Biking back home

Riding my bike into KCMO the day after I get back, taking stock of the city and how much and how little it has changed. The laundromat on 43rd street has finally closed, most likely remaining in operation right up until the last of its 50 washers and driers finally bit the dust. The tattooed crowd outside the tattoo shop have not died of nicotine poisoning just yet. Blockbuster Video is somehow still in business, and the Westport covered wagon looks as regal and ready-for-takeoff as ever. Streetside has closed down but the red neon lights above the door are still turned on, as if the building is not yet ready to relinquish the life it once contained. Bikers in KC are much less rigid than those in Germany, making lazy figure eights across Westport road before picking a side street to pedal down. Two fat women in floral print dresses waddle out of Rudy’s taqueria, shouting to each other in voices that have only grown more hoarse over the last three or four decades. Crooked sidewalks with grass and weeds growing between them, the smell of freshly mowed lawns and truck exhaust. When visiting friends you don’t have to search for people’s name plates or doorbells on apartment buildings, you just park your bike and walk right up to their front doors. Dropping by unannounced isn’t done very much anymore, but I have an excuse as long as I don’t have a cell phone. There aren’t any bike lanes, but if you cheat on the traffic signals you can break ahead of the traffic and for a few glorious moments glide down the middle of the smooth paved streets until your survival instincts prompt you to front wheelie it up onto the sidewalk.