En Bici

New York is a city that looks as it should in fall. The crisp air, the burnt colors, the hint of death in the air—these qualities fit it well. Autumn squeezes the city of life, squeezes it for life, and in that last push, it thrives.

Buenos Aires is a city that takes a summer to understand. The streets, lined with arching plain trees, the parks, dotted with those purple flowers that seem to be in perpetual bloom. It feels like a county fair at the plazas—the carousels, cotton candy, clowns, crying toddlers. The blocks hum, the outdoor tables are full—suddenly even the dog shit that covers the sidewalks seems to make sense (a few minutes under the South American sun is all shit needs to dehydrate and dehydrated shit, like dehydrated fruit, is super not-gross). It’s so almost-inoffensive that sometimes I ride my bike over it just to prove how harmless and not-nauseating it is.

My bike says Trek on every side of every tube of the frame. They’re stickers, Trek decals, masquerading a cheap no-name bici as a high performance mountain bike. I ride it everywhere, and I ride it over a lot more than dehydrated shit.

At first, I was quite risk-averse, riding slower than the cartonero in his horse-drawn cart. I was wobbly around the ripped up pavement, flustered by the speeding cars and renegade motos. I’d bump into side view mirrors and lose my balance at red lights. I’d underestimate the turning radius of a bus and then fall over trying to get out of the way. Every ride felt like one step closer to death. When people asked me if I listened to music while I biked, I said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

But with each passing month, I became a little more aggressive, dodging trucks and passing slow bikers, swerving around automated and human obstacles. As my legs pushed senselessly into plumes of black smoke and grime, I cursed, I yelled, que puta, que chucha, fuera the fucking bicisenda, don’t even think about crossing, I have the light, only to blow through the next.    

It was a language that translated. A circle of hate often surrounds a New Yorker in transit. She hates cars and pedestrians when biking, pedestrians and bikers when behind the wheel, and bikers and cars when on foot. Some say there are endless ways of seeing the world, especially a world over 5,000 miles from home. But on a bike there are really only four. It’s a beautiful simplification. The streets, the city, the world—all seems digestible at 15 m/hr.

It was just after 2 am and I was twenty minutes from home when it started pouring. Biking through a thunderstorm requires a special sort of masochism. Pull over, I told myself, but I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, neurological firings lost somewhere between neck and hips, sandals soaked, feet slipping in straps, personal tsunamis, every part of body dripping, hair plastered against back, shirt stuck to skin, eyes squinting, stinging.