My bike is my armor

Our boy Response is back on tour and livin’ the vida loca. Whatever the hell that means.

From: Response
Subject: My bike is my armor
Well, my bike was stolen here in China. It was $60 usd new. So no major loss. Or so I thought.

I had ridden a few miles off the beaten track to the fair grounds to see the 60th anniversary of Chinese Communism festivities. My bike was swiped while I was walking around inside the fair.

Nothing to do but walk home. Evening had set in and the hazy autumn sun sunk slowly into Guangzhou. I noticed that the streets seemed strange and different. Somehow the buildings, houses and vacant lots that I had breezed by on my bike, now seemed unfriendly and sinister. There was none of the usual “hello” being cast in my direction by locals testing their one or two words of English. People had time to study me as I inched through the dense neighborhoods. The local tough guys looked a lot tougher now I am moving at brisk 4 mph and standing 6 inches shorter than when mounted on my bike. After my bro recently got his gold chain snatched in broad daylight, I knew that these guys can be Kung Fu fast and have balls of steel.

I realized at that point, my bicycle is my armor. It protects me from harm and speeds me to safety. (If I was as tough as old pistol pete, it could be used as a weapon as well). My bike hardens my muscles, puts calluses on my hands and stretches my lungs, amplifying my strength and forcing life into my body. My bike sharpens my senses and reflexes, testing my limits, making me tougher and more secure.

My bike is my translator. It sends a message of good will and trust to all who observe my gentle passage. It tells a story of my interest in the community and desire to keep the environment clean and my carbon footprint small. It shows my willingness to adopt the local ways and my respect for the common man.

My bike is my friend. It tells me stories of adventure and romance. It carries beautiful women on its padded rear rack and charms them with its confidence, imparting a sense of freedom with its smooth effortless movements. It wakes me up in the middle of the night to tell me jokes so I laugh myself back to sleep. My bike always wants to hang out after work, go for a cruise or even hang out in the garage, listen to music, drink a few beers and play with tools. On rainy days, we go and play in the puddles and try not to drink the gutter water.

My bike is my business partner. It carries my tools and sundries for work. Also, my bike shows the local vendors that I am CHEAP, too cheap (and practical) to own a car and too cheap to pay full price for their goods. My bike has a strong work ethic and seldom calls in sick for work.

My bike must be replaced immediately! I smiled and changed my course to the nearest reputable bike shop…

I hope the new owner of my stolen bike lives to be 110 and their whole family becomes rich…

Response

About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

9 Replies to “My bike is my armor”

  1. “I hope the new owner of my stolen bike lives to be 110 and their whole family becomes rich…” Thanks for the reminder of where the path is!!

  2. Bikes like dykes take broadway hikes,
    when they stray on a cloudy day a fever of adrenaline raves,
    A quest for answers involves all friends…acting like panthers.
    If found certainly a hole be dug inda ground.
    fiend aint keen, a derogatory gene?
    walk tall nocturn-al wheely new bike through the mall.

  3. This reminds me of a time I was just out cruising and I found myself in a neighborhood I would not walk through (and would have no reason to drive through) but it seemed ok on the bike. A man across the street yelled out: “Hey!” I looked over and he put his arms in the air, raised the roof and sang, “bicycLE!, BIcycle!”
    He smiled, it made me smile.