Pedalling With All My Might

Biking back from the gym. It’s on a random mix just like it was at the gym.  But the biking part is supposed to be the part where you drive the cardiovascular exercise.  You don’t need to push up and down on the stair master for twenty minutes if you’re biking fifteen minutes over and fifteen minutes back.  Right?  Accurate, largely?   Yes.  As long as you push it when you do you pedaling.  If you just meander over and back it’s akin to a power walk and no sweat is generated.  

Tunes came and tunes went and I was pushing it as best I could until, “Jazzy,” from Willie Colon’s first album, “El Malo”, filled my ears. Oh.  Now thoughts turn to Jose Morales.  Jose, where are you man?  Jose and I taught together at High School Redirection in the late eighties, early nineties.  We laughed together, played music together and reckoned with all those kids shoulder to shoulder.  I had developed a love for New Yorican salsa around the same time we were teaching.  And for him all these tunes were memory lane.  One time we were driving around East New York and “Jazzy” came on.  “Oh shit, this tune . . . this tune . . . we used to play this tune in a band when I was a kid at social event.  What the hell is this, this is “Jazzy” right?  “Yup.  From “El Malo.”  “Damn.”

And with the first slide of the trombone, I knew I would now be pedaling with all my might.  The piano solo is lovely, if somewhat simple.  It effortlessly maintains the positive upbeat amphetamine drive of this tune.  But it’s the timbale solo at the end, that leaves one panting.  Presumably this guy sat around imitating Tito Puente from sunrise till sunset until he could leap off and cut up the world all by himself. 

I came up upon my driveway before the timbale solo had reached its climax.  No, no, no.  Do not park your bike.  Continue till the cul-de-sac at the end of the road and turn around and keep going straight back again.  The timbale solo is not something you want to listen to stationary.  Nor should I be doing air-timbales riding these fast over speed bumps.  I turned and continued to pedal back past my home for the second time.  Now I rode fast.  Fast as I could possibly push the bike, driven by the incredible pace of the timbales until the final two rim shots that ended Nicky Marrero (yes, I had to look that up)’s improvisation and signaled the return to the song’s assertive head.  I’m not sure if Jose felt the invocation from all the way over here in Beijing.  Sent with love.  Drenched now.  Cardio box, most assuredly ticked.

Sunday, 08/20/17