The Initial Tune-Up

Budget: $80.90

When I walked into the bike shop, my first words to the kid were "Don't laugh." To his credit, he didn't.

"Actually," he said, "it doesn't look too bad. We'd just want to replace--" and he proceeded to list item after item, resulting in a tab of $350. Then he went off to show me some new bikes.

"I'm going on that one," I said, "and let's just do the minimum with it. What if we don't replace--" and I went off with "what if" after "what if," looking to replace only the consequential stuff.

The kid's father came in.

"That thing? ...well. That wasn't a good bike when it was new. With all the corrosion on it....and we don't even know what's going on inside....I really don't recommend putting any money into this thing."

It was good advice for anybody else. Indeed, I knew already that the money I would spend fixing this bike up along the way would total to more than buying a new one. However, I'm planning to do a lot of the fixing myself along the way, and even when I take it to a bike shop, it'll be on money I'm making as I stop, already on the road, to work. Way cooler than sitting around in Massachusetts for weeks more, making the money for a new bike. That's not the point of this trip.

Finally, the kid stopped trying to push me to spend more. "It actually isn't as bad as it looks."

I went through the whole thing with them and determined what I would need to fix in order to be able to ride it decently.

"I realize it'll never ride perfectly," I told them. "I don't expect that."

We settled on

• A general tune-up
  
• New gear cables
  
• New tubes and tires
  
• LOTS of lube and grease
  

I dropped $150. Pumped nearly all of it from a different source than my trip budget, because I want to get going with this trip faster. I'll be way stricter about the budget once on the road.

The bike should be ready by Friday, and should allow me to go some distance and be OK.

"We can't see the bearings," he told me, "so while the wheels and pedals seem to turn OK now, I can't tell you how long that will last. What worries me more is that the back wheel is so corroded that the brake pads might not be able to stop it very efficiently."

To replace a wheel, I'd be looking at about $50. About the same if I need to replace the bearings in the pedals. Not so bad, especially if I can already be somewhere well along the way when that happens.

Like everything else, it'll be an adventure.

Volunteering for Money

Budget: $88.23

At five-something AM on a Sunday morning, I found myself driving along the coast.


To my own disbelief, I was driving back to Somerville. The highways were empty, so I zipped along pretty quickly, passing by Prospect Hill where the first American flag (the Grand Union Flag) was raised by George Washington's army on January 1, 1776, and Union Square, where Union Army recruitment had taken place during the Civil War.

I had gotten a call that someone had heard I was a good, dependable worker, and wanted to know if I would be willing to work on Sunday. I figured some immediate cash couldn't hurt, given that I was in a hurry to tune up the bike.

I was sick of loading and unloading trucks in Massachusetts. I wanted to be off. I wanted to be doing it elsewhere, with the express purpose of continuing along my way within a few days. Any chance to get closer to departure was welcomed.

And thus I arrived, and found Mike already there, having also been asked to work. Since I had brought the car today, I loaded him into it and off we went.

"I'm a better man, now that I've been in prison," Mike told me on the way. "It was no fun, but some of the guys in there, they had it coming to them, and they deserved to be there, and they'll be there for life. Now I know what I'm getting if I f__k up again. Those guys, they ain't never getting out. No more p___y for them, ever. I met a guy there, he was a few years younger than me, he ain't never eaten p___y and never will. Can you imagine? I'd 'a killed myself. Well, I wouldn't 'a killed myself, but....you know."

We pulled up to Harvard stadium. I'd been told the work would be easy, so I put on my "normal" clothes. Mike had worn work clothes. It was pretty much all he had. We were there to set things up for the walk for multiple sclerosis. We walked in at the same time as some girl did, and a woman came out to greet us.

"Kara!" she yelled. "A worker and two volunteers!"

Mike looked at me and laughed. "He ain't no volunteer!"

"Oh, he's not? Sorry."

But the rest of the day, with everyone I talked to, the question that instantly came up was "Have you volunteered here before?" I didn't lie. I just said "Nope."

We worked alongside the volunteers, doing the same stuff they did, carrying boxes, tables, chairs. Hanging up banners. ("I'm a cat on ladders!" Mike said.)


Mike was constantly walking around, asking how he could help. I just chatted with "other" volunteers, and did stuff when we were asked.

"The concept of physical work is truly important in a world in which physical work is frowned upon...," someone I deeply respect recently wrote me. "I strongly believe in physical work as an enlightenment tool." When the work is hard and requires the workers to bond, I think I catch a glimpse of that. Here, being told that I'm doing a great job when I was standing around talking, I definitely wasn't feeling it. But I was having a great time.

I ate free food, and got paid for the time I spent eating it. At one point, I sat down in a chair and fell asleep, and was paid for that. Even the people who knew they were paying me treated me as a volunteer, which I really didn't understand. At one point, I actually went ahead and asked how I could help, and was told to "just chill and have fun." No problem.

----

And then came the moment when I wished I'd had the camera on and filming a video. Mike and I were approached and asked to "move the port-a-potties back into place." We went outside, and, with disbelief, saw that two port-a-potties had somehow gotten moved about 20 feet out of line. Wondering how it had happened, we moved them back. Then we just stood outside and took in the sun.

And then a strong gust of wind blew, and, as we watched with even more disbelief, a port-a-potty slid out, sped up, hit a bump and tipped over. Two other port-a-potties followed it, but, hitting no bumps, just sped up and shot along the pavement, reaching speeds greater than most people could sprint (I estimate about 20 MPH).

Mike and I started running after them, but, in a beautiful display of chaos theory at work, they went off in different directions. The air was filled with feminine screams as people ran to get out of the way of the port-a-potties. By the time the gust of wind was exhausted and the port-a-potties stopped sliding, they had gone a good fraction of a mile.

With uncontrollable, uproarious laughter, Mike and I spent a good fraction of an hour hauling the port-a-potties back to their prior location. We tied them all to each other, and then to a pair of poles, to make sure the incident didn't recur.


At the end of the day, we were told we did a great job, and paid fifty-odd dollars each. Plus we had been given unlimited food, which we had been eating all day. All for hanging out and talking to people and having fun. Not a bad deal.

Inspecting Old Rusty

Budget: $31.50

So far, transportation has been the primary difficulty in moving between cities, because Old Rusty has been in no shape to be ridden, and the negative budget didn't allow me to tune it up. Now that the budget is going positive, my first step is start first fixing up, then beefing up Old Rusty. Today I went with my little brother Dan to give it a preliminary examination, the purpose being to see if it can be ridden as far as the bike shop.


Inspection results:

• I wouldn't trust the brakes on a long trip, but they're working well enough to make it to the bike shop, where I can get new pads.
  
• The rear gears shift; the front ones don't. That's enough to get to the bike shop.
  
• The pedals and chain look awful, but turn fine. Looking awful is not a bad thing, considering it makes the bike less likely to get stolen.
  
• Once we pumped them up, the air tubes seemed OK until I actually got on the bike. Then the rear tire instantly went flat, and while the front one deflated more slowly, both tubes clearly have punctures. Therefore the bike won't make it to the bike shop.
  

So I can either get to the shop some other way, purchase tubes, and install them myself; or I could just load the bike onto a car and take it to the shop for a full tune-up, which is probably how I'll start.

Positive Balance

Budget: $31.50

Finally got one of the payments I've been expecting. I'm going to need to keep working, but I can also start really preparing for the trip now.

Building the Circus

Budget: -$318.43

I bade Amanda good-bye (nearly tearful, but probably only on my end, as I had still very recently eaten all her cereal), and, slipped out into the night. I got to the office, signed in, finally collected my check for moving furniture, and sat down to eat breakfast. I immediately attracted attention, and not just for being the only upbeat person in the room.

"Look at that guy. He has a LOAF of bread and a JAR of peanut butter."

I offered him some, but he didn't take it.

I noticed two guys speaking in Spanish. One of them, I could swear, had a Russian accent, so I jumped in and asked in Spanish where he was from.

"Russia," he said, so I switched to Russian and asked him where in Russia.

His name was Igor, and he had moved, just like my family, to Austria in the late 1980s, then to Italy, and by 1990 was living in the US. However, he had been living on these day jobs the entire time, and had learned Spanish better than English.

He switched to Spanish, saying "Spanish is now the dominant language in this country."

A guy from Honduras jumped in. "What are you talking about? English is."

"Before, it was English. Now, definitely Spanish."

He also asked me if I needed a place to stay.

"There's a pretty nice shelter on Long Island [there's a Long Island in Boston Harbor]. Just don't go to the one on Pine St. They have fights there all the time."

Then we were all called to go to Government Center to help build the Big Apple Circus that was coming to town.

----

I rode in with Mike. Mike had gotten out of jail two weeks before, after having served four and a half years for armed robbery. He was concerned about my trip.

"It's going to be an awesome time, man. Just watch out for other people. They take advantage of you."

We arrived at Government Center early and sat down to have some food. I continued working on my loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter.


Mike had worked the day before until 10 PM on the circus. He warned me that it was rough work. But it was already looking good.


I had gone to the Big Apple Circus as a kid, so I thought it would be cool to be on this end.

Mike ran ahead to talk to the guard, whom he knew from the day before, so by the time I got there he knew exactly who I was and took my backpack into his booth, saying that was the only place where it would be safe.


I was quickly put to work with another guy, carrying extremely heavy pieces of metal that were basically the skeleton of the circus seating. With a lot of trouble, we would carry them on our shoulders (I quickly learned to ignore my body posture and slouch so that it would rest on muscle rather than bone, which hurt a LOT) to where they'd need to be set up, and then, with the help of two other people, heave them into place, and secure them with pins, chains, and big steel triangles that two yet other people would bring.


At one point, when we had a moment to catch our breath, I decided to make an overture, and said "What's your name, man?"

"Scares, man," he said, and shook my hand. I didn't want to ask again, though it sounded totally off.

Eventually, later, I did say "Dude, I'm so bad with names. What was your name again?" But, with an annoyed expression on his face, he just said "Scares, man," and shook my hand again. "Scares?" I asked. Looking even more annoyed, he said "Yeah."

Later on, I saw a list of our names and learned his real name, but if Scares is what he wants to be called, that's what I'll call him. Back to when we were carrying heavy pieces of metal.

"How long have you been doing this kind of stuff?" asked Scares.

"This is my fourth day," I said. I suppressed the word "nonconsecutive" that would have been in there, for fear of sounding pretentious.

"I've been stuck in this since 2002," he said.

"Wow, that's what....seven years now?"

"Yeah."

Scares looked away and I snuck a picture of him and the rapidly assembling circus.


We were sent to haul wooden boards and load them onto the metal framework. This was much lighter work than assembling the metal framework, and provided us with a solid floor to walk on, replacing the jungle gym we had been dealing with.

Then we were sent to set in a bit more metal. And suddenly, a tractor trailer was opened up, which contained all the chairs that needed to be assembled.

Now work became hell. The chairs were attached in groups of three, which made them heavy, though much lighter than what we had been assembling into the framework. However, the chairs were SO awkward to carry that this part actually felt worse.

I noticed a man hauling the chairs who looked like he could have been a professor of mine. He also reminded me of my father.

We were ordered to drop our work and go to the white tent in the back for lunch.

The circus was looking better and better.


----

We went to the white tent and got lunch. Igor sat with me and talked. I was under the impression that he hadn't spoken Russian in a long time and wanted to. Then he went off to wander around the city with Scares and a few other guys.

I thought about joining them but then saw the guy who had looked like a professor and slid into a chair at his table with the words "What's your name?"

His name was Mark (like my father's). Immediately and with no prompting, he started telling me about what a strange place Boston is, and how, because it has so many students whose parents pay their rent and who are willing to work for very little money (or even do unpaid internships), the city, as a result, has astronomical prices and very low wages.

"Did you study econimics?" I asked.

He did, as part of his political science major at Dartmouth.

The rest of my lunch break had been decided. I kicked back, and we talked economics. How he ended up doing this sort of work is a mystery to me. But then again, my story isn't so obvious either.

----

Lunch ended and we went back to work. Igor and Scares and the rest of the guys came back too.

"Man," said Scares, quietly pointing to Igor. "What's with Old Onion Breath? I can normally handle a little, but I can't be around that guy. It's f___king disgusting. I mean, some people have bad breath, but doesn't he notice? It's f___king ridiculous. I don't ever want to work with that guy again. Someone needs to tell him. He needs to get a box of altoids. Or two."

I tried to interrupt. "What did you guys end up doing?"

He shrugged. "Walking around. Looking at hos."

We went back to work carrying chairs. I tried to position myself so that I carried stuff next to Mark. We were now talking about the differences between UNIX and MVS operating systems.

The light of the cloudy late afternoon became increasingly grayer, making the now-empty metal dumpsters strewn about look even more bland and desolate. I really didn't feel like working anymore.

At one point, I walked by Scares as he was talking to someone else. "It's like, seriously. Get that guy a breath mint. He's all the way across there and I can f___king smell it from here."

----

We unloaded the entire truck, mounted nearly all the seats, constructed the walkway that leads under the canopy. Then we were all marched outside and sent to a small trailer where we were given signed work tickets. Then all the workers were dismissed.


The circus was definitely starting to remind me of what I'd seen as a kid.


"It's weird, how small the circus is," Scares had said. "When I was a kid, I thought it was much bigger. But that was, like, 20 years ago."

I walked out of the circus tent, putting my camera away, and ended up face to face with an older worker who grinned. "A picture for the kids?"

I didn't want to explain. "Yeah."

"Show 'em the hard work that's REALLY the circus!"

----

I caught a train back up to Somerville and called Toya, the girl who was behind the desk at the office at the moment. She picked up after one ring.

"Hi, Greg!"

So now even the people who are sending me out to work for a couple of days are storing my number in their phones. WTF? I asked her if she'll be there if I drop by to get my check. She said she won't leave until I've come by.

And so come by I did. I opened the door and she smiled at me. "Hi!"

"Hi!" I said. "Thank you SO much for staying." Then I realized she was on the phone.

"You're welcome!....No, it is NOT nice to talk to you. Would you like it if YOUR own momma were trying to ignore you?"

----

She printed my check, I thanked her again, and headed for the station. I wasn't planning on coming back. I just walked and smelled the air, already feeling nostalgic, and remembering a line from Alexander Gorodnitsky: "It will become desirable and bitter in the distance, that smell of gasoline and dust...."


Bye-bye, Somerville!

Movin' Furniture

Budget: -$397.19

A past comment from Matthew Marchesi came back to haunt me today.

I walked back to the office in the afternoon and was given my work ticket, along with a pair of gloves.


I was also given vague directions to where I was going. They were so vague that I used my extra time to go to the library and get a map to figure out how to really get there. Then I set out, through miserable wind and rain, to walk what was supposed to be a couple of miles to the address.

Of course, I missed a turn, and then relied on my navigation skills—which are rather poor in the rain, when there's no sun and no stars—to follow some cross between a spiral and a zigzag to the address.

I got there first, so I started carrying TVs, couches and random marble slabs down the stairs and outside as instructed. Joe arrived a bit later and joined in. Even before he arrived, I was feeling light-headed, and wondering whether I had randomly developed some condition such that I could no longer handle physical exertion and would have to call off the trip.

But soon we'd carried everything down, the truck with the replacement stuff still hadn't arrived, and Joe asked for a drink of water. Thank God. I was normal. I asked for a drink of water too.

Two hours passed. Still no truck. Just Joe and me, hanging out. I'd started feeling hungry before I'd even arrived. I broke down and ate half of a granola bar I'd brought with me. I gave Joe the other half.

Finally, Dawn, the homeowner, told us she'd called the company and the truck wasn't coming for another 45 minutes. We went around the corner to a convenience store and I bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. The store had tables and chairs, so I sat there and had a feast. I was in heaven.

Then Joe and I walked back out into the miserable rain, watched the truck arrive, unloaded it, and carried all the stuff up the stairs.

Moving couches is awful. Moving everything else is amazingly easy. (The gloves really help, by the way.) Too bad the truck took so long that the office was closed by the time we were done, so I won't get paid until next time I show up, which will probably be Wednesday. It'll be something like $30.

It's getting frustrating to watch my budget creep downward again. I wish at least one of my clients with a balance would finally cut me a check. Perhaps the ever-so-slow Commonwealth of Massachusetts? I've been waiting for its check for a LONG time.

Got Work

Budget: -$389.61

Last night, I asked Amanda if Somerville is safe at night. She told me she walks around at night all the time, "but the east side might be a little rougher."

I smiled. "That's where I'm going!"

And so I got up at 4:30 and went out for my two-mile walk through nighttime Somerville.


And Amanda had it exactly right. As I walked eastward, I ended up on a small street that dipped down


and went into an area with shuttered houses and random people standing on street corners. After about a mile of that, I came out into places familiar from Friday.

I was there well before 5:30, but the door was already unlocked and I was only third on the list. As more guys came in, I turned a chair to face them—especially Brian, the guy who was doing most of the talking—so that I wouldn't look aloof. But I didn't talk yet. I wanted to scope out the scene.

"Luis," said Brian. "This guy—the Iron Man. He'll lift a mountain off ya." Laughter. "Mikey—worthless, he'll just talk your ear off." More laughter.

Brian pointed to me. "New guy. Don't know anything about him. If I did, I wouldn't say it, he might take out a gun and shoot us all for all I know." More laughter. "You never know with new guys. I'm just glad that light-skinned guy ain't here no more. What was his name?"

"Chris."

"Yeah, Chris. He can't never come back here no more."

Another guy perked up. "Yeah, he had bitches flyin' all over the place!" I figured out that this meant he was constantly using the B word.

"Yeah," said Brian. "And motherf___ing n____r was LAZY. He'd show up, but he wouldn't do no work. He got kicked out of a shelter, you know that? Now THAT'S rock-bottom."

A few more guys jumped in about how worthless Chris—and his whole family—were.

"Comes in in the mornin' says he drank mouthwash by accident. Didn't realize it was mouthwash." I didn't even get that at first. Turned out he'd gotten into trouble for showing up drunk.

"Can't work with those kinds of people." one guy said. "Especially if they're watching your ladder or something. Ever worked with Jim? I'll be 25 feet up on a ladder, and he's supposed to be holdin' it, and I look down, and he's takin' a walkabout."

Eventually, Brian pointed at me again.

"This guy here, probably a cop."

"He don't look like no cop."

"He's undercover."

"He don't look like no undercover cop."

"He's DEEP undercover. So undercover he's become one of us." Laughter.

"What's your name, man?"

Now was the time to stop scoping out and become part of the scene. "Greg."

"I'm goin' out to smoke a joint," said Brian. Then he looked at me. "You want a puff?.....Nah, you's a cop." And he walked out for five minutes.

My story came out pretty quickly.

"That's.....different, man. You bringing a gun?"

"Nah," I said, "the laws in the different states are pain in the ass, not worth it."

Another guy cracked up. "You tell me it ain't worth it when you's campin' out in the middle'a'nowhere and someone comes over an' says Oh, you's got a fire goin'.....hey, nice watch you got there!" We all laughed.

"You watch out," said Brian. "You're not careful, your bike'll get stolen. I locked mine up once by the train station in Quincy. Took the seat off an' carried it with me. I come back, front tire's gone, screws are gone, anything they could take off. Right in front of the train station! Still had my back tire, since I put the lock through the back wheel."

Another guy jumped in. "Me an' my friend used to steal bikes all the time. I had some nice ones. Had some Treks, a few Specialized, a NICE Diamondback. Didn't do so well on hills, but good on flat ground."

I asked him all the details about how he stole bikes. He told me about what locks he could open and how. I have a much, much better idea now of how to lock up my bike to make it harder to steal. I still expect stuff stolen on this trip.

Guys started getting called to work, so the conversation died down. A man walked over, shook my hand, and introduced himself as Joe.

"You say you worked in Lynn last week?"

"Yep."

"I used to work there, years ago. How is it there now?"

"Not bad at all. When I came early, I got work."

"Good to hear," said Joe. "You know, I used to bike. Even all up around there."

More guys got called to work. I was #3 on the list, but new guys don't get called so readily. I'll need to get used to that, since I'll be the new guy pretty much all the time. A few other guys, including the one who stole bikes, got sick of waiting and left. Soon, Joe and I were offered work moving and assembling furniture. But that didn't start until the afternoon.

I called up Amanda, who works from home, and told her I was coming back for the morning. Joe gave me a ride back. Amanda gave me breakfast. Any anxiety I might have had about Somerville is gone.