Riding through a Big World Looking for a Small Moment
Cycling through the city is a lesson is a risk and reward. The infrastructure is inconsistent and pedestrians wander across the street like lost stagehands or confused extras, immersed in their phones, or their luggage, inebriated or aggravated, never quite following the script, while they try to juggle the kids into the car or shake off a long day at the office.
On my hundreds of trips down Milwaukee Avenue from Logan Square into the Loop I've been cut off by cars and hit by taxis – when those still existed – gone over the handlebars headfirst onto hot, newly re-melted asphalt patch, and been at the very edge of my brakes just inches away from a joyous (and oblivious) Sunday brunch crowd, all the while scanning side mirrors and driver-side headrests in an effort to avoid the next car door being opened into the bike lane.
But most days I still roll a bike out the back door anyhow, down the alley, happy to be outside instead of in, and repeat the process because the path from our neighborhood to downtown Chicago is so often a novel at ground level, a short story under construction, a series of irresistible vignettes. Between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM on Sundays, for example, as Bucktown comes back to life after killing it on Saturday night, people regularly fall in love and out of love right there on the sidewalk while waiting in line for the next available table, holding hands or settling disputes, and reconstructing aloud the night's adventures all within earshot of me, invisible on my bike at the stop light. You can hear it all, clear as day, as they make big, unwieldy and unrealistic plans for the future, promise to reconnect later in the week when they hardly mean it, and plot recovery out of regret outside the book stores and noodle shops.
Once, as the sun set at the corner of Milwaukee and North, right in front of the Flat Iron Arts Building, I witnessed a cyclist execute a perfect, rock-solid track stand – that's the act of stopping the forward motion of a bike while retaining its upright balance as you'd witness on an Olympic velodrome – while patiently waiting for the traffic light to change... with a formidable kitchen chair strapped to his back. When the light turned green, he cranked forward like he was professional chair delivery courier who had already performed this stunt a thousand times and for whom today was simply practice.
At that same intersection just a few weeks ago, I watched as new grandparents bent down to wave goodbye to their new grandchild, then stopped to breathe in the moment, each turning in tight, opposing circles, unsure of which direction to walk next or what to say to each other, lost in their luck and the rush of people passing, both in disbelief that this time in their lives had arrived so quickly. Their son pushed the child's stroller forward as they departed and his wife reached out to hold onto the back of his shirt, directly in the center, as if to say, "I'm right here with you," a young family locked together and pressing forward into the crowd crossing the street.
I am, in these moments, grateful to be free of my phone, missing the opportunity to capture any of it on camera – leaving it all largely undocumented and offline – and obligated, instead, to commit each small scene to memory. It's so much more rewarding than firing it into cyberspace and expecting it to find any meaningful home on an asymmetric, uncontextualized social media feed alongside all the professional influencers, recipes, and political rage.
In that regard, cycling in the city has trained me for keen observation, minus a camera, no matter where I'm at.
When I'm not in Chicago, for example, I get to ride in the middle of nowhere alongside Lake Superior – mercifully free of taxi traffic and other hazards – while I watch the tops of waves and the underside of tree leaves to determine the wind direction and velocity.
Occasionally a bird – last week it was a woodpecker – will match my speed almost exactly and hang suspended for just a few short seconds directly in front of my handlebars like a still life, its red, white, and black feathers offset against a stand of spruce trees and the gray wildfire haze.
– Jon Roketenetz
Jon writes on art, music, business, and creativity at Unclumsy.com
