Single Speed

"Babe," she said, "that light is killing me. Can you change it?" She couldn't stand the overhead light. Depression lighting, she called it.

"Uh huh," I said.

"Hey babe," she said, "so how are you going to get to Mike's tomorrow?" Mike was her friend and I was building a closet for him. She was sitting next to me on the couch, with the old laptop in her lap. She reached up behind her head and stuck the wireless modem in the blinds trying to find the Internet.

"Maybe I can finally use my bike for something practical, for once." My bike was a beautiful burgundy Shogun and I kept it in the hallway just below our apartment.

She checked the signal. "Mmm, where are you, Internet?" She adjusted the modem. "You would ride all that way for me? You're the best." She leaned over and kissed me. "So, I can have the car tomorrow?" Her new job was in Hillsborough, twenty-one miles north. Mike's closet was twenty-four miles south west, in Jacobstown.

"I used to do like, forty miles in like, two hours." The words came out a little unsure, but only because I couldn't remember the exact miles and hours.

She gave me this look. Of course, now I was twenty six and I had taken the Shogun down to a single speed. There was a slim chance that the ride would kill me.

"Light, please." She was crazy about that light issue. Plus that look of hers really got to me.

"I can just haul ass," I said.

"I'm just trying to see something," she said, waiting for a page to load.

"I can totally do it."

"Look, it's only ten miles from Bordentown. You could take the big train to the River Line to Bordentown." She sounded sweet about her suggestion, but it was not sweet. She was suggesting that I couldn't make the twenty-four miles. The modem fell out of the blinds and went behind the couch.

The train route she suggested made a huge inefficient arch halfway across New Jersey."It's kind of on the other side of Mike's." It didn't make any sense to take such a circuitous route when I could cut straight there on the Shogun.

She gave me that look again. Not the evil eye, not quite. Just skeptical about something as she found the modem again.

"I can totally make it, babe."

"Or, I can drive you down the Turnpike and you can 'haul ass' from there. It's what, fourteen miles?"

I was starting to hate that old laptop. It didn't even have a battery anymore. "I don't want to make you get up at like, six to drive me that far south."

"Oh, come on, babe. You'll be tired all day. Why did you take all the gears off, anyway?"

I wasn't really sure why, but I said, "Because shifters and gears, all they do is wear down and break. It's just simpler and more efficient in the long run."

"I'm not going to make you ride all that way with just one gear." She probably thought she was being nice and she was nice, but she was also strangely nice.

"I don't care if it takes me all the damn day! Babe!" It came out like I was kidding, but I was a little serious too.

She just smiled at me and said, "I'll buy you a coffee if you take the train?"

"Really?" I said. That was a good point. If I rode, I wouldn't be able to get my morning coffee. "Okay."

Before we moved out here, to Hightstown, we lived in Highland Park, which was all city riding. The gears were a complete pain. Of course the reason we moved was because we couldn't afford Highland Park so I couldn't afford to take the Shogun down to a single until we moved to the burbs, where you probably wanted gears.

She turned the computer off, and turned on Family Guy. "Why don't you put the rack on the car tonight?"

She was strangely persuasive. I got up and turned the lamp on and then I crossed the room and turned off the overhead. I would put the rack on, but I didn't want to miss Family Guy.