To Catch a Thief

I've often had fantasies of what I might do if I caught someone riding one of the seven or so bikes I've had stolen since I moved to Tucson.

Yes, I can hear what you might be thinking -- Since you moved to Tucson?? that was like, what, thirty years ago?? And you would be correct in advising me to move on, to forget, let go, and live a life free of trying to recoup my losses.

But I can't seem to help it. I am a bike-ophile, a bike-aholic, an obsessed bike geek-materialist-Americonsumo-cum-laude. I can tell you the make, model, size, color, and components down to the level of minutiae ad absurdum ridiculo of every bike that has been filched, jacked, kyped, pinched, or swiped. That blue Cannondale M-800, for instance, the one that walked out of my back yard in 1998, had White Industries hubs with Velo City rims laced with red alloy nipples and blah be da blah blah. My list of wrongs done to me is long, and my monkey mind can't seem to get off it.

So, two bikes were recently lifted from my front porch. One of them was a Bianchi S.A.S.S., which stands for Shiny-Assed Single-Speed. While still in the throes of grief and violation, I was driving down our fine Fort Lowell Road when I passed a Circle K and saw SASS being piloted along the sidewalk. I knew it immediately; in the time it takes to snap a photo, I saw the the carbon seat post, the Monkey Lite bars, the Avid disc brakes, the gleaming chrome frame.

"My Bike!!" I yelled out the window at a stunned 20-something guy. He jerked his head, and we entered a fast motion comedy of drama and errors.

He crossed the road and I swung a U-turn with no thought of traffic (not recommended), and pulled into a gas station to head him off.

You could say I went bonkers, berserk, ballistic. All of the injustices of life funneled and fused into one white-hot nerve of indignation and righteous rage. I was living the fantasy, the dream of redemption of all that has been lost, the final turn into Ithaca after long years of battling the Cyclops, sirens, and privation. This was IT, the moment.

"Hey! That's my bike," I yelled as the car stalled. It was blocking the driveway to a gas station and the door hung open as I strode up to the startled young man now standing next to the bike. He could see I was shaking, was hopped up on adrenaline, had the blazing eyes of the insane.

"Uh, uh, I bought it off of Craigslist," he said, not so confidently.

I had been monitoring CL for the past week and had seen nothing of the missing bikes, so felt fine challenging this claim. I approached it logically, with all the cool, calculated method of a prosecutor moving in for the kill.

"Bulls%$t!!!" I sputtered, foam forming around the edges of my mouth.

Nothing.

"Bulls*&t!!!" I said again, even louder and crazier than the first time.

I stepped forward and began poking at his chest with my bayonet of a finger.

Now, the youngster started to wilt, to back down.  He released the bike. He put up his arms as if to say, "Whatever..." and backed away.

It then dawned on me that it might be a good idea to call the police, so I pulled out my phone with my free hand and dialed 9-1-1.

I noticed he had turned and was walking briskly down the street. He was getting away. I had the phone in one hand, the bike in the other, the car stalled in the entrance to a gas station, its door still open, the keys still in the ignition, lights still on.

The words were out of my mouth before I could think."I'll get you, you a**hole. You and your family too. All of your children, ancestors, and distant relations. I'll find you and yours and ... I'll...I'll...." I'll what?

"Hello. What is the nature of your emergency?"

As I spoke with the operator, I came down from my adrenaline rush.

The whole scene became ridiculous and unseemly. I was standing there with the bike, wearing my teacher nerd pants and button-down shirt watching a young guy run followed by a mob of ghosts -- angry, wounded, hungry ghosts.

The Signature Move

The road to the prison is a long one, and you will want to turn around before you drive past the melting tar, hot-engine smell of the power plant. You will think briefly of all the other things you might do today -- go for a hike, work in the garden, watch the basketball game -- but you will settle in to the sound of the car as you merge onto the interstate, doing what you need to do.

You will look into the mirror and see the face of an old man, the bags and sag of the face you thought you would never have. You will feel tired, maybe sick, all of a sudden as you make the turn south. Do not go numb when you see the towers of the federal penitentiary off to the right. Do not hope that the guards will be waiting at the entrance behind a barricade that says no admittance. You may cringe when they say "I'd like to kill all of them," because they are frustrated and afraid and impatient. Do not smile when they call the men in your workshop cockroaches, rats, or worse.

You may tell yourself that you are not up to this, not bright enough, not ready, nor skilled enough, that you have no business asking men in a cage to hone their expressive skills. You certainly will not feel driven by some principle of fairness or service. You may remember something from years ago, a time when a man with a badge read charges against you, that he said you were going to jail. You might also remember the pucker of your nether regions as you think of the pills and weed hidden in the pockets of your girlfriend's purse, that because she was the daughter of The Man, and had a stack of traveler's checks, that they did not search her the way they did you. You will remember shame and gratitude, the feel of your car keys, your wallet, your watch, as you carried it all out of the courthouse back into a morning bright and clear with mountain sun. You may or may not remember that you wished someone would tell this if you went down.

You will have to smile instead of argue when they ask why inmates need paper, pens, dictionaries and books. You may have to lie when they ask if you plan to leave any of this with them so they can take it back to their cells where they will settle back onto their racks and think about what to say and how to say it.

As you carry the tubs you will look away from the blood spots on the sidewalk that go on for thirty yards and will not wonder what could have happened here. The tattoos on the neck of a member of the AB, the Aryan Brotherhood, will not scare you, even when he challenges you on why you think his friend's poem is overly cliched and sentimental and full of racist jargon.

If you forget that it is you who are the lucky one, that you might be confined here, then you will be lost. You have the comforts that you only dreamed of when you stood on the side of a road, with no money, in the cold. Or the time your boss reminded you that you were on the clock, so do that damned job over again, even if it's already done and done right.

The live wire of memory may be too much, so you will push it away. Try pain killers, but they will not silence for long the whispers, even when those voices are smothered in the cotton of comforts. You may want someone to do the work for you or someone to take care of you, but you know that it is up to you.

But still, you pack up the books and papers when the time is up. You cover the sore with a bandage and go back out into the noise of the free world.

Eat. Go back to sleep. That is the way to keep going, to get by, to take shelter from the wind. 

Eating My Words

Megan and I are driving south of Tucson to the little burg of Patagonia to help some friends work on an old ranch house. It is New Year's Eve, so traffic enforcement on the winding highway climbing up to Sonoita has been beefed up. State Patrol cruisers parked conspicuously on fast, straight stretches of highway look dark, menacing.

The old truck makes deep moaning sounds at speed, so I keep it under 60. I am not worried about drawing attention.

We talk the way couples talk, lapsing into subtle irritations and criticism just because we have to vent a bit once in a while. Megan reminds me how hard it seems for me to let go of things -- shoes, T-shirts, youth, vigor, hair, height -- little things. I politely listen in silence, building up a litany of rebuttal that will soon be delivered, once I can get a word in.

The lovely tawny hills of Sonoita spread out like a blanket from the foot of Mount Wrightson. It is winter and the sky is cold and bright. Snow fills the shadowy defiles cut into the rocky heights. It is movie backdrop, a scene fit for real drama.

"You know, a bunch of people have gotten speeding tickets lately near Patagonia," Megan advises. She mentions friends and family, scofflaws who ought to know better, who have been cited. All the locals have talked their way out of, even when drunk with no registration or insurance papers. She says there's a wing-nut cop who is obsessed with giving city folks tickets, a spit-and-polish ex-marine. "Even the gas station guys don't like him," she adds. Between the lines of her counsel is the implication that I am not so lucky -- or charming -- as our friends who gotten out of big fines.

This is particularly irritating because I rank below the local malcontent reactionaries. The gas station guys pride themselves on being PIGS, the "Politically Incorrect Gas Station.," and tend side with law and order while opposing "bra-burners" and "tree-huggers."

I have to sit with that for a bit. I have a spotless record (except for the one time near Duncan, AZ that I do not like to remember and tend to omit whenever the subject comes up) for traffic tickets. Everyone in my family has had a ticket, but for more than 15 years I have been ticket free, in spite of my tendency to drive faster than I should. I feel I can drive how I want, even through speed traps.

The writer in me takes over and composes a dialogue fit for the occasion.

"I don't get tickets," I say.

That is a good start, I think to myself, but is not quite enough. It needs some elaboration.

"I am special."

Ah, yes, that is good too. But special in what way?

"In fact I have a sixth sense about when to speed. I can tell when there is going to be a cop with a radar gun."

The hole has been dug.

As these words are leaving my mouth, we enter the town of Patagonia's way reduced speed limit, and I slow a bit, but not enough.

True to script, the sheriff is parked in his truck with the gun on. Right on cue he pulls out behind me. Within seconds I am below the speed limit and I am sure it is just a coincidence. We drive s-l-o-w-l-y into town, and I make the turn toward Harshaw Canyon and the ranch house. He turns too. The lights come on.

Megan grins a big grin. I sink into my seat.

So, I will be spending this coming Saturday at traffic school with the other scofflaws. We will all be eating a piece of humble pie, hoping to return soon to the promised land of exception from the laws of man and spirit. After all, we are so very special.

Megan will not let me forget.

The Way

Mondo the cat was taken by a coyote yesterday. The details don’t matter so much, and the gnashing of teeth over what might have been done to prevent it have given way to the finality of loss. 

Mondo walked over our sleeping bodies like climbers trace the ridges of mountains. He lay next to me at five in the morning and touched my lips with his paws telling me to wake up. He watched nature shows with me, often more attentive than I to animal action.  He was, to me, my family, and neighbors, a loving eccentric who bounded across the yard just for the fun of it.

And he was a hunter of lizards, packrats, and birds. He brought them all inside so we could share the spoils of the hunt -- not something I appreciated, especially the packrats. He was also part of the desert food chain and territoriality. At least once a bobcat followed him up to the back door of our house. There was a great horned owl that roosted in the giant mesquite of our backyard who waited for his chance. Coyotes patrolled the front yard, eyes on the porch.  Javelina bristled when Mondo got too close, curious, and personal. 

 Mondo lived a full, happy,  predatory life. He fell prey to the cycle. 

His absence leaves a hole in our family. Sad. Very sad. He leaves behind his sweet sister, Simone. 

As with all creatures who lived fully, his example is one that teaches me to enter the grief, to open to the sadness, to breathe and remember the pain of loss that accompanies life in the this world. I think of the wounded civilians in Syria, desperate mothers of sick children, the homeless men and women in Tucson. Pain is no stranger to many in this life.

It is what I do with that pain that does Mondo justice. He was part of the cycle. His time came, just as mine will come. It is his unbridled love of life, his love of us, that remains. Now it is my work to open, to open, again and again, to notice this lovely desert day, to embrace friends and those I love. Rejoice.

I have known three great teachers in this life: one, a yellow dog, and two cats— one tabby, the other a black long hair named Mondo, for the size of his heart. All left me broken when they passed, but left a legacy of joy.

As a holiday song goes, “It is because of the dark that we see the beauty of the spark.” Now that’s a Christmas thought worth celebrating. 

Finding Will

He was down here somewhere, but ahead of us, probably already in line. It was still dark at 5:00 AM, and we were on our way to meet with Team Colleen and then ride together over to the start of the El Tour de Tucson. 

We were already late, and barricades blocked our going west, toward our first destination of the day. We were directed by traffic police into an alley from which there was no turning around and we were going in the wrong direction. One might say we were off to a blurry and half-baked beginning.

When we got there, there being Chad and Emily McGlamery’s home where we were assembling, we transformed into cyclists -- funny, tight clothes, shoes that are no good for walking -- but this is how we need to be to do what we have to do. Then we set off through the darkness to the start line.  

A year ago, I and a small group of bike buddies, including a wild man from Indiana, had gotten in line toward the front of the sub six-hour group. Today we were back in the six hour and more group.  No problem; we were going to hammer today, to find that man from Indiana.

We, not the royal one, are Mark and Eric Streeter, Team Colleen, and myself. We are riding to remember that wild man, Will Streeter, Mark and Eric’s dad, my friend. It is going to be a long day, one hundred eleven miles, around the city of Tucson.

But we are in good hands. Team Colleen has been doing this kind of ride since 2008. They are going to help us find Will. As the day goes on, we will tire, we will work, we will run into the wall that says “Quit!” and we will be fed by the generosity, the selfless help offered by the expert cyclists of the Team Colleen. 

Colleen, an avid bike racer, died of cancer. Her husband, George, took his grief and turned it into a legacy of helping patients and family affected by cancer. He took Colleen’s passion for cycling and created a team of domestiques to help these patients and family deal with the cancers by setting goals and working toward them. “The fight is the victory,” is one of the mottoes of the group. 

Will understood that and was waiting for us learn it. 

With blinking lights on our bikes we rode through the quiet city over to the start line. Once there, raucous music, bright lights, and a small army of cyclists came together to create a festival atmosphere. I thought I might have caught a glimpse of Will of my way to the porta potties. 

We lined up in the dark. Some things have to be done while it is dark, and this was one of them. This was not a routine day of work and school;  it was a soul day, a day to drill down past complacency, comfort, familiarity. We were going deep to see and feel  life at its most intense.

Patty, Tom, Kathe, and Megan, bless them, brought coffee, warm clothes, and enthusiasm, en theo, with God. We began the wait as butterflies began to circle in the lower regions. Both Mark and Eric looked nervous. We knew Will had gotten here earlier than we had and was somewhere ahead of us in line. We would not see him until we were ready, until we were purified, depleted, scrubbed clean of doubt and distraction.

As the sun lit the sky, we got on the bikes, heard the National Anthem, and began the long roll-out after the gun. The stops and accordion starts of a 6,000 rider mass start gave way to speed and the whistling of wind through wheels, the turning of chains, the positive clicks and thunks of gears finding the right ratio. Our little peloton was a tightly knit, well oiled, speed machine. Chad, Pat, John, Kathryn, Mimi, Emily, Karina, Brian, and others took pulls on the front. We sliced out way forward, closing the gap on Will.

Eric and Mark’s buddies coached them on the finer points of eating, drinking, and relaxing while your front tire followed the wheel in front with only inches of separation. The boys listened and learned, went past old limitations, harnessed channeled their fears into forward motion. We were gaining.

Then we hit the river crossings, the hills, the long rollers that sap legs of snap and strength. It was starting to hurt. Shannon, John, and Ben stepped up to provide a helping hand on the back to get up the longer grades. We all need friends in times like these, and we will never catch Will without accepting help, support, giving in to being carried sometimes. 

Forty, fifty, sixty, seventy miles roll by beneath our wheels. Somewhere the muscles start to tire, to cramp. Eric drinks more than he wants following the advice of the group. Water needs to fall on bushes, porta potties, convenience stores. We listen to the body as it gives us more than it wants to. We push past the easy efforts and enter the zones of pain, of the body begging for relief, but push on. 

The peloton eats up Rattlesnake Pass, where a year before, Will and I had wept from the pain of the effort. We became brothers of shared vision, of pushing past what was easy , of sacrificing for a vision, a goal.

The rough patches of Silverbell led us to a view of the Tucson skyline. We were closing the gap. Will had wanted to finish this ride under six hours. We were going to catch him if we kept this pace. 

As we made the final turn onto Sixth Avenue, the finish line rose ahead of us. The peloton fell behind and Mark, Eric, and I led the charge. We went as deep as we could, and, somewhere in there, caught Will and he caught our wheels. We pulled him in to give him the gift of gold. His sons had come to remember and to give back. They had succeeded. The memory of Will swirled around us as we crossed the line. I felt infused, surrendered, depleted, full, rich in joy and grief. We had made contact.

While the pain of losing does not go away, it can transform into action and service. Will was about learning, teaching, and giving. In order to be strong enough to do that, he pushed himself past perceived limits. I connect with him when I follow his lead, his noble example. 

I will continue to chase him and, once in a while, if I really commit and push myself hard enough, I will catch him. In doing so, I feel peace and joy, the support of a brother of soul, his two sons, and beloved bride.

All Souls

Tucson, while a surly city on the one hand, has some seriously redeeming attributes. One of them is the All Souls Procession that winds through city streets the first Sunday in November. Do not make the mistake of thinking Halloween here. The ASP is sacred, a tribute to the dead, more Tim Burton than M. Night Shyamalan.

I was in bad emotional shape a few years ago and joined my friends David and Chris in honoring their son of sixteen years who committed suicide in their back yard. 

At the beginning of the procession I wondered just what it was I was doing here with all the monstrous skulls, skeletons, flowers, drummers, dancers, freaks, and fellow mortals. There was an urn, a ten-foot tall caldron that would be burned at the end of the procession, in front of where I stood waiting for the long walk to begin. A priestess of the urn approached me and asked “ Would you like to remember someone by writing their name on this paper and placing it in the urn? It’s a way to let go while connecting to your grief.” 

More out of conformity than real intention, I wrote down my mother’s name, and immediately felt stricken with sadness.  

Within minutes the procession began.

I walked and surrendered to the chaos. 

Then David passed me a drum that his son used to play. I like to drum, but had an injured hand, a deep laceration from a stupid mountain bike stunt. I had it bandaged with a glove over it. 

I pointed to my hand and David just said, “use the sticks. You won’t need to play it with your hand.”

So I took the drum and began to feel the pulse of the crowd. Buhm ba buhm buhm. I picked it up, played with a little ganas and started to feel the blood pump through my chest. Some very lithe and slinky young women painted as skeletons with exposed and curvaceous midriffs began to belly dance to the beat.

The are times when carnality and spirit mingle to create something that has elements of both, but is something else entirely. These dancers embodied Earthly delights, but celebrated letting those go while embracing that which endures. Paradox again. Love this life knowing that it will not last.

I laid into the beat and got lost, or got found, depending on how you look at things. 

The parade, my stride, the flying hands on the sticks, adrenaline, oxytocin all came together to define a “zone” of experience that transcended the sum of the circumstantial parts. I covered miles in that state.

I did not notice the blood pouring out of my glove until we crossed the stage at the end of the procession. It had overflowed the bandages, soaked through my glove, and spilled onto the drumsticks and drum head.

David noticed and said, “Don’t worry about it. I like it. I reminds me of my son. He used to drum so hard he left nothing out.” 

No amount of contrition on my part could sway him, and no amount of scrubbing could clean the head of the stain. 

One of the images associated with Day of the Dead is a heart wrapped in thorns with blood dripping off the beating heart, the corazon espinado. It is a kind of Southwest stigmata.

I can’t claim supernatural influence on my hand, but the bleeding stopped immediately after the procession, and the wound healed abnormally fast.

I don’t know where she is or even if she is, but somewhere I think my mother would not be surprised by that or by much of anything that blends this world with the next.

Alchemy (a parable -- sort of)

Head down, angry, he worries the light switch. It only dims the room he is in, failing to complete the circuit for the dark room he needs to enter. He has to pee and finds the placement of switches irritating.

"Where is the ... switch for the other room, the bathroom?" He leaves what he really wants to say, which is "f--king" switch, unsaid. He swallows the curse and deposits it in the muscle of his neck and shoulder. There the profane poison tightens the sinews, twists the brain.

I stand up and step ahead of him into the dark room, reach around a corner, locate the illogically placed switch, and turn on the lights.

"There you go. Sorry for the lack of rhyme or reason to the electrical around here. This place was built in the 50s and has been remodeled a few times. The switches (plumbing, flat roofs, crumbling adobe, and bizarre architecture, I could add) don't match modern expectations (or code)."

He is not satisfied with this explanation and heads off in a huff to the bathroom.

The architecture is just one more thing that sets him off.

He is me, or rather part of me, and he finds what he is looking for: reasons to be pissed off. All the time.

Tonight it is a headache, a hollow tunnel of echoes, of mental cotton, that is goading on the discontent. He feels beset by this annoyance, this wall standing between him and getting where he wants to be.

Of course, there are plenty of other reasons to be pissed. Drivers on the way here for one. Does anybody actually watch the road anymore? Or have phones supplanted driving as the primary purpose of sitting in a car? Then there is the cash flow. Always more out than in. And, he wonders, why do I have to work so damned hard?

I follow along like a balloon tethered to a tricycle. This trike has squeaky wheels that wobble, and rusty, loose steering. It takes the power of hydraulic pistons to turn the pedals. But we move along.

Some people would call him impatient. Others just ornery. I see him as a prisoner. He is locked in to seeing things only one way, the way he learned a long time ago. The injuries and angers of childhood can be such a heavy load to tote around.

After finishing in the bathroom he heads back to the gathering. Others are waiting for him, in more ways than one. They stand on tip-toe, hoping that it will happen, that the cords will be severed and that he will join them in the big joke.

Once, not so long ago, under blue a moon, he almost cut it. His heart felt it would burst from the river of energy running through it, like he used to feel, somewhere in memory, all the time. Back then, play was easy and even the smallest of moments a drop of magic.

"Why can't he remember?" I ask. The mystery is waiting just on the other side of a veil, waiting to be called home.

I whisper something. "Go into the dark. Don't worry about the lights. You will find me there."

He listens, sort of. But the other voices are still too familiar, too loud, and rude. They have a monopoly on his fear and attention.

I bide my time. He is starting to wonder just who I am.