Totems and Biking

Warning: For those of you who have yet to see Inception (shame on you), the first part of this post concerns the awesome Leo film, and may contain spoilers.  If you haven't seen the film and want to keep everything a surprise, proceed below to the biking segment.






So yesterday, my wife (Heidi) and I had lunch at Changs Mongolian Grill.  But this detail is not too significant...Or is it? Anyway, after dropping her off at her home, I proceeded down the road to my home.  I was jamming out to some N.W.A., ya know, same old same old.  When I approached my home, however, I noticed some unusual activity occurring in my front lawn.  The British chimney sweeper had parked his monster mobile in the driveway, occupying my spot.  His presence was unusual, but scheduled and not completely bizarre.  So I parked my automobile near the park, several feet from my house.  I reached into the backseat to retrieve my purse and saw a strange object laying on the floor.  It was a puzzle piece.  "That's odd," I thought.  "I am not the type of person to transport puzzles in my car.  In fact, I loathe them."  Nevertheless, I reached down and examined the thing.  On it was the face of a man.

Not just any man, however.  The most intense of men.  This is the face of a man who is ready to embark on the Oregon trail, defend his civil liberties and/or kick some ass.  I racked my brain and cataloged all of the people I had transported in my car the past few days.  None of them were carrying puzzles...Or were they?

It matters not, however, how the man puzzle piece came to me.  What matters is that it is my totem.  My grip on reality, if you will.  This puzzle piece helps me differentiate between my dream existence and "real" existence.  Then again, who's to say there is a definitive line separating the two?  This was actually my thesis for my monster research paper last year.

But I digress.

The point is, I, like Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page, now have a totem.  It will help me out in those hazy situations, where I'm not sure if the fruits flying out of the stands are real or not.  Plus, maybe someone will hire me now to work in the inception field.  I wouldn't mind wandering around in other people's dreams, stealing ideas.  Sounds thrilling.  Maybe I should freeze myself until this is an actual career option.

I digress deeper.


I went on two mammoth bike rides today: one with Kirsten and one with my mother.  This is significant, because I have actually never biked to a destination before.  Normally I bike aimlessly, in pursuit of physical activity.  But today, I biked to two destinations: Cafe Yumm and the library. 

The latter ride was a bit more chaotic than the former.  My mother and I embarked on our quest at approximately 7:00 p.m.  We thought we could make it before closing.  Sadly, the library closes at 8:00, and we arrived at 8:15.  I was hoping to retrieve a Dropkick Murphys CD I had on hold, and find some books on chaos theory (for my math final, not simply for enjoyment).  In the library's present state, however, all I could hope to do was return some items in the outside bins and depart.  And so we pedaled home, away from the peachy, setting ball of sun. 

My mother and I rode back on the opposite side of the road, and this side lacked a sidewalk for a significant portion of the ride.  "Let's cut through this parking lot" my mother advised, and so we turned into the INTEL headquarters.  The lot was smooth and devoid of cars.  I coasted through it and soared like Jack on the railing of the Titanic, or like Jack, my cat, when he takes a shit in the litter box (He sticks his torso out of the box and puffs out his chest like a proud man, its a little disgusting). 

Suddenly, in the midst of my coasting, my mother beckoned to me.  "Cut through the bushes here" she said, indicating a shrubby, off-road path straight ahead.  "Why?" I asked, wondering why we would leave this biking paradise.  "Those are security cars" she answered, pointing to two sinister-looking vehicles parked to the far right.  Apparently the lot was private property.  I pedaled through the bushes at my mother's order, feeling an adrenaline-rush from the thrill of resisting authority.  As we made our escape, I pondered how well I could escape Eugene police on my bike in the fall. 

After evading arrest, my mother and I pedaled onward.  The ball of sun had already set, and it was getting pretty dark.  Besides thorny bushes and asinine drivers, however, the darkness posed no threat.  Riding in the dark was quite liberating, actually.  Much like swimming nude.

I came down the hill to my house at approximately 9:30 p.m.  The ride was much longer than we anticipated.  As I turned the corner, I was nearly blinded by the headlights of a truck.  The more one rides bikes, the more one despises the sight of automobiles.  Bikes morph one into an elitist, who automatically judges the driver's concern for the environment and/or level of athleticism.  Plus, bikers hate stopping at lights.  It makes us angry.

The truck driver, however, happened to be my sister.  My instinctual anger dissipated as I realized this.  She noticed me too, and we both moved slowly towards each other in an awkward stand-off.  Being perched on a flimsy piece of metal, however, sealed my defeat.  I hopped off my bike in surrender.

 My sister was sent by my father to go searching for us, in a rare moment of paternal worry.  He was pissed because we weren't back before dark.  We admitted that this was irresponsible of us, but we were too busy evading security guards.  Fortunately, my father forgave us and we all lived happily ever after.

Or did we?  For life is a journey that has no end..Until death.

Forgive this morbid thought.  Instead, focus on this wonderful theory on the relationship between humans and bikes developed by Flann O'Brien:

In O'Brien's novel The Third Policeman, humans become more like a bike the longer they consistently ride.  Conversely, bikes develop human-like qualities when they are often ridden by humans.  The job of the police force, then, is to steal bike parts when people become more than fifty percent bike.  The hope is, after man and bike spend some time away from each other, natural balance will be restored to the universe.  Unfortunately, this sort of aid is not possible for the postman, because he needs his bike to deliver mail and is therefore 90 percent bike on a regular basis.