hairbags!

Today is "Bike to Work Day" in Chicago. What this entails is the presentation of free food in Daley Plaza accompanied by all form of advertisement for bike stuff and Balley Total Fitness. I got a free water bottle from some bike shop and the Balley display had attractive young people lifting and pulling things slowly. I signed a two year contract under duress from one sassy number who said I have “awesome ‘delt’ and ‘lat’ potential.” There was also a rock-n-roll band.

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The night previous an overabundance of refined spirits had brought about a fit of morning sweats, a really grand headache and, due to the intake of tobacco cigarettes, a congested sinus. Hoping my biking brethren would help ease this pain with dignified talk of car-pigs, wipeouts, increased bikeridership as the second coming and hooting and catcalling at bikes as if they were flaming gams (i.e. Work that Shimano derailer, Oh Baby, she/he/it knows what she/he/it is doing. Don't stop baby, keep rolling. Never stop, baby. Oh yeah!), I arose. My excitement was such that I forwent my regular morning routine of drinking coffee and swearing at animals so I could arrive as early as possible. Visions of defined, ambitious young professionals standing next to sensible road bikes drinking vodka Red Bulls in rolled up Domenci Vaca trousers and Luca Luca skirts danced before my eyes as I pulled my chariot out from the basement.

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These visions however were quickly dashed when I arrived to discover nothing more than common hippies parading around in all form of bead, macramé and homespun spandex. Some had even decorated their bikes for the occasion with streamers and the scraps of signs and banners from last week's swinging protest against Facists/Republicans/Bush/War/Supply-side economics/America/Public Decency, etc. This caused me to wonder if these people even had jobs to bike to or just simply rolled off of whatever filth mattress they found themselves on the night prior and came down for the free banana halves. I would have left immediately except I had done more or less the same and was desperately hungry. So I got in the food line next to one of the hairbags.

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Hippy: I’m totally ripe from my ride down here.
Working Boy: The smell is overwhelming. Do you clean yourself regularly?
H: No way I’m protesting our “nation’s” dependence of foreign oil by not using hot water which is heated by natural gas which is strip mined in West Virginia by Haliburton which, if I’m remembering rightly, controls everything that is evil and Al Gore is trying to save us. Did you participate in Critical Mass last week?
W.B: Is that the event where young people get together and ride around in a large pack causing havoc on the roads in order to show how we have reached a “critical mass” of car drivers?
H: Yeah, we really stick it to them.
W.B: I can’t think of any better way to make such a refined statement.
H: Together we can turn this terrible country around!
W.B: Yes, it is pretty terrible. This free bagel I received? It’s gross.
H: Yeah, man, the times they are a changin’, you know? Sweet ride by the way.
W.B: Are you referring to my Murray Spectra?
H: Mos def, I haven’t seen a Murray since I was like 7 years old. But why are the handle bars warped and your bike rack held together by bungee cords?
W.B: As to the former, because my bike is made of outstandingly bad materials and common usage apparently destroys it. As to the latter, without these bungee cords my milk crate would fall off the bike rack and the rack would crash about on the ground while being joined to the bike by only the most precarious combination of screw and nut.
H: Your bike sucks.
W.B: No truer words have ever been spoken, my disgusting new friend.

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