Location: Monroe, LANovember 12th, 2011
Rainbows only happen after a rain.
Someone said that before me. They can happen in waterfalls and with garden hoses as well, but that would make it a really long saying and it would lose some of its meaning if you said rainbows only happen when you set your garden hose on mist.
I'm driving out about 6 miles west of my hotel to go for a ride today. I didn’t feel bad, but I didn’t feel much like riding either. I've been in a bit of a funk lately, for sure. I admit it. I think since I wrote about my dog dying I have a had a rough couple of days.
I know this because the night I was editing it I cried about 20 times. And there was one point, which is really funny in retrospect, where I was sobbing and I was also a little tuned up, and I was staring out the window of my hotel room in Greenville MS and I blubbed to no one: “Im at a hotel in Greenville Mississippi by myself, what the fuck am I doing? What have I done? How the fuck did I get here?”
I was in a glass case of emotion.
He is on the phone and I hear him say, hang on a second, and then let me call you back in a second. And I begin to ask him if this a good place to park, but then I see that he was not just on the phone for regular reasons but that he has a flat.
And I have everything you need for a flat, so I break out all my shit and start in on it. We make introductions and he says I can't believe this is happening and that you just showed up out of nowhere and I gotta get a picture of this because no one will believe me.
We talk a bit about biking and that there are good routes around here and the guy couldn’t be more pleased that I showed up right at that moment. And I think it's pretty cool too because I don’t think twice about helping him out and getting him back to what he loves.
When he's all back to position one and ready to take off, we shake hands and I grab a picture for the Exodus files.
The ride is just about like every other ride that I have had since I got to the south, and it's not a particularly scenic route but the music on Pandora is good and I think a bit about the fact that what happened back there was a little cooler than I realized when it was actually happening.
As in I started to think about how blown away I would be if I had a flat in a place where there aren’t so many riders, and I'm on the phone with a friend and asking them to grab my truck and this is a hassle for everyone and then some dude in a mobile bike shop glides up and changes my tire for me and then shakes my hand and speeds off.
 |
| That's a bull with an udder. |
Yeah, that would kind of blow my mind.
When I finish the ride and get back to the car, I am super pumped for some reason, and the music was so good that I get off the bike and continue to dance in the parking lot.
And I'm starting to feel a little wind at my back, and I feel my mind letting go again, finally.
Just then a red truck pulls in, and I think it's just some church member wondering what the hell I am doing dancing and drinking beer in their parking lot on a Thursday, but it’s Michael, the flat tire guy.
He wants to buy me dinner, and I'm in a fuck-it kinda mood, so I accept.
When we sit down we get into it right away, the deep talk, the good stuff. When you can skip right past the small talk with someone you've met for only a few minutes, well then you know this is one of the 5% of people in the world who is built like you, and you best be listening.
It's an intense experience, it really is, when someone you do not know shares with you deeply intimate information. It’s a spiritual delicacy to be chewed slowly.
We meet at a mutually pivotal moment. Something was weighing on me. As I said earlier: I was questioning the purpose of this trip. And he was battling with his mind as well: where do I go, what am I here for, what do I want?
Two hours later, we left with smiles, and we left lighter and we hugged then too, like you would someone you loved.
And I walk away shaking my head again about the beauty of all that, and I'm pretty sure he did the same.
