I took a programming class in college and have had this inside joke url ever since
As much as I hate wearing a bike helmet while riding (but I do, I wear that damn uncomfortable stupid-looking thing everywhere), I love carrying it around. At the grocery store, across the parking lot, into coffee shops. There’s something pretty badass about holding a helmet under your arm.
I transport myself in a way that could cause brain damage, the helmet says. Who knows what the fuck else I’m capable of.
Wouldn’t you know, that the day my new bicycle finally arrives, after weeks of delay and miscommunications, after years of fear regarding the Boston city streets, after studying maps and sizing helmets and coming to terms with my mortality, I leave my apartment to pick up said bicycle — and halfway there a man cuts in front of me on the sidewalk, walking his bike.
At first I just think he just happens to have the body type of a sea anemone, with a tuft of strange hair emerging from a head slightly less wide than his head, and an oceanic wobble wobble to his walk. But then I realize he is wearing a neck brace. When he looks back to check for cars, his eyes wander in different directions.
And we walk like this, with him maintaining position a block or so in front of me, escorting his bicycle — wobble wobble wobble — nearly the entire way to Porter Square.
Here’s the thing about standing on your head: it’s incredibly easy, once you get up there.
And that feeling, of looking upside down at the world while you hover, is like stepping into space. The first time I did it, I thought I was dying. It was three seconds away from being an out-of-body experience. Everything seemed to lift, to float, to say yes. I stretched upwards gloriously, pointing my toes.
Unfortunately, that perfect, first time equilibrium couldn’t last long. Maybe just under three seconds. Two and a half. I started to wobble backwards, and desperately clenched my abdomen muscles. The yoga instructor shuffled next to me as I eeped in alarm. “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” he said. He framed my ankles with his palms. “I won’t leave you.”
Oh my God, I thought, delirious with brainblood. That was like a wedding vow.
They were very sweet. At my going-away party on Tuesday (“what is that,” a friend asked, “Boone’s Farm Black?”), Jake snapped this photo with his phone. There were roses. Roses! And marble cake.
Today was my official last day. My laptop was cleared, my last podcast put up with no fanfare. I walked the mile home, set my purse down, and then opened my computer to see this picture. And I was suddenly overcome with horror.
“My . . . God,” I realized. “This is the kind of picture that is taken before it all went wrong.”
Greetings from … well, I wish I could still say Costa Rica, but last night we returned, significantly browner and peelier than a week before.
As a result of that trip, I am now a little bit more fond of monkeys, a little less fond of cats — which were feral and whining about it everywhere — and much more fond of paved, straight roads, which were stomach-lurchingly absent in our area. Also, I want a pony. (Whenever we wanted to go somewhere, we drove on dirt roads through green hills dappled with white oxen, grey-spotted horses and unicorns, apparently. It was always sunset, and there were always mountains in the background. I began to harbor fantasies of owning a ranch. It would have an wooden gate painted bright orange, and every morning I would enjoy a breakfast of Cream of Wheat with black coffee.)
(Step one: stop hating Cream of Wheat.)
(Step two: stop hating coffee black.)
How’s springtime in Kansas City? It’s kind of nice to be back home in Boston, even if it is a bit chilly and forecasted to rain for the next week. I like to think that I attained a level of zen in Costa Rica, because when a car tried to plow through me this morning in the middle of a crosswalk with a walk signal, my inclination to give him the middle finger was almost cavalier, dispassionate, like a friendly tip o’ the hat to his douchebaggery.
Sometimes I worry that I’ll become too accustomed to this city.