Cycling Through the Darkness and Emerging Alive

By Al Ness
Contributing Writer

Darkness. The bright bluish lights had faded and all was calm. It was the pain that did it, or perhaps the lactic acid. The rushing in of peripheral vision until it shuts out the front and that odd lifting feeling as consciousness floats away through the top of ones head. Deep, calm darkness…

…and then I heard words, followed by the sounds of birds. From dreams far away to the instant in a single sentence. “Are you okay?” I heard her say.

Snap back to reality, oops there goes gravity; “yeah, I’m fine, I think” I replied, feeling somewhat embarrassed.

You see, the sign said ‘Free Massage’ and I had signed up, waited my turn in line and was now in the chair. The doctor asked the proper questions about where I was feeling tense and set to work untying stubborn spinal knots of tension and turmoil.

So, what I had remembered as somewhat more of a wonderful experience was now, due to some tightly bundled shoulder and neck muscles…well, I’ll tell you, it hurt: Dr. Savages Thumbs of Steel.

Once the dizzies started, I asked for some water and downed the lot of it, but upon the doctor’s resuming, I just knew that I was going away for a short while no matter what.  “I’m okay” I repeated and stood up, somewhat amazed at how drenched my shirt and the massage chair were. “Just passed out that’s all.”

This was round about half-past four on Sunday afternoon, and I was at the Participation Parkway section of the Streets Alive event, it was warm that day and I had rode the route four or five times with numerous side routes on a sparsely filled stomach.

So, it might have been my own fault because of my rippling, yet too-tightly wound shoulder muscles and lean caloric intake; I’m a cyclist, we’re powered by apples and bananas and have strong legs but sore shoulders.

Passing out was the highlight of my day anyways, though I was sort of bummed that I didn’t get the handy-dandy backscratcher or the rest of the massage (a half-relaxed, half-tense back feels weird), but I would highly recommend the massage during the next Streets Alive on September 19th; you can’t fall down when you pass out, because you’re in the massage chair, try it, it’s fun, plus it feels good the next day.

Aside from that, Streets Alive was awesome. Who knew Fargo had so many bikes? Kudos and candy bars all around to the planners of that.

I saw square dancing, aerobics, some hip-hop, lots and lots of cyclists with happy faces on, chalk art on the streets, hula-hoops, and hacky-sack; activities of all sorts.

Next time How’s about a couple dozen games of hopscotch covering a street somewhere. That might be fun, huh? (What’s the Guinness record for that?)

At the next Streets Alive I’d like to set up a table and play a game of chess on the Main Avenue Bridge. But hey, bring checkers, dominoes, or a poker table if you want, it’s cool.

One thing lacking was finding water that I didn’t have to buy. Perhaps those daring lads and lasses with the National Guard know where to find some sort of new-fangled water purification unit and show us how it’s done, strictly educational hydration of course.

Yep, in this cyclist’s opinion, Streets Alive is worthy of repeating many, many times. Let the motorists grumble.

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If You Go

What: Streets Alive
Where: Downtown F-M
When: Sun, Sept 19
Info: 877.977.5770