liken to something on TV or the interwebs or wherever they feed their heads. No matter to me, I'm getting paid for eight hours of work and I'm doing only about 90 minutes of actual working. The rest of the time, is PCT.

12:51pm

Patsy's Pizza on 74th & Columbus is one of the half-dozen in the pantheon of "Greatest Pizzerias in NYC" (Name the other five. I dare ya.) It's been around since 1932, which means that their coal oven was grandfathered into legality when New York City outlawed any new coal ovens, resulting in a new era of gas-ovens. The result is a pizza that's softer, and more foldy than the classic Buffalo Mozzerella, Pomodoro sauce, and the thin, crispy-crust that pops out the coal oven in 8-12 minutes. But today, I'm getting the chicken cacciatore, which is also excellent. I ask for the bill, and am told that there is none. The manager, a beautiful plump woman in her fifties with a lovely black dress and greathighlights asks "When you gonna bring more people in here?" I promise to try, but make no guarantees, drop $5 for a tip and laugh my way to my bicycle.

1:45pm

Porto Rico Coffee Importers, on St Mark's Place is the only place I buy my coffee. I'm not out of coffee yet, but the group is ending their day at STOMP at the Orpheum Theater right around the corner, so I might as well ride down here on my paid free time, get some coffee and hop the F to the B train back. If only this damn broad behind the counter would take my order. And then the F train is ten minutes late. Dammit, I have to be back at the Museum by 2:30!!

2:28pm

Nice. "OKAY KIDS!! ON THE BUSES!!"

4:55pm

I'm sipping Thai beer for $3.25 a piece at a very charming Thai joint on 38th and 9th avenue. Should've remembered the name. But it doesn't matter, I got my Wednesday new-comic book fix out of the way, and now I'm finishing Bonfire of the Vanities and am dying to know what's going to happen to Sherman McCoy. I'm wearing the new sneakers I bought at the 34th street Payless, and I've got my new black ink cartridge taken care of as well. All while the group is at Madame Tussauds, then going to Planet Hollywood for dinner. I don't have to join them for either of them, and I'm still getting paid.

7:30pm

"Arright you guys! Enjoy STOMP and enjoy your time in NYC." I leave them to retrieve the bike I left trustfully locked up on the corner of 2nd ave and Houston, and I'm laughing all the way to the Williamsburg Bridge.

9:42pm

Maggie Brown's on Myrtle ave and Waverly makes really great burgers. And the lights are low enough to sit and huddle over a computer  and recount my thoughts of the day. A good day. A Perfect day, if only to make up for the less than good day I had yesterday. It was last night however, that still haunts the outer rings of my memory. 

The stroll down East 7th street, the bright cerulean tank top she wore with black cardigan over her shoulders and blue jeans. A body stacked like a mountain and eyes that dared me to look away. One should be well-composed on a first date, but I was frumpy from a day of getting caught in in-and-out rain storms while killing time in the city in-between two ill-conceived 1-hour tours. One at 8:30am, and another one at 4pm. A bunch of unpaid time on an alternating rain & sun day made me cranky. My lousy, crumbling sneakers were wet and my feet ached while I tried to put on my most charming demeanor, and was unsure if it was successful.

I'm seeing her again on Monday. 

I guess today was my victory lap.