The Urban Time Trial

Chicago, 1988

In 1987 I started work on a novel I’ve never finished, and never managed to stop myself fiddling with, either. Here’s a version of the opening scene.

I do the urban time trial. It's an under-appreciated sport, not recognized by the United States Cycling Federation. Unlike an ordinary time trial, which typically follows an out-and-back route on an isolated rural road that has been closed, blockaded, and sometimes even cleaned for the event, an urban time trial happens in the city at rush hour. No rules govern the safe conduct of the sport. Traffic laws are selectively observed, since Chicago cops aren’t concerned about bicyclists.

My apartment window overlooks Roosevelt Road, a gritty street pushing from western suburbs through the city, halting at Grant Park near Lake Michigan’s shore. Roosevelt Road wakes me at night rumbling beneath delivery trucks, and it supports currents of traffic that suck me to work in the morning and spit me out later on. Most people who know Roosevelt Road spend as little time on it as possible. But I embrace the daily challenge, getting to my job as quickly as possible. The twenty-five minutes between Oak Park and Chicago's Loop are the best of my day.

Today my legs are shaved, my Masi tuned. I want a new record time. Ten miles. Previous record: 24:37.

There is no wind. I circle among cars, watching for the green arrow two blocks ahead to go yellow. It will, four seconds before the main light turns green. I avoid looking at drivers inside cars, but I know they are looking at me. My heart idles. Coasting nearer the intersection, I go to the drops, feel the handlebar tape. Today I'll do it. It is all I need care about now.

Yellow. The Masi's tubes flex, make a sound as I stand off my saddle. I'm at the intersection before I let go my first breath and the light is green maybe half a second before I hit the crosswalk, which is where I press the start button on my Cateye Solar cycle computer. There's snot on my mustache and I feel maybe a beat slow. My butt brushes the saddle and I shift, stand forward, knees bumping elbows, chin inches from the handlebar. Speed 32 mph, cadence 117.

I'm riding the dark strip between the solid yellow lines, and I pass a string of cars going in front of Fitzgerald's. It's five minutes to Cicero Avenue, and if I can keep this pace the light will be green when I get there. Targeting that green light, I like imagining I can burn the calories I drank at Fitzgerald's last night. Then I'll ease off a little.

In graduate school I had a professor who was kind of a flake. He took the El into the city each day from Evanston. So did a lot of professors. So did I, when I lived up that way. This guy said he liked the long train ride because it was great for meditation. Each morning he would take a seat on the Express and fix his eyes on a rivet or a dot in some graffiti, and let his eyes go to slits and focus his entire awareness on that spot as if to memorize it, burn it into the concave canvass at the rear of his skull.

I concentrate on a similar spot each morning during my commute, but this spot is nothing you can see. It's the spot, usually just beyond reach, where my heart nears 195 beats per minute, 200, and the split between my body and my Masi is gone. Sound is lost. Vision is a lightning strobe succession of traffic snapshots. Semaphore truck brokenglass cop pothole taxi sewergrate gravel tincan TransAm CTAbus DONTWALK drunkpedestrian and each image is processed for the bodybike's response and is behind and forgotten. The strobe oscillates between chest and eyes and is painful in a satisfying way. Whenever the pain stops, I get off my saddle, chase it down.

Through a yellow-red light, a horn breaks in, sprint to sneak in front of the truck. It may have nicked my rear tire. To make a new record I'll keep my average speed at 25 mph and only focus on that spot in my head or chest or in front a little bit.

The next light is red. I coast fast to the intersection between lanes of cars. At the front of the line is a People's Gas truck. I balance, my fingers on the truck’s side panel. The driver, a black man with a gold earring and a couple of teeth to match, sees me in his side mirror and doesn't seem to mind. I press Cateye buttons. Average speed 29. The light is slow to change, and the liquid-crystal number on the computer changes: 28. I suck huge breaths. I can feel my quads stiffening.

Green. I let the truck pull ahead. It jerks hesitantly while the driver shifts. I tuck in behind and switch to my large chainring while the driver shifts again. Drafting, I stay within three feet of the white painted step of a bumper. The acceleration seems slow, but in two blocks we’re going 35. Every couple of blocks I drift left, poke my head around the truck to peek ahead—if this guy stops too fast, I'll be wrapped around his axle. He smiles at me in his mirror. We clear three lights.

I’m being tailgated. I look back, my face under my armpit to see whether it's a truck. I generally avoid being sandwiched on my bicycle between trucks exceeding the speed limit. Granted, small cars can crush cyclists too, but trucks make an expanded polystyrene helmet seem superfluous. It isn't a truck. It's a cobalt-blue '65 Mustang convertible with a vanity plate. I have to look again to read it, upside down: MIMICA.

Heavy brakes squeal in front of me while I'm trying to get a look at Mimica through the glare on her windshield. I cut left and see a flash of red brake light peripherally as I dart into the wind, a projectile from a slingshot. Ahead of the truck I overtake a BMW that is sneaking through the red light, keep even with it on the left, letting the car shield me through the intersection. The driver puts it to the floor to race ahead of me. Some drivers can't abide being passed by a bicycle.

The BMW is waiting at the next red light, revving. I wheelstand next to him for a few seconds, then hop the curb and circle back on the sidewalk. Mimica is idling by the curb a couple of cars back. She had to have run that red. The top is folded down and I wheelstand on the sidewalk close to the curb’s edge. If I lose my balance, I'll be in her lap. I'm tempted. Brunette, busty, she's wearing a black bikini top and a black skirt. Mounted between the bucket seats is a cellular phone. In the back seat there's a cooler and towels, a bottle of tanning oil. I'd like to say something, I don't know what, but the light changes, and then she looks at my legs, maybe my bike, and lets go the clutch. I drop off of the curb behind her. There's a bumper sticker:

How's My Driving? 1-800-EAT-SHIT

My chuckle makes me cough.

Mimica's car accelerates smoothly through the intersection. I'm coughing, but I stand forward and push to catch her. My chain is still on the large ring, and getting momentum again in too large a gear is painful, but I want to draft Mimica.

I can't do it. My cough makes me choke—I’ve inhaled some saliva. I have to downshift, and Mimica stays ahead. I think she was watching me in her mirror, but it's hard to be sure because of these white sunglasses she's wearing. I sit up, let a few cars pass while I take a squirt of water, try to get into a decent rhythm to carry me to the next light, a good stretch ahead. I'm losing time now and need to recover. I'll have to time the lights perfectly or catch a good long draft behind someone.

I'm losing focus. I'm looking at flags to see the wind, and I'm paying too much attention to the road surface, swerving to avoid small potholes that don’t matter. I see the green light at the next intersection, but the DON'T WALK light, the color of a tequila sunrise, is flashing. I sprint, sort of, to just make it while the light is yellow, and I relax again, almost coasting through the intersection. I shift up one cog and try to bring my cadence back near 100, look for a rhythm to recover with—there’s still a chance at the record if I can get my rhythm back before I reach Halsted Street, and if I can time all the lights through the Loop.

I can see Halsted now, three intersections ahead. The light there is green, but the two before it are red. Average speed 24.9. I have to gain a tenth of a mile per hour between here and the finish. I wait for the first light to change and the second one is still red when it does, and I coast between the first and second lights, and when the middle light finally changes, the light at Halsted is still green so I go like mad. I put my head down to the bar and pull. I can feel my shoelaces with the tops of my feet.

I've got concentration again and the road is burning away under my tires and then it turns silver around the edges of my vision and the whole black road surface turns silver, then white and I look up—the light at Halsted is red, I didn't even see the yellow, and I'm already past the painted crosswalk lines—more than 30 miles an hour—and someone next to me, behind, yells "Hey!" and I'm going to be broadsided by a rusting Chevy with metallic green paint. I put my head down, accelerate so hard my knees are going to pop, and I feel the Masi frame and handlebar flexing. A rush of air goes heavy over my back before I hear the horn and the rubber shriek of cars trying to halt and my cadence is over 140 because my gear is too low and I wish I had time to shift and somehow I'm through the intersection and nothing hit me and I shift to my highest gear to maximize this great adrenaline rush.

The adrenaline carries me the rest of the way on Roosevelt to where I make the only turn this urban time trial route has, left onto Canal Street, which will take me the last mile or so north to the finish line at Steve's Deli on Randolph, a block from the building I work in.

I haven't missed a light, and I feel strong hammering up the small incline in front of the main Chicago post office after the turn. Then I'm under the bridge, up another short hill to Franklin, through a couple of lights and in front of Union Station. I love this final stretch. At River Place crowds stand on the curbs and sidewalk watching to catch busses and taxis. The street's about five lanes wide here and I command the center lane, out in front of a convoy of taxis. The road is mine. Everyone watches. Many of the same people have watched each morning all summer.

Most of a block ahead the light is yellow. I'm flying. I don't even have to change my pace—I make it through easily. But traffic is backed up ahead—new construction at Washington—there isn't an open lane. I choose a line between a cab and a UPS truck without slowing. The truck’s mirror tags my jersey shoulder. I coast, picking my way between vehicles. I pound on the door of a car that nearly takes me out starting to switch lanes.

Time: 24.30.2. Less than seven seconds to finish. I can see the Steve's Deli sign, yellow and red above the tops of the cabs and cars, but there’s no open space where I can sprint. Streams of pedestrians are mucking up traffic in front of me, crossing from the Northwestern Train Depot. “Coming through!” I yell, dicing my way into a mass of jaywalkers. I pounce over the crosswalk lines at Randolph in front of Steve's and press the stop button. 24:45.7. Nine seconds off.

There are no cars in the tunnel where Randolph passes under the train viaduct, and I take the middle of the lane, sitting up, arms across my chest. The light is green at Clinton, so I coast out of the tunnel into the bright intersection. I stare at the black liquid crystal numbers on my Cateye.

A cab honks behind me and, startled, I pull on the handlebar, and the bike leaps to the right. I grab the drops and pedal hard, trying to power through my sudden turn, but I've angled too steep, and I feel the Masi's wheels slip, then bounce sideways. Both wheels slide out and my right fist, still gripping the bar, hits the street first. I tumble and my helmet slams backward hard against a chrome bumper.

Blind, vision is pure white-hot ringing static and the roaring brightness in my ears crushes me to the street. Someone is trying to help me up, but my bike is tangled between my legs. The first thing I see again is my feet twisting themselves from my pedals without sound. I struggle to stand, lean on the car I hit, yank the bike onto the sidewalk. I say I'll be okay because I think I heard someone ask. I find my helmet's buckle, pull the shell off, let it drop to the street, and some of the deafening roar falls away with the helmet, a hollow, plastic clatter on asphalt.

On the sidewalk my Masi's handlebar points away from the front wheel, the stem twisted in the front tube. My hand stings, my shoulder and hip throb. I lean off the car to pick my bike up. It seems oddly heavy—my head is light, vision still hurts, and now I recognize the '65 Mustang, cobalt blue and chrome burning, that I just cracked my head on, parked on Randolph in front of the building I work in

.