Thursday Night Track Racing at Ed Rudolph Velodrome, Northbrook, IL. June 5th 2008.

The little strip mall that sits at the corner of Clark and Montrose sees me on regular occasion — sometimes I head to the 7-11 for something or for the once-in-a-blue-moon Subway sandwich but lately it’s been the Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins (known henceforth as the DD-BR) that’s drawn The Girl™ and I there.

Last night, after seeing Zach celebrate his 28th at the Hopleaf, we dropped in at the DD-BR for some post-celebration sweets. Hot Chocolate for her, a scoop of whatever caught my eye for me.

We’ve become familiar with the crew at the DD-BR having dropped in a lot in the past few weeks at about the same time. There’s a tall, lanky fella who’s a couple cousins removed from Napoleon Dynamite (in a good way) crossed with long hair and would soon prove me right in a bit. The other fellow is a mild-mannered older guy who’s been nice to me with free and extra hook-ups on whatever it is I’m getting.

As I’m paying for our sweets, the tall dude asks me what kind of hat I’m wearing. It takes me a few seconds to consider his question — does he mean the helmet Im wearing or the cycling cap underneath it?

I point to the hat, “This one?”

“Yeah. It looks familiar.”

“It’s a cycling cap, made by a guy in Wisconsin.”

“Yeah, it reminds me of a hat.”

“Huh…”, not knowing what he means.

“You know the guitarist in AC/DC?”

Oh. “Angus Young? The schoolboy hat he wears? Oh yeah!”

“Exactly, that’s what the hat reminds me of.”

“Ah, cool. Awesome. Thanks and see you guys soon.”

It all makes sense now. Dude is totally a rocker.

“Why can’t they get some natural lighting in here?” I wondered to myself.

The fluorescent lighting above lent only more of a feeling of despair and dinginess to the small room that I waited in. It had some upsides though. A trash can that was wood paneled¹ that I would have loved to have taken home. The old school blood pressure gauge that is so concise and simple yet bold with its burnt amber number wheel that it made me ponder why we have to make things look so stupid and 3D these days with depth². Maybe flat is the new black.

The doctor was all business. He poked me here and there. Made sure my breathing was up to snuff and that all other bits were working well. He wrote some things down then debriefed me. The nurse would take me away to administer injections and draw some blood.

I’ve never been shy of needles or having blood drawn. It has been said that I have a relatively high pain tolerance. I’m not so sure it’s pain tolerance as much as it is a sort of resignation to getting hurt. Years of skating and now cycling have left me with my fair share of injuries and so perhaps a tolerance of some kind has built up. I don’t fight it. I like to move on, thinking about what has to be done next to get past it.

Five jabs altogether. Four had things put in me and one took things out of me. The nurse asked if I were needle-adverse. I assured her no but thought about the last time I had this many injections³ and felt confident with my response.

I was not mistaken. It was over in minutes.

¹ Makers of household items take note: make wood grain paneled trash cans. They’ll sell like gangbusters. ↩

² Gradients, drop shadows, rounded corners, et al. ↩

³ The big bicycle accident, number two in a series of three over a six-month period where I started to wonder if perhaps I was cursed for some odd reason.  ↩

I recently received the first four copies of Rouleur, the gorgeous black and white cycling quarterly put out by the British cycling gods of style, taste and elegance, Rapha.

Rapha has long held my interest — their aesthetic is exactly what I had been looking for in cycling clothing for a long time. However, their prices have caused some controversy, but I say that you’ll pay for quality anyway so while I can’t quite bring myself to buy most of what they sell, I do appreciate quality when I see it.

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