I wasn’t in the market for grips, but I guess these grips were looking for me. If the first stage is denial then the next first stage is reaching out to Steve Maluk because these silicone grips will always and forever and forever and always remind me of Steve. He talked them up and stocked them up in the shop at Bike Works when we both worked under that 501(c)(3) ten years ago or so.
I actually had a pair of these grips on the Allez once upon a time. In a tasteful understated gray grey way. But they were sliced off when I ditched the thumb shifters.
But anyway as I was aimlessly loitering in Recycled Cycles in a former bike messenger now government worker asking Andy Voight if he’s my Bucky kind of way this past take-your-baby-yoda-to-work-day afternoon around 2:22 when I saw these grips and I picked them up only to take that photo for Steve in a thinking-of-you Hallmark Card kind of way. As I was ham-fisting a thumby text message to express those thoughts, in-walked Steve G and the entire Bike Works posse on their Seattle bike shop bike ride tour du jour. It was a big ball of Bike Works energy bouncing on Boat Street for one brief shining silicone moment.
I’m not making this shit up.
Then I bought those grips and put them on this bike.
There are only 5 points of contact on a bike: hand-hand foot-foot & ass. So why not float those points on something that brings you joy. ESI 100% Silicone grips made in the USA. Platform pedals and a WTB saddle.
I like to think that it’s possible to send out telepathic messages to people through the earth, through time and space. And I’ll go with that thought and sometimes I feel like backing it up with a photo and or a text.
Like when I see a #56 Lawrence Taylor jersey and think of Koshalla
Or all those produce PLU # rubber bands that say Catarina
And “Pour Some Sugar on Me” will always say Sara G
Or in my inner ear, I’m hearing “you can do it” from 02 Joey in his Corky voice
Or 33 John saying “just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…” repeating repeatedly
Or a vivid dream featuring my old pets Brad or Skunk or Jody or Buppy or Wendy, just checking in, saying HEY. Across time and space and modes of existence, speaking from the hereafter.
Those telepathic messages are flying around all the time. But most of us are oblivious to them. However, some of us can tune into them sporadically, and when we do, it’s amazing. Like a crystal clear blast from the past in the middle of the AM dial that comes in for a while just outside Ellensburg and then it fades to static once again.
If anyone could tune in to those types of messages it was Aldous Huxley. But that’s another story.
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