i dream in stereo

in doubly, that is.
tandem.
teaches us about love, forgiveness, and the flower of promise. it's the american dream. that's what the tandem bike is for me. it's my white picket fence-two kids-in the country-dog sliding on the kitchen floor-wine cellar-ham radio-midlife sailboat-corvette covered on blocks in the driveway.....something that i sincerely think about when i try to envision my future.

of course, i'll still ride the lone steed. silence in the small hours. tilting my head away from the wind. watching the street riverrun away under my arms, which are still as statues and resolute in small folds and bronze wrinkles that were dug with the flex of a joint and never moved, never closed back up or filled back in. it's about fertility, probably. you know how all life is spawned from repetetive motion...the peak and dip of the moon pulses with the same hip thrust as the life giving loin which thinks of waves and rivers-constantly swirling the same water back into itself-as it's host sweats and cusses and the cherry tree buds, blooms and dies in a year long, slow loop, knot in the board that supports the roof of the shed, the knot is an eye where the tree learns to count starting with years. as it's branches sprout and swell, the tree learns about numbers, one, two, three and each arm has fingers who count by growing their own fingers and all of this wraps the gentle marrow of the tree heart in a new skin each year.

just saying.

this morning, full on 2.95 breakfast special and copperwire lectric bustelo coffee, jeezy and i were riding up 6th ave. acting the commuter and jeezy bumps a cop car haha and the cop pulls over and starts talking pathetic power trip how he's going to lock jeezy up and mess up his friend here too, me who's not said a word except this is stupid and we laugh at him as we ride away free on like gazelle legs which never have touched the ground but appear to jump, really flying bouncing on a layer of power that lives under its feet all the time even sleeping a centimeter off the ground hovering. haha....we win.

Glidin' Across America

Body Glide (aka "The Glide") has officially been marked off our "To Buy" list. The demons of chafing have officially been exorcised. I'm feeling better already....

Possible future exchanges inspired by and/or related to Body Glide:
"Bro, you Glidin' today?"
"Crap man I think you got some of your Glide on my sammich."
"I told you bro...shoulda gone Glide back in Pueblo."
"Brosef, I think I need to swing by a bathroom and re-Glide."

Bikini biking

As my friend Alex pointed out, "Biking blog," read quickly and carelessly, looks just like "Bikini blog."

Coincidence?

We still need a name for our tour. Some possibilities:
Free Ballin' Tour '07
Summer of Unrelenting Optimism
Tour de Bro
(--> alternately: Tour de Breaux)
Torch Bearer Tour '07
The CRBHD Acquisition Operation

We need help with names. Any input is appreciated.

And I still need to buy body lubricant....

I believe in you. Your magic is real.

Kasey messaged me yesterday--she of the beautiful golden locks and lilting voice and curving-down-at-the-ends smile. Her message spoke of love interests and Louisville and Lawrence and potential leaving. And horoscopes. This was mine for yesterday:

For the future **
This can be a time of very successful energetic activity, if you proceed cautiously enough. You may be infected with an unjustified optimism that anything you do today will "turn to gold." It may, but it won't happen by luck. It will happen through intelligent planning and foresight, which are available to you under this influence if you make a conscious effort to take advantage of them. You act for the future under this influence, because you are more concerned with what can be done than with what is. Therefore this is a good time for furthering new projects. But do not overextend yourself and go beyond your resources, which is another temptation now. Also your fondness for taking risks can lead to accidents at this time, so be careful. You are not unlucky, you are just somewhat impulsive.**

I am not much one for horoscopes or psychics or any such foretelling of futures. I look to them as I look to magicians. Or prophets. Or religion in general. With a sort of aloof suspiscion, coupled, almost always, with a suspended disbelief, a desire, however remote, for it to be real: A child watching a woman being cut in half; white rabbits materializing from nothing, emerging shyly from black hats; prophesies dealt from mountaintops.

Mostly I just think horoscopes are fun. And sometimes, strangely accurate.

A good time to be planning a bike trip across the country, hm?

eight wheels are better than two

this morning, jeezy and i met at gimme for a pre-ride americano. there was a big beautiful dog tied up next to the stoop where i sat. when it's owner came out, i asked him, "what kind of dog is that?" "rottweiler" he said. "i like it." i replied, smiling.

as he walked away, i felt bad for calling it an "it".

ps - on my lunch break i was doing some digging in the photo archive at the mid-manhattan library. that's where i found this impressive image.

I don't know "no"

i can get my mouth into that round shape, i can blow a smoke ring (...probably still can), i can whistle like a lonely bandit, but it's the word. stringing together those little letters goes beyond my verbal motor skills. i suppose it's about love, right? it's about sleep and love. or sleep versus love, rather.

anyways, this trip is about "no". if i have anything to do with navigation, we will actually write that elusive word across the country. tracing a grand loop from jersey up to michigan, out to kansas, down to tennessee, back up to jersey, then a curlicue-connector up toward indiana, then diving down to texas only to turn our noses north for the giant horseshoe up to montana, ending up in new mexico. the US could certainly use a little dose of negation. i'm sure charles ray agrees.

addendum: perhaps i've been living under the locational curse of the double negative. Brooklyn, New York contains my new mantra twice! Mystically, linguistically, this could be responsible for my gap-toothed and grinning lexicon.

PSS - New Orleans and New Mexico are high in the running for places to settle with North Dakota leading by a final furlong.