Thursday, March 05, 2009

Beer, Bikes, and Blogs


I rode Little Soldier down to my neighbor’s house to pick up beer. Little Egypt has been out of town so Little Soldier has sat un-used in my bike storage facility—um, I mean garage—waiting for her return.

As this old tandem has lights—the original lights that still work, Gentler Readers of This Blog, there is no excuse to drive the car over to friends when one can ride a bike with perfectly good illumination.

So I headed out at dusk, solo on the tandem, to Bruce and Heather’s house down the road a ways. The generator light whirled and the big red tail light glowed a deep ruby-red that reflected brightly on the shiny chrome rear fender, and down on the street behind me. The head lamp shown a steady, but faded yellowish-amber sphere on the pavement ahead of us.

As Bruce and Heather’s place is down the road, I picked up speed quickly on the slight descent, and then maneuvered a left to the gated entrance off Dog Mtn Blvd where they live.

They bought one of those McMansions and it is a horrific structure, mes amis. They actually live in the house—the others around them are vacant. They were bought as investment homes to flip; now they sit empty. The street is dark and lifeless but I’m on Little Soldier—and we are moving through the warm desert air with a mission: Beer.

I’ve brought some of those re-useable grocery bags for the beer. Bruce and I load them up and tie them to the sturdy frame of my 1971 Schwinn De Lux Twinn.

“Honey, you have to come see this bike,” Says Bruce. But Heather, his wife, avoids getting close to it—as far as she’s concerned, it’s some kind of huge green phallus built for two.

She drives a Lincoln Aviator, in which they have negative equity at this time. Bruce wanted to sell it but they were told they would get nothing for it. So they owe more on the vehicle than its worth—sounds kind of familiar, eh? She drives it five miles to work.

Heather is the type of driver every cyclist loathes—huge bling SUV with super turbo V-8 engine, cell phone glued to her jowl—or she’s texting some piece of illiterate shit friend that she works with at Comcast—oh, and did I mention she’s a speeder? When not behind the wheel of an automobile, she's kind of a fun person.

We say our good-nights as its getting late, and I start out for home, up the road now with bottles of cold Corona strapped to Little Soldier. Climbing up Dog Mtn Blvd is easily accomplished, and my house appears in no time. Callie hangs out in the garage with me while I do a few odds and ends and sips me beer.

Cheers!

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