Like Riding a Bike

Reviving Old Passions

You Can Still Do It. Well… Most of It.

Through my teen years there was really only one thing I cared about. Seeing where I am today you might assume it was comics, but I didn’t fall deep down that rabbit hole until the end of high school. Of course, the easy guess for most young men would be girls, but that wasn’t the top priority for me either. All I really cared about and all I really wanted to do was ride bikes. I’m not talking about riding a bike as a means of transportation. I would spend every hour I could riding my BMX bike at the skatepark doing the same few tricks over and over until I learned a new one. 

As we become adults our priorities shift, we find new passions, and our tastes change. Somewhere in that journey I discovered a deep passion for comics and found less and less time to go ride bikes. It wasn’t that I lost any love for BMX, in fact, I almost lost a couple jobs because it was still more important than being a cog in the industrial machine. Adulthood required a lot more of my time than when I was in high school skipping classes and not doing my homework. Most of my social life still revolved around skateparks and BMX, then it slowly shifted to comics and I had a foot in both worlds, but half the time to explore either. I never truly quit riding and I’ve always had a bike, yet sometimes the gap between sessions would be months or even a year. 

A much younger Zane.

Before I moved to Oregon I was riding consistently again, thanks to my dear friends, Ryan and Kiah. They would not only get me out to the park, but push me to progress. Once I moved to Portland, I found myself with nobody to ride with, and worse yet, no parks with lights. That meant I had only until the sun went down to ride. I am not a morning person, so getting to the park early enough to ride without dodging children is rough. I managed to find a park somewhat close to home that I liked and would go ride there sporadically. Next thing I know it has been almost a full year since I had pulled my bike out of the house. 

This week  I dusted the bike off and rolled around the skate park again. I was surprised at how comfortable I felt just dropping in and doing all the basics. Some of that is likely in part because I am stronger and lighter than I was a year ago. In many ways I felt as if I hadn’t taken a break at all. I’m not at the same level I was in my late teens and early twenties, but I feel good and I would enjoy it just as much if I had to put training wheels back on. What’s more important is that I’m finding the time to reconnect with something I love. In many ways it’s even more refreshing because there is no pressure to be good. I’m never going to get sponsored, turn pro, or even learn those tricks I always wanted to learn. The truth is that I never was, even at my best I wouldn’t have gotten there. Maybe I was third best in Brigham City, but now far outside of that bubble and in the real world. With that bit of knowledge, I can really enjoy BMX in a way that I never could when I was at my peak.

Yes, I do wear a helmet now.

I would like to encourage all the readers of my newsletter to spend a little time revisiting an old passion. What loves have you left behind or let dwindle? Give yourself an hour to rekindle that romance and tell me about it in the comments. I would enjoy hearing what everyone else’s passions were and your experience going back to them.

Note: If anyone in highschool reads this, please do your homework and go to class.

The Magic of Mail 

This week I’ve had a feeling of excitement about mail. My dear friend Kevin Cuffe, half of the team on Word Bros and co-writer of books like Metal Shark Bro, Dust Pirates, and Skeeters, sent me a mystery package. (You can check out Kevin and Bob’s Word Bros substack here.)It hasn’t arrived yet, but I’ve been checking the mailbox every day in anticipation. I have great memories from my childhood of going to the post office with my grandmother to get the mail. There would rarely ever be anything for me, but I always looked forward to those quick trips hoping that someday there would be. Checking the mail for Kevin’s package takes me back to those warm feelings. There is still something magic about sending mail.

Earlier in the year I received care packages from another friend that were so elaborately packed and decorated that I felt bad opening them up. I had to find a way to preserve all of the care that went into this care package, so I made myself a scrapbook. I carefully peeled stickers, uncapped a glue stick, and began filling the pages of a silly sketchbook that I hadn't yet drawn in. Since then, I have continued gluing cards, stickers, and other mementos to its pages.

This book is still pretty new, but I know that one day it will fill me with memories and emotions when I open it. I found proof of that this week when I opened a card given to me around the end of 2020. It was a heart-felt message about the importance of our friendship in the pandemic, having met just as the world was shutting down. The message was short and sweet, but it made me tear up and text her right away to reaffirm how important she is to me and how meaningful that little card was.  

I want others to experience the magic of mail, so I’ve discounted the sketch cards in my shop, started drawing some new ones,  and added my remaining supply of wolfman cards to the store. These wolfman cards are pretty special. They were all done with a reductive woodblock, meaning that I carved every layer from the same block of wood after printing each layer, effectively destroying the previous block and making it impossible to go back or make more. I started with 50 cards, but by the end of the process, after throwing away mistakes and misprints, I was left with a signed and numbered edition of only 34. I have fewer than that left so I’m only making 10 available in the store at this time. You can click the link here to see what sketch cards there are available in my store.

New in my online store this week.

 

Cards are cheap and easy to send. You can still find a pack of ten at your local “dollar” store. You don’t need anything fancy like a sketch card or a limited edition wood block printed card to make it special. Just put a little heart into a message and send a friend some magic. 

The Laughing Monsters

A few weeks back I talked about Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson and how influential it was to me and my writing. After that post went live I realized that I hadn’t read anything else by Johnson, so I sought out a bookstore to remedy that

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The Laughing Monsters was a great page turner that had me churning through the book. The surrealness of Jesus’ Son is gone, but the strangeness and broken, somewhat vile type characters that populated Johnson’s short stories seem to have matured with the writer. Instead of those left behind at the fringes of society and drug culture, the plot follows characters in the world of espionage that have been broken and left behind by the shadowy conflicts that shaped the world post 9/11. You can’t trust anyone in the book, and while you despise them at times, you also find yourself on their side more often than you’d like to admit. 

While it isn’t as good as Jesus’ Son, that is an unfair comparison for any novel. If you must choose between the two, take Jesus’ Son, but after you’ve read that, The Laughing Monsters is a fine novel to lose yourself in over a weekend. You can read the synopsis and order it here at bookshop.org or find it at your favorite book store.

Helen in the Woods

Lately my headphones have been filled with the sounds from this playlist. I’ll often find a song that I like and let Spotify assemble a somewhat related list through the ‘song radio’ feature. I’m not sure what I was listening to when Helen in the Woods came on, but I remember that I stopped what I was doing to find out what it was. 

There is an eerie vibe to the song and the lyrics are ominous and reminiscent of a horror film plot. Torres’ voice oscillates from calling out in the distance to whispering in your ear, from singing softly to so hard that her voice cracks. There is a weirdness that I find compelling, beautiful, and sometimes unsettling in a way that appeals to me. I can’t speak for the random list of songs that follow, but I will recommend giving Helen in the Woods a listen. 

That’s enough for this week. I’ll be back next Monday with more rambling.

Zane Barrow

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