I get off work at midnight usually and bike down the empty boardwalk with the black sea to the west of me. I can't see it, but if I hold my head to the side when ride so the wind's not rushing past my ears i can hear it sometimes, if the water's really moving. If each wave is taking sand away with it, I hear the crashing, muffled through the night air.
It's brisk, nice for a ride home. Really it's always nice for a ride home, save for the rains, but it almost never rains in Venice. Even this, an El Niño year, has been only a handful of days, maybe two. Besides that, I'd been at another job recently, and I was in my car mostly. It was one of those jobs that you take on a leap with an uncertain step and like an albatross slowly circle back to the one that you love.
Now I'm back and it feels like magic. It's hyper-nostalgia of all the things I remembered; the people, the weirdos, the workspace. The life on Windward at night, it's a Friday. I usually just ride by, sometimes slowly to see the people in their line at Townhouse, see if I recognize a soul. I rarely do nowadays. I'm getting old, I guess. The kids smoking cigarettes in the street look like high-schoolers, and honestly the last thing I want to do after work is queue up at a desperate sweaty bar entrance. I used to love that place. Oh, well. I used to love a lot of things.
At the intersection of Windward and Pacific, I swing over to the side by the curb to look into The Bank for an old friend. She still works there, I think, but apparently not tonight. The light's red. People and cars are swirling around me, and through the din and unfocused clutter, I man rides up next to me on a road bike, like poof! - out a nowhere and he stops next to me and says, "Hey, that's a nice lookin' ride you got there! Schwinn World Sport, an oldie!"
There's a snap and I come to out of the dreary daze of solitude to respond with a pause and, "Yeah, thanks man! I wish I would a taken better care of it. It was in mint condition when I got it two years ago."
"Well it still looks good to me, man. Good find." We sit there on our bicycles, and we talk. The light turns green and then red again, and then the young bucks and anxious ladies cross diagonally to the far corners and across, then green again, then red again. He's a delight. An older gentleman, white hair, but strangely he's young in the eyes and speaks quick with spirit. In fact, he looks like Sir Richard Branson in that split second whenever I happen to blink at him. He tells me about his bikes on the boat he lives on in the Marina, and about collecting and projects that fall by the wayside. Something resonates. I can relate. I tell him about my surfboards, but not about my writing. Then red, then green again.
"That's my light," I say. "I just got off work, I'm heading home."
"All right. It was really good talking to you."
"Likewise brother." I shake his hand with a smile.
We both start cranking, slowly at first in low gears. We both cross Pacific neck-and-neck, ahead of the pedestrians, and I laugh a little to myself. Goodbyes are always a delight when you both leave in the same direction. Jokingly I yell, "Oh, we're racing now!"
He smiles a wide Richard Branson smile. "It's been a couple years since I raced, I'm up for it. To Abbot Kinney then?"
I look at him, "You're on." So I push down hard on the pedals, even stand in the saddle for a few strokes to catch a quick rhythm. We fly around the circle, past Hama, and when I look back, he's right there at my eight o'clock on the same beat. I can't help but start laughing.
I'm in the right place again.
