Andrew Titus – Page 8 – Kent Fackenthall

By Whatever Means Necessary

Sunday morning I was supposed to get out for the usual weekly ride with Titus, but it was pouring rain. We decided hesitantly to pull the plug. I don’t mind the rain really – it’s terrible for the bikes and means they would require more attention post ride – but when you get pretty much soaked and/or completely saturated within 5 minutes of leaving, it gets to be a drag really fast.

The TLDR version is I should have gone anyway.

The rest of my day went downhill from there – and my day started pretty early. So there was still a lot of downhill left.

Titus texted me later:

Titus: This one time, 
I'm glad we didn't go. 
It's still raining 
and it's cold and I 
am sore everywhere 
from farming.

Me: If you say so. 
I wish I'd gone. 
I should know better 
by now.

Titus: In all honesty, 
I live by that whole 
"one corrective 
action" philosophy...
it just so happens that 
for once it was the 
right thing to do 
to stay put.

Me: I should have learned, 
maybe have learned 
now that whenever I can 
ride bike, I should ride 
bike. Rest of my day has 
been shit. I should have 
gone even if it was just 
getting on my stupid bike 
with a basket and fenders 
and gone for coffee.

Titus: Sorry to hear that.

I have a bunch of bikes and quite the assortment of specialized and technical gear and apparel. Sometimes that all doesn’t matter. I’m always telling people asking me about gear or getting started cycling – “don’t worry about all that stuff. Just ride your bike. In whatever way you’re comfortable. If you’re not comfortable, you’re not going to ride and continuing to ride is the important part.” It’s still easy for even me to get caught up in all the trappings and bullshit.

Titus and I have developed simple philosophy/credo by which we feel most, if not all, of life can be navigated: ride bikes

As evening came and darkness was descending, the skies had somewhat quieted and my stir crazy was at a fever pitch. I basically jumped on a bike in what I was wearing and headed out. I texted Titus from the ride:

Me: Full Dirtbag Hoodride 
in effect. Hoodie, ball 
cap. Zero fucks given. 

Me: Considering an 
addendum to the Credo: 
Always.

Me: Always. Ride. 
Fucking. Bikes.

Titus: 'struth. 
By whatever means 
necessary.

To the 5 Boroughs

For the most part any non-paved trails or trails in the woods are still snow-covered. The roads and shoulders are in terrible shape. Wet, crumbling, full of potholes. So we do ‘road’ bike rides on our mountain bikes this time of year. Doesn’t ruin your road bike, you don’t spend all your time fixing flats in skinny tires and, the most enjoyable benefit, when you find a big long, muddy dirt or gravel road, you can see where it goes.

My compatriot Mr. T. and I had a rough idea of a route to visit 5 neighborhoods local to us. Our ‘homage’ to the Beasties record, if you will, check it out.

Because Titus Says So

I am gonna sit here an write this because Titus told me to I don’t know why. I don’t know why I’m writing or what to write about.

I don’t believe in blogs anymore. There are too many blogs. Blogs are dead. Blogs are news magazines. Blogs are old news. Some blogs are fake news. I can remember when there were no blogs. People used to sit and write in their journals and keep shit to themselves. Now we have to tell everyone and it’s become increasingly difficult to find anything worth reading. I’ve returned to books.

I don’t have anything to say. At least nothing that someone else probably hasn’t said already on one of the 350 million Tumbler blogs alone on the internet. More WordPress blogs. Blogspot. Blogger. Blot. Squarespace. Millions. Millions of words and people who want to be heard. Are they getting what they want? What they need? Do they know?

I’ve felt compelled lately to start writing and posting to my blog again. My glob. My glob of words and nonsense. I don’t know why. Few people will read it. I’m not interested in stats. I’m not interested in page views. I’m not really interested in validation through comments. Or confirmation. Or trivial argument. Or “yeah, I feel you dude’s”. This is not an affront to my past commenters, it’s just that social media picked up that comment thread – literally – and wore it the fuck out. For all intents and purposes comment threads are the dumpster of the internet. I’m convinced it’s the worst possible way to engage with anyone on a serious level. You want discourse, email me – and let’s get it on – old school style. Make sure you bring some well thought out and fully composed sentences and paragraphs. Check your damn spelling and punctuation. REREAD what you’ve written for clarity and content. Make sure it MAKES SENSE. If I wanted sentence fragments spouted from your thumbs while you’re in the process of taking a dump I’d have stayed on Twitter.

I’m not interested in my old posts. No one is really. No one goes back and reads old blog posts. I don’t anyway. Not mine. Not anyone else’s. When was the last time you did? We don’t have the time. We are about now. About economy. About disposability. We’ve got notifications to attend to. We read words and if they don’t instantly capture us, we dump them and move on. We don’t even read whole blog posts anymore unless they are confirming what we already believe, filling a need, creating a warm fuzzy feeling or in some other way validating us. If you don’t have your reader by the short and curlys in the first sentence. You’ve lost them. They’re gone. They just went and bought something online. They’ve forgotten about you. I think I will start making posts just a sentence long. And overwriting the previous one. It’s there, then it’s gone. You either get it or you don’t. It’s an instant.

Maybe Titus is right. I just start writing with no idea at all and came up with an idea. Just because I felt like I needed to write. I had some ideas whirling in my head earlier today thatI thought were going to compose a post and none of them made the cut. I don’t know where they are now. Really, when you think about it, that’s about all there is really, to life maybe. One sentence at a time. Call it an experiment. Call it lazy. Call it an idea that someone else on the internet has probably already come up with – but I’m too lazy to look for it.