So yesterday I was going to go to a friend’s Cinco de Mayo party at noon, and so went to bed at 3 am which is relatively easy for me but instead I woke up at 7 and couldn’t get back to sleep because I have insomnia and it’s aggravated by the intention to get up for anything no matter how trivial.

So I go over and think I’m maybe a little late even for this competition he was going to do, bring my bike into his backyard and like no one else was there so I’m like “oh, ok, I have time to get some coffee and pick up some beer and grilling meat” only as I leave I have the terrible sense that I screwed something up and check my phone and oh shit it’s only Quatro de Mayo whoo boy dodged a bullet of awkwardness there.

So I decide I’d always been intending to bike around North/Northeast in the daytime but never got to it so perfect chance. If you ride down side streets in Portland long enough you always run into a park with water fountains and whatnot so that’s nice. Eventually I decide to ride up until I hit the river and follow that. There’s a marina and stuff and I ride east until 33rd and I’m thinking of turning back down but hey there’s a specific bike path and I’m thinking I’ll ride that a while further and then turn inland.

Except that path is between the airport and the river so there’s no turnoffs until like 90th and the I-205 bridge, it’s hard to realize how huge an airport is until you traverse its perimeter under human power and this isn’t the longest bike ride I’ve ever taken but the longest in years, and at one point I’m seriously afraid my junk has withdrawn into my body but nope, just gone numb. A few passenger jets take off over me and some F-18s land on I guess Air National Guard business. Like, I’m pretty sure they’re 18s from the wingform but on the ground the canopies look bulbous and raised like a 16 so maybe they’re 2-seater trainers?

Anyway eventually there’s a turnoff through the airport parking lot, and then somehow I go up a normal curb cut, turn, and for some reason sprawl out across the pavement. Get up, wave myself OK to the bus driver, but now my palm’s scratched up and from the bruise and swelling I probably sprained some extensor digitalis. On top of all the grease from having to dislodge my chain, which was getting stuck between my rear gears and the frame for some reason.

And I’m like “what the hell even is this place” but then I remember there’s a big box center here, like to take advantage of the Washington sales tax on the other side of the bridge, and it has an IKEA, so I go get some meatballs. Except they’re not as good as I remember, and the salad is terrible, and walking the store circuit doesn’t relax me like it always did, and it’s bugging me that the people seem so much more like stereotypes of the “ugly American” than I remember but I can’t put my finger on it, I definitely see overweight dudes in cargo shorts and t-shirts every day.

So I steel myself up for the ride home only for some reason on going out I find my bike has a flat tire, which was maybe the result/cause of that fall earlier. I drag it over to Sports Authority, realize that even with the $15 charge to upgrade from 72-hour service having them fix it is cheaper than either buying a patch kit and pump or getting a cab home to my garage where I have one.

Had to wait for the bike repair guy to get back from lunch, talked with the tennis stringing guy about his growing up in farm country, we felt out some common ground on guns (he was mainly the gun guy in the store), he declared himself a “far-right-winger” who’d voted for no Democrats since Nixon and blamed the collapse of the American bike manufacturing industry on “Bill Clinton and his cronies, who came in after Reagan” for ending our long and noble tradition of defending the American way of life through protective tariffs by giving China most-favored-nation trading status (this was actually a legislative formalization of a presidential prerogative that had been exercised continuously since the Reagan administration, but hey) Held the manufacturing companies blameless since what could they do.

Rode home along Columbia. First really warm weekend, everyone was out on their porches, which makes you realize how monolithically white the neighborhood isn’t (Had a professor once who pointed out that people usually judge the ethnicity of a neighborhood on stores & restaurants, and even Little Italy in NY was at peak only 35-40% Italian by population).

Got home at 5, showered, prepared to collapse into bed, looked on Facebook, realized the party was in fact on the 4th. Headed over.