Pilder, a writer with a pointed blog, has honed his outlook on the polar glimpses the job provides, from Columbia Center's 72nd floor to Third Avenue's homeless men. And from spending as much time in elevators as in the saddle, listening to absurdly intimate conversations or countless versions of the same question: "Is it raining?"
"That's the worst question you can ask a messenger that's soaking wet," he said. "Just because you don't have windows in your work, you ask me if it's raining. Of course it's raining."
--it's in the PI or it was 2/25/08
That’s not a top tube pad, that's a TaylorMade golf umbrella. A country mile long and wider than your wingspan, ziptied to the bike. The extended toptube effect VanMoof’d in my shorts. But like Alistair said, it got me home. Russell said it might not make it past the bike rack at Big Time and I agreed with him in a karmic comes-around-goes-around on the Ave kind of way…
I didn’t take the photo to share with you. I took it to see if it would make it past the Big Time bike rack. I took it to commemorate a calendar date like: remember that one time I found a fucking golf umbrella leaning on a dumpster and I grabbed it? Then I spent three weeks thinking about how I’d get it home? Kinda like this and like that and like this
And then?
No and then
And then?
No and then
And then it set off a sequence of memories when I finally ziptied it on for the ride home and it actually made it past Big Time…
I used to talk shit about umbrella’d peds downtown. As I was a soaking wet messenger with rain dribbling into my eyes off of whatever I happened to have on my head and then on down into my mouth contributing to the various postnasal drip tributaries that were dripping down as well. I’d mumble to myself “I hope your hair doesn’t get wet as you make your way from your parking space to your office door”
I visualized various methods of schlepping this thing home, zip ties, toe straps, sticking out of my backpack, or wearing it like Conan across my back. Not that Conan. THAT Conan. The guy that lived in the Mohawk Apartments at 13th & Jefferson in the late 90’s. The guy with the incredible Italian steel road bike collection. The guy that rode one of those sweet bikes to get Korean food on Broadway every single day with a fucking sword on his back. That guy. Yeah that guy. Peloton Cafe cannot help but absorb some of Conan’s mojo. The Mitten coffee shop, even more so. I just hope it’s the sweet Italian lugged steel vibes, not the weird whacko sword toting vibes.
The one and only truing stand I own is an old old old Park Tool version that I got from 09 Dave. 09 lived in the Mohawk Apartments in the late 90s before we both got jobs at Elliott Bay Messenger Company. Dave developed a friendly bike-like chit-chat relationship with Conan and got a few hand-me-down bike tools and tidbits from him. Like the truing stand that he passed on to me. 29 years later it’s gathering dust in my garage.
I’m still not an umbrella guy. A Seattle resident for 34 years, I do not reach for an umbrella on the way out the door. But this fucking golf umbrella got my attention because I’m a soccer dad these days. There have been a few soccer games where I’ve watched Junior-Junior play, standing completely still for 2+ hours in pouring rain. In my so-called rain gear. Soaked. Cold and fucking soaked. And not in a bike messenger way. In a stationary soccer dad super saturated sad sack spongey way…
This thing is HUGE. It’s made for fucking golfers but now it’s made for standing still in Woodland Park on the sidelines watching Junior-Junior’s soccer game in the rain.
Is it raining?
