Tuesday April 27, 2021




Unsettling night last night.  Dreamed of Michelle and we were just walking around the streets like we used to just going for a walk and she took my hand.   Messed me up for the rest of the night and didn't get much sleep.    When faced with the past the strongest man cries.

To cheer myself up and re-center, I drove up to Coos Bay this morning and am now at Starbucks with my laptop, writing.   Much like the "Before Times", ie before Covid19.   Feels good to reexperience a moment like this, almost as if life has a chance of returning again to what it used to be.

When Michelle and I separated 4 years ago, and in regard to our shared possessions, the first thing she said was that she wanted to keep the family table that I had built for the family a number of years ago out of 2 by 12 by 8 foot redwood boards that I gotten cheap from Home Depot.    It is a great table that was about 8 by 4 and you could bang around and could use for any family event or holiday affair, as it could sit 10 or 12 all the way around.    The kids grew up with it.  It made me feel good that she wanted to keep it.

The other thing she said was - adamantly - "take the bikes".    I have a hard time walking by a garage or yard sale, and if I see a bike there, I will always offer 25 bucks, and usually families have no idea what a bike is worth, so over the years I just tend to accumulate bicycles.       I see and work on each bike to get it going again, and it is almost as if I can look into its soul, and after fixing each one, I develop a connection to it.

Well, as it turns out, bikes can sit in a shed in Santa Clara's dry climate for years and come to no real harm, but not so much in Bandon, with its wet climate, and rain six months of the year.   A month ago, as the weather started to dry out, I took a look in the shed and found quite a bit of rust appearing on the bikes, so I realized that it is time to sell them, or just watch them disintegrate on me.    So the past two weeks I have been getting them all back up to speed for selling and of course as I work on each one, I wonder how I will be able to let it go.  Its like having a kid and knowing that it has to move on with its life.     You have to be able to let go.

I remember one time on one of our first bike trips out of Boston, I fixed up the bike for Michelle, an old yellow Schwinn that she had gotten when she was 13 years old.   That was for our first bike trip, from Boston to Provincetown.      After that trip I bought her a new bike, and she gave the Schwinn to her friend Philip.    A year later we went over to Philips house for dinner and I look in his back yard, and Michelle's bike had just been left out there through the winter and had turned to rust.   It had been ignored and left to die.  It broke my heart.    We are a product of our experiences.  Ever since then I have a hard time working on a bike and thinking that I might give it or sell it to someone, and it might be left out like that again.

So I posted the bikes on Facebook and Next-door and said I would hang around the house Saturday to sell them if anyone showed up.    Then it rained all day Saturday, putting a damper on my sales,  but I ended up selling 4 bikes anyway.   

I am keeping 5 bikes that I definitely cannot ever sell, at least at the moment.   My "dog" bike, a black Schwinn beach bike that I used to run the dogs twice every day for 12 years from when they were pups to when they got old and died on me.   My Trek Madone, A Nikiti Japanese road bike.   And a purple road bike that I had given to Michelle once.  And maybe one other.     The problem is that I know I will continue to walk past yard sales and have a hard time not offering 20 bucks for a bike sitting there.    I love to take them home and get them going again.   Each one has a soul.

That still leaves 9 to go to sell and all fixed up now.   I will post again for this Saturday.



 

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