Surly Bikes
I recently found out they have the internet on computers now. Sov told me. "You remember internet," he said, "it's the one with email." So when I got home I swept the pile of clothes and notebooks off of my computer and turned it on for the first time. And after some digging around I found the internet right on there. Damnation. The world I grewed up in is gone.
That was last thursday. That night I was "surfing" the "web," as as the kids say, and "hanging ten" I might add, and I got this little...I don't know what you call it, like a window that pops up that says I have 4,876 messages. Well you can imagine my excitement! After some digging I found my "mailbox" and started reading all 4,876 emails. Near the end (and I mean that both in terms of the number of emails and my physical state after staying up for 2 days straight staring into the "monitor," dressed in crumpled jammies, eating wheat thin after crispy, low fat, lightly salted wheat thin) I came across one from Tim Grahl, one of the whack-jobs at The Crooked Cog network of bike related websites (which started if I'm not mistaken with twentynineinches.com, which isn't what it may sound like. {He's completely wrong. It started with bluecollarmtb.com. What the hell is going on around here? -KB}).
This email from Tim, a latticework of lyrical phraseology, was a reminder of the Big Wheeled Ballyhoo, a 29er meet up organizized by Crooked Cog. The email said in part, "wondering if you would do a post about it on the Surly blog."
"What in good gravy," I wondered aloud, spraying half moist cracker crumbs all over the keyboard, "is a blog? And who is this Kenny Bloggins he keeps talking about? Is that name supposed to be a joke? Why do I seem to know this guy? But man, he DOES paint a picture."
I fell asleep on the floor next to my chair. The dark magic of his words had infused me like delicate tendrils of smoke, opiate and dangerous, and I began to dream, a lavish wild roller coaster of washed out visions and suspect memories. I dreamed of endless rollers, tire-polished roots, and slabs of crumbling limestone. I dreamed a string of lights snaking along darkened trails and people drinking beer until the wee small hours when light cracks the horizon, purple and dim.
The next day I pulled myself together and came into work.
"The craziest shit happened to me last week," I said, and explained my last few days' absence. Nick turned around and walked back to his desk without saying a word. Alix rolled her eyes. I saw Snackey pull out a box of rat poison and a teaspoon, then change his mind and put it back in the drawer. I sat in my chair for a while. Sov came over and turned on my computer, typed some stuff then said simply, "Write."
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