Another One Bites the Dust

Committed a total newb mistake last Friday night: I ate it on slick streetcar rails, fairly badly. I bashed an adductor magnus (such a cool name!), the adjoining hip and an elbow a little; my head, too, if I weren't wearing a helmet. (WEAR YOUR FUCKING HELMETS PEOPLE!!!) I'm going to get my hip x-rayed, days late, of course, because I'm a bad patient. I don't think anything got broken, though the elbow sometimes feels like I could have incurred a meager fracture of some sort. I'm still pretty gimpy from the accident, but I've managed to run a few deliveries the past couple days. Well, I'll be better soon, at least enough to walk normal and get on and off my bike somewhat gracefully.

Frankly, I'm starting to have reservations about being a cyclist. I haven't really done anything to my bike except wreck it and barely keep it running with a — probably dangerously — warped rear wheel. The deliveries are only paying so well, especially considering 51% of my earnings come from tips and how much in taxes I'll owe at year's end; I'd probably be earning more if I were still slinging Dippin’ Dots and popping kettle corn at the stadium. The roads are terrifying game preserves wherein prowl SUVs and biggus-dickus trucks driven by dangerously inattentive and inept buffoons, who flail at intersections, can't park, and never signal. (Weren't those big vehicles supposed to go out of style, or did they briefly and come back?) These supersized Hot Wheels are also parked alongside curbs, but up to a foot away … so, it gets crowded on a lot of streets, and I get nervous as hell when I'm squeezed in between walls of man-crushing titans. And then there's the inevitable end of summer: not too long from now it will be dark and rainy much of the time, not to mention windy and occasionally icy.

We'll see. I may feel better about it after my body heals and I manage to get some real work done on the bike. Also after I get a decent part-time wage slave job somewhere. lol And, yes, I'm also going to buy some body armor, probably of the kind mountain bikers use; I'll totally feel ridiculous wearing it for a while, because I'll probably end up looking like some poser Dark Lord of the Sith — but I'll be damned if I cruise around with no protection at all, like those foolish single-speed hipster/messenger kids do. And, as silly as it may sound, I'm pretty bummed about having lost my cute little lucky cat bell! I'm replacing it, of course, but this time I'm going to fasten it to my backpack with some burly nylon cord.

A Return to Hourly Wage Slavery

Well, hell. It's time to start looking for a part-time job. I've been delivering for Postmates for ... over three months now? and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The thirty-percent taxes, while accelerating my paying off of my defaulted student loans (sigh), are a bit high for a guy who still doesn't earn enough money to get out of subsidized housing — lol at least not unless I live in a tent or an RV, or something similarly homeless. Not only that, but just how feasible will it be for me to try to earn a living delivering food by bike during the wintry New Year doldrums? And what about my bursitis? It's quite possible that I may not be able to mount and dismount my bike, or ride it for any great distance, sometime within the next few years.

I'm not trying to talk myself out of or into anything. Service and food work is generally fraught with chaos, melodrama, agitation, indignity, and pain. But it pays more, is comparatively consistent and reliable, is generally conducted indoors, and doesn't put my life on the line by requiring me to share the road with dangerously inattentive and impatient dunderheads piloting world-devouring behemoths. And, well, as much as I tend to be critical of and dismissive of other people, it's nice sometimes to have co-workers to share some Canterbury Tales ribaldry with.

Yeah, I don't want to get some job wearing a damn polo shirt and a name tag, encouraging the infantilization of successful American consumers with my scripted dialog and sarcastic sycophancy. I also don't want to ride my bike surrounded by SUVs driven by imbeciles glued to their phones, eventually in ice and rain. I don't want to do anything, anything at all. I'm tired of life; I was tired of it decades ago, back when it was relatively cheap, beautiful, peaceful, and full of promise. All I see right now is repeated failures and persistent loneliness until my body falls apart on me — possibly fairly soon! — and I die, alone like an abandoned cat.