Carrying a Torch

I have no idea what that picture means (I found it on a blog called SentimentalMechanic.com), but I wish Jesus would teach me to weld. If Evel Knievel’s regret was that he never killed anybody (certainly not for lack of trying, if suicide counts), my great regret is that I never learned to weld. Also, that I don’t have my own CNC machines. Not that I have a lot of free time, but if I did, I would love to be a complete menace to the entire neighborhood with Tesla-grade mad scientist hardware in the garage. If I’d learned to weld and machine, at least some version of Project Danzig would already be done.

I was thinking about this over the weekend, when I thought I’d lost my trusty Pivot 429, a frame I’ve had almost as long as I’d been working on my own frame. I love it, but a part of me hoped I’d have a prototype of my own frame by now. For one terrifying moment, I thought I’d lost the 429, and a bunch of years have gone by without a prototype.

I’d run into Wal-Mart to drop off a Redbox movie this weekend–we have no TV right now, so we’re watching recent Nicolas Cage movies and seeing who cracks first. I hadn’t planned on stopping, so my Pivot 429 is on the back of the car, unlocked.

Off I scramble toward the Redbox kiosk inside the store, constantly looking over my shoulder. Still there. Still there. Still there. And then I’m inside the store, at the Redbox machine. I click “Return.” Nothing. Unresponsive. Again. Again nothing. The Redbox machine does not want Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance back, which I understand completely. Still, as the person who paid to watch a Nicolas Cage movie, I feel a Redbox representative should’ve already come to my house to pick it up and apologize. In fact, I’m thinking Nicolas Cage should be personally traveling across the country to check this movie out of every Redbox in America permanently, and Stan Lee should probably be driving the dumptruck.

This is what’s going through my mind when the machine finally, grudgingly, accepts Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance back into its bowels.

And I’m off. Boom, out the Wal-Mart doors and moving across the parking lot toward my unlocked Pivot, which is no longer on the back of my car.

Um.

Oh.

Temporarily, I’m not sure if one continues walking toward the car in this case, turns around, or starts hopping up and down, hands on cheeks, screaming. I go with walking toward the car. And then I notice my car, and my bike. In just the time it took me to return the movie, another white Subaru Outback pulled in only a car away from mine. In the Northwest, only VW vans outnumber Subaru Outbacks.

I’m not good at interpreting dreams–particularly when they happen in broad daylight in a Wal-Mart parking lot and aren’t dreams–but I think I need to find a way to build myself a prototype. So many things are still going on with the patent license, but more than anything, I just want to ride one of these bikes.