But the shallow medicine cabinet had voided itself of the stuff some time ago. And my furious, beastly pawing through the half-dozen Dopp kits squirreled beneath the bathroom sink yielded nothing either. Perhaps the spools vanished in the move up here from Austin six months ago. Regardless, dear reader, this lack of jaw-twine should not be read into as a foreshadowed omen, a symbolic indication of my resulting standing. Granted, it is certainly easy for someone who placed second to last (as I sure as hell did) to extol some grand, sweeping rhetoric on the detriments of contest as it is also tempting to sermonize on the ubiquitous turtle-and-hare, slow-and-steady notion.
However, the meandering trail I inefficiently blazed through the coarse corners of Fort Worth proved the most efficient way to show myself to the Town of Cow. Anyways, I hate the way that used floss sits coiled in the bathroom trashcan like some thin snake, waiting to strike.
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It is half past two, roughly, and I am the first one to hit the pulsating intersection. There are twenty-one of us that shot out from Trinity Bicycles like taut rubberbands. Our light is red and I am going to run it, that’s for sure, but it is all about getting the right timing. Timing and weaving and totally like that classic game, Frogger. Nicky bullets past me, pointing his fat-wheeled monster straight through the intersection and I follow him out. Someone bellows hoarsely: “watch the cars!” No shit. We snag our manifests (the ride will be like a kind of scavenger hunt, we learn) from some forgotten and muddy dead-end that butts up against the base of the Lancaster bridge.
The next thing I know, I am riding in these city-blocked sized circles, herding skyscraper shadows. I am trying to get around the Courthouse and it is ugly. My Xeroxed maps look the same no matter which way I turn them. Nothing adds up in the numbers of streets. On the north side of the Courthouse, where Main’s asphalt waterfall cascades sharply down across the river, I slalom orange construction cylinders, my legs in a fiery sprint.
The first stop is around North Main and 21st, to an indiscriminant box full of cartons of eggs. It is almost easy to miss, sitting as it does aside some industrial monolith that smells, ironically, like bad eggs. The task: to make it back to the shop (after hitting all of the other checkpoints, of course), without breaking the egg. Cute. I gingerly roll mine into my bike bottle, where it is cushioned by the few remaining ounces of tepid water. Probably the only good idea I will have all day.
The pack has split: Keith is long gone, his shoulder-length hair flailing like the ribbons lashed to the box fans of an electronics store display (he will place 12th). Ele is the lone female racer and I will not see her again until the finish (she will place 14th). Nate powers ahead, pumping his calves that look exactly like Popeye’s forearms (he will take a respectable 2nd). Somewhere along the way, I meet up with Abe. Abe rides a nobby-wheeled mountain bike that makes his legs bow. Abe resembles Santa with a shortened beard or a de-hatted garden gnome. Take your pick. He has all the quintessentially jovial mandates: red cheeks, glowing eyes, a warm smile. And it looks like he has a fifteen pound bowling ball tucked beneath his baby-blue Trinity Bicycles jersey. I’d seen him at back at the shop but hadn’t the opportunity to exchange pleasantries.
We roll in together to the back patio at the Flying Saucer to chug our free beer, as dictated in the manifest‘s rules. A few other riders are already there (or have already there’d and gone); O’Brien shows up, like an out-of-breath Olympian (he will come in 4th). The icy can of Brooklyn Lager is delicious and the air is smoky. The place is packed with meatheads and I am thoroughly confused at the servers’ slutty Scottish get-ups; they prance from crowded table to crowded table, the pleats on their tartaned ta-tas fluttering like warbler wings. I crush the can beneath the sole of my shoe and we leave.
It is now unofficially official. Abe is my guide, my co-pilot. We have both seemingly long abandoned the racing mentality of the ride anyhow, we had to. We exchange formalities and discuss the plan of attack, as it were, for the remaining locations.
“I’ve been here since 1982,” he tells me.
So, what we lack in sheer speed we will make up for in precision. Ideally.
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We are deep into Samuels Avenue, well past the brick canyon of shimmering new condos. The checkpoint lumbers ahead like a decadently ornate Tim Burton set-piece: a late nineteenth-century mansion with a turret that tapers into an enormous Victorian nipple.
“That is probably one of the oldest houses in Fort Worth,” Abe huffs.
I scrawl down the required information (a real estate agent’s name from an askewed sign), noticing the bronze Texas Historical Landmark plaque before we double back. In its day, this place used to really be something.
Suddenly, from the starboard side comes a fervent cry: “I love you.”
A heavy-set girl runs toward us down a driveway littered with detritus: naked, asexual dolls; an entire tree’s worth of branches; a flattened, oil-stained box. Her curly bangs drape low over her forehead, hinging her head back like a Pez dispenser in order to see. She seems mentally disabled and is flapping her hands fanatically.
Another vigorous wave after we pass: “Hi, I love you, hi.”
I turn back because I have this strange sensation she would be trailing us like a small, untethered dog (which has actually happened to me in similarly dilapidated neighborhoods). But she just stands there, motionless now, watching, diminishing my presumptuous arrogance.
Then she becomes a shrinking speck on the cracked sidewalk where tufts of grass grow in the fissures like wispy hairs on a geriatric‘s temples.
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Over to Oakhurst, past gurgling Chevron plants, vast recycling centers, a police impound lot. Everything is aligned for the proper post-apocalyptic aesthetic: dead weed stalks beat against a rusty propane tank; a humanless wind waving newspaper shreds entwined in a chain-link fence. We ride parallel to some creek offshoot, which, to employ the verb ‘littered’ to describe the number of discarded truck tires, would be a grave misnomer for this stream was dammed with the things. Damned. Our clue: what year was Oakhurst the Neighborhood of the Year? 2006, according to the street sign. Neighborhood of the year: the irony is glaringly inescapable. I guess a lot can change in five years.
On to the last checkpoint. It is one of the triplet of roundabouts that dot the map, like eyes, in the warehouse district due west of the toppled V that is the White Settlement/Henderson intersection. We take the trail system into a brutal headwind and overshoot our target by several blocks which, by the order of the day has become common operating procedure for me. The manifest says there will be free water bottles (we had to return with one as proof of our visit) but instead there is nothing. Stolen, is our guess. Me and Abe shrug and head back to the shop (we will take 16th and 17th places, respectively; we are the final two because four other riders dropped and went home). It is a quarter to six and I estimate, after all said and done, we will have gone close to thirty miles. We pick a prize from long card table to go with our new spoke card trophies. I snag a decent light set, which is great, because I had not brought my other one from home. I did not expect to be out until the sun went down.
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Two final items: 1) the Montgomery Plaza Super Target had a special on Glide floss and 2) I topped my bike tires off with air. Next time I race in something like this (the Trinity Bicycles anniversary alleycat?) at least this time I will lose without the stigma of halitosis.
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