Chainless and Horsey: The Spirit of Defects

The Cannondale Badboy, black matte bike is eleven years old.  At the time of my purchase, I had just signed up for the Northeast AIDS Ride with my then boyfriend and his friends – one half of this couple had a brother who was gay and suffering from the disease.  As for me, I wanted to do the ride for many reasons, one of which was that my mom and stepfather had just returned from a trip to South Africa where the disease was essentially performing genocide on its people.  I also just wanted to see the Northeast via bike.

Forgotten, remains the bike shop somewhere near Murray Hill.  It wasn’t Togo on the Westside, but named after some guy who offloaded to me (at sale price) what has proved to be a defected but loved model.  Loved, first, because my Misguided Angel of a bike needs a swift talking to.  According to Nameless Salesman, the bike was the only little one they had to offer for a young woman of my efficient stature.  Seems I’m short, even for a bike, AND (coincidentally) this was the only lost soul for me – a bike’s version of one of the inhabitants versions of The Island of Misfit Toys.  Thankful here that I didn’t qualify for a huffy with a banana seat and low-arched crossbar.  Not atypical here that I go for the underdog (Under… dog!).

To this day, and despite just recently getting the cassette replaced, Broom Hilda (I just came up with that) has been temperamental.  So much so, that it gets a swift talking to each time I have to change gears going up a hill.  For anyone with a less chatty brain, this would be a fairly brief one-sided conversation, but I have to coax it up hills.  Which is why, when suggested that I switch to a lower gear and I look at you like you have four heads and an, “I know but I can’t,” casts a shadow across my face…  Well, that’s why.  It’s always been like this between me and the bike that I left for ten years in the garage without a good, long decent ride to make it feel alive.

A good thing about my bike is that it doesn’t blame this neglect on my kids.

The cassette is not a music tape player with shiny Hematite ribbon bound up inside it.  It’s the circular disc with sharp notches in it that both resembles a ninja throwing star and is arranged in a cascade of smaller discs that carry the chain and allow it to hop from one gear to the next.  The cassette functions like a pulley, mechanized by my moving legs, until it slips off the imprecise catch of bent and worn down spikes.   When you don’t think it will malfunction, it does.  When you think it will, it won’t.

Taking a mental but circuitous leap, I’m likening it to a horse that I rode when I was a young girl taking lessons at the Flintridge Riding Club in La Canada, California.  Horses could be rented there.  I did not own a filly so I got whichever partly broken pony was available.  I was lucky for that.  Each horse had its own personality, but I only remember the ones that gave me the most grief.  Contrary to all things stupid, animals are spirits with their own needs and insecurities, just like people, only they’re a little less prone to their own destruction and the destruction of their own kind. 

My bike is more like Goose than Amigo.  Amigo was a stubborn chestnut horse easily diverted out of the ring and into a patch of long weeds where he would start eating, completely disregarding what my coach, Izzy, had ordained for that hour after-school lesson.  But Goose had the most disparaging reputation.  Goose was white with little black spots – the Dalmation of horses.  Now, Dalmations don’t have the best of reputations.  I’m sorry to anyone who has a strong affinity for the breed, but it takes a certain level of fearlessness to run into a burning building if you’re an animal that functions on pure instinct.  Humans are the exception here, because they go in armed with preventative gear.  I had to note that out of respect for the firefighters among us all (bowing).  Goose would never save anyone but himself.  Self-preservation was his strong point, which, if you’re a horse means you either bite or don’t bite the hand that feeds you.  This varied for Goose.  The first time I mounted that horse I was scared almost to tears.  But, he behaved so well – a perfect gentleman – as I turned blue almost holding my breath.  As long as I expected him to be a brute, he trotted around that ring and jumped for me with the minimum effort on my part.

However, the second time I rode him, I had my guard down.  The sociopath bucked me off, my booted foot hooked onto the stirrup so that he dragged me for enough time that I quite permanently hurt my low back, sprained my tailbone (for the second time), endured a concussion, sprained a few of my fingers, and had the wind knocked out of me.  Amigo had already quite literally taken my breath away one day when we were poised to jump.  Instead of doing so, he stopped short of his hurdle, and vaulted me out of the saddle so that I landed flat on my back.  But, at least he let me go.  At least I didn’t get a full view of the underside of a male horse as his feet near-trampled me.

It took years for me to figure out that I went home that day with a concussion.  My ears ringing, I could barely hear what my brothers were saying as they informed me that my mom was at work and, “Why couldn’t I hear anything?”  They had to yell at me to get their words into my head.

The lesson here is, “Do not overlook a reputation.”  A good day can give even the most bad-tempered horse a reprieve from pure… jackass.

Then there are the girls who come up with a good idea just once in a while. 

You may be thinking by now, “Why won’t she stop talking?” 

Stay with me.  There is a connection:  a story about the way a defective chain worked to my advantage.

The chain slipped off unexpectedly on its second long ride out in a very long time.  I was having unbridled faith in the Badboy, of black-matte-faded-to-almost-patina-beauty.  I had to get a little assist off the side of the road on my weekend ride, got the chain back on myself, and ascended the (I have no idea what low-grade hill) with quiet verbal cajoling toward the two-wheeled beastie below me.

Repetition in life is notable, amazing and awkward.  The funny thing is that I owned a bike – the one that belonged to my mom, that I obsessively cleaned from decrepit to shiny using the pink, rust-removing goop and a toothbrush so that it looked brand-new.  The chain occasionally fell off of that bike too.

But, here you go.  Remember Potsie?  Yes, of Happy Days.

Well, Anson Williams lived at the near bottom of my long and hilly California street, under the Oak Trees and at the back of the black and white Tudor-style home where I lived for a few years as a child – a home with a pool that had a slide and was next to a rose garden.  A home with a third floor dedicated to one large, red-carpeted room that had a bar, a TV, a sofa, two chairs and a coffee table, all of which served as protection against the lava monster as my brothers and I jumped, teetering on our little feet, from one piece of furniture to the next.  We lived in that home during my parents’ divorce. 

My best friend, Tonya Krosnoff, and I were out riding our bikes, well after two moves away from the place we first met.  At that time in my life, and the time of life of all of my friends, riding bikes meant that you were en route to one friend’s house or the other on your own.  No one set up a play date for you.  You picked up the phone or found someone outside to play with.  You played with your siblings.  You also just got on your bike and took off to a friend’s house.  Parents weren’t accused of neglecting their kids for this.  They were applauded for nurturing the independence of their children.  But, that was a different world and I don’t blame myself or my peers for being reasonably protective.

So, Tonya and I were out nurturing ourselves and having been completely addicted to the HAPPY DAYS reruns of long ago, started talking about the new neighbor who lived at the midpoint between our two homes.  The midpoint was at the bottom of my hill and the swell of another hill that descended into a hill steeper than both of those hills combined. 

We lingered somewhere at the front of his iron-gated home.  We hung out and waited and talked.  And, the one and only creative idea I ever had as a child (that I let anyone know about) was this:  I would remove the chain from my bike, march up to the handsome actor’s door and plead for help to get it fixed.

It worked.

Though, I’m pretty sure it never cemented my cycling passion.  Perhaps it was a lesson in diabolical salesmanship.   

That didn’t stick either.  I seem to forfeit “manipulation” in favor for “hard work and sincerity.”  What did stick, was that I wanted to have some face time with a very cute actor to prove to myself that I wouldn’t let an opportunity slip away, that I was brave, and that  Anson Williams was just a nice, smart and regular guy, despite his on-screen character.  To a chubby girl with bad teeth and glasses, this was a valuable discovery.  My opportunity to meet Shaun Cassidy had slipped through my fingers.  Years before my Potsie meeting, I did cry over “Da, do, run, run…” knowing that I’d never meet the singer.

I’m over all of that.  But, I do want a new bike.  I don’t need to chuck the Badboy - just need help up hills.