for the past few days I've been cleaning and conditioning the leather of a vintage brooks saddle.
and I was finally able to put it on my dutch utility bike this morning.
and the japanese saddle that was on the dutch utility bike is now on my vintage nishiki touring bike. i love both my bicycles, but the dutch utility is my all time favorite bike. i like how subtle and functional it is. i love how the rear wheel has a dress guard and the front light is on a generator that works as i pedal the bike. and i like how a picnic basket fits on the rear rack. i love the bell and the basket and the paniers. but what really really made me love this bicycle right when i saw it was the strange "bus stop" and "city" emblems
and how the kickstand is like one that would go on a vintage motorcycle.
the components are all very strong and durable, but it is completely factory (aside from a few modifications that were done since the bicycle has been my own). best part is that this bicycle was found at some thrift shop in some backwoods town in florida. it is a wanderer and white like a ghost; the most transient thing ever.
so my old touring bike an i are taking on an MS benefit tour at the end of April. I will be riding 100 miles in 2 days. I started seriously training this week, riding over 30 miles yesterday, half of those miles were up wind (a 22 mph wind i was riding against), which was exhausting. and i have the old strap pedals, and not clip ins, which makes riding more challenging. but that's ok. i love my touring bike almost as much as i love my dutch utility bike.
i have never had a flying dream. it is rare i have ever felt some part of weightlessness since i was very small. i have been working on submissions all morning, reading things i had written a while ago; i have been writing all morning and remembering how it felt to be small. how certain i was that everything was a ghost, everything was untrue, everything was coming for me. there was always something to pretend not to fear and to always protect what i could.
i probably seem terribly high seriousness in all of this, but mostly, i think i worry to much about my conscience. i like to ride around on my bike and look at architecture. i like this more than most things, which is probably why i ride my bike so much. the other day i saw a house on a street over that seemed interesting, so i went to see it, but it was in a gated community, so i snuck through the gate. but i got caught. the awful woman who caught me acted like i was going to rob her house or something, just because i snuck through the gate,
which made me think that maybe it is sort of strange to ride a bike around, looking at architecture. and i felt guilty for making this awful woman uncomfortable, but i really really hate gated communities anyway, but besides,
i have come close to a flying dream twice:
one. i had a dream i could jump very high. but every time i would fall back to the earth, weeks later, the world would get worse and worse, and i always had to keep coming back. i had this dream about a year ago. then
two. two nights ago i dreamt i had this very strange wire airplane. that, while standing on the ground, it could fit in the palm of my hand. but climb a ladder and i could climb aboard and lay across the wires, like sleeping in a day bed. so i would go out to the middle of a field somewhere, leaving everything to the earth except me and my airship. it would drift like a kite and i would sleep in the air and dream, but when it would be time to come back down to the world, i would never know where i was. and this led to some terrible things.
i cannot decide which i prefer. in the first i had a sense of personal preservation because i could always leave, in the second, i had to leave everything behind and rely on others to get me back home.
