Laurenz World

I discovered the perfect way to stay warm without having to dawn a fat jacket, drink myself into insanity, and hibernate during the brutal Chicago winter:  balancing on one leg, holding your arms above your head, and bending your back a lot in a room heated to over 105 degrees.  Jared maintains that drinking and hibernation is the only way to go, but I am pretty fixed on my way now.  I am in my second week of practicing Bikram yoga almost everyday, and I must admit I feel pretty freakin fantastic.

The 26 Postures of Bikram Yoga

Bikram yoga is a patented sequence of 26 hatha postures including two breathing exercises.  Bikram Choudhury created the sequence and named it after himself, though the poses that comprise the sequence are thousands of years old.  His patenting of the sequence is very controversial.  He actually filed a lawsuit against a studio that taught Bikram without a license from him, and he won.  Part of the reason for his patenting is that if a studio is teaching Bikram, he expects the studio to meet certain standards of uniformity in the set up of the studio as well as the instructor’s dialogue.  It is to be practiced for 90 minutes in a carpeted room with mirrors that is heated to at least 105 degrees at 40-60 percent humidity.

Bikram likes to make ostentatious displays.

Most of what I’ve seen and read about Bikram the man indicates that the guy is little cheesy, seemingly arrogant, and very opportunistic.  He is known as the bad boy of yoga.  He has a very outgoing personality.  He makes outlandish claims.  If you watch the video below he calls his book, “…the most motivational book ever written in the history of our civilization.”  He brags about being THE guru and about all the celebrities who practice Bikram Yoga.  But he has definitely played a major role in bringing yoga into popularity in the West, and he has improved the health of a lot of people.  He is one of the few gurus that has managed to turn his practice into a multimillion dollar industry, which some would say is very contradictory to some of the ascetic philosophies behind yoga.  He lives in Beverly Hills and owns several Rolls Royces.  He gets a lot of flack from people in the yoga world of the West, but in India he is a VIP.  People in the West who want to teach Bikram yoga have to be taught by him in his $10,000 9 week teacher training program during which you live and eat at the hotel where it is taught.  That is certainly not the way he learned yoga as a young boy in Calcutta.

Despite all of it, I still like the guy.  One can’t help but recognize how energetic and passionate he is when you watch him in an interview.  He likes to joke around a lot.  He also recognizes something that a lot of yoga instructors don’t always seem to, which is that the western mind can’t just glide right in to spiritual transcendence.  The aspects of yoga that some might characterize is kooky/new agey are not a part of Bikram class.  For me, that is a good thing.  The thing is, these aspects are only kooky in the western context.  We don’t live it.  I always thought it felt a little fake to be chanting Oms because I am simply not there yet.  It kept me away from yoga before because I felt I had too much to learn before I could do that and feel authentic about it.  Bikram says that before you can move on to the more spriritual forms of yoga, you need to learn how to breathe.

I told Erik Ryberg that I’d started doing Bikram Yoga, and he said, “Isn’t that the thing where people get heat stroke and die?”  I said, “Yes, that’s the one.”  Actually, I don’t know if anyone has managed to die from Bikram yet, but the heat definitely ads a dimension of intensity that I hadn’t experienced in yoga classes before.  The instructors tell newbies not to leave the room and discourage everyone from drinking water during the class.  In fact, a lot of the people who come regularly do not bring water into the room with them.  Instead, they encourage you to drink a lot of water all day before and after your practice and no coffee, tea, or alcohol.  Yesterday a guy in my class did leave the room and may or may not have passed out, and I heard a tale of an ambulance having to be called for a guy who passed out the week before.  For me, the heat and profuse sweating has taken some acclimation.  Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me during the class.  Your heart rate is up the entire time, There are definitely moments of dizziness and disorientation, but they pass.

Unexpectedly, unlike other yoga classes I’ve done there are all sorts of body types and ability levels in my classes. There are obese people in my classes who know that Bikram is an effective way to lose weight. Sometimes they have to sit out on certain postures to take a break. There are other people who are very advanced and ripped. There are a lot of guys in the classes as well. Most surprisingly, it’s not all just yuppie white people, either, but that might just be because of where we live in Chicago.

Maybe in the Spring I will lighten up on the Bikram because there will be more opportunities to do things outside and go on long rides. For now, Bikram has been a great reprieve from bicycle touring, and I am really enjoying the workout. I am amazed that I am getting that kind of physical activity of of a 2′x5′ area with no equipment except a mat and towel. I haven’t slept this good in a long time despite the fact that we are still sleeping on a bed that I have to blow up everynight. Namaste.

As we enter into a new year and the door of the past year hits us in the ass, I would like to take this time to reassess what the hell happened to us in 2009.

It is not often that I stop and evaluate my life because that only leads to depressing conclusions. However, the past year has led me to realize that sometimes taking at least a few minutes to evaluate and plan can dramatically improve your quality of life for months to follow. Perhaps the arbitrary end point of this year is a good enough reason to do that.

2009 was a year of change. I am not sure it was the change that I needed, but I am an adaptable organism that tries to deal with my surroundings in the best way possible. However, in 2009 those surroundings were changing everyday and there was no end to the change in site. Let’s review.

We spent the first part of 2009 couch/yardsurfing between Mickey’s condo and the apocalyptic junkyard where our friend Tim lived. I spent almost everything I had on the custom bike of my dreams. We left Tucson for the east coast.

We were excited to be on the road again in the desert with 30 lbs of Clif Bars.  I left Tucson the same way that I came in, on the I-10.  Camping in the desert was rugged and desolate.  I enjoy being in places where I know that I am the only human being for miles.

The further east we got, the less majestic and desolate our surroundings became, and the more densely populated and congested with cars. It became utter drudgery and I began to feel more like a hobo than an adventurer.  Summer on the farm was not the mental and physical refill that we needed to keep touring.  Eventually, and possibly after sleeping on a pile of garbage in a mosquito infested nature preserve aptly named Mosquito Lagoon, I drew the line and decided that the change needed to stop. It needed to stop somewhere that we could hopefully find work and a cheap apartment. It stopped in Chicago.

A quick comparative glimpse into the present and past can illuminate certain things, and perhaps make me appear very foolish and stupid at the same time. Lets take a trip back to this time of the year in 2009 and compare it with where I am here in 2010.

So to recap, I still have 3 bicycles and <3, and according to some, I have two years to gain the rest back before shit either hits the fans or magically transforms.  Thank you.

-L

Yesterday Jared and I rode around in a blizzard in search of Christmas presents for my family. After running up a credit card bill that I won’t be able to pay off any time soon, I was satisfied that my family would not look upon me as a slacker who didn’t take the time to participate in Christmas consumerism.

Riding around in a blizzard in Chicago is surprisingly okay. For the most part, the city does a very good job clearing off major roads. Side roads, alleys, and residential streets are where the real fun happens. Here are some photos from the last portion of the ride home:


When we got home, Jared insisted upon making his first snow person ever. I did not want to partake because I wanted to warm up after riding around in the snow all day. It was a very windy night. Initially the creation of the snow person was a one man job, but after watching from the window for a few minutes I joined Jared in rolling the huge snowballs. The difficult part came when we had to haul the 60 pound midsection over the bottom. Jared pulled his lower back out trying to roll it over while I held the bottom in place. We decided to save our backs and just make the middle smaller. I found some twigs and wine corks for the arms and face. Then we went inside and proceeded to get drunk and enjoy the snow person from the comfort of our warm apartment.

Our new place is right above Jared’s head in the photo directly to the left. That single window is our kitchen, dining room where we often hang out is the three windows left of that one. We sat in the dining room drinking and overhauling the hubs on Jared’s Centurion touring bike. Jared took apartment the rear derailleur and was too drunk to put it back together right. Something was wrong with it to begin with, and something is really wrong with it now.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked outside to check on the snow person and the head was missing. What was even more alarming was that not only was the head missing, there was no evidence of the head splattered anywhere. It was just gone. If the wind had blown it off, we surely would have seen the remnants of the eyes and mouth somewhere. After looking around for a bit, the only conclusion we could surmise was that someone stole the head. It is disconcerting to know that we live in an apartment complex with a headhunter. Nevertheless, we rebuilt. The new head was a little creepier to try to ward off potential invaders.

-L

Hello SEBASTIAN, lurkers in the mist, and the 5 people willing to openly admit to reading our blog. Sorry for bringing you out of the closet, SEBASTIAN. I know. I know. You wouldn’t want your employers or your family to find out. It hasn’t become socially acceptable yet. In another 20 years or so, society will advance and Wasitabatisaw can be embraced and displayed proudly much like the vibrant gay rainbow. Until then, we will do our best to coax you out of the closet.

Speaking of closets, last night we watched a hip-hopera entitled “Trapped in the Closet,” which features R. Kelly and takes place in his hometown of Chicago. It is currently 22 chapters long and can be viewed on YouTube. Each chapter ends with a suspenseful cliffhanger that leaves you wondering who’s next to admit to cheating on their significant other with a midget that is hiding under the sink. Recommended viewing and has an adequate freak quota to meet Wasitabatisaw standards.

Speaking of freaks, the official Wasitabatisaw video of the month award goes to Eric Warheim directed music video (which you can watch here) for the song “She’s Got Me Dancing” by Tommy Sparks. I heard that the song is being popularized in an Ipod commercial on tv, and I don’t care. The song is awesome and highly addictive. I find myself singing it often while I’m riding my bike to work, working, buying groceries, taking out the trash, etc.

Speaking of taking out the trash, we also watched Topps Chewing Gum Companies 1987 production “The Garbage Pail Kids Movie” this week. This cinematic masterpiece is a timeless classic and hardly makes any sense whatsoever. Supposedly the kids are trapped in the Garbage Pail, but then you realize that they are able to get themselves out at any time. Anyways, it has a very rad soundtrack and puppets that fart, pee on themselves, and throwup. Definitely meets Wasitabatisaw standards.

Speaking of standards, I have succeeded in getting Jared to lower his. He is flying back to Virginia with me for the holidays. In the past, this would have been unheard of for Jared the green machine. Perhaps it all coincides with the misanthropic and nihilistic downward spiral that occurred this past fall. In other words…fuck it. We have succumbed to yuppiedom and are now flying in airplanes and shitting out carbon emissions like Garbage Pail Kids with diarrhea.

__Lar

Dizzy. I just finished inflating a queen-sized air mattress by mouth. The mattress was purchased approximately 2 hours ago at Target. After spending 2 nights on the floor of our new apartment, Jared and I decided that an air mattress would be a better temporary solution to bedlessness than our flimsy Thermarest pads. The air mattress was intended to be inflated with a pump, which we did not purchase. Hence, the air hole was huge and in a recessed plastic box, which made it all the more awkward and difficult to inflate.

Check out the size of this monster. It’s big enough to accommodate an 8 person orgy. This thing is the Moby Dick of air mattresses. See how that full-sized electrical outlet is dwarfed by this behemoth?!

I did not have any assistance in slaying that beast. Jared gave me a choice between purchasing a discounted dress that I took a liking to or being assisted in inflating the mattress. I chose the dress. Initially, I did not think it could be done. After 10 minutes it did not appear that I’d even made a dent (or a rise, rather) in that thing. I began to do what any logical human being would do: bitch, complain, and attempt to give up. I repeatedly asked for help, but my cries fell upon dead deaf ears. I don’t know why, but I persevered, and I now have a nice new dress and sore lungs. It took me about 45 minutes, which included taking some breaks to give my lungs a rest from the polyurethane fumes.

Because of our current financial situation it seems that the tables have turned for Jared and I. Whereas I financially supported Jared for just about the past year while he road my coattails, I now find myself completely broke and virtually enslaved to Jared. The bike shop situation promises to improve in another couple of months, but for now I am relegated to indentured servitude. So I have to do stupid things like inflate air mattresses and get cancer.

I hope one day my sore lungs and cancer is all going to be worth it. I hope one day we can sail across the great Lake Michigan on that thing with 6 shipmates and a harpoon gun.

Update: Though I wrote this piece in a fury of rage last night, I awoke very well rested this morning after the best night of sleep I’ve had since arriving in Chicago. I guess it was worth it.

-L

As you all might know, temperatures recently plummeted here and we’ve officially nose-dived into winter. Despite the cold, I still see a lot of people out riding bikes. These winter warriors inspired me to ride the 10 mile commute up to work the other day instead of taking the train. I discovered that riding in the cold is really not so bad after the first mile. I think getting out the door is actually the worst part.

Commuting to work by bike really did make my entire day better. I also arrived almost an hour early and got to go to Dunkin Donuts, so the bike is faster and provides me with more time to eat and drink coffee. The ride back was a little less enjoyable in the wind at night. It made me all the more excited to move closer to my pseudo-job because it will provide me with about 4 more hours a day to do something other than work.

I might even be able to make a post or two when we move. I have decided to invest the majority of my current lackluster writing energy into finishing up the Crazy Guy on a Bike Journal for the last tour. Hopefully Jared will take up the slack here on der blog. If not, oh well. Until then, I will let you take pleasure in this giant snowball that I hand-crafted last night on the way home from work. You can take even more pleasure in the fact that I nailed Jared with it when he opened the front door. Schadenfreude baby!

-L

Before I begin today’s post, here is some photographic evidence of the title:
Jared as mountain man hipster:

Lar as escaped convict hipster with celebritard glasses and asymmetrical haircut:

Lar as ethno-bohemian hipster:

Lar as flannel wearing rat carrying hipster:

Hipster Hobo Camp:

We now return to our regularly scheduled post:

We have been dubbed “the subleteers” by our friend Zach, whose apartment who are currently subletting for 1/2 of December. It is an apt title considering that we’re now in our second sublet since our arrival in the city. Zach’s place is an architecturally peculiar duplex in Logan Square. The inside features a curved wall, weird built-in cubby holes all over the place and squares within squares, a loft bed with ladder, a three foot high walk in closet, a breakfast nook, and some oddly shaped windows.

Logan [] is a hipster hotbed of Chicago. It is interesting to ride the train and watch the demographics change from neighborhood to neighborhood. The Logan Square stop feels like a hipster mass exodus. It’s sorta scary. My new game is to pick out all the people in my train car who are about to get off at Logan [] and I’m usually pretty much dead on in my predictions.

It seems to me, though, that the term hipster has evolved and is no longer applicable solely to art school kids who make their own clothes and play in bands. Frankly, it’s not that cool or exclusive to be a hipster anymore. Hipster is now almost ubiquitously applied to people who are young and don’t go to church.

Of course I’m a hipster. How could I possibly avoid that label at this point considering how pervasive and all-encompassing it has become? Among other things, it has a lot to do with mainstream culture appropriating the styles of hipsterdom and spitting them back out in consumer outlets like Urban Outfitters. It’s become nothing more than a look that is readily obtained. Here’s a fun website

It’s so done, and I don’t really care to befriend the youth of Chicago who are still trying to ride out the hipster wave. For a while, it gave some nerdy white boys who never had a shot in high school a chance at popularity and getting laid. That’s hipsterdom’s saving grace. In reality, they’re just a bunch of insecure nerds who got lucky by being nerdy at the right time. They got the chance to have fun and do drugs while celebrating their nerdiness rather than suppressing or hiding it. That’s awesome! Frankly, I’m ecstatic to see the proliferation of non-meatheads.

However, given that kind of luck and good timing, the most comical aspect of hipsterdom is the pretension. It’s as though they don’t want to admit that they happen to be metro and nerdy at an opportune moment in history. But seriously, good for them. I can’t blame them for continuing to try to ride that wave for as long as possible.

It’s not that cool to be cool anymore. I’m rejecting it in favor of being []. Which is why Jared and I are deliberately choosing to live in the decidedly unhip area of Rogers Park. I hope to spend most of my winter in “hermitude,” which isn’t a word, but I decided that it should be….I mean come on. If they let “hermitry” and “hermitship” in there, they should definitely let “hermitude” slide. Fuck it. Space is the place! We’re going to SPACE!!!

-L

Out of college money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money’s gone, nowhere to go
Any jobber got the sack
Monday morning turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go

I’ve been slaving away for peanuts in the bike shop dungeon for about a week now. 3 hours a day has been devoted to commuting by train 1 1/2 hour each way, which I actually thoroughly enjoy. I just pretend as though I’m on a Disney Monorail magical tram ride through the city. I’ve never been on the Disney Monorail, but I assume that it is pretty rad and not as clunky and smelly as the “El.”

Today it was snowing on the ride, which made it all the more surreal. Yes, it was snowing in Chicago today. It was the first snowfall of the year and the first time that Jared has ever seen snow falling from the sky (he has ridden his bike past frozen patches of snow in the mountains).

Of course, just to shove in my face how hardcore Chicagoans are, I walked out of my house in blizzard gear and the first person I encountered was a woman walking her dog in a short sleeve miniskirt.

I usually use the time commuting on the train as an opportunity to read or people watch. If you want to see interesting characters, just ride public transport around your city.

Once I get off the train, I grab some coffee and go to work until 8 p.m. The bike shop where I’m working is so completely different from Ordinary in Tucson, where I used to work as a salesperson. It is in a working class part of Chicago and doesn’t take in much money whatsoever. In the winter that means almost zero. Customers are few and far between, and even when they are in the shop I am in the other room fixing bikes and don’t get to see them. Whereas Ordinary had a huge open air garage half to the store, this shop has no windows except for the front door. It is perhaps an easier place to learn the ins and outs of wrenching because it is not the fun shop environment that Ordinary had. I’m not there to make friends or converse with customers. I practically feel like a nun. I don’t take a lunch break and rarely even stop to piss the entire time I’m there. Instead I just quietly work on the bikes, sometimes stopping to ask my zen master occasional questions. There is no music playing in the shop. It’s quiet except for the occasional commands of a crazy Italian owner who for the most part acts as though I do not exist.

The shop fixes up a lot of bikes that are beat to shit from Chicago winters, which means rust and salt all over the wheels. We also fix up a lot of old bikes. It’s fun because I’m actually getting to do mechanical things on the bikes, which sometimes doesn’t happen in these days of planned obsolescence. A lot of times nowadays things just simply get replaced rather than repaired. I actually can’t think of anything that I’ve replaced on a bike yet other than some brake cable and housing.

Each bike that I work on seems like a person of sorts. Some of them are really cranky and need tons of attention. Others are completely easy-going, fun to work with, and almost pass out of my hands too quickly. Then more cranky ones come along and the drudgery continues. Like people, most bikes suck, whine, and have existential dilemmas. But all of them can be made better to a certain degree (unless they are from Walmart..j/k…not really), and some of them are absolutely amazing.

Despite the long hours and lack of pay, I can’t deny that I enjoy what I am doing. Even when I make mistakes and have to take extra time to correct them, I find that the work is engaging. Rather than counting down the minutes until I can leave, I find myself occupied by finishing the tasks at hand and I often run out of time at the end of the day. I’m sure eventually it will become drudgery, but right now the job consists of all sorts of problem solving and learning. I guess it would be more difficult to accept the peanuts as payment if the job was monotonous and terrible.

Bike mechanics are dropouts and dirtbags. Many are there because they simply can’t handle sitting at a desk, and many that I’ve encountered seem to have problems with authority. Steve mentioned that there is a lack of “upward mobility” as a bike mechanic and I about peed myself. Nothing could be closer to the truth. I’m not really trying to become a CEO. Believe me I don’t have any delusions of grandeur here. I have delusions of making $10/hr, which would be over 2x what I am making currently…if that puts things into perspective for you.

It’s just a job. I just want to feed myself and have a roof over my head and force Jared to fix his rotting teeth. These are things that could not be accomplished on bike tour. The reality is that it sickens me to see that Jared has been in pain over his rotting jaw for the past year and I refuse to continue touring until he takes care of himself. It is easy to forget about a lot of things when you are traveling. It is required that you forget about a lot of things when you are traveling by bicycle.

-L

Life has been moving at a rollicking pace for us since moving to Chicago, which has probably contributed to the neglect of bloggerly duties bestowed upon me with this here website. I would apologize, but if you are dumb enough to still be reading, then you are probably willing to cut me a little slack here and there.

So a couple weeks after we got here, my parents decided that my current unemployment would provide them with the perfect opportunity transport me back home for the Thanksgiving holiday. Just in case anyone thought that Jared and I were doing the earth a great service by bike touring to our new city, I managed to negate all the carbon emissions saved by riding my bike to Chicago with one shitty plane trip to DC and back. Jared chose to maintain his pint-sized carbon footprint in comparison to mine and stayed back in Chicago. I assured him that doing my part to bring forth the apocalypse more quickly is the right thing to do, which is why I will continue building upon my Sasquatch carbon footprint with future plane travel plans.

The day before leaving I went to work all day at my new job in the bike shop. I was very nervous, but I think that the job is going to work out. It’s mainly because I am getting paid peanuts in exchange for the ability to learn the ins and outs of wrenching, but you gotta start somewhere. I got home from work and was not prepared for my trip whatsoever. Luckily, my attentive and caring partner in crime knew just what to buy for me in preparation for my trip.

With these records, Jared ensured that I’d have plenty of listening material for the flight. No more pesky ipods to deal with. Just bring the whole record collection! No one would board a plane without a VHS copy of Mad Max to keep them occupied, and who wouldn’t want the extra weight of a coupla cans of Spaghetti-O’s to snack on and spill all over your shirt midflight? The 1970’s suitcase would be sure to win me tons of style points as I hit every passerby with it in the airport, and with that jacket my dad would be able to pick me out of the crowd quickly after I got off the plane. Boy Jared, you sure are wonderful! SRSLY though, I was thrilled to come home to this lovely parting gift.

That night before my flight out, we partied. We split a bottle of rum and went for a walk down by the lake. It was very windy and the lake was choppy. We walked out on a rock outcropping and it seemed as though we were on the ocean. The next street down there was another pile of rocks, and we spent about 10 minutes arguing over whether or not the anthropomorphic form on top of the rocks was an actual person. In my old age, some how or another drunken nights usually boil down to an absurd and meaningless argument such as the one that took place on this particular night. I asserted that in this kind of wind no one else would be dumb enough to stand out there and that the figure seemed awful stiff to be a human. Jared reasoned that my eyesight is terrible and it was obviously indeed a person. After about 20 minutes we walked over to the other side of the jetty. Jared was right. It was a person, and I was a little creeped out by the anthropomorphic human disguised as a post standing motionless for so long on the windy bluff. There’s nothing creepier than discovering that something you thought was inanimate is not only alive but is human.

Oh wait there is one thing that is creepier. Blacking out after drinking a bunch of rum and attempting to watch Mad Max then waking up in your own piss the night before you have to catch an early flight is creepier. Apparently during my blackout, I inscribed an inspiring quote on Jared’s back from one of my fave YouTube videos of all time. The quote and part of the pee stain that got on Jared are both visible in the photo below. As you can see in the second photo the quote reads, “I WAN KNOW WERE DA GOLD @.” Apparently my grammar was about as debilitated as my bowel bladder control during the black out.


…in case you don’t know the reference.

REMIX!!!

Thanksgiving day I was back home in Virginia Beach (with mi ma) and Jared was left alone and hungry in Chicago. Don’t worry, he’s used to it. You should have seen him in Tucson on Christmas day last year. He ate lunch at a homeless shelter with our friend Tim (whose junkyard we camped in for a while in Tucson), then he and Tim spent Christmas night at my house and apparently “splurged” by turning on the heat for 10 minutes during the cold night. I promised him that for this year’s Christmas I am tying him up and shoving him into my suitcase. Should be a lovely flight for him in that cargo bin.
-L

New front page!

-J

Today we had an unexpected delivery. You know that saying, “Nothing good ever comes in the mail?” Well, nothing good gets hand delivered to you by a cop, either. In the midst of a code writing storm going on in the apartment, Jared heard a knock on the door. A surly female CPD officer handed him a court summons. Looks like the guy who’s subletting the place to us dipped out on rent for the past two months and is facing eviction and a $3,000 fine. Just our effing luck to be caught in the middle of this situation!

Jared called me right away as I was on an aimless walk and telephone conversation down by the lake (which was crazy yesterday because of the wind). Before I tell you what he said to me, the backstory is that I’d gone out for a drink with a friend of ours the night before. I had to ride back to the apartment on the northside all the way from downtown in the wind and it was kind of brutal getting home at 3 a.m. His first response to the court summons, “Did you do anything on the way home from the bar last night?” Me- “Oh shit they found out about my prostitution ring?…I fucked a cop?” I mean seriously, how does that make sense whatsoever, Jared. Pretty sure that’s not the way things work. If you do something, you usually get arrested right then and there.

It’s a trap!

Another special surprise…we often hear rats running around in the walls of this apartment complex. For the most part it’s just comical and adds even more character to the situation. But things went too far last night. I was cutting cilantro, and a rat ran across my foot. Absurd! It’s not as though I’m terrified of rats or anything. I used to have one as a pet for gosh sake, but I have to admit that the surprise visit from our mammalian friend really creeped me out. Later on I heard some weird murmuring noises under the cabinet. My rat never sounded like that!

That’s me and Ratso, who is now living with my framebuilder Ed and his rat Peanut. At least I hope she is as I haven’t been informed of her status lately. Ed had plans of welding a rat palace for the two of them. He seemed happy to welcome my mammalian friend into his home. I was elated that Ratso would be making a new friend. Rats are social creatures that enjoy the company of their own species.

I found Ratso at a reptile store. I went there to purchase a rat to feed to my friend’s snake, but then I just couldn’t do it. I tried to let Ratso go into a park, but she didn’t want to leave the paper bag. So then I went to the thrift store and got a cage and she lived with me for a while. Sometimes I would ride the bike with Ratso on my shoulder. It was quite a crowd pleaser.

-L

Upon reader request, I am compiling a list of LIKES and DISLIKES in regards to Chicago based on our experiences here. I realize that there’s a lot that we are missing since we’ve not even been here for a month. However, in our short time here we’ve managed to get around and see a lot of different areas of the Chicago. Unemployment has aided in my exploration of the city because I have tons of time. I’ve been riding about 20-30 miles a day. However, we have yet to have our socks knocked off by the Chicago, and I have yet to find a job. The socks can stay put, but if I don’t find a job here, we might end up leaving.

I guess I haven’t mentioned yet how much we enjoyed Bloomington. Bloomington is Plan B. Besides Tucson and Austin, TX, it’s one of the only places I’ve been where I really felt like the people there really wanted us to stay. It’s a town where punks and freaks get around just fine, which is sort of an anomaly in Indiana. We thought- Wow, these people like us. It felt good to be accepted. Also, the kids there really like their town. How many places do you go where everybody is trying to get out…or they have a ton of complaints about the place?

Chicago is a very different experience. The urban anonymity factor is making it a little difficult for us to just glide right in…especially considering that there isn’t anything in particular here for us. People here seem to like it enough, but not overwhelmingly so. Also I find that a lot of people ask, “Why are you here?” To which I sometimes reply, “If you are looking for a logical explanation as to why we are here, you aren’t going to get one.” Does the city necessitate having a reason to be here? In other places I’ve been, people don’t ask why you are there. They know you are there to see how rad their city is. If the city necessitates a reason for me to be here, maybe it’s not the right city for me.

I googled why are you here and this photo from a Taiwanese video game came up captioned, Why are you here. Is it because the natives here also wear masks?

The other dampening factor in our experience here is that Jared is very hard to please. He hates bars. He doesn’t enjoy live music. He doesn’t enjoy performance art or theater. I don’t think he’s actually enjoyed anything that we have done here thus far except for eating delicious Indian food on Erik Ryberg’s tab last night. It was shocking. For once he was not nonplussed by our expenditure (that wasn’t even our money) and effort to go somewhere. It was a truly refreshing moment for me to see him approve of something.

The situation that we’re in here in so predictable. Hate to say I told you so, Jared. I can’t really blame him for feeling underwhelmed, though. A lot of stuff that you pay for is sorta bullshit, but sometimes you catch something that is pure gold. You feel privileged to be there at that time witnessing whatever that glorious experience is. I guess I’m willing to wade through all the bullshit in exchange for that one meaningful experience that makes it all worthwhile.

The things that would actually make the city enjoyable for me probably aren’t conducive to being happy with Jared. I would probably enjoy going out and dancing all night on the weekends. I think it is worth it to spend money on music and theater when you’re in a city. I’ve always spent money on those things and am ok with it especially if I have extra money. For shits and giggles and your viewing pleasure here is a photo of me dancing at a show in Chicago that was in the paper two years ago. I’m on the far left with bright dress and hand raised.

But the reality is that I’m kind of tired of those things too and don’t seem to derive as much enjoyment from it as I used to. The days of pretending to be a flapper, smoking Nat Sherman Fantasia cigarettes, and drinking cheap booze all night are long gone. Eventually you realize that going out is one big scam. You could be having just as much fun at home with your friends for way cheaper and not have to deal with all the douchebags that frequent drinking establishments.

Don’t get me wrong, I still like to have fun but in a more moderate fashion. Furthermore, I don’t have the expendable extra income to be paying for booze and shows anymore. Most shows bore me after the first 30 minutes and leave me wondering why I paid so much to see these goons. Theater can be really fun but is unpredictable and good stuff is sometimes much more expensive than seeing music.

I’ll tell you what is not bullshit. Riding to your secret mountaintop camp spot with your best friend in the whole wide world. Showering in a mountain stream. Not bullshit. Could this guy be any happier?

This fall has just been a practice in dealing with the fact that we are stuck out on this side of the country on bicycles and we are broke. I originally suggested that we go to Asheville, NC, but Jared did not approve. I think he felt that it was too trendy. Not sure that he understood my intentions. I want to live in a place where we can spend the weekends riding bikes in the mountains. Don’t really care how trendy it is or who’s there because I’m really not looking to be around the people in my free time. If it’s trendy, perhaps that means there’s enough yuppies there to support the bike shop where I’ll be employed. Something tells me that if we’d gone to Asheville, people wouldn’t be asking us, “Why are you here?”

However, on the upside I believe that there is a lot to be learned from living in a huge city like this one for at least a year. Initially it is a struggle, but I think once we commit and dig our heels in a little more, we’ll find the places and people that could make our time here meaningful. All I’m saying is that I’m willing to give it a shot. I’m willing to go beyond surface level impressions which haven’t been overwhelmingly impressive and try to find all the secret niches that make it cool. If it doesn’t work out, there is always Plan B- loomington.

Here is the beginnings of my list of LIKES and DISLIKES. It will probably be an ongoing list as I discover more things about the city.

LIKES
-literally does feel like a microcosm of America
-ethnic neighborhoods (ukranian, indian, puerto rican, chinese, korean, mexican, greek, polish, african, etc.)
-city of neighborhoods, you can do most everything you want to in one neighborhood
-good food
-good music, theater, and nightlife
-lots of warehouses getting turned into art spaces, performance spaces, and sustainable living spaces or businesses with green roofs and gardens, etc.
-feels cleaner than other cities I’ve visited
-lots of musuems
-pretty much all the urban options you can think up
-cheap cost of living compared to other cities of the same magnitude (rent is amazing- cheaper than tucson believe it or not)
-friendly compared to other cities of the same magnitude
-established bicycle infrastructure with bike lanes, sharrows, and directional signs just for bicyclists
-strong bike community
-the chainlink (I think you’ll appreciate- it’s like facebook for bicyclists)
-vast craigslist bike section
-Jared seems very capable of getting freelance web gigs here
-lots of dedicated bike commuters
-cars seem accustomed to sharing the road with cyclists
-fun lakefront bike path
-Rogers Park (where we are right now) is very diverse and progressive neighborhood
-reliable public transit
-ability to use public transit to get out of city for long bike ride
-city has interesting architectural features
-cool community bike shop in Rogers Park

DISLIKES
-we don’t really know anyone here- no one actually gives a shit about us if something were to happen
-winter will be cold as hell
-more expensive than other places because it is a big city
-not a good place to be broke
-no dumpster diving close-by (have to go far out to burbs)
-very segregated
-Jared doesn’t enjoy nightlife, music, or theater
-blatant gentrification in hip areas (Logan Square, etc.)
-city is huge and sprawled…takes an hour to get from Rogers Park to downtown
-pollution, post-industrial and from all the cars
-dispersed bike community- who the fuck are all these people? in tucson, if you rode a bike i probably knew who you were lol.
-not many friends here yet
-hard to get a job, lots of unemployment
-Lake Michigan (main natural feature) is not something we can really benefit from enjoying
-almost comically corrupt local govt.
-lots of traffic even on main bike arterials
-urban riding can be stressful
-intersections where diagonal streets meet with perpendicular streets feel precarious to cross on bike
-lots of honking

-L

…for the fans of the millionaires, a download. -J

It’s official. Jared got a job. I know I know. Pigs are flying. Hell has frozen over. Monkeys are flying out of your butt. The apocalypse has arrived. Hold on to your hats, folks.

We spent yesterday thrifting for fancy pants and shoes for Jared. The beard is gone. Metrosexual intellectual urbanite has taken over. Here is a photo of the New Jared Vs. the Old Jared.

This morning, he put on dress pants, tucked in his shirt, simulated hair combing by running his hands through his hair, hopped on the train and went downtown to WORK.

I have never been so proud of a human being in all my life.

-L

Update: Fine. I won’t keep you guys in suspense any longer. Jared is doing freelance web design stuff for a couple of undisclosed entities. One particular job is a pretty big project that will really help us a lot. Neither of us were feeling completely certain of the situation until today, but it looks like he’s hired. So we’re throwing in the towel on wandering nomadic hippiedom for now.

I think we’ve realized that all the real hippies are trustafarians. It’s pretty easy to be free when you’re sucking on the monetary teat of your parents. Since we don’t have that kind of monetary surplus waiting in the wings, we are here to suck it up and raise some funds.

I’m stepping through the door
And I’m floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today

For here I am
sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do

As you know we’ve been hangin out in our tin can apartment now for about 5 days. It is extremely cramped and I am happy to know that the situation is only temporary. It’s a bit of a shock to go from living here:

To living here:

Somewhere along the way I also managed to acquire a new cold, which has probably not aided in brightening up my grim outlook on prospective jobs and a life here. I am attempting to apply for a few things, but haven’t really had any positive responses as of yet.

In an attempt to thwart the feeling of utter futility and worthlessness due to our unemployment, we have been volunteering a little bit of time at a local bike project in Rogers Park. There is a place about 2 blocks from us called The Recyclery where we are currently working on restoring a Raleigh 3 speed.

I am beginning to feel that Jared’s social incompetence has rubbed off on me. I thought that I was supposed to be the amiable one with a certain degree of social aptitude. Now I am questioning whether I am capable of reintegration. Maybe there is hope. If only I could be treated to think that it wasn’t all complete bullshit. Perhaps I should be placed in a straitjacket and forced to look at photos of mountains and wilderness while being injected with drugs to induce reactions of revulsion.

The city is not very topographically dynamic and there is virtually no exit to the sprawling urbanity. It would be easy for me to forget these things if I were busy working. However, when living in a city I guess I’ve become accustomed to spending my time off work away from the stress and BS. Last year, I spent a lot of my free time camping in the mountains north of Tucson. It was relieving just to know that anytime I wanted to, an escape from the city was easily accessible by bike. How many places can you live where you can be here within 40 mile ride from your doorstep?

A place where there are pine trees and bears fisting each other over a violet-orange sunset in the valley below…

A road that looks like a Dr. Seuss landscape come to life…

Maybe the thing is I just prefer the mountains. Though it has been fun to ride through all the different neighborhoods in Chicago, I know it won’t be long before I begin to feel trapped by the endless sprawl. There is only so much that amazing ethnic food and great live music will do to appease me, and only so long that my wallet will be thick enough to pay for it. Apparently the guys at Blvd Bikes refer to us as “the hippies.” It cracked me up to hear it as I have never really thought of myself as such, but I am beginning to think that there might be some validity to it. It is funny to me that Jared grew up listening to Dead Kennedys and The Cramps, but is now being referred to as such. It is also funny to be referred to as “hippie” given that part of the reason we are here is because of our rather recent turn towards misanthropy and nihilism.

-L

Almost 10 miles north of ‘the loop’, Rogers Park is the northernmost and supposedly most diverse neighborhood in Chicago. In fact, Wikipedia says, “The 2000 census data, like those of 1980 and 1990, showed it to be one of the most diverse communities, if not the most diverse, in the entire country.” Before we moved here everyone we’d ask about it would respond with something like:

“Oh yeah, Rogers Park is sooo cool. It’s got like African immigrants. It’s so diverse. Really good food. ”

In my exploration thus far, outside of the train-tracks all I’ve seen around here is block after block of old brick apartment buildings identical to our own with wrought iron gates in front of their entrances and windows. It looks like a combination of a government housing projects and the cold-war era Soviet housing. Maybe the diversity here is due to all different types of people willing to be packed away into tiny apartments in exchange for cheap rent. I have yet to find any enticing ethnic restaurants or confirm a single African immigrant sighting.

Although orders of magnitude larger than our tent, the apartment we’re renting for the month is still comically small. We’d fit in it pretty well if it weren’t already full of someone else’s belongings.  Outside of our 2nd story windows have a stunning vista of all 4 tracks of the Chicago’s Famous “Red Line“.

Every few seconds a boxy stainless steel clad train full of people passes by – heading to or from downtown. The Chicago Metro system is quite dated and the section of track in front of our window seems especially crappy. The trains noisily rattle and shake by while the tracks emit huge blinding arcs of electricity, brighter than one million suns illuminate the entire apartment and ruin our eyesight as we instinctively glance up at the commotion. Whenever the trains stop in front of us Lauren and I try to get the attention of it’s passengers with our headlamps and our flailing arms. We’re thinking about making signs for our windows but most people don’t look out of the train window.

Although it’s temporary, small, noisy and not in the hipster hotbed (Logan Square) it is nice being able to sit around and cook things with Lauren in a place of our own. It’s been a really, really long time since we’ve nested.

Our Laurens nest egg is quickly disappearing. We need jobs.

-J

After our stay at John’s, we spent the day ameliorating the soggy socks situation at the laundromat. It poured pretty much all day long, but the rain somehow let up just in time for Critical Mass that evening.

On the way downtown to the ride, we attempted to follow a jolly mad recumbent rider toting a trailer with a stereo system and Halloween installation. I thought it would be a good idea to follow someone since we really had no idea where we were going, but he looked like he was on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and was weaving in and out of traffic and hauling ass. We lost him in his attempt to break the land speed record.

Chicago Critical Mass was the biggest we’ve ever attended. It converged at Daley Plaza, which is a square downtown which features a 50 ft. Cor-ten steel Picasso Sculpture. The square is in the middle of a lot of really tall buildings. The Richard J. Daley Center building was once the tallest building in Chicago, but more importantly was the headquarters of Wayne Enterprises in The Dark Knight.

As we pulled into the square we beheld a sea of bikes and people dressed up in Halloween costumes. It was exciting to see such a turnout. There were people of all ages, but I was especially impressed by a strong showing of the over-60 crowd. I don’t know if the performance was in conjunction with Critical Mass or not, but there were acrobats and jugglers.

Soon after the culmination of the performance, there was a bunch of noise and whistle blowing and people slowly started trickling out of the square and into the streets. Our new friend and bicycle refugee aide John was dressed as Johnny Walker (red jacket, cane, and bottle of whiskey) and hopped onto the back of my xtracycle. It must have been a little precarious for him because he was sitting on top of my sleeping bag and Therm-a-rest. The ride circled around the square a couple times, then headed north.

The first thing I noticed was how jubilant everyone seemed. It was a seemingly neverending stream of all sortsa bikes and clever costumes. John’s friend TC was dressed as an angry motorist and had a smoking tailpipe made with dry ice as well as a grill attached to the front of his bike. He would come up behind you and honk his horn really loud and yell….pretty hilarious.

Other than TCs costume, nobody was really trying to be agro, and a few people were Hi-5ing motorists and pedestrians along the way shouting “Happy Friday!”. The most striking thing was that the bike cops were actually corking the intersections for us. I was told that there was once animosity between the riders and cops, but eventually the cops just started assisting the ride in delaying traffic. It almost gets treated like some sort of parade now. The ride winded through downtown and north into Lincoln Park eventually ending at Navy Pier. Unfortunately Jared became hungry and demanded pizza, cutting our ride short. It was hard to tell how many people there were altogether, but it was well over 1,000 people on a brisk and slightly dreary evening. Hooray for Chicago!

-L

The first thing that happened when we arrived in Chicago was guy offered me a free hot dog. No seriously, we were just past the BP oil refinery on the outskirts of the city, and suddenly a man at a hot dog stand shouted at us, “Where are you coming from?” I answered, “Arizona!” to which he replied, “Come and get your free hot dog!” Jared said, “No lets keep riding we’ll get sick.” I don’t eat meat, but I fucking wanted that hot dog.

Sometimes when you are bike touring, you ride past something before you think about it. The momentum supersedes the opportunities. The hot dog offering was sort of a momentary moral dilemma for me. For one thing I was starving. For another thing, I have a problem denying any kind of free food or kind gesture that someone throws my way. Toss me a hot dog, and I’ll figure out something to do with it LOL. I knew that I should have gone for it, but sometimes to keep rolling is much easier than stopping. For the next few hours I was whining to Jared that I should have taken that free hot dog.

We arrived at the lakefront bike path and the cityscape loomed in the distance for miles. We were hungry as we’d eaten nothing but cookies all morning. I was nervous about finding a place to stay for the night. I don’t like entering cities without knowing where we are staying, and though I’d tried repeatedly to line up a place to stay through warmshowers.org, no one accepted our request. Thus, the excitement of coming to a new city was squashed by my apprehension.

Finally we arrived downtown and it was like being thrown into the fire. Taxis, pedestrians, buses, bike messengers, and somewhere in there were two confused bicycle tourists all in the swarming urban clusterfuck of downtown. It was pretty overwhelming to go from waking up in a cornfield in Indiana to being shat out into the middle of capitalism at work in a bustling city. We were both a little stressed, and though I’d studied Google maps enough to have a basic understanding of where we were, I still felt completely lost. Once we steamrolled our way threw downtown, we found ourselves in the more hip neighborhood areas outside of downtown.

We ended up in Logan Square, which is sort of hipster-central neighborhood of Chicago and hightailed it to a coffee shop called New Wave Coffee. New Wave is a spacious place with black and white tiled floors, comfy chairs lining the walls, tables throughout, solid fast free wifi, and pretty decent coffee. I began desperately attempting to find us a place to stay for the night as well as potential residence for the month of November. It was raining. Things did not look promising. In a pathetic last ditch effort we taped a note to my bike seat stating, “We’re from Tucson. Can we sleep on your floor?”

Someone recommended that we check out Blvd. Bikes, a bike shop which was right around the corner. Since we’d discovered that my brake pads were completely worn, we decided to go and get some new Kool Stop pads as well as check out the shop. Well, when the guys in the shop learned of our predicament, one of them offered up his sacrificial futon for the night as a testament to weary bicycle tourists who come to Chicago without a place to stay. John turned out to be a super awesome dude who is very well known within the Chicago bike community. More about him in a minute.

Things were beginning to look up in the late afternoon in our new hometown. The shop let us leave our panniers in the basement while we went apartment hunting in the pouring rain. I’d found a possible sublet for us for the month of November. We headed to Rogers Park, which is a neighborhood on the far north side of town by the lake. It sort of has it’s own scene and things going on from what we hear.

The apartment is what I can only describe as so Chicago. It’s a sardine can sized place on the 3rd floor where the train comes literally about 2 feet from the window about every 10 minutes. Totes Blues Brothers.
“How often does the train go by?”
“So often that you won’t even notice it.”

The guy that we are subletting from is going on tour in a play and reminds me a lot of my former roommate in Tucson. We decided to take the place for the month. We’ll be paying $450, which split with Jared is just about the cheapest rent I’ve ever had. November will give us the opportunity to get our bearings in the city and attempt to get jobs. We can make a more permanent decision after that.

We made the trek back to Logan Square after securing the apartment. It was pouring down rain at this point, so we were soaked. But at least we had a place to stay thanks to John. I cannot describe how awesome it felt to take a hot shower. He made us veggie subs and provided libations. He took us back to the bike shop in the pouring rain to get our panniers. John has toured almost the perimeter of the U.S. himself and is a freelance writer and works in the bicycling industry. On top of that he seems to know everyone and is super friendly. I am glad that the cosmos steered us toward John.

I really mean that thing about how it is easier to keep rolling than to stop. Jared epitomizes that concept- and I know you guys have heard about our predicament before. The dude has been on the road for about 3 years. Is he even capable of anything else at this point? To stop requires that you suck it up and join the masses. People aren’t going to be throwing free hot dogs your way. You have to struggle like all the other wriggling maggots. Jared seems to cringe every time we talk about potential employment. I think that Jared and I are both feeling exceedingly overwhelmed. There’s nothing like a sprawling metropolis to remind you of your relative insignificance.

-L