Chronicles of Procrastination.

I was facing a certain dilemma today: take Chiang the Chinese bicycle from Wal-Mart down to Wrightsville Beach, or directly engage the encroaching squalor of my apartment, concurrently cooking chicken and lentil soup. Beach versus cooking/cleaning is normally not a difficult decision for a bachelor who lives alone, but as it was four, I wouldn't have had an awful lot of daylight left by the time I got there anyway, so I decided to go with the latter. I like chicken and lentil soup, and a clean apartment allows for my continued residence in the fantasy world where some woman may actually ever set foot in it. It's like paying rent on my delusions of eligibility.

It's funny to me that I face this dilemma at all; back in Cleveland, if one were casually mulling over a trip to Lake Erie in early March, it would typically be done with fishing poles and an ice pick as prerequisites. I tend to suspect this might be why Midwesterners tend to emerge from the Winter a little, er, better fed than before. For five months out of the year, calisthenic excercise requires: A) The lunatic resolve of one training for the Winter Olympics, or; B) An expensive gym membership. The mere fact that I can hop on my bike for a ten mile round-trip ride on a sunny, 58-degree early March day, stopping midway through for a three-mile walk along the ocean is still a bit novel to me, and hence ardently indulged.

So I struck a compromise: I'd go get the mail, which would fulfill the "left the house during daylight hours" provision of my contract, and then do the cook/clean thing, stopping to inspect the bicycle, and hence entertain the idea of exercise. Surely that counts for something, no? But what I was struck by when I did look at Chiang was what's up with all the silly decals they put on new bikes? It's as if they're giant Hot Wheels toys, requiring every conceivable adornment to capture and hold the attention of an eight-year-old. Would anyone actually buy a car with that many stickers on it? In fact, I believe the principle operates in reverse in the automotive world: the more stickers on a vehicle, the less its sale value; hence the '72 Volvo with 119 political slogans cleverly arranged to cover the rust holes being worth about $75.

So I decide that the really silly ones have got to go, and I use the car standard to decide which ones qualify: if it would look ridiculous on a car, off it comes. Item one: "three speed, coaster brakes," on the rear chain guard. I had no sticker on my Honda announcing "five speed-manual, front ABS." Away with it. Item two: decal near front forks announcing "aluminum frame." Nope, never seen a Corvette sporting a "fiberglass hull" bumper sticker. It's gone. After several more of these informative stickers, I begin to wonder if bicycle manufacturers save on printing owner's manuals by substituting decals explaining every function and specification. By the time I'm done with the infograms, I'm left with nothing but these silly looking decorative arrowhead patterns on the crossbar and forks and the serial number info, which is supposed to be engraved into the frame so people don't steal your bike, but is of course here instead an easily removed decal.

The patterns go, the manufacturer's info sticker stays. I now have a pocketful of crinkled plastic, a tuff-looking, minimalist, Euro-style $99 Chinese street bike, and have squandered a half an hour of my time. The house is still a mess and I haven't started on my paper.

God, I need a job and some friends here before I go off my head. Off to tend the chicken and lentil.