notes, scraps, snaps, and marginalia

For me, pens are a means to ends, more commodity or disposable tool than cherished object, especially when I’m reporting, scribbling notes, just trying to get the elusive thing down before it vanishes. I appreciate that people can be pen people, and I don’t dismiss that kind of pleasure, the kind that starts with ownership and deepens with knowledge, which exists for me with typewriters, bicycles (and, to some extent, stuff like tires and bar tape), wine openers, shoes, vinyl, caps, flasks, a few other objects probably. It’s not that any pen will do in any old situation (though, yeah, when you absolutely need to get a scribble down you’ll find a way, and some of my best written captures have come with the worst-working implements): I have some favorite types and kinds, from telescoping pens good for travel and carrying in my pockets, to bad-weather pens, to long-lasting pens, to ones that will feel okay in my hands for hours. But those are types and my loyalty is to the function rather than the specific item. For editing, I’ve come, after thirty years in the trade, to like a simple, capped pen of average length and width, round, with a bold stroke, and that’s cheap enough to not matter when I leave them all over the office or carry one home, or lose one from my back pocket while I ride, or otherwise mislay and mistreat them. I’d had a good run of a couple years with a model put out by Pilot, then the company either discontinued it or pulled it from the catalog my company buys office supplies from. For months I’ve been trying pens to find a new editing go-to, and just a day or so ago I settled on this one, the Pentel Sign Pen, a black fiber tip made in Japan, less than ten dollars for a box of twelve, and a thick vibrant stroke that means you’re not messing around. The amount of peace this has brought to my life might be ridiculous except for how much of that life is spent marking up pages.

And here is mine: Two-thousand-and-four was the year I saw Rapha, the first Rapha there ever was, that now-iconic original black jersey. I knew the jersey was something extraordinary. The aesthetic that we now consider established — classic without being retro, timeless without being safe, simple without being plain — was revolutionary. And the attention to detail astounded me. But it was the idea of Rapha and, later, the expression of that idea, that helped alter who I am on the bike, and in my words, and in my life. Glory through suffering. The beauty of the ugly moments. The voice of the silence we all hear. The pure, near-embarrassing yearning to be: to be aware and appreciative of the working of our body and the pack around us and every moment that mattered, and to — goddamnit — be — to actually become — that rider perched post-ride with feet on the loo in some private desolate noble despair, or to be the one looking up stricken and beatified at the cross on the hillside. I was not alone, none of us were. We had found each other. I rode better than I ever had before in my life, and I wrote that way, too, and some of that magic year, maybe a lot of it, has stuck with me, and I have never been the same. And in the way that punk was never about the clothes but cannot be prized apart from them anymore, some important and mysterious part of who I am is enmeshed with Rapha. The only real thanks I can give for that is to ride in homage to how I should have done so all along.

live with conviction, befriend with forbearance

that was fun. #bikeT 85 & done

putting embrocation & espresso together made no sense until it made all the sense there was. #bikeT 84

Assuming I make it to Monday, I'll make it to Monday. #bikeT day 83

#bikeT 82 baby!

one of the great ones made art for one of the great ones, and I got the shirt. #bikeT 81

no idea at all what the hell might even be going on with this one. So I really like it. #bikeT 80

never done the ride & not at all sure I am one, but I got the shirt so that's something. #bikeT 79

Into my final week of #bikeT. This beauty is number 78

Thing I really like about #bikeT 77 is the funny smart faux trademark superscript

Another freshie & again not at all my style but one with a message I can't say no to. #bikeT day 76

Today, finally, I looked at the stack of shirts yet to be worn and thought, "that looks short." #bikeT 75

Clearing it up: Though historically attributed to me, I never actually said, “Put me back on my #bikeT” (day 74)

I was more accidentally made than handbuilt & ain't from OR but got this judging '11 Oregon Manifest & dug the type. #bikeT day 73

you tell me. #bikeT day 72