Friday, September 26, 2008

Assclowns

When an evening of bicycle riding includes an interlude where somebody agrees to launch not just one, but two—(consecutively, not simultaneously) bottle rockets from his ass and it’s still not the most memorable part of the night, you have to chalk it up as a bona fide disaster (in the old sense of the word, the one that refers to the alignment of the stars, which must have been exerting a truly strange attraction on us all to result in such an odd and calamitous collection of events).

Or maybe the shortbread space cookie I had before leaving home had something to do with it.

In any case, more than once I got to feel like Walter Brennan meets Mr. Magoo as I stood slightly apart from my cycling comrades both dismayed and elated at the behaviors that swam before my eyes, which included surreal karaoke singing, random tossing of things that gosh darn it you kids, you better stop throwing, so help me, don’t make me come over there, fisticuffs, which I completely missed, thank god, the wearing of orange rubber fishing overalls, and a surprising amount of bicycle riding when you tallied it all up in the end.

And it was one of those times when, in some ways, the best part turned out to be the long solo route home, where the combination of sensory stimulations over the course of the night came together to make for an especially delightful ride, the front of my front wheel eating up the pavement slowly but surely all the way across town.

We had set out for Nickelsville, the homeless encampment near Georgtown, to bear witness to the authorities evicting the residents, but never made it past Goldies on Airport Way, which turned out to be just fine since the threatened removal didn’t take place although it did seem that, at some points, our butts were this close to being kicked out from where we were, too.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Fries

Is this a great fucking country or what?

Where else could some three dozen idiots ride bikes from a downtown meet-up, where already park rangers were on to them and their open containers, to an inner-ring suburban shopping mall for a takover of a “family” restaurant in order to stage a French (call that “freedom”) fried potato-eating contest that would result in some among their number regurgitating publicly, and then to top off the evening, pedal furiously down shuttered freeway express lanes only to be stopped, upon exiting to city streets, by a phalanx of law enforcement vehicles, some State Patrol, some Seattle’s Finest, and still manage to walk (or more accurately, ride) away from arrest, imprisonment, and even water-boarding?

Fuck you Osama Bin Laden, the terrorists have not won, not so long as such adventures remain in the realm of possibility, although thankfully for people’s intestines and police records they only come once a year.

The second annual .83 9/11 Never Forget (How Fat You Really Are) Bike Ride and Freedom Fry Eating Contest went off last night in fine form, which is more than can be said this morning of the competitors’ distended bellies.

And while, as has been noted, one might interpret the event as disrespectful of the tragic events that marked the date back in 2001, a more accurate reading—and I would argue more consistent with the true spirit of the night—would see such inspired stupidity as a celebration of the liberties upon which the American Dream is founded.

Moreover, I would bet that if only we might have gotten those misguided fanatics away from flight school back in 2000 and onto bicycles, they never would have carried out their fateful mission, but instead, would have been right there with us, singing “God Bless America” and gorging on deep-fried starch, feeling nothing but pride (and maybe a bit of dyspepsia) to be in the land of the fry, home of the brave.