This morning reminded me of 1986

I used to commute to work by bicycle then, too. It was an old Schwinn continental '10 speed'. Brown. Rusty. The commute was 8 miles (one way). Now I have 15 miles (one way). Of course, I have two pedals now. I only had one then. Really. The right one was gone. Not the crank arm, just the pedal. It had completely broken off a few weeks before. It was either ride that bike or walk 4 miles to take a bus the other 4 (which I did sometimes). Sometimes I went by skateboard. Really.


It was in Ft. Collins Colorado. I lived in the southwest part of town and worked 4 miles north and 4 miles east of there. At Wendy's. Getting there was mostly downhill so that was no problem.



The way back required a little more effort. I would pedal with my left foot and push down on the right crank with my right. It wasn't bad after I got the hang of it. I was pretty poor back then, so I used to steal potatoes from Wendy's and cook them at home. I once tried to make spaghetti with a handful of ketchup packets and some Ramen noodles. It came out tasting surprisingly like I had just dumped a bunch of ketchup onto my Ramen. It was terrible. Maybe I should have used Catsup. Or even spaghetti sauce (yeah, whatever, Howard Hughes!) People used to call spendthrifts 'Howard Hughes' back then. Now they say 'Bill Gates'. Oh, they also used to call people spendthrifts. Did I mention that this was the 1940's?




That's the only time in my life that I stole stuff on a regular basis. It's interesting to me. I never had any guilt about stealing stuff that I felt I needed. I was just happy I didn't spend money on whatever it was I stole. I've never been that poor since then (I've been close), so my sense of right and wrong has improved dramatically.



I had no furniture. I had no bed. I didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out. All I had was Floyd. Just kidding, I didn't have Floyd. I did buy a color TV at a garage sale for 25 dollars. The brand was 'Ford'. Yeah, it had the blue oval car logo on it. Good TV.



But that's not why this morning reminded me of 1986. Unfortunately, my ride took me right by the Colorado State Campus. I was 21 at the time, so it was particularly humiliating to be pedaling this old rusty Schwinn up a hill in my Wendy's uniform (nametag and all), pushing the right side crank arm with my greasy brown "all man made materials" work shoe, next to a bunch of extreme college hotties, sitting in the grass socializing with clean, non-greasy, good looking people (stay in school kids).

The bike had been borrowed from a next door neighbor, Lorna. It had been leaning against the back of the house for a while and was in a certain amount of disrepair. I asked if I could use it and she said no because it didn't work (flat tires, problem with one of the pedals). I asked if she would mind if I took a look at it. So I got some inner tubes and cleaned/oiled the chain. At that point, the spindle part of the right pedal was still there. The platform part was gone though. The shifting and (center-pull) brakes worked fine. It was really hard to pedal on just the spindle. When it broke off, I thought that was the end of it. It actually turned out to be easier without that spindle in the way. My left leg got a really good workout.

Lorna's husband was Dave. Dave was a Vietnam Navy veteran. He identified strongly with Nam. He and I used to go up into the mountains sometimes and he taught me how to shoot a 12 gauge and his M1-A rifle (or maybe not, I can't remember if anyone was allowed to touch the M1-A, but I think so). That was pretty cool. He also had a Springfield 1911 45, but I don't remember shooting it. Sometimes we went hiking into the mountains and he'd show me where he and his family would be living when "Ivan" comes. "Ivan" meant the Soviets (they were not called Russians again yet) and Dave was prepared to live in the mountains if worse came to worse.

Once I said to Dave, "You're a regular Jeremiah Johnson, aren't you?"

"Jeremiah Johnson forgot more than I'll ever know", Dave assured me. My first reaction was to laugh because I thought Dave was brilliantly pretending that Jeremiah Johnson was an actual person and not a character that Robert Redford played in a movie by the same name. Then I realized that Dave believed there actually was a Jeremiah Johnson. Then I realized that I don't know if there ever was a Jeremiah Johnson or not, I had just assumed it was fiction. Well there was nothing for me to say but "Some say he's up there still."

"Indeed", came Dave's satisfied response, and we nodded at each other, affirming our mutual respect for Mountains and cinema.



But that's not why this morning reminded me of 1986. In the spring time in Ft. Collins, there is a weird thing that happens. I think I've talked about it before, but it gets real windy. The wind comes off the Rockies at up to about 100 MPH (100/.625 KPH) blowing straight to the east. They call it the Chinook winds. I don't know why. Maybe Chinook is Jeremiah Johnson's friend. It lasts for a couple of weeks or so. Maybe one week, I don't remember. But it's real windy. It was pretty fun riding east with this stuff going on. I actually tried riding into it once. Even with 2 good pedals, there was no way. But I only had one pedal anyway, so … All I could do was lean forward hard against my (Lorna's) bike and push it the 4 miles to the west. Yeah, there seemed to be a lot of sand too. Going south, north or east was no problem. You could actually get the wind to push you up hills going south by leaning into it right. It still didn't impress the CSU girls. Not that they were lounging around during the Chinook winds or anything. But if they had been, I'm sure they would not have been impressed.

And that’s what reminded me of 1986. It was windy this morning.