DB: Tuck and Roll

This Sunday, my call to the riders of our city must have resounded off the very fabric of the grid. No one showed up, so I went to Oliver’s gallery and hung out until I got a text from my friend Autumn: “wanna skate?” Oliver and I closed the gallery and the three of us jumped the closed fence at Point Defiance and gleefully owned the five-mile drive. Two long boards and a vintage banana seat Schwinn, a purple jump rope stringing us together up the hills.

While I was waiting for everyone to show up at the Blackwater rendezvous, I scoped a mysterious article in the News Tribune. There was a large drawing of the Statue of Liberty up to her nose in water. The caption/headline read, “ARE WE NEXT?” In the article, the answer seemed to be a resounding yes. Like Rome, like Troy, the Incan’s Mayan’s, Samarian’s, Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah, we too will fall to our own pleasure domes and poor foresight. Welcome to the next great depression, avast ye scallywags, abandon ship! I am paraphrasing, but the word on the street is “YIKES!”

The trick to riding the five-mile drive is to do the loop backwards. That way you start with hills and end with long rolls. After all that work, the pleasure of coming round the horn and pointing your nose at nothing but smooth curves and soft pave….oh sweet freedom of summer, I am alive. On the home stretch, jump rope firmly lassoed around the seat post of Oliver’s Apple Krate, I propelled myself ahead of the pack, pulling all that pedal power into my own glide like a selfish Country’s economy, piggy backing on the resources of the world. My speed was supreme, and in a crouch I found myself pressing the limits of my grip on the pavement as the turns came faster than I realized I could bring them.

I stood up and began to press the board in its apex, linking several s-shaped turns in a desperate attempt to slow my decent, but I was perhaps to hasty in my abuse of the bicycle’s energy, as I rounded a bend blurrily and saw an S.U.V. parked on the side of the road, I feared tumbling from my narrow perch was inevitable. A woman had just removed herself from the vehicle and was watching me wide eyed and cautious, obviously aware of my coming disaster. Just as the board lost its grip on the pavement I remember her posture seeming somewhat terrified in its repose.

But I remained unworried, my fellow Americans. These chilly northwest summers called for the armor of a thick cotton hooded sweatshirt and the comfort of a baggy pair of denim jeans. I gracefully fell onto my bottom, used the slide to turn myself around so that I slid on my back headfirst and then dug a palm into the pavement to right myself onto my feet once again. My board had very naturally continued its graceful path and as I made haste to jump back upon it, I called to my soccermom witness in coy tones, “its all about how you fall.” Oliver wizzed by at an incredible speed, and the woman said matter of factly, “oh yeah, tuck and roll!”

To that I say, TUCK AND ROLL America. Let’s let our fall be graceful and quick, let us receive the Okies with joy for their farming skills are a lost knowledge to us. The undeveloped south slopes of Downtown is soil ready for their happy weathered hands. I came out of Point Defiance with a hole in the tummy of my hoody and a zipper that only unzipped halfway, but not a scratch on my skin. In my imagination it could have been far worse….Oliver swerving to dodge my brains spilled out and losing control, pinning the soccer mom against the grill of her S.U.V….a gruesome sight indeed for our friend Autumn (She is careful and Scandinavian), to ride innocently upon.