Smaller Hours
by Bill Ketzer

"Out of rhythm come many things, perhaps everything. The physical action compels action of another order-action of mind, memory, imagination, dream, hope...there are many ways in which to ride a bike effectively, and this aquaintanceship with the ways and the comparing of them gives an awareness of a parallel potential in all other actions."
-William Saroyan, from 'The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills'

I have been blessed with insomnia.

Usually, even for one who endeavors to avoid sleep, waging grandiose campaigns of caffeine ingestion ritual and persistent unhealthy work habit to thwart its ancient necessity, it is still a large "fuck you" at the cellular level when it will not come when it needs to.

Such is not so in my case; these small hours are the only gilded moments I spend alone, having been thrown wide awake beneath the smothering warmth of my girlfriend's 40 lb. Ralph Lauren comforter for no apparent reason. Alone with the bikes! Step-Father dying of cancer in a green leather chair in the suburbs. Full-time student at a crudely designed state university. Crappy job as Barrista in a lame coffee shop. Recently recorded raucous drum tracks for ska/punk legend Can't Say's debut album at Moon Ska NYC, aptly entitled, "True Grit." Brain and body no longer processes alcohol in a responsible manner. Girlfriend...well...she's my girlfriend!

The khaki mist of predawn is inspiration this particular morning/evening, the hum of electricity an irony as I carefully ease out from under Lynn's smooth, Mediterranean headlock, quietly pad downstairs, select a bike from the rack and place it in the stand for a quick once over. One must be careful not to wake my girlfriend; her temper is that of the Minotaur. She works hard, isn't used to the early hours of being a high school English teacher; we're polar opposites in this respect. Sleep defines her, makes her neurons fire, increases manual dexterity and sexual appetite! Even if in her sleep she feels a cold pocket of fabric where my body is supposed to be, she inevitably stirs, tossing about in a tempestuous manner until certainly she spews forth a garbled expletive, a subtle dagger like "JESUS CHRIST, DO YOU MIND?" At which point I conclude tossing Black Sabbath's legendary "Volume 4" on the turntable is pretty much out of the question.

For this morning's quest I choose the '96 Mongoose Rockadile. I like this ride because it's the first aluminum mountain bike I ever owned; thus, I was forced to attain a more graceful style, to learn the mathematics of weight distribution so as not to wreck my poor arse with the frame's unforgiving stiffness. It's poorly designed for Northeast shredding; the bottom bracket height is too low, and the chainstays are a tad too long for my tastes. Even in my mild, illegal hometown singletrack of Albany, New York (somewhat South of the Adirondacks and North of the Helderbergs) the Goose doesn't exactly carve a viscous line through the path. But I do. And you should always stick up for the underdog.

One of my favorite things to do with this beast is drop some corporate yahoo astride his or her $4,000 XTR Ventana Marble Peak on a steep climb or bombed-out downhill, maybe pat them on the back or something as I pass. You can find these status-validity whores at Killington, Mount Snow, and most recently the awesome Plattekill, reaching for their Ventolin inhalers, checking their hair in the broken-glass window of abandoned utility cabins, victims of bullshit values they don't even realize aren't their own.

Such thoughts, despite forcing you to question your own questionable values (combined with a powerful latte!), are good company at 3 AM as I tweak the rear derailleur and smear some Judy Butter on the inner legs of the fork. The whole house smells like grease and espresso, and a scant wisp of Lynn's Aveda moisturizing lotion. The shop is strewn with frames, frames, frames and cassettes and cranks, littered with wheels and tubes and tires, accosted by stems, old seatposts, cantilevers, cables, pedals, shocks, springs, levers, derailleurs, quick-release skewers and rim tape. And TOOLS!! Bottom bracket pullers, crank arm extractors, a bearing-cup press. Third-hand tools, chain tools and cone wrenches. Vises, freewheel removers, spoke wrenches and gauges, and an entire arsenal of metric and standard allen wrenches. Also, there are drums, timbales, cowbells, heartbreaking reminders, locked away in blackened, beaten road cases, stuffed into weathered canvas bags, starving for punishment.

Starving. I sigh and put a chain tool in my pack, the only tool I carry. All else lends itself to an unwillingness to persevere.

Although this early morning's venture will most likely be upon paved road only, I forego an opportunity to saddle up a recently restored '79 Serotta Club model road bike (complete with Campagnolo Record Gruppo, a steal from a used bike store at $350!!). The knobbies of the MTB have a much more profound, hypnotic hymn stored in the rubber. There is an austere, beatific reprimand in trying to consistently spin at over 20 MPH on them, thereby adding endorphin blasts to sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated brains and bodies. And besides, you never know when the urge for heavier sport may overwhelm you...

The bicycle has never failed to realize and illuminate the nostalgia wish provided by a past-midnight revisitation to the various locales of foolish youth. The rite always begins with no precise destination; like a dowser to an underground water well, one lets the soul dictate such things the conscious mechanics of the brain cannot identify, but can only file away to some archetypal realm. One simply clicks in, twists the chain onto the big ring, rides and finds it.

It's raining. The drizzle is just enough to turn the glass of my spectacles into a million clear beads, refracting street light and shadow in a decadent kaleidoscope-how a common housefly must perceive the world. I quickly remove them and get out onto Delaware Avenue, take a left on Federal Street and find Catalpa, a dead end street that heinously drops through a narrow path of maples onto Hackett Avenue with a series of retaining-wall size steps. It's March; the world is melting. The air is rich with the smells of dirt and wood and water you miss so much when the earth freezes. I blow my nose, what feels like centuries of snot explode forth with glee! Already glad I chose the Mongoose, I make for the psychiatric center on South Lake, which for some reason possesses a strange series of built-up, grassy whoop-de-doos that toss you a mile high if you hit them fast enough. I used to live right across the street; I see they've fixed up the 12-unit mansion house (it was built in 1863) since I called the fire department in to cite the landlord with over two dozen code violations so I could get my security deposit back. Bastards.

I hit the jumps and a guy in his underwear behind the gate of the loony bin, possibly the only person awake in Albany besides myself, gacks on his cigarette and screams, "HEEEEYYYY!! EVEL GODDAAAAAAMN KNIEVEL!!! ATTABOY, KID!!"

He's been in there forever, remembers me. Giving him what he wants, I wheelie and flash him the "V" for victory sign and he laughs as I hammer out towards Washington Park, where bums die cursing, infidels covertly tryst and I once passed out cold, death grip on bike rim, bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold and a strange Irish lass puking next to me. Distracted, I storm a few steep descents and, because my vision is trashed, I crash hard on the pavement as my wheel bites into a rut on the last hill. Wasn't back on the saddle far enough-always manage to take an SPD to the shin, too. It's raining harder, now; it gives the blood the appearance of flowing out both my knees as if someone turned on some internal hydrant. I chew mud emphatically and check out the bike, which looks fine. Feeling that nudge again, that adrenaline that swells in your head and joints when you crash regardless if you feel hurt, I get back on it. Lightheaded getting up, but that's the idea. After I hoof a climb or two more to keep the heart wise, I hustle out to Route 5, make a left and really hop on it, going strong, breath like billows for about eight steady miles uphill into my childhood.

The dark is unusually calm in the small city, a serenity that degenerates into desolation when approaching the suburbs. The wind, invisible certainty, gains momentum on the main drags when there's no traffic to disperse it. Odd how it's never at my back. Miles of artless strip malls give old Colonie Village the appearance of a town scooped out and occupied by military forces. Blinking yellow traffic lights, slight whistling ear, somewhere a large dog barks like a stooge. Temporarily disobeying the might of logic, I circumvent the street where my old house sits on Parkwood Drive, blunt and vexed, and scoot down the other side of the block towards my old elementary school. Ultra-white street lamps obscure somber homes built before the raised-ranch revolution of the early 70's. Deplorable things. Barry VanAcker's aluminum-sided single-floor house, both parents died before his 20th birthday. Had a Schwinn Grey Ghost (one of the rarest ones!!), freaked out and disappeared after his Siberian husky escaped one night and was promptly flattened by traffic on I-87.

Tom Carroll's ivy-covered brick abode. First friend I can remember; at 5 years old, proximity is the only factor determining alliances. He had a Green Machine he drove off the roof of his parents garage and a 3-speed Columbia that weighed about 105 pounds. Took my first drinks from his parents' downstairs bar. After heavy experimentation with LSD and a soured love affair, he began his gradual, garish descent into schizophrenic hibernation, occasionally trying to carve out the wires in his head with various sharp utensils.

At the school's main entrance, I finally stop for air. Since I carry no water on these journeys, vision's field swims with glycerinesque undulation and many-speckled swarm of microscopic matter as I stand soaking and dazed, looking inside. The gray and maroon mosaic tile on the floor is the same; the old cubbyhole cabinets are the same; glass cases in the hallways hold the same Native American replica artifacts; children's art submissions pasted on the same blue-paint cinder-block walls through every wing. The special-interest group from Memory Lane batters down my door, demanding a donation!

I suddenly remember the names of every kid that ever beat me up, every teacher that ever sent me cowering with a furrowed brow and debilitating scream in my direction, every instrument I was forced to play, every girl that made me feel small, even the time I shit my pants during the California Tests because Mrs. Buddenhagen forbade bathroom excursions.

It's unsettling, the amount of information you still carry in the brain's wrinkled vortex, undetected, waiting for these catalytic moments to bludgeon you with total recall. Like caffeine, like the bicycle, it wields holy significance, like a fist.

I clip back in and head toward the old house. The torrential downpour subsides momentarily and I'm melting, practically tripping, and there it is; I pull right into the driveway, freewheel clattering and pitiful bushing on Shimano XT rear derailleur pulley chirping like an angry bird. At first glance, the place is sullen, a refuse pile. All the beautiful pines that lined the walkway in front have been removed entirely, replaced by wilting, sickly rhododendrons. The driveway is potholed, crumbling. Upon closer inspection, the paint on the window molds hasn't been redone since my father painted them an atrocious beige, much to my mother's chagrin, 18 years ago. It is he who flakes away with a finger's cruel swipe. I woke up one morning to find my father dead. He lay there with the clean white sheets thrown aside, as if he were trying to get up, his face ashen, the tongue thick in his partially-opened mouth. In the caustic glare of the overhead lamp, his body looked unhealthy despite sun-weathered skin; his undershirt was too tight, drawing attention to his flabby belly, which shone as if it had burst through the garment at the spleen. His boxers, I think they were yellow with some strange argyle pattern, were bunched up into his crotch. Bloody slits for eyes, nest of blonde hair, one hand resting on his chest, the other reaching out towards me (I slept in a single bed placed next to his), the fingers swollen around his rings. An ochre stain dampened the sheets just outside the perimeter of his body. My father. Dead, looking scared but relieved, two emotions my mother believed were non-existent in him. I walk to the old elm in the front yard. I used to stand on his shoulders to climb it. Wind. Water. I sit at its base and cry a little. 18 years.

I've got to get home before Lynn wakes up for work. Reluctantly, I clip in and make it so, not remembering much about it later. You will never visit these places in your car; a car serves urgency, ignorant to and bereft of history. Nor would you ever set aside the time for time travel. It is these small hours where passage is possible, a hole in the rigors of daily planners, prior engagements, useless weddings, company functions. Upon arrival, these terrains have often been obscured, developed, subdivided or just plain grown in-yet just being in that eternal place, not sealed off, packaged by the glass, plastic and steel of an automobile, relearning the terrain through Hemingway's eyes, you confront your own mortality with precision and consideration of all realms, morbid or resplendent. Sight, sound and taste recovered.

These memories, this psychiatry can only be revisited in this forum, with the proper mechanisms: disorientation, insomnia, and the faithful rhythm of the pedal. The algebra of convalescence. Tomorrow, I'll go to class. I'll schlep coffee to the fuss-budget masses. Maybe even ride with friends, go for a walk with my love. All of this is a product of love, in one way or another. But in the odd night, alone, astride various velocipedes, is where the vision comes, and that, my friends, is a product of life.

See to believe.

© Bill Ketzer
Dirt Rag 66