“Look on the shaft, you {me?} can see the scratch right there.“
Time stops and I’m transported back almost twenty years to Different-Bikes at Parkgate. I’m sitting at the island in the middle of the sales floor, putting together some quotes for custom metal, as my name rings out from the workshop. Did I say ‘rings’ out? It is borderline singing, and given that Craig and I are the only two people in the store, that means only one thing. I missed a frame-crack on one of the service bikes I’d booked the day previous.
I rise from my chair, sigh, and shuffle to the shop where he’s holding a flashlight out for me. The bike, a beyond-clapped-out DH rig, is in the stand, and Craig is sitting on a bottomed-out stool, pointing up towards the linkage assembly. I take the flashlight, but I don’t need it. From this angle, with my excellent eyesight, I can easily see the dark crack snaking around the bottom of a bearing journal. It’s not small. All I can muster, as I grab the work order to call the customer, is a low “urg.” Craig smiles. I had adamantly proclaimed that this roached-rig was free of service-ending defects.
I’ll catch the next one. It’s just a matter of time and focus; my eyesight has always been excellent. A higher than average visual acuity. In that moment I think about how old my parents were when they started needing glasses. Ancient. In this moment, here and now, I figure, yep, I’m right about that age.
{Photo: MEATengines}
My bicycle job journey took quite a turn when Claire was some seven months old and I became a primary-parent and part-time industry hack. I retired my ‘mandals’ {socks & sandals} and left my full-time job as the front-house of SuspensionWerx for gigs unknown. From ski-mounting to test-writing, from bike-building, to wrenching, to the returns desk, I’ve put my mind to being a senior {age} grom / junior {status} employee at a number of places; the sometimes gelastic, sometimes grizzled, Grompa in a sea of younger colleagues. Sharing the few tricks I’ve picked up along the way and learning from folks, first, half my age and then many who are easily young enough, though very few punctual enough, to be my kids. If you’re not early, you’re late.
In many instances I’ve been much closer in age to the “okay, boomer” demanding an audience for all he knows about some widget before he’ll buy it, than to the poor hostage {‘kid’} drawing minimum wage to hear pre-historic ski-patrol stories. It’s a bit strange. Manager: “Why hasn’t the floor been restoked?” Staffer: “That guy was ranting for thirty minutes about ski bindings that were discontinued before I was born.” Manager: “Did he end up buying something?” Staffer: “No, ski wax was way cheaper in 1996. He liked that we were playing Goldfinger though.” Manager: “Goldfinger?” Staff: “Yeah, it’s some of Drew-Bob’s oldies music.”
{Photo: MEATengines}
I’m in the forest with two friends. Fromme. A few years back. Both of them have a couple of decades on me but I’m still burying myself to keep pace with them on the climb. It’s a dark grey day, noontide gloaming. Plus, we’re in the cloud to boot. And, then, we’re thankfully stopped briefly for a minor adjustment. There’s a multi-tool out, a bike arranged just so, and then one of them turns to the other with the most exasperated look on his face.
The other nods sagely, no words having been spoken, telepathy, and reaches into his pack and produces a pair of reading glasses. They’re donned, the repair is complete, the glasses are returned, and I’m just stood there as if watching two dudes fix a bike at the old-person zoo. I don’t know who said it. Did they even really say it or was that too telepathy? But I distinctly hear, from the forest itself maybe, “your time will come, Andrew.”
“Look on the shaft, you {me?} can see the scratch right there.“
Time starts again. I look accusingly, way, way, up, at the overhead lighting. I could almost believe that my work space is receiving just a little less luminosity than the others. I squint, spin the shaft and move it side-to-side, and catch of glint of grief in the glare. Yeah, there’s a scratch. A silver sliver on the silver-ano. It’s just deep enough that I can feel it with my finger nail now that I know it’s there.
When I was twenty something riding my rigid single-speed in a sea of freeride rigs, Dirty {and/or} Dancing Shirley* used to call me an ‘old soul’. A kinder way of acknowledging the fact I’ve been an old man for a long time. Sixty-four since I was sixteen. Add to that, some folks were meant to be retail thrivers, I’ve always been more of a retail survivor. A pretend extrovert. It’s life draining. Now I’m just old. With a veteran tech I’ve known since he was a kid, tasked with showing Gromps the ropes, pointing out, from a mile away, the scratch I couldn’t see.
I instinctively reach up and ruffle my ever-greying beard. Outwardly, I acknowledge I should probably look into some readers. Inwardly, I laugh maniacally: “Your time will come too, whippersnapper!”
*{There’s a, or actually three, nickname(s)!}
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