Bianchi's Goodwill comeback tour

Hello friends,

Bianchi and I need your help! This June, we're riding in a 62.5-mile charity bike race through Buffalo, N.Y. and we're sweating bullets because ... well ... neither of us has begun fundraising.

Please check out my Ride for Roswell homepage and read my fundraising letter. For those of you accustomed to verbose Lance posts, I promise you this letter is quick and to the point.

I wasn't going to plug the ride here, but Joe (who has yet to contribute) encouraged me to. He even took these glamour shots of Bianchi and I spending quality time together Wednesday night. 

This cause is so important to me, you have no idea how much it will mean if you donate just $1.

And because I love the U.S. Postal Service (or more-so because I love you) I promise to mail a cheesy Buffalo souvenir to anyone who donates more than $10 to my ride. 

Thank you so much,

Heidi

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PS. I really do love post offices. I patronize them at least twice a week. At a bar one night in Sarasota, a male postal employee, whom I frequently deal with, bought me a drink and asked me to dance. (I did and he had very stale moves.) Now whenever we see each other it's awkward. Actually, it's so awkward I avoid his post office. 

PPS. Yes, Bianchi has pink handlebars now. I figured a new pink wrap-job would compliment her svelte green frame.

Cheap thrills.

Meet my new wheels. She's a real Bianchi. 

Light as a feather and the color of a robin's egg, my Bianchi came from Goodwill. She's got pizza-cutter tires and handlebars shaped like my pug's tail.

When I wedged her into the front seat of my Honda Civic, she contorted into a kind of fetal position, which made me think perhaps Bianchi was scared or sad, having just been pulled abruptly from the bike pile at a tidy Goodwill store on 4th Street in St. Petersburg.

She's a 23-year-old Italian with a stubborn saddle, caged pedals, soft tires and a nervous tick. I think her rear break might be chaffing against the rim, but with the proper tools and gentle touch she'll be prime for riding long distances. 

I hadn't intended to get a 1986 Italian racing bike. My sister Heelya and best friend Ro are visiting next week and I wanted a third bicycle so we could pedal the Pinellas Trail together. I've been eyeing a tricked-out mountain bike for a month now and was fixing to shell out $500 for a better (and I mean way better) bike than the one I pedal now, but today's little lesson in negotiation and good will has prompted me to forgo a new model in favor of a more seasoned cougar.

I pulled into Goodwill today with two $20 bills in my wallet, feeling good about myself, my friends and the world. I'm on a new cash-only budget thanks to $3,000 in fraudulent charges at a Panama stereo store. My debit card number was stolen last week (perhaps in cyberspace) and when the bank told me I'd have have to wait a week for my new card, I decided now was as good a time as any to pay homage to my parents by paying for everything in cash. 

Peering into the back stockroom at G.W., I asked one of the employees if there were any decent bikes for sale. One guy perked up and said, "Sure. We got a Tour de France bike out front."

I figured he was pulling my chain, (bike pun!) but as I followed him out front to the parking lot where the robin egg blue Bianchi was parked, the vintage bike stuck out like Christie Brinkley ...                                                                                      

... in a sea of Tonya Hardings.

"It suits you," the guy said.

"I'll take it," I replied, not knowing how much it would cost, but assuming not much.

So I wheeled it into the store and up to the counter, where an employee with a name tag that said JAYME asked, "You buying that bike?"

"Yup," I said.

"Do you know how much it costs?" He asked incredulously. 

"Um. No. How much does it cost?"

"Fifty bucks," he said.

Before I could even get a word out, the man in line behind me said, "No way is that bike worth fifty bucks. Man, you're rippin' the girl off. Give it to her for 25."

A woman standing in line behind the man chimed in:

"Fifty dollars! She's gonna have to put new tires on that bike!"

"It's an expensive racing bike," the Goodwill clerk snapped. 

"It was an expensive bike," scoffed the man behind me. "Man, that thing is old! Being that she's a girl, she's gonna have to pay someone to fix those tires."

Slightly embarrassed by the attention I had drawn, but thrilled by its sitcom appeal, I quietly said to the clerk, "It's OK. I came here thinking I'd get a deal. No biggie."

Upon further inspection of the name tag, I noticed that JAYME was the store manager and as I turned to push the Bianchi back to the bike pile, Jayme sighed and said, "Alright. $35 and that's as low as I'll go."

Forking over my money, I nodded at the male chauvinist behind me, grateful for his cojones. Although I don't usually take kindly to being treated like a damsel, in this case I curtsied, grabbed my bicycle and headed home. 

--

This isn't my first love affair with a 1980s bicycle. I was once infatuated with a clunker 10-speed named Ross. For more on that torrid romance click here.

A sucker for beautiful talented people.

I have never, ever tired of the Oscars. Even when the show crawls past midnight, I never turn the TV off.

Even as a kid, when I had no clue who the nominees for Best Supporting Actor were, I'd root for the guy, who when the camera panned his face, seemed humbled by the nomination.

Even when my father bitched that the only movies to ever win Oscars were boring ones he'd never seen, I'd righteously back the Academy's choices. Even as a 12-year-old.

Even when my mother suggested I go to bed before Best Picture had been announced, I'd weasel my way through the end of the telecast.

Even when I went to school the next morning gibbering on about animated short films no one in my rural high school gave two shits about, I never scoffed at the Oscars.

It was my Super Bowl.

I was insanely jealous of the actresses. Their dresses. Their bodies. Their skin. Their grace. Their effusive speeches. I wanted their talent. Their dates. Their doe eyes and bee-stung lips. I was fascinated by the way they tiptoed to the podium and clutched their golden barbells like freedom fighters in silk Valentino, forging forward in battle.

When I bought my first pair of high heels in 2004 – just before moving to Florida to become a newspaper reporter – I practiced walking from the living room to the kitchen by conjuring up images of Charlize Theron accepting her Oscar for Monster.

I realize the awards themselves are mostly overblown. In the scheme of sobering world affairs, actors congratulating actors seems almost bombastic. Yet I'm swept away by the industry's enthusiasm, even when Roberto Benigni clownishly accepts a Best Actor award and I can only understand two words of his speech.

On a frigid February night, in my parent's living room, on a worn sectional sofa in a Western New York farm town 2,500 miles from Hollywood, Calif., the Oscars were a glitzy portal, bloated with beautiful people applauding high stakes creativity.

I even baked special blueberry muffins before watching the ceremony; the same blueberry muffins I baked before watching Ally McBeal.

Naturally, I had crushes on the screenwriters.

I had a good hunch Quentin would win for Pulp Fiction in 1994, as I had read a profanely eloquent interview with him in Talk magazine several months before the awards. In the year of Titanic, when Matt & Ben won for Goodwill Hunting, I considered writing them a congratulatory note on my Christmas stationary set. And last year, when Diablo Cody nabbed an Oscar for Juno, I considered a career in stripping to support my novel-writing.

To Joe's delight, I did not apply for a job at Mons Venus for fear that the opposite shifts would kill our evening Rummy games.

Anyway, I'm a sucker for the Oscars ...

And if I were Mickey Rourke, I'd get me a haircut, a new Chihuahua and start baking blueberry muffins for Jon Favreau.

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PS. Killer Marisa Tomei illustration by Rob Kelly for Time Out New York.