Transferring Components

When I brought home the Shogun for the first time, I faced a dilemma that threatened to change our lives forever. There was nowhere to keep it besides the basement, which was expressly forbidden from our personal use. If I started keeping bicycles down there, I feared the landlords would have grounds for evicting us.

Mimi carried an armload of boxes across the street, heading to the apartment.

Of course, that fear of mine was what my professors would have described as hyperbolic. That is to say that instead of evicting us, the landlords would have been far more likely to kindly ask us to remove our crap from down there.

Be that as it may, my walk from the car to the front porch was fraught with terror. This was finals week at Rutgers and the rent was due and we didn't have the $1,100 in our checking account to pay for the rent quite yet. Nor did I have a job. Eviction seemed quite likely.

Be all of that as it may, I had to fix the bike in order to make it to my next class. So I needed to set up shop somewhere for a couple of hours, just long enough to transfer the components from the totally busted Lemond to the slightly less busted Shogun.

The Shogun was ridable as it was, so technically, I did not need to transfer the components. But we were packing up to move. If I didn't transfer them now, I ran a high risk of losing them in the move, due to my packing and organizational technique.

Mimi returned to the front porch, rubbing her forehead. "We have to pack up, babe."

I stood at the bottom of the brick steps, admiring our neighbor's fixes gear bike. He was a graduate student at Rutgers and he left his fixy right out on the porch all year round. "I'll be right in, babe," I said. What a luxury, I thought, not to worry about rust - bike cancer - eating away your rear derailer.

"Okay," she said, and there was a tone in her voice. I couldn't blame her. She was married to a guy who didn't have a college degree, who didn't work, didn't clean the house, and ogled bicycles with a Dungeons and Dragons intensity. I figured there was no point explaining my problem of where to set up shop.

Since we were already packing to move, I realized, my whole fear of eviction was a freestanding pyramid scheme. I sneaked that Shogun and that Lemond around the side of the building and right down into that cool damp basement. Let them evict us, I thought, as if committing to a life of high crime.

I was directly beneath our apartment and I could hear Mimi walking back and forth, probably packing. I thought I could sense frustration in the creeks between the floorboards.

I was already taking too long.

I shook the old Lemond right and left by the seat to watch the broken frame bend wildly. Then I abandoned it and the Shogun, propping them discretely against each other against the wall. I headed upstairs.

She was in the bedroom, loading our winter clothes into boxes, not even folding them, not even closing the boxes. "What time is your first test tomorrow?" she said. "Don't you need to be studying?"

"I do," I said. But instead of leaving, I grabbed the tape gun and pulled a box aside. I wadded the sweater sleeves up and squished them down inside and ran the tape gun over the top. Then I did the next one and the next one, squishing down and folding the flaps and screeching that tape gun.