There’s the moment at stoplights when I become especially self-conscious of my vehicle, my new bike, and I never look back at the cars behind me to see how much space they’ve designated as an appropriate window of safety that indicates they are aware of my semi-vulnerable position on a bicycle.
A whole new series of previously unthought thoughts come to me (or maybe I emit them) now that I travel around Duke and Durham on the bike my best friend who graduated Duke last year left me as a bonus to the bed and couches and furniture I bought from him.
Night one on the bike I went out with my Half Ironman-racing roommate, Dan;
he also just purchased a (really expensive) Cervélo that makes my hand-me-down look extra vintage in comparison, which I figure is actually a good thing. We rode (on night one) around the West-North-East outskirts of East Campus, starting from
our Erwin Mill apartment up Broad into Old West Durham, past Englewood—which made me nervous since this is also the name of a dangerous area of L.A. near where I grew up—and past the familiar-sounding W Club, where we discovered a mysterious boarding school that I’m sure no one else at Duke knows exists.1 Then east into Trinity Heights and south in Trinity Park which is beautiful and tree-lined-residential, where I’d hoped to secure a lease for my senior year, but I was in Barcelona for most of last year
and these things go fast. Riding past the more undergraduate-filled haunts on Main Street, emboldened by an imaginary sense of authority—I pass by Shooters II and Devine’s and Alivia’s feeling taller, proud of my choice of weekend leisure. But this kind of self-righteousness waxes and wanes depending on the situation.
Waxes, for instance, when I arrive sweatily for my mostly-grad student lit theory class, where everyone sees me tether my bike to the banister near the side entrance to Friedl; where I fit in among the other hipster, somewhat outcasty students that neomarxist professors attract.
Wanes, when I bike to Sanford to a public health class comprised of more neatly-kempt and older graduate students in Public Policy, and then I suddenly don’t feel too good about my sweat-drenched t-shirt in a room of pressed oxfords and business casual.
There’s also a middle ground between pride and embarrassment, a kind of ambivalance I feel during the awkward moments when I teeter to one side on my bike at stop signs because I am too short, or kind of half-collide with the handrails of long wheelchair ramps with unfortunate 90-degree turns. On the one hand I think these awkward moments of clumsiness are funny, but I also consider the idea that if I literally am the only one laughing at myself, maybe it isn’t so funny any more, in retrospect.2
Some of my discoveries are fortunately less neurotic in nature; I am, for instance,
thrilled by the new geographic discovery and mastery I’ve begun to encounter on campus. Duke University (West, Central, East) finally makes sense to me as a connected whole, and is now open to me to experience seamlessly, instead of being ushered to preordained destinations and departure points caused by the bus system. Even driving one’s own car requires a similar situation, that makes you shuffle between overcrowded parking lots closest to Perkins or the Bryan Center or wherever you’re headed.
This romantic new conceptualization is going to be short-lived. Once average temperatures drop below 60, my currently trusty-and well-loved biked will start to hibernate and, I imagine, experience self-loathing and jealousy of Dan’s two Iromnan-caliber bikes which will continue to receive the validation of his frequent, adoring use.
1 Plenty of people at Duke know about the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.
2 I once read a study suggesting that most narcissists don’t rate themselves high on a psychological narcissism scale, but their friends do. As a narcissist, I’m troubled by two factors possibly contrary to my self-assessment as such: that I am vocal and conscious of my supposed narcissism; and that I am self-deprecating and find my embarrassments entertaining. On the other hand, I am certain that a genuine narcissist would create a loophole of this sort that allows himself to self-congratulate for awareness of a so-called character deficit and that his embarrassments are somehow captivating and attention-worthy for everyone else; and aren’t these thoughts only further testament to the deficit in question? This is thoroughly confusing, obviously.
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