autumn tactics

Today I rode into Kawasaki for the first time in about half a year. I meant to take the Trek, and spent a good long time filling up the tires with the hand pump, but ultimately it was deemed unsafe for riding. Lack of use and being ferried in and out of the apartment half a dozen times has knocked a number of joints out of whack, and it’s not a stable ride. There are also the beginnings of rust on bolts and the chain, simply being covered doesn’t cut it, the poor girl is still outside most of the time.

So, since I had a date to keep I got on the unflagging Enjoy and did another 36 kilometer dash into my western neighbor. It’s ironic that a hundred dollar Chinese made jalopy made for shuttling between the grocery store and back is so easy to maintain. The odometer is over 2300 kilometers now, but that belies how much mileage I’ve put on the thing, since the device is less than two years old and I forget where I put it half the time after locking up. So probably we’re somewhere around 8000 kilometers now, but I have a feeling the battery will give out before I turn over 9999.

Anyway, as I said I had a meeting today in Kawasaki’s Takatsu-ku, recorder practice for my obligatory company band recital of Sukiyaki Friday. I made pretty good time, but unfortunately almost every convenient way into Kanagawa is a real pill to do on bike. The major roads are loaded with cars and buses, the air quality sucks and the street is all torn up along the very narrow shoulder. Once you get into Kanagawa though, and start down the nice jogging trails they have along the river, it’s all worth it. The rocky clouded skies at dusk are always dramatic, the lights of Kawasaki twinkle, and a flood of memories come rushing over the bank. It just about this time two years ago that Mikiko decided she was going to France for study, and we spent a quiet evening by the river drinking cold beer and talking in hushed, solemn tones.

I saw Ratatouille the other day, and I blanched a bit when Gusteau was spurring Remi out of the sewer for the first time, “If you always are looking back, you’ll never see what lays before.”

Oh, but what a hell of a look back it is.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 8:44 pm and is filed under Enjoy, Trek 728, music, reflection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.