STRAIGHT AHEAD
A Portrait of the Artist as a Biker (not Cyclist)
by Jack Saunders (the new old Bukowski, America’s greatest unpublished writer)
The Christmas I got that temporary job as a technical editor Brenda bought me a Raleigh ten-speed with a 25″ frame.
I used it for transportation, later, when I got on permanent at IBM, riding it through historic colored town on my way to the concrete office building at the intersection of Congress Avenue and Germantown Road.
Captain of a huckleberry party. I had a rack for pannier saddlebags on the front wheel and an aluminum book rack on the back. I was ready for my wanderjahr, If and when it happened. A bivy sack too small to change your clothes in.
Now’s the time. Take your wanderjahr a weekend here, a spell of unemployment there. Or selfemployment.
I wasn’t unemployed. Writing is my job. I just do not get paid to write anything I care about.
Do people pay you to put your bicycle in the wind?
- I’ve got a Schwinn delivery bike named Dreadnaught,
- and a ten-speed I call Straight Ahead,
- man, I put them in the wind and ride,
- sometimes wind up in a side ditch,
- drunk as a bicycle,
- fall off the son of a bitch.
I had to sell the delivery bike when we moved back to Florida from the mountains, broke as a haint.
In a ten-year period a couple of years ago I was able to stay home writing half the time, or nearly five years. 0, how sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child!
So the first thing I did when I quit my job at IBM was ride my bike from inlet to inlet. From Boynton Inlet to Boca Raton Inlet. Remembering the A1A stories of my youth I wrote about in Evil Genius. I deducted the bike repairs from my taxes.
Ride out to Loxahatchee.
There was a wildlife refuge off Range Line Road between Delray Beach and Boynton that had a boardwalk through a cypresshead.
There was a Visitor’s Center, there, that was closed, at the time. (Nowadays the place looks like the boardwalk at Atlantic City all year long. Now, you have to pay admission to get in.)
One day I rode my bike out there and the place was deserted, as I knew it would be. Not a car in the parking lot.
I rode my bike around in a big circle in the parking lot getting up to speed and hit the boardwalk at full power. I sailed around the boardwalk at a huffing whisper, the spider webs and morning raccoon shit still undisturbed.
The swamp went wild. Birds took off in flight, turtles plopped in the water, snakes coiled and hissed, bobcats spat.
They’d never seen anything like me and Straight Ahead.
I went around again in a victory lap. You could have heard a pin drop, except for my irreverent cackling.
I was thinking of birdwatchers and lifeguards, game wardens and traffic patrolmen, managers and gatekeepers.
Head out for The Territory ahead of the pack. The Territory Within. On your bicycle.
Straight ahead!
Jack Saunders, Box 10375, Parker, Florida 32404
