Last week I had a dream that I was riding an old mountain bike built up with period correct parts, to the Othello station to catch a train early one morning, so early it was still dark outside. It may or may not have been my bike but it was black and it was steel and it was old and it was a real smooth ride until I got a flat and just when I realized that, the other tire was going flat too. When I got to the station I leaned the bike against a stainless steel railing with safety glass below it and then I went inside somewhere. Somewhere that may or may not exist in reality because it was all a dream and hard to describe. I spent some unspecified amount of time in that somewhere place doing some unspecified things and when I came back outside, the bike was gone. I had a huge sinking feeling and said, this is what it feels like to get your bike stolen. Then I heard a few voices yelling my name and I turned around. They said, hey, we got your bike over here. But I couldn’t see the bike because it was beneath a pile of baked goods, pastries, cakes and desserts. Piles and piles of them, stacked, all individually wrapped, presented in clean white boxes and clear plastic cases. I thought to myself, what the fuck is this? What are you doing with all this shit and why would you pile it all up to obscure a bike? The bike that may or may not have been mine. Help me move all this. I’m going to miss the train, I thought out loud. As we unloaded all the cakes and pies. The train pulled up and I missed it because the bike was still mostly covered in baked goods. Then I woke up. I think. What day is it?
About 6 or 8 hours before that, in what some people call reality, so called real life, daylight hours or actual events. I got on a southbound train in the U district, and there was Gigo, who I’ve only seen two or three times in the past 12 years. I said shit, do you always take this train? He said, yes but usually later. And I said, me too but usually earlier. We sat staring at our bikes hanging on the bike hooks and talked about Seattle history, Seattle messenger history, legal messenger work then and now, bikes, bike collections and bike parts and the accumulation of “stuff” all the shit that piles up when you live somewhere for a long while. We talked all the way to the Othello station where he got off.
There is no doubt my conversation with Gigo was the root of the dream I had. The photo above is one of his bikes around 2006ish. He told me he’s built it up now with much better parts and it’s just one in his collection of many. But I’m not really sure about all those cakes and pastries.
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