Me and my cousin took a bike ride the other day. And as I was pathetically struggling to balance on the bike as we first went down the driveway I realized it had been close to a decade since I had ridden a bike. After a couple minutes I got the hang of it, but man those first couple minutes were embarrassing.
After a while we were weaving between trees and telephone poles and cars and I realized how much I missed bike riding. Since I’ve moved to California my life has been almost exclusively indoors. The only time I get outside is to go to the gym, visit family, occasionally go out to dinner or a movie with my father and step mother, or every now and then take a walk just to get some fresh air. All in all, I’d say I’ve spent about 95% of my conscious life indoors since I moved to California. So, as you can imagine, this long bike ride with my cousin was a much celebrated escape. Indeed, it wasn’t just celebrated, it was desperately needed.
Well everything was going great, we had ridden through some beautiful areas and made our way through two towns when we decided to take a circular route and start heading back to try to make it back to the house before dark. So we did this, dangerously riding along the side of some very busy streets (sometimes without even a bike lane) and made our way to a Panda Express restaurant. We decided to stop in front of the Panda Express for a water break. Not a minute later a white guy, dressed like a wannabe gangster, storms around the corner red faced, jumping and shouting:
”What now nigga? What now nigga? What now nigga?”
Worst of all, he was getting in the face of a Mexican man who was with his wife and daughter (and quite a few apparent gang members). Well, from around the corner came the white guy’s posse, and literally within three seconds they all started beating the living shit out of each other. It was shocking yet seemed strangely artificial. The timing seemed almost coordinated, the fighting almost like a dance. But, of course, this wasn’t no WWE championship, these boys were really goin’ at it.
My cousin, poor guy, got scared to death and insisted we ride away, while I wanted to watch (granted, they were only five feet away from us). I reluctantly agreed and rode away with him into the parking lot and looked over my shoulder. When I did I saw that the fight had broken apart, but then a black Escalade was pulling out of the parking lot. Many of the gang members were chasing after the car and throwing bottles at it and hitting the windows, and that’s the last I saw. My cousin and I quickly rode away to a nearby movie theater to hysterically and exhaustively tell my cousin’s friend all about it.
As you can imagine on the ride back we looked at every pedestrian with suspicion. But I’m happy to announce that the rest of the ride went without incident. We made it home, told the family, then collapsed on the couch. Exhausted. Yet the two hours of fresh air and vigorous exercise, the sights and sounds of different towns and cities, the intensity and fear from a gang fight, it was all real. It was all real. And that, I came to realize, is what my life has been severely lacking for a while now. So from now on, I will be taking measures to bring myself step by step back into reality, and give myself a break from the screens.
