Closing Time at Joe’s


Joe’s Bike Shop is a tiny place. A brick and stucco cottage about the size of a two-car garage. Therefore, about half of the inventory and all of the repairs get trundled outside and into racks every morning. If it rains they get hauled back in (most of the time) and at the end of the day they get stacked, like Lincoln Logs back in the shop.

This is a nice time to be at Joe’s. Sitting out front, drinking a coffee and ruminating on rides taken, not taken, or rides to come. The sun dips low and glaring off of Lake Ella, and the after work jogging set begin their laps.

Joe does the stacking, and anyone else still hanging around does the hauling.

Cruisers, Hybrids, Mountain Bikes, Three-Wheelers, BMX, and Freestyle, for once all bikes are equal, because they all have to come in for the night.

-Juancho

16 Responses to Closing Time at Joe’s

  1. Sounds idyllic. Maybe Sasquatch and I will drop by for a spell on the porch after our road ride Saturday. I owe Joe a few dollars for some pre-Felasco work. I can’t recall; is there separate seating on the porch for road and mountain bikers? Would be if Juancho were the social director.

  2. O.K., enough of this road / mountain thing. Can’t we all just get along?

    Pete (Joe’s mechanic) is arguably the James Dean of cycling in these parts, and he’s got room in his heart for the road and the dirt.

    As I’ve said many times, what is a road but an extremely firm (and highly convenient) path? If you had bothered to read my book, “It’s Not About The Bike,” there’d be no tripping about this whatsoever.

    I personally think every cyclist needs a mountain bike AND a road bike. They’re different tools for different terrain, and each experience enhances the other.

    As for road and mountain bike “culture,” Sasquatch culture trumps all that. It’s gonna be Molly Ringwald socks and helmet forgetting and haphazard maintenance due to pure, stubborn ignorance. It’s gonna be undergeared, underhydrated, underfed, with big miles, regardless of how the waterbugs OR the Rhino beetles snort, scoff, and shake their helmeted heads.

  3. Who is Libblyllama? WHO IS LIBBYLLAMA? Who ISN’T Libby llama, that’s the real question. And HT- The shop porch is a neutral zone, like when the Allied/Axis soldiers sang carols on Christmas Eve and traded chocolates, before they resumed trading bullets.

  4. Hey! You can’t get ride of the roadies! Then there won’t be any chicks hanging around any more. Cuz we all ride road bikes. I mean, I have a pink Surly 1×1 mountain bike, but it’s the road bike that gets the most consistant action.

  5. I gotta say, cycling. Ah yes. Our thoughts lay themselves like spent shells at a turkey shoot. Our actions, criss-crossing in gas-power driven metaphor, form unforseeable patterns. “Day in, day out,” an author once stated – and so it goes at Joe’s. Weapons? Words? Moses saw Sysiphus on the way down the mountain and gave him a sermon…. “Go and sit in the shade of the porch at Joe’s.”

  6. Hey Juancho, Hope your feeling better. So today we role to the pit of dispar. Oh mama, what have I done?
    It would be nice to read some new material before the weekend!!!!