Madness grips early on today. Bill’s Bachelor party starts in just hours. We hit the links at 9:30AM and I have elected to start things off right with a few Heineken’s to round out my essential food groups of Golden Grams and toast this morning. Deutsche Welle – German News on the cable box. Large headed puppets broadcasting the news in German. It’s like watching those two grumpy, jaded Muppets who sit in the balcony and berate the other Muppets but I can’t understand a word they’re saying. Perfect. I can’t imagine this is any less informative than the Today Show.

I’m just glad to be here today. A cruel and mean bike commute last night. People, especially the automotive type, are just rotten. I can think of at least a dozen ways i was almost maimed or worse last night. The first of which was stopping in at the Washington Ave liquor store to pick up some spirits. Biking up to the establishment you enter a wide undisciplined parking lot that the careless owners have allowed to become a playground of depravity and drunken bullheads. They lay about, a dozen or so in total, shirtless with their bellies punching out to ask the sun for more of a burning. It was a freaking war zone in broad day light. I dodged one 40oz bottle that almost caromed off my melon and then got pissed as hell and ran over some other guys arm. Another intoxicated indigent attempts some retaliation and gets one leg up before he falls onto himself and lets out a heavy guttural “harrumfff”. I fantasized for a second about kicking all their asses and being this guy standing on top of like twelve beaten bodies – pumping my fists in the air. Then more disgruntled noises from the parking lot beckoned me back to reality and I tore off cursing my luck. Do other people have these problems?

Not more than two blocks away from that Mayhem and a Passat goes screaming past me on River Road. Everyone in the car thinks it’s cool to scream shit at me. Rotten bastards. That’s just low. What has gotten into the masses? Are people not getting laid enough? Were they dropped as kids? Maybe their Rolling Stone subscription is ending or their EMINEM CD has a scratch in it.

Poor bastards are just pissed that they’re trapped in their cars. They know they are dying one gallon at a time. Every hour they spend in their car locked into a horizontal negotiation of post work traffic brings them two steps closer to full blown shooting-up-the-turnpike insanity. Sweaty and working hard for momentum, I must represent some beacon of freedom on my Trek 830, a free and lackadaisical mockery of their well designed four door trap. Yeah!

So I get over that hump and then the clouds open up and a torrential downpour strikes. It feels good at first. A new beginning and a fresh baptism, a cleansing from the early leg’s craziness. But then it comes down so hard that I’m almost blinded and it’s getting cold. Cars are looking uneasy as they pass me and I know they wish they didn’t really have to “share the road” as the sign says.

Just as it’s letting up, I get passed by a fraternity of bike nazi’s all wearing the same dorky spandex uniforms (man those things are ungodly stupid) and they start tossing shit too. Some righteous nazi shit about the fact that I’m not wearing a bike helmet. Oh man, wrong guy wrong time fella’s. What a fucking waste of skin and organs. And good bike parts too.

So you see it’s no minor miracle that I’m here now, washing the dirt out of my pitching wedge and nine iron, scurrying around in my bare feet looking like Ozzy trying to find my damn bathing suit, and contemplating what a whole day’s bachelor party will bring…