I Want to Ride My Bicycle...

I've been doing some thinking, y'all, and I've decided what I really need is a bicycle. A zippy one with a bell and hand brakes and a detachable front tire and an alloy rear rack. I want one that is good for street cruising but that can also take the rugged hills of Knoxville. I don't want a mountain bike, since I won't be mountain biking. I just want t road bike that I can ride to school since I live close enough to do so and forgo purchasing a $162 parking permit that only lasts 9 months.

My dream bike would look similar to this one:

I can get that beauty there for $124.00 on line, but I'm leery of buying a bicycle on line. Dear God, how much would the shipping be? And are they expecting me to put it together after its shipped in a million little pieces? I can barely put my Crock-Pot together, and it only has two!

I checked out Craigslist and found an awesome sounding bike for $75, which is perfectly within my price range. But when I emailed the seller for a picture, some country gal named Debbie down in Seymour, TN, she told me that she did not see the sense in developing an entire roll of film for one picture to scan and send to me. Hmph. I told Deb that I don't buy goods without first seeing them, and therefore she could keep her damned bicycle and shove it up her...well, I didn't go that far.

So I'm bikeless still.

I also checked out the Goodwill down the road from my apartment and found a whole slew of bikes for $15 a pop. However, none looked like they were in working order, and I'm not looking for a fixer upper. I want one I can hop on and ride right out of the store and into the sunset. Or at least until I get too hot and need to stop under a shade tree for a spell.

So it looks like a bike shop or the Walmart is my best option. The thing is, I checked out the bike shop near my house, and most of their merchandise cost as much as my car. My name is not Lance Armstrong; I don't need a $2,500 racing bike. And as far as Walmart goes, well, I just hate going there. Not because I'm a liberal pseudo-intellectual who finds the corporation repulsive; I'm actually not anti-Walmart (which doesn't mean I'm pro-Walmart, either), but don't tell my grad school counterparts that lest an argument at the pizza buffet ensue (we'll save that story for another time). It's just Walmart makes me mad, with all the long lines and rude salespeople and items housed in the most poorly thought out places--like sandwich bags not beside the trash bags. That store makes my blood pressure go up, so I try to avoid it for the sake of my mental and physical health.

But I might need to take a whiskey shot or bong hit or meditation session and just go in, get a bike, and get out. It can be like a reconaissance mission. Hell, maybe I should even take a rifle with me. Just kidding, y'all. Still, I shudder to think about braving the wilds of the falling prices, though.

I also can't stomach spending over $100 on any single item at once. I get nauseous just thinking about it, which is completely irrational. I regularly spend that much in a day or so on groceries, gas, and dinner and a movie with friends. But I feel like I'm getting more for my money then for some reason. I should really get past this over-$100 fear if I'm ever going to be a successful adult or parent or benefactor of the Barak Obama campaign.

I'll keep on toiling over the bicycle situation until I either just break down and get one or cough up the money for the parking pass. Either way, I'm sure all the worry warting will cause my hairline to recede even more. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for a cheap bike for Mr. Sisk

A Father's Day Musing from a Chronic Daddy Worshipper

Everyone knows I suffer from Daddy Worship in the highest order.  I think my father is the best man in the world, and I've written about him several times on this blog.  Despite his hesitation (or inability) to demonstrate affection, my father is the most loving, kind-hearted man I know.  He regularly goes without in order to provide for other people.  When I was little, just after my parents divorced and what little money my father did make was spent on child support and trailer payments, he always, always took my brother and me out for pizza on Friday nights and McDonald's for breakfast on Sunday mornings.  He always made sure we had school clothes and money for field trips and book fairs and anything else we needed, and in many cases wanted.  My father, the ultimate provider.

I was much older when my grandmother confided in me that during those trying times in the late 80s and early 90s my father would often go without eating lunch at work every day of the week in order to have money to spend on Jeffrey and me when we went to visit each weekend.  As a child, I loved trips to my father's house for a few reasons.  Weekends at Daddy's meant hours spent playing with my cousins who lived next door.  It meant eating hamburgers and tea cakes at Grandma's and sitting out under the shade tree at Muffy's.  But, I think what might have been most important to me at least for a while as a naive and pretty much spoiled pre-pubescent boy was that it meant on our weekly Walmart trip, Daddy would buy me whatever I put in the shopping basket.  It never was much, mind you; usually just a package of pens or markers or a Hot Wheels car.  I never asked for outlandish things as a child.  But knowing now how much my father gave of himself to be able to give me those things makes them mean so much more.  And makes me feel a little guilty for not appreciating them as the love tokens they were.

I won't gush too much about Daddy today.  This blog's full of Daddy Worship posts, as are my writer's notebooks, as I'm sure will be the pages of my future volumes of poetry.  I only hope I can be half as hardworking and self-sacrificing as my father is when I grow up.  My daddy's a good man.  My daddy can beat up your daddy.

Happy Father's Day.