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Before the trip Ben and I made a final bicycle gear order together. Or rather: I made the order, Ben just told me what he wanted. We purchased arm warmers (brilliant) and biking sunglasses. The arm warmers were easy to pick out: Ben had already tested out the size at his local bike shop. They were cheaper online, so he put them back on the shelf and waited — good little frugal frannie that he is — to order them from a cheaper retailer. The biking glasses were not available for pre-order testing so we gambled: Ben picked his and I picked mine and — though we may not be competitive in terms of racing we are in terms of quality of gear — Ben’s were nicer.

“I got the glasses today,” I told him over the phone a week before departure. “And though it pains me greatly to say it I must be honest: you win. Yours are better.”

“Ha ha!” He shouted, “I knew it! Victory is mine! I have won!” And then he set the phone down for a moment to do the traditional dance: I Have Better Gear Now Than You Do.

I waited patiently.

When he came back to the phone, slightly out of breath from dancing, I said:

“I’ve already returned mine and they are sending me new ones, just like yours. They will be here tomorrow.”

Ben was silent for a moment.

“Well, I hope you got a different color.”

I did. Mine were blue and his were grayish-silver. I cared for mine well enough, but Ben spent hours each day cleaning his in whatever running water was available. He was forever scrubbing the lenses until, I feared, he wore them down to a point where they stopped protecting his eyes from the sun. I laughed at him and called him names and rubbed linseed oil on the lenses when he wasn’t looking any chance I could. But he was not discouraged. Back he would go to his fountain of water and scrub away hopelessly only to have them spoiled by sweat within the first fifteen nanoseconds of putting them back on his face.

And this is something I cannot understand but it is in not understanding it that I understand Ben better.

Which is to say: not at all.

On the Art of the Post-Prandial:

The first thing anyone embarking on a post-prandial slumber should know is that waking up from a post-prandial nap is always unfortunate. Getting back on your bike and beginning to pedal is futile. Nothing works. You can’t see straight; you can’t feel your legs; you can’t even coast down a hill. In knowing this, you must embrace that you are setting yourself up for misery and then let go of this attachment and embrace the moment’s rest. This is the key to the post-prandial.

We pulled out of Enumclaw and pedaled on a straightaway so slowly we thought all the bearings in our bikes had been replaced with molasses and lead and that the earth’s gravitational pull had moved from below us to behind us. It was the post-prandial. The mid-day slumber. The Saturday snooze. The sandman sandwich. The silly sleep-fest. The sorry to have woken you but you must be now be punished for your slovenly habits.

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