Paul's House Diary

Yes, I bike now. It’s disgusting to think just last week I was too lazy to take a free train home from work, and regularly wasted 25 bucks on a cab ‘cus it was easier than crossing the street. It’s a new Paul, and today I stand before you a little more sore and a little more cocky – every time I make it home alive, I feel like a God. But here are the top 3 things I’ve noticed since becoming a regular, full-commute biker.

1. Allston smells really weird. You can’t really tell until you get past the Super 88 at Packards Corner. It’s not necessarily a bad weird, so much as a weirdness you can’t place. Is that Thai food or urine? Msg or sewage? Delicious or a diarrhetic? And it changes depending on what time of day it is. Coming down Comm Ave around 1 PM on a Thursday, I smelt something foreign – might’ve been food, might’ve been feces. Is it bad to say that either way it was kind of delicious? Monday night at 9:45, totally BBQ sauce, but quickly morphed into stale tuna. Living in Allston, I’ve never really noticed how different it smells here, but flying into my corner of the city on two wheels after gliding near the river and over the Mass Pike, it hits you like a vat of smelling salt. I can equate the smells of Allston to an expression that defines life’s gifts used by my friend Billy – you could get peaches, could get lunch meat – they’re both great, but you’re never jonesing for the two at once.

2. Not everyone wants to steal my bike! Who knew!  Parked that thing at Park Street, the nexus of both the most unorganized T-lines  and the cities desperate homeless, left it there for roughly 30 hours, not even a fingerprint! Hah! My bike is an undersized bright red mountainer I got at Target for $65, but I still think it’s a hotty. Chalked that one up to a fluke. Parked it at Kenmore, practically locked it to a kind homeless gentlemen, and it lived to ride Beacon Street yet again. I’m paranoid about lots of things, and this is one I can cross off my list.

3. Mountain bikes are for the mountains, not for Boston. I rode behind my girlfriend and her sick blue street machine the other morning, named Blue, and I was peddling 3 times as much as she was while the distance between us grew exponentially. I’m getting a good workout, but I am going to have unnaturally diesel calves to accompany my unnatural waiters’ shin splints. I’m too cheap to upgrade now, but Red (my ride) will not see the end of summer if I’m going to keep this stuff up.