Getting in gear

My down­stairs neigh­bors had a par­ty last night. I’m get­ting old over here and what would have been a nice tame par­ty when I was twen­ty turned out to be an insane­ly crowd­ed drunk­en explo­sion. They had drink­ing games set up in the garage, and I have no idea what the rules were. I nev­er could fol­low the rules of a drink­ing game when I was drink­ing, and frankly nev­er cared to. Drink­ing games were invent­ed to be lost, weren’t they? Any­how, this involved ping pong balls and I have no clue how it worked.

It was, how­ev­er, an oppor­tu­ni­ty to chat up girls that are way too young for me. I parked my bike in the garage, dis­plac­ing a cou­ple of par­ty­go­ers, but yes, rid­ing a motor­cy­cle into a par­ty is a bit of a con­ver­sa­tion piece, even if part of the par­ty is in a garage.

I did­n’t spend much time at the par­ty. It was after mid­night when I got home, and not my kind of scene. I think I must be los­ing my high-range hear­ing, because I can’t dis­cern voic­es in a crowd with lots of back­ground noise any­more. But I did come back down­stairs to wipe down the bike (it was rain­ing when I got home).

While I was down there, one love­ly young drunk woman asked for a ride on the bike. Too bad I had to say no. I mean, I’m an inex­pe­ri­enced rid­er who has nev­er rid­den with a pas­sen­ger before, I don’t have a spare hel­met, and the roads were wet. If all three of those con­di­tions were dif­fer­ent, well then sure. But no, tempt­ing as that might be, it’s a bad idea. And part of why I did­n’t buy a sec­ond hel­met. I want to be more com­fort­able rid­ing before I give any­one rides. If I’d had a spare hel­met for her, I might have been tempted.

I was­n’t even think­ing in any dou­ble-enten­dre terms when I said some­thing about her get­ting all wet in the rain, but the guy who’d been hit­ting on her cracked up laugh­ing. And she got angry. At him. If I was into young and drunk I prob­a­bly could have made pur­suit at that point. But I remem­bered the Tao of Steve and fol­lowed the third rule: «be gone.»

If I’d want­ed to drop dou­ble-enten­dre, I’d have said some­thing about pre­fer­ring to play safe with peo­ple I don’t know.

Any­way, I checked the bike this morn­ing, and it seems to have sur­vived the hun­dreds of drunks play­ing games in the garage. I did­n’t want to leave it out in the rain.

I ordered good gloves for rid­ing yes­ter­day. I’ve been rid­ing with thin leather dri­ving gloves. Bet­ter than noth­ing, but not by much. These should arrive in a cou­ple days. Today I’m going to try to find some boots. I’m not all that hap­py with the cycle-spe­cif­ic boots I’ve seen so far. I’d real­ly like to be able to walk in boots com­fort­ably. So today I’m going to try to locate the Red Wing Store and see if there’s any­thing I like. Also, Aeros­titch Com­bat Lites have been rec­om­mend­ed to me highly.

One thing’s for sure, rid­ing in these old Doc Martens reminds me why own­ing a pair of Docs was a child­hood dream. As a grown-up, they’re a bit of a dis­ap­point­ment. At least I’m start­ing to devel­op a cal­lous on my left big toe!