Bike Ripped my Pants

arrrrghghghhh!!!!

I’ve been wound a little tight lately, I’ll admit. A few things have been bothering me.

OK fine, everything bothers me, and I’ve been blazingly pissed off for 6 straight months. Storming around from place to place, hands unconsciously balled into fists, I’ve been a ticking time metaphor. Too pissed to even write.

But what’s brought me out of hiding wasn’t the declining state of the country we live in, wasn’t the increasingly horrifying train wreck for civilian and soldier alike that is modern-day Iraq. Wasn’t the slow constriction of "truthiness" that has our news media so starved for air that supremacy of fact just doesn’t seem worth the effort. Wasn’t even the eternal joke of Intelligent Design this time, I swear.

Nope! Tonight, when I when I was riding home from the gym, I decided to take the long way ’round the Circle. I dipped into the inner ring of the Circle, passed a bunch of cars, slid easily between a delivery truck and an SUV with Maryland plates, and made a hard right onto P Street. It was too windy to cruise through the light at 21st, even down the subtle grade as P feeds into the Park, so I got back into the saddle and cranked hard to beat the cross street traffic.

And that’s when I heard it, an angry, ugly sound. RRR-RRR-RRRRRIPPPP. Cold air shooting up my leg, the bike suddenly dragging and lurching to the right. I didn’t even need to look down to know what had happened. Son of a bitch.

I almost always remember to roll up my pant leg on the crank side of my bike — I’ve had enough friendly fire incidents to learn the lesson well. But occasionally, I don’t roll it up high enough, or tight enough, or it just comes loose while I’m riding (case in point, almost lost a leg last week while schlepping a bag full of wine bottles back from Schneider’s with K). This time, my ravenous sprocket sucked my pants in straight up to the knee, and tore that shit to shreddy ribbons. Son of a bitch!!

Anyway, that’s the last fucking straw. That was the catalyst. Time for action!!! Am I gonna change my life now, snap out of this zombiefied funk I’ve been in, stop worrying and start living? Hell fucking no. But I will be complaining more about what pisses me off right here on the goddamned Joy Zone , that’s for fucking sure. Necks will be punched for what they’ve done to my pants, my precious fucking pants!