I noticed that the ride into work was a little cold this morning, so I shouldn't have been surprised when I took off my helmet and found ice crystals riming the edges of my face shield." No, that can't be" No, considering that the temperature was a chilly 35 degrees when I left home, and then factoring in the wind chill, it really shouldn't have come as much of a surprise, but it did.
So what is it that leads brave men to face such dangers, you may ask. Well, let me try to answer that. I believe it's either one of two things, or maybe a little of both. First, when riding a motorcycle you're usually sitting directly over the engine. That means the vibrations, although counterbalanced and dampened, often work their way through the handlebars, footpegs and seat to the rider. It would only seem natural to me, then, that more than a few neurons would shake loose in the process. Thus, such a marked decrease in IQ combined with the rapid onset of hypothermia would naturally explain why an otherwise normal adult would set out on a winter morning and choose a bone-chilling ride on a a bike over a warm cozy automobile.
The second factor may be that bikers are just born stupid. I am coming to that conclusion, and, in fact, what we may be dealing with here are stupid people with hypothermia and loose neurons choosing to ride their bikes in sub-freezing weather because they don't know any better. Yes that would explain a lot.
Before I go any further let me just say that I wasn't the only biker out there this morning. I may be brain impaired, but certainly not without my peers. In fact I counted at least a half dozen other brave souls out on the road this morning, and if they give out medals for this sort of thing, then be it known that medals were earned today.
Of course, the other bikers I passed seemed much better equipped than I to deal with the cold. At the very least they all had windshields to keep the wind off of them, and a couple were riding Honda Gold Wings fully loaded with fairings and heated seats and all that other stuff which seems so silly in the summer and so practical in the winter. I should note that what I didn't see this morning were any badasses riding Harleys wearing nothing more than a t-shirt and a brain bucket on their heads for protection. Sure, they may be tough, but it's one thing to scraping bugs off your teeth in the summer and another to be picking snowballs out of your nose in the winter. Even toughness has it's limits.
But enough of that. After all, who cares? I bet you weren't sitting on a bike freezing your tush off this morning. You're more sensible than that so let's see what else there is to talk about tonight? Hmmm....Hmmm...I know. I could talk about maniacs with guns going on shooting sprees, but which maniac should I talk about? Would that be this week's maniac with a gun or last week's maniac with a gun? It all gets to be so cliché after a while. Or, I know, I could talk about Barry Bonds. Oh, what for? That's already old news. Let me just say this. Getting a San Francisco jury to convict Barry Bonds of perjury is about as likely as getting a Chicago jury to convict Michael Jordan or a New York jury to convict Babe Ruth. In other words, not very likely, and if I were one of you Barry Bonds haters out there (actually, I am), I wouldn't get my hopes up.
Tell you what, let's just call it a night and hopefully I'll something better to write about tomorrow. In the meantime, if you happen to be driving around tomorrow morning and see me out on the road, I'd appreciate it if you got out your ice pick and knocked a few of the icicles off my helmet. You might also want to shake me around a bit just to be sure I haven't lapsed into a coma. Neighbor helping neighbors, that's what it's all about.
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