The Modern Ride

By Chris Dannen

The website refreshes.

THE SYSTEM IS BUSY. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER.

Why does the computer have to capitalize the words? Capitalized words are obnoxious, rhetorical bullies. I don’t need guff from some retarded machine while I try to register for my classes. This is my senior year of college—the Registrar should be giving me my schedule with ceremonious dignity and panache, engraved on a tablet leafed with gold, or written in chocolate cursive on the face of a steamy buttermilk waffle. Instead I’m stuck grappling with the online registration system, whose acronym title is ISIS. Google tells me that Isis was an Egyptian goddess who married her brother. I’ve only wasted two minutes learning this. Apparently the passage of two minutes doesn’t constitute “LATER”, because I try to log in again and get a similar message.

THE SYSTEM IS BUSY. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER. EAT SHIT.

In my hallucinogenic fury I slam the lid of my laptop closed and heave it onto my bed. It takes a silent bounce and cartwheels onto the floor. I sit for a minute. What the hell has technology ever given me? I still hope the tumble didn’t break the laptop. I just want it to be hurt enough to learn its lesson.

Now maybe I’m the only one, but I can’t see the offspring of modern technology as entirely lifeless objects. Computers, cell phones, MP3 players. They don’t just sit like books or bars of soap. They look at you; they have faces, they glow and hum and get sick sometimes. At night you turn them off and let them sleep, and during the day you interact with them, you fume at them, you feed them CD’s and batteries. They almost seem like they have little electronic souls. Like you could list them as dependents on your tax returns.

And at the moment, I want to banish every electronic soul to a torturous purgatory, or the closest Wal-Mart. I hate their arcane circuit board guts and their primitive silicon brains. My hydration pack bulges with day-old water but I throw it in the car and strap the bike to the roof rack. All I want is to escape to the woods on my air and oil valved, metal-n-grease equipped mountain bike. System Error… Screw technology.

Arriving at the trailhead I remember that my iPod Shuffle is still in the front pocket of the CamelBak. I can’t misplace my techno-anger onto the Shuffle. Short and white, it reminds me of a more svelte Keebler elf, too simple and perky to plot against me like its bigger digital brethren. Locking up the car and clipping one foot in, I push the earbuds into my head and hit the Play button on the Shuffle. I spin to the first climb, and my cadence finds its rhythm in the ebb and flow of a thick, gritty bass line. Tires bite into loam and suspension tenses. I’m listening to the Roots. The tingle of the first sweat makes me squirm in my saddle and my eyes wander off the trail, finding the horizon of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They’re solemn and obscured by fog and for a moment I hate the music polluting my skull. I yank the earbuds out and drape them over the bars, and concentrate on the lapping of the chain and the wheezing suspension. When I stuff the headphones back in my ears at the base of the next climb, my legs are already plump and sore and there’s a new album on. I concentrate on the lyrics of the Urban Sophisticates:

The toll of time, eternity is the only real thing mine It’s a fine line between love and hate…

The trail looks distortedly steep and the legs are failing. The minutes halt to let my pain keep pace. My legs flush and breathe with fresh blood. The course of time is wandering, swerving, drunk in the drumbeats. My mind picks its way through the lyrics and my wheels lurch over rock and root. I love the music. It ratchets the seconds forward. The bike tracks loyally up the forest floor. What has technology ever given me?