Late Night Bike Rides
Sometimes when sleep offers no interest to me I ride my bike late at night, the best hours being 2 to 3 in the morning.What I like best about doing this is the fact the the streets are completely empty giving a feeling of total aloneness.If you have seen the pilot episode of the twilight zone entitled "where is everybody?" you know what I mean.The whole thing is very surreal.I always ride in the middle of the street for two reasons 1.there are no cars on the road 2.I remember back to summer school going into 9th grade reading "rumble fish" and there being a line in there somewhere that was about walking in the middle of the street so no one can jump from the shadows and get you.I used to feel invincible doing this but lately I feel extremely parinoid.The night before halloween a year ago? I was riding pretty early 12 or 1 and rode in front of a police car which turned around to persue me.I sucessfully alluded the police by riding into a neighborhood before they saw me.That didn't deter my rides which are usually compulsory unless there are shoes to be retrieved off of telephone wires(which there are right now on beach and utica).My usual route is once or twice around the block meaning garfield to yorktown to brookhurst back to garfield but I have expanded my rides to include such far off places as the edison high school field,slater,ward and once to hamilton.The busiest street I've come across is brookhurst and by busy I mean one or two cars every 2-3 minutes or so.My absolute favorite thing to do on these rides is to ride around in circles in empty intersections namely garfield and yorktown.That is reeeealy surreal.Just going around in circles while the lights turn from red to green.One time inspired by the stereo bike I always see(usually hear)riding around,maybe you've seen him too,he told me one time I saw him stopped that that sound system he has taped to his bike cost him $800,anyways I took along musical accompaniment in the form of robert johnson moaning "crossroad blues" over and over on my hand held tape recorder.That was the night we went to texas this last time.I did that the year before sans music and my chain kept breaking.The only really scary thing I've seen so far on my bike was a guy who flashed his brights at me and honked apparently because I was riding on the side of oncoming traffic,which seems like a really dumb thing to do if you think about it.So that and the police add to paranoia now.I haven't gone out in awhile and depending on my mood it might be a long time before I do again.