On Thursday the lads at Reincarnation had a look at Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster and told me she required no heroic lifesaving measures at this time. It’s a red-letter day when a geezer on a fixed income with an equally ancient rice grinder can escape a mechanic’s clutches for under a hundy.
Plus I managed 30 cycling miles — 15 after dropping the old gal off downtown and then cycling back home, and another 15 picking her back up. Though the mileage is identical in both directions, the first leg feels the longest, with 1,150 feet of vertical gain. There’s less than 200 feet of vertical on the return trip, most of it in the first mile.
There are still a few hurdles to clear, though. The people whose “home” is the weedy industrial area alongside the North Diversion Channel Trail huddle together in what shade they can find come the heat of the afternoon, usually on the west side of the bicycle path’s underpasses, south of I-25/Pan American.
Many wear dark clothing and are hard to spot in the shade, if you’re new around here and don’t expect to roll up on a small crowd sprawled in a blind corner. Here’s a guy who looks like the Feral Kid from “Road Warrior,” with a dog instead of a boomerang. There’s a pensive young woman who seems to be revisiting her life choices as the temperature creeps into the mid-90s.
We were all on the same path, but not really. I was riding a bicycle that’s worth more than the car I was going to pick up. I was wearing sunscreen and about half a G’s worth of cycling kit, with an iPhone in one jersey pocket, wallet full of cash, credit cards, and health insurance in another. I knew where I was going to sleep that night, even if the Subie didn’t start (I was riding a bicycle, remember). The place has food, drink, beds, toilets, showers, doors and windows that lock, climate control, and a lid on all of it.
Cycling past the street people I always feel like a tourist gawping at the wildlife in some squalid national park. Possibly because I am one, and always have been, never more so than when I was pretending to be a hippie, hitchhiking, panhandling, and taking all those gosh-darned drugs that were so much fun.
Maybe the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showed me around one dark night, way back when. Or maybe I just wised up to all that unearned middle-class-white-boy privilege I was wearing like a Superman costume under my hippie garb. Because I never had the balls or the bad luck to take anything that might leave me sprawled under a bridge on a searing August afternoon, as some bastard on a bicycle breezes by.
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I suppose we could all sell all we own and give it to the poor, as the Good Book sez. Not sure that would really solve the problems, given generosity only affects those with a conscience. It is painful to watch. The paths up here also are where the less fortunate of our kinfolk congregate. There are a few descansos along the way.
We’ll have to console ourselves with Scripture:
“For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.” — Matthew 26:11
Or we could go with the one-line will of François Rabelais:
“I have nothing, owe a great deal, and the rest I leave to the poor.”
I used to be able to quote scripture pretty well, as I went to a Jumpin’ Jeebus Church for a while in high school. It never took, though. In college, I discovered mild altering drugs and alcohol.
Forty five percent of Americans could not cover a $1000 emergency expense with a loan or credit card. Sixty percent of Americans do not have a retirement saving account or plan. The difference between home and homeless is sometimes one medical or legal problem, or something even less like a car breaking down. And these people are preyed on by politicians who are in the group who exploited them for their own profit. It’s easy for me to say I worked hard and deserve what I have. But, I believe this less every day.
Lots of people living on the edge, for sure. Closest we came was when we quit our gigs in Fanta Se and moved to Bibleburg to take care of my mom.
We had a roof over our heads — it was her house — and Herself got right back to working retail while I built my various freelance gigs. We had money coming in, but not a lot of it. I think we were doing without health insurance at the time, and I was racing bicycles a lot, so, not real smart.
But my mom had money, and my sister was handling that end of her care, so even if we’d stepped in the shit we probably could’ve gotten out of it without winding up under a bridge somewhere. The only time I’ve been closer to the edge, I put myself there. I must’ve thought I’d either live forever or die real soon. Not real smart. But as you know, I will never be smart.
I feel your feelings. Next time, just stop and talk to them. They may not want your money or sympathy, but acknowledgment is precious sometimes.
I usually just wave, holler some generic greeting, same as I do to everyone else. That feeling of invisibility is a real soul-crusher. Anyone who’s ever been in even a tiny spot of bother and gotten nothing but averted eyes knows how it feels. Not good.
Nice photo. It’s nice and symbolic to your column. There is always a tree of hope branching from those of take the time to care.
I try to be friendly with those who appear to be living in an unofficial sheltered state. I see myself in them and how easily it might be for me to be living somewhere I’d rather not be. Also, it seems in many cases the most caring people that may respond to an ailing cyclist that just got rammed by a motor vehicle are those who can more closely relate to just such an instance. As Mr. Steelman infers, respect is a wonderful thing.
A half a G kit? Wow. I suppose though if added up the value of my old gear that it would be similar. But I was noticing earlier today how my old Sidi MTB shoes are slowly becoming Sidi Road shoes because the little aggressive tread bits keep falling off.
Re: the kit, I was thinking replacement costs. Giro helmet, Rudy Project shades, Sidi shoes (in the same condition as yours, maybe worse), Voler bibs and jersey (they did the old Fat Guy and Mad Dog kit), Paddygucchi undershirt, Smartwool socks, Pearl Izumi gloves (which really need replacement; them sumbitches is ragged).
I’ve written before about the hobo couple who accosted me in an Oregon tavern back in the Eighties. They offered to buy me a beer, saying I looked sad (I was). It was a fascinating conversation, took me right out of myself and my puny little self-generated tragedies.
I’m normally cheap on kit given I don’t do 100 mile rides any more, so discomfort is a little more forgiving. Still, I hate to think of what some of the replacement costs would be of stuff I bought back 20 or so years ago and am still keeping in rotation. I suspect the Protogs stuff from the eighties is irreplaceable. I have a couple newer jerseys I bought from the Santa Fe Century folks even though I didn’t need them. Just to put a little money into the pot. Today I rode in Pat O’Brien’s gift jersey. My wife says I still live like a grad student. My off road cycling shoes have been glued back together twice with Shoe Goo after the soles fell off. Once one fell off while I was teaching a BikeEd class. That was embarrassing, but I told the students it teaches you to improvise. Still, if you tally up shoes, helmet, gloves, shorts, jersey, glasses (in my case prescription), it can easily hit half a grand. Jeebus….
Handing greenbacks to the hobos on medians sometimes feels a little like purchasing indulgences. I think the closest I got to a relationship with street people were the times I was trudging back to my hotel in San Francisco during an American Geophysical Union meeting. Once some guys asked for money. I was a little reticent to give money for whatever, so I said, OK, dinner’s on me, so I came back with a large pizza and a couple quarts of beer. We ate and drank it in the shadow of the giant Christmas Tree in Union Square and shot the shit. They were interesting guys. Another time, stumbling back late after too many beers, I offered to buy coffee for a couple Black streetwalkers after telling them I couldn’t afford their services but would gladly share a cuppa Joe. They laughed hysterically.
We really need a sea change in how we run this country. Medicare for All is a start, but the heedless loss of industry, good jobs, unions, and the tipping of the tax structure to the wealthy has all left us with a replay of a Dickens novel. If I were rich, I guess I should feel guilty. As it is, I just find it depressing but I don’t quite have a “white privilege guilt complex”. I’ve been fortunate, given my not quite so privileged origins as a kid born in a home for unwed mothers (that’s a long story), but a lot of that fortunate son stuff in my case is not because of privileged parents, but is on the backs of union halls and people who paid to set up public schools and universities and other such stuff. Stuff fewer people seem to give a shit about today.
Speaking of sea changes, did you see this? It made me want to punch some holes below a few waterlines.
All I could think of when I saw that last picture with Springline in the black metal archway was “Arbeit macht frei “. Sick.
I loved working from home because I could set up a computer on the dining room table, have Annie the Dog for company, and cut loose to get in an hour bike ride during the day and then come back and do more work. Who the fuck needs all that other weird shit, which I suspect no one had who is loading trucks for Amazon.
The photo alone should be enough to trigger a Second American Revolution.
“Don’t worry, buddy, you won’t need shoes for the short walk to that wall over there. Ready … aim. …”
I worked from home or the road for 30 years and I didn’t need any of that shit. And despite all evidence to the contrary, I feel that I was plenty productive, cranking out the word count and silly scribbles without the usual interference one comes to take for granted in the average workplace.
I did enjoy the occasional visit to VN or BRAIN to lend a hand with production and get some face time with the colleagues. But I got more done at home, where the signature scent was green chile and the spa was a two-wheeler or two or three.
That article should be enough to trigger a 2nd American Revolution. With so many people, as POB said, going off the back (as we say in bikey-bikey land), all the money is being spent kissing the asses of the high mucky-mucks. I suspect there are plenty who can’t afford a decent pair of shoes rather than having the choice.
We were mainly working from home during Covid; one or two people living in Los Alamos would go in to the office if someone had to do something in the Cone of Silence. The main rule for working from home, other than to not take risks with the “content”, was to remember to change out of your pajamas for a Zoom conference. There were many days when I was sitting on the laptop with a steaming cup of coffee, working in my PJ’s until the spirit moved me to get cleaned up and dressed. For Zoom, at least put on a clean shirt along with your boxer shorts, which were not visible. I hope….
Disney shot Doogie Kamealoha largely in Waimanalo, because it was quieter than Honolulu, easier to get crews in and out, and they could find a nice looking house with a big enough yard for camera crews and trailers.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12225230/
But literally one block away from the doctor’s four bedroom , ocean facing home was a tent city of homeless, a spot near a public shower where they could shit/shower/shave with a clean water supply.
https://www.kitv.com/video/leader-of-waimanalo-homeless-encampment-requires-covid-19-shots/article_40e47274-5326-5c52-8a54-f8a7be1cb23b.html
The emotional/social/financial/economic distance between the Haves and HaveNots might be getting bigger, but the physical distance is downright Dickensian right now. And yet that doesn’t make us any closer to finding a solution.