One Thing and The Next

My bike's little hiding place under the stairs

My trusty bike

This being Monday morning, I was free to tackle a few chores.  I watched from our second floor apartment window as Rebecca and Shawn worked their way down the stairs and into the cool of Soe Naing’s waiting car.  (The school is just about four blocks from our apartment, but were it not for the car service, they would arrive at school damp and disheveled.)

This was eight-thirty in the morning, and while it was not yet hot by convection oven standards, a hint of dragon’s breath was in the air, and the lack of any discernible cloud cover suggested it would be a real stinker of a day.  So be it.

I gathered my laptop computer, map, cell phone, and little black book into a day pack and headed out the door.  Rebecca and I plan to head out of town next week and jump on the tourist track, touching down in Bagan, Inlay Lake, Yangon, and Prayer Rock Pagoda.  My goal was to secure passage to Bagan via riverboat down the Irawaday, and then to find someplace with wi-fi and—hopefully—a decent cup of coffee.  My wanted to peruse the internet in search of possible accommodations in Bagan and flights to Yangon.  

After unlocking my bike (which I keep hidden under the stairs) and negotiating the delicate task of moving it out of its dusty little foxhole, I peddled south toward the offices of the boat company.  

Then my brakes gave out.  In fairness, I probably leaned on them harder than I should have, but such is my sissy response to on-coming buses driven by betel juice-addled maniacs.  Not to mention my bike is a piece of shit.  It’s cool, mind you.  But a piece of shit. 

So now I needed to find a mechanic. Typically, they can be found on the street corners, and are God’s gift to bikes. An inner tube draped over a tree branch by way of advertising, these grease-smudged souls  are of a most dignified and capable bearing.  I rode two brake-less blocks before spying a man jumping on a scooter wheel, trying to break the tire free from the rim, and indicated with hand gestures my problem.  He regarded my bike attentively before swinging into action.  Actually, he and a buddy, who I hadn’t even noticed, began a rapid multi-task of my machine.  Fix and adjust brakes, set bearing tension, tighten various nuts, lube others, fill tires, straighten handlebars.  All of it couldn’t have taken more than five minutes and cost  about 300 Kyat- just under twenty-five cents.  And the best part is when I got back on the bike, it was less piece-of-shit-like.  Significantly less.  

Who knows? Maybe my spirit was buoyed by the guy’s wizardry, but I skimmed along in the general direction of my destination and after only three or four wrong turns and a side trip down a narrow alley filled with angry roosters found myself talking to a ticket agent who spoke some English.  And, except for the fact that my back, shoulders, butt, legs, feet, kidneys, spleen, and brain were drenched with sweat, things went reasonably well.

“Do you take visa?”

“No. Only cash.”

“Is there an ATM around?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”  

You know.  Reasonably well.  

And this was all before ten O’clock.  Ultimately, by day’s end most of my goals were put to bed.  And, as happens when a fellow has a bit of time on his hands, I managed to wander into some lovely situations.  Brief encounters with locals that made me smile.  Like the hardware guy around the corner.  I went into his shop looking for a longer chain and padlock so I could lock my bike to the rail (a bit of a reach, since I have to tuck her so far back into her cubby.)

He had the scraggly chin beard of the Muslim faith.  Teeth red from Betel nut.  Long, stained shirt and loose pants.  Not so much wrapped up in appearances, but clearly focused on the task of setting me up with just the right product.  I liked him immediately, and settled on a lock with a bit more show than go.  “Chinese,”  he said with a smile.  “”Cheap!”  

Then, while making change, he looked at me and asked, “Where from?”  

“USA”

He considered for half a beat before asking, “Hillary or Trump?”  And here’s the thing: We certainly don’t speak the same language in any articulate sense.  His world of experience here in Mandalay is as different as it can possibly be from my white bread world of Northern Michigan, USA.  I’d even go so far as to suggest our very physiology is of a different order, given the fact that I was sopping with sweat while he appeared cool and dry.  Yet when I smiled and said, “Hillary,” followed by, “Trump is crazy,” while spinning my finger around my ear in the universal indicator of looney tune, we shared a laugh.  And, I hope, something more. In that brief exchange we were free of the typical relationship between a stranger in a strange land and its inhabitants. We moved beyond commerce and found a larger connection through shared values. What fun.  

This place is not easy.  Every step forward, in even the most mundane of tasks, seems to carry with it a requisite two steps back.  Or two steps sideways.  It’s hot and dirty and poor.  So why bother?  I don’t know.  Sure would be easier to huddle inside around the AC.  Sip on a coke.  Order take out.  But there is something to be said for pushing through the heat and the noise.  Laying aside the very rational responses of fear and hesitancy in favor of something else.  Just what that something is is hard to pin down, and to attempt a definition for someone else is the height of pretension. But there’s a vitality and life to it that is undeniable. So bring on da heat and da noise and da funk. 

Time to go!