rex
quadriceps.
And, well, no time like the present, right? I was ready, as was Rachel—the color had come back to her cheeks, and she was really
wearing
that grease-inked, chain-link calf tattoo. Even the Fuji looked poised. Its spokes were in fine fettle, chain oiled, tires topped off, down tube newly adorned with a neat oval sticker I’d bought at a Duluth brewery. I planned to pick up many such stickers along the way, to both personalize and uglify the bike. Soon the corporate logo would be hidden, the frame festooned with enough hideous fonts and clashing colors that even the most desperate of thieves would be like, uh, no thanks.
Rachel had attached the same brewhouse sticker to her bike. At first I whined, because
I
had seen it first. But then Rachel reminded me that
she
had first shown interest in the Fuji I now loved so dearly, and so hadn’t she perhaps made the bigger compromise here? I relented. She had. And really, given the ridiculousness of our matching bikes and bags, it did kind of make sense to just ham up this barfy his-and-hers thing.
We were all ready, then. Me and Rachel, Fuji and Fuji.
The four of us now rode the final quiet miles into Two Harbors. Here, Old Highway 61 unceremoniously dumped us onto new Highway 61, which, like all (new) highways, was designed for big-ass vehicles to go stupidly fast. Logging trucks and tourist-toting SUVs and rusty old junkers clogged both lanes, burying the minty-fresh breath of the lake under the sulfurous reek of the tailpipe. To make matters worse, the highway now veered from the coast and into second- or third- or fifteenth-growth forest. Our “view” was reduced to scrubby pine, airborne chunks of gravel, and, depending on who was riding out front, each other’s butt cheeks.
I was eager to get these miles over with, and so I mashed the pedals, all the while eyeing the speedometer, watching the numbers climb. Once I hit fourteen miles an hour, I checked the rearview. Rachel was right there, her jaw set, brow furrowed, shoulders rocking side to side. She was hugging my rear wheel, just begging me to speed up, so I dug harder, until my heart was racing, my legs screaming, my lungs begging for oxygen. I gulped greedily, not caring that the air tasted like rotten eggs, suddenly loving this highway. After so many days of blown spokes and Lump rubbing—of being held back—it felt amazing to actually work for something.
Now I looked to the rearview. Rachel was gone. In her place, a tiny, wavering figurine. She must have been five hundred feet back, but I’d fallen so profoundly into a three-cheers-for-me reverie that I hadn’t noticed the gap I was opening. My first impulse was to feel annoyed that I
had
to notice, to check my speed, to abandon my reckless abandon just because Rachel couldn’t fucking keep up. Then, a tsunami of guilt. A familiar voice telling me I hadn’t earned my speed or muscle structure, hadn’t earned a goddamn thing, ever, and that this wasn’t about Rachel, or anyone else, keeping up. It was about me recognizing why I found it so easy to pull ahead.
I was usually quite attuned to all this. But after a year of following—no, chasing—Rachel, I had begun to lose focus on the whole male privilege thing.
Not knowing what else to do, I downshifted, spun the pedals, discreetly checked the mirror. Once Rachel caught up, I kept my eyes on the rearview, carefully adjusting my speed, trying to match hers without seeming like I was trying to match hers. We continued this way for five miles, still sandwiched between traffic and yawn-inducing, scrubby forest, until at last we rounded a bend and saw a bike trail, the one Tonia had told us about, the one that would carry us straight to Illgen Falls. It was called the Gitchi-Gami State Trail, its name a bastardized version of the word the Ojibwa had long used to describe the lake:
gichigami
, “big water.”
We climbed the trail up to the top of a pine-Mohawked dome of granite, dropped
quadriceps.
And, well, no time like the present, right? I was ready, as was Rachel—the color had come back to her cheeks, and she was really
wearing
that grease-inked, chain-link calf tattoo. Even the Fuji looked poised. Its spokes were in fine fettle, chain oiled, tires topped off, down tube newly adorned with a neat oval sticker I’d bought at a Duluth brewery. I planned to pick up many such stickers along the way, to both personalize and uglify the bike. Soon the corporate logo would be hidden, the frame festooned with enough hideous fonts and clashing colors that even the most desperate of thieves would be like, uh, no thanks.
Rachel had attached the same brewhouse sticker to her bike. At first I whined, because
I
had seen it first. But then Rachel reminded me that
she
had first shown interest in the Fuji I now loved so dearly, and so hadn’t she perhaps made the bigger compromise here? I relented. She had. And really, given the ridiculousness of our matching bikes and bags, it did kind of make sense to just ham up this barfy his-and-hers thing.
We were all ready, then. Me and Rachel, Fuji and Fuji.
The four of us now rode the final quiet miles into Two Harbors. Here, Old Highway 61 unceremoniously dumped us onto new Highway 61, which, like all (new) highways, was designed for big-ass vehicles to go stupidly fast. Logging trucks and tourist-toting SUVs and rusty old junkers clogged both lanes, burying the minty-fresh breath of the lake under the sulfurous reek of the tailpipe. To make matters worse, the highway now veered from the coast and into second- or third- or fifteenth-growth forest. Our “view” was reduced to scrubby pine, airborne chunks of gravel, and, depending on who was riding out front, each other’s butt cheeks.
I was eager to get these miles over with, and so I mashed the pedals, all the while eyeing the speedometer, watching the numbers climb. Once I hit fourteen miles an hour, I checked the rearview. Rachel was right there, her jaw set, brow furrowed, shoulders rocking side to side. She was hugging my rear wheel, just begging me to speed up, so I dug harder, until my heart was racing, my legs screaming, my lungs begging for oxygen. I gulped greedily, not caring that the air tasted like rotten eggs, suddenly loving this highway. After so many days of blown spokes and Lump rubbing—of being held back—it felt amazing to actually work for something.
Now I looked to the rearview. Rachel was gone. In her place, a tiny, wavering figurine. She must have been five hundred feet back, but I’d fallen so profoundly into a three-cheers-for-me reverie that I hadn’t noticed the gap I was opening. My first impulse was to feel annoyed that I
had
to notice, to check my speed, to abandon my reckless abandon just because Rachel couldn’t fucking keep up. Then, a tsunami of guilt. A familiar voice telling me I hadn’t earned my speed or muscle structure, hadn’t earned a goddamn thing, ever, and that this wasn’t about Rachel, or anyone else, keeping up. It was about me recognizing why I found it so easy to pull ahead.
I was usually quite attuned to all this. But after a year of following—no, chasing—Rachel, I had begun to lose focus on the whole male privilege thing.
Not knowing what else to do, I downshifted, spun the pedals, discreetly checked the mirror. Once Rachel caught up, I kept my eyes on the rearview, carefully adjusting my speed, trying to match hers without seeming like I was trying to match hers. We continued this way for five miles, still sandwiched between traffic and yawn-inducing, scrubby forest, until at last we rounded a bend and saw a bike trail, the one Tonia had told us about, the one that would carry us straight to Illgen Falls. It was called the Gitchi-Gami State Trail, its name a bastardized version of the word the Ojibwa had long used to describe the lake:
gichigami
, “big water.”
We climbed the trail up to the top of a pine-Mohawked dome of granite, dropped
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