III. Cycling

The roads I bike on to get to work aren't particularly even. There are potholes and cracks in the cement. Rocks and twigs and crushed PBR cans cover the paths, so even with a perfectly tuned and maintained bike, the ride is bumpy. But my bike is not perfectly tuned or maintained. In fact, it's falling apart so my work commute is even bumpier. With my ill-fitting helmet that's two sizes too big, I look like a bobblehead biking along the lake front path every morning.

My bike is on its last legs. Or last wheels, I guess.

Actually, the wheels are good. The guy at the bike shop said that the wheels were the only parts that were salvageable. Then he ran through a list of what was wrong with it:

-loose cables
-broken derailleur
-worn-down brake pads
-non-shifting gears
-exposed cable housing
-rusted chain
-non-ringing bell
-it's ugly

"When was the last time you rode this thing?" he asked.

"Last week," I said.

"That's impressive. I'm surprised you haven't died."

"Hahaha," I fake laughed.

"Yeah, normally we can fix up bikes in a couple days, but this might take a week or two." he told me, shaking his head.

I stood there for a second, staring at my bike.

"How much will it cost?"

"To make all the repairs and adjustments? You're probably looking at…"

He paused, scratching the spot behind his left ear.

"$315. At least."

"But I bought that bike for $350 four years ago…"

"Yeah, if it were me, I'd buy a new bike."

I didn't get a new bike. I didn't even fix my old bike. I thanked the guy, walked out the door and wobbled my bike back to my apartment. That night, I tightened the brakes, lubed up my chain, put air in the tires and replaced the bell. Before I head out every morning, I ask the Lord Baby Jesus to watch over me.

I don't want to spend the money on a new bike. I also don't want to spend the money on having someone else repair my old bike. But you know what I did spend the money on?

This.

That's the Nashbar Essential Tool Kit (for cyclists). Designed to tackle most bike maintenance and repair challenges, from minor tune-ups to drivetrain overhauls, the Nashbar Essential Tool Kit (for cyclists) has 18 essential tools that get the job done right.

I realized I know nothing about my bike. I tried to change my tire when I got a flat a few months ago and I ended up breaking one of the spokes and having to carry my bike on my back to the repair shop (a somewhat related thought: Broke Bike Mountain would be a great name for a bike place in Boystown).

You don't really think about objects or appliances until they begin to fall apart. No one ever knows what type of garage door opener they have until it stops working. I didn't even know I had a gallbladder until I had to get it removed. Drive train? What's that? Derailleur? I hardly know her.

Once something fails though, you understand its importance. Remember that old adage, you don't know what you got until it's gone? I didn't know how essential working brakes were until I almost ran over an Asian woman walking her pomeranian.

I'm going to learn how to care for my bike and I'm going to treat her like a princess baby. Fix her up real good and rub degreaser all over her frame. Remove the dirt and grime from her gears. Give her a bike massage. Awww, yeaaah.

In the meantime, I'm riding her around with broken parts. My work commute is tougher, partly because I can't change gears and partly because if I try to stand up on the bike for more leverage, the chain skips. But mostly, it's the lack of working brakes.

I've been biking everywhere in Chicago for the past four years, although I didn't start riding year-round until 2012. No weather condition can stop me from biking. Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night. I am Batman.

"Wait, you're telling me you bike in the winter?" people ask.

"Yes," I tell them.

"Wait, wait. You're telling me, you bike when it snows?!" they ask.

"Yes," I say.

"Waitwaitwaitwait. YOU'RE telling ME, you BIKE when it's NEGATIVE DEGREES OUTSIDE?!" they shout.

"Yes," I respond.

Then they ask why.

I usually mumble something about biking being cheaper than public transportation or that I'm trying to stay in shape or that I care about the environment.

Which is all partly true.

But mostly, it's about control.

I'm a bubbling ball of nerves and angst. Anxiety and dread are the primary emotions I feel on a daily basis. People brimming with confidence show it with good posture, a firm handshake and strong eye contact. I'm stuck with clammy hands and shifty eyes. I don't just get butterflies in my stomach. I get entire colonies of Monarchs, furiously flapping their shimmering wings, migrating North to my throat and then back South to my small intestine.

Certain situations stress me out more than others. Specifically, heavy traffic or being stuck on a bus or train with no way of escaping. Why? Let's just say that this is my favorite iPhone app. It's a type of agoraphobia that I have. I am agoraphobic Batman.

I deal with this in one of two ways.

Distractions or control.

Distractions work by, you know, distracting me from the situation at hand. Which is why having a phone with access to games and videos and the internet is useful. I can try to distract myself from the anxiety by shifting my focus to something else. Flicking birds into swine or coming up with clever hashtags for not-so-clever tweets or looking at pics and swiping right. Always swiping right. And this works fine, sometimes.

Other times, not so much.

Other times, I feel the panic set in instantly, filling me up the way clowns inflate balloons. My heart begins banging against my rib cage, begging to be let out. My insides twist and contort themselves around into the shape of a balloon giraffe (to continue with the clown/balloon metaphor). Those times, my brain sends the message YOU-NEED-TO-GET-OUT-OF-HERE-RIGHT-NOW, engaging fight-or-flight mode and leaning heavily towards the 'flight' option.

There haven't been many times like that and, thankfully, I've been able to remove myself from those situations fairly quickly. But those times are not fun.

Which is why my preferred method of dealing with anxiety is control. Or avoidance, depending on how you look at it. Rather than risk being stuck in traffic or on a stopped train, I bike.

I prepare as much as I can. If it rains, I have a poncho in my backpack. If it snows, I got some snow boots and fenders. In the winter, I have Spongebob hand warmers to put in my gloves. During the summer, I carry deodorant and a change of clothes so that I won't have to walk around the office in a sweat-soaked shirt.

But no matter how much I prepare, no matter how much control I believe to have over a situation, I'm never really in control. It's an illusion, Michael. I could ride over a nail and get a flat or a particularly strong gust of wind could blow me into the lake or Lance Briggs could jump out from behind a bush and tackle me to the ground. You never know, man. You never know.

And that's what scares me. Not Lance Briggs. Uncertainty. The whole dilemma of not knowing what's going to happen. It's paralyzing. I drown in a flood of "what if's," a torrential downpour of questions and doubts.

But just thinking that I'm in control helps.

I had a younger cousin who would always sit next to me when I played Zelda. He would stare at the screen in a trance, hypnotized by the way I maneuvered Link through dungeons, slashing down hordes of Moblins and Ocotoroks. Inevitably, after a few minutes, he would ask if he could play. Since it was a single player game and I was kind of a dick, I'd plug in a second controller and hand it to him. He had no idea that he wasn't participating, but the mere thought that he was playing was enough to placate him.

It's the same thing with me and my bike. I'm not really controlling anything. But I think I am, and that is enough.

It's not a solution. Only a way to cope with the issue. It doesn't help when I have to be on an early flight or when I have to drive out to the suburbs for a client meeting. But I don't know how to fix it.

So I bike.

I bike to work. I bike to play. I bike to shoots that are sixteen miles away. I bike to here. I bike to there. I ride my bike to anywhere. I ride my bike for green eggs and ham. I ride my bike to avoid those traffic jams.

Jesus Christ Improv

I just got back from church. Saint Clements Catholic Parish. Mass isn't over. I kinda left early. Also, I kinda got there a little late. Look, the important thing is that I went, alright? Get off my back, conscience. Damn.

I actually listened to the homily this time. It was eerie. Not eerie in the "Jesus Camp" kind of way, but eerie in the sense that a similar theme was prevalent in my improv class last week. The whole "living-in-the-moment" idea.

What the priest was saying boiled down to not worrying about the past or the future. If you intend to follow God, dwelling on either will only deter you from being an ideal disciple. There was a guy who kept saying that when his father died, he wanted to leave in order to bury him. There was this other guy who kept wondering about all of the stupid mistakes he had committed in the past. Jesus was all like "NO! If you're not 100% committed to the task at hand, you're not going to give it your all!" Jesus would've made an awesome coach. The idea was you have to live in the present in order to fully embrace Jesus and his teachings. At least I think that's what the main idea was. I got there pretty late.

In my improv class, that same lesson was being taught. If you try to plan out how a scene's going to go, you're only setting yourself up for failure (that one's pretty obvious). Alternatively, if you keep worrying about mistakes that you've done, then you're now in your head and you're not going to be able to react sincerely. Improv is a mental game, kids. It's really hard to get out of your head once you're in there and when performing 'prov, if your mind is somewhere else, you're screwing yourself. Seriously, it's like any sport. You've got to focus on the present. Live in the now.

Which is also a good life lesson, isn't it? No regrets. Learn from your mistakes. Worrying helps nothing. I'm sure there are other clichés worth mentioning, but for the sake of length, I won't.

Learn from your mistakes. I like that one. Actually, it should be take your mistakes and turn them into gifts. If the condom breaks and you end up getting pregnant, teach that baby to read and make him a doctor. Boom. Now you're set for life, right?

Or not. It might not be as applicable in real life, but in improv, it's an incredible mindset to get into. I wish I had that mantra before in my improv career. Nothing is a mistake. Everything is gold! It might be covered in vomit, so you have to wipe it off and polish it a little, but it's still gold. I've always had the mindset that whether a scene is good or bad depends a lot on your partner. And, yeah, while it's a LOT easier to do improv with someone who knows what's up and who you're familiar with, you can still have a helluva scene with someone who won't agree to a single thing you say. Whether that'll happen depends entirely on you.

Help! That's a perfect word to use in the situation. That's what you need to provide in improv. Help. Assists. Be like Chris Paul and hand out assists while at the same time getting your own points. Aim for a triple double. (I don't know I'm trying so hard to force the sports analogy.) In a scene, according to the iO philosophy, your job is to support your partner. Some partners need more help than others. There are scenes where you don't really have to do anything and it's a great scene because your partner is just that awesome. Then there are other scenes where you have to do quite a bit, not because your partner sucks, but he needs some help before he gets his sea legs.

I hope I'm making sense.

It's a lot like sex.

(Kidding, kidding. I'm not going to force that analogy.)

I want to do improv all the time.

Kinda like sex! (Ok, I'll stop.)

I've been doing a lot of improv lately. And seeing a lot of improv. I don't know why I didn't go to shows before. I should be seeing shows every night. I learn so much just from watching other people do improv. There are people I want to emulate. There are habits that I recognize as detrimental to my improv health. There are people who are just amazing to watch on stage.

So that's kinda what I've been doing these past two months.

I've been writing (kinda). I get really easily distracted. I'll be writing and then I'll decide to research something for whatever it is I'm writing and then twenty minutes later, I'll be looking through someone's facebook profile before I remember that I was supposed to be writing. I don't know how it happens. And I know that when I just sit down and write, I'm super productive. Last week, I set my timer for an hour and just wrote with no breaks. I think I wrote more in that one hour than I did that entire week. I'm like a laser beam. When focused, I can burn through your cornea. When unfocused, I kinda just play with my dog.



ALSO, I've been having these weird anxiety attacks. I've been having these since I moved to Chicago and they're actually a lot better now than when I first got here, but it's still a problem. I have a hard time holding in my pee. Well, that's not entirely accurate. If I realize that there won't be a restroom nearby, I freak out and have to go pee that very moment. I start panicking. It's made public transportation a huge headache. I've had to get off of buses and trains several times because I think I'm going to wet my pants, but of course I never do. I think a lot of it had to do with the stress of moving to a new city and all that jazz, which would explain why it's not happening as often (cus I'm beginning to be more comfortable in my surroundings), but it's still a hassle.

It also happens when I get really nervous (like at auditions). Of course, once the audition starts, it goes away. But then I make a mistake and I keep dwelling on the past and it messes up the rest of my audition because I can't get out of my head and we end up back at square one.

Circle of life.

(Like the sex act!)