7/31/07

-1) Big Dog type custom motorcycle:

The Keed.

The superwide rear tire on the back of my niece’s husband’s Big Dog. (That’s a car-tire for comparison at left.)

Yesterday (July 30, 2007) I encountered a Big Dog type custom motorcycle.
Actually, it wasn’t that extreme. It didn’t have a bulbous phallic gas-tank three feet ahead of the rider at chin-level.
Nor did it have an enormously extended front fork giving it an eighteen-foot wheelbase — or monstrous and unwieldy ape-hangers.
What gave it away was its superwide rear tire, similar to that pictured, and the infernal and ungodly racket it made.
It also had Iron-Cross mirrors and skull-shaped taillights.
Other than that, it looked pretty normal. Were it not for the superwide rear tire, I would have mistaken it for the usual garden-variety GeezerGlide, of which there are so many.
And the rider looked fairly pedestrian, as opposed the the usual frightening chain-smoking aging grizzled beer-sodden Hells Angels wannabee.
No chromed spiked Wehrmacht helmet.
The only giveaway was a faded black “Bike Week” T-shirt.

-2) Another stroke-survivor:
Yesterday the final minutes of my workout at the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA witnessed the following conversation:
“I had a stroke,” some guy said.
“Wait a minute,” I said, wheeling around. “Did I just hear you say you had a stroke?”
“Yep.”
“Well so did I,” I said; “a little over 13 years ago.”
“Did it do any damage?” I asked.
“Well, everything works, but I don’t have any feeling in my right forearm.”
His speech was slightly scattershot; I could tell he was having trouble putting words together — the same problem I have.
“Everything works for me,” I said. “But my speech is a little wonky and I have slight lability: the tendency to cry.”
“Same here,” he said.
“My stroke was caused by a patent foramen ovale (I had a hard time saying this): a hole in my heart that was repaired years ago with open-heart surgery. The PFO passed the clot.”
“That’s what I have, but the PFO wasn’t repaired, so I’m on blood-thinners (Coumadin) for the rest of my life.”
The hospital was very hot to perform that surgery, but now they are no longer (according to Linda’s Internet-research). The guy’s stroke was about a year ago, which might explain why there was no PFO repair.
“I guess we’re not the only ones,” I said. There is a lady at the Y who lost her whole left side, and a guy missing part of his brain.
This guy is a big bimbo, but I told him “You are where you are because you thought you could still do things. Every time you do anything at all it’s rewiring your brain. I’m running on what’s left, as are you. I always say I’m running on seven cylinders.”

-3) Dubya T-shirt:
Yesterday while driving to the Canandaigua YMCA, a giant tow-truck pulling a large GMC flatbed pulled outta the Porta-John place right into my eastward path on 5&20.
No Dubya-sticker, but as he pulled onto the shoulder to let me by, I noticed the driver had a red Dubya-Cheney ‘04 T-shirt on.

-4) Window-replacement project:

The Keed.

“Onto the ‘Web.”

And so begins our gigantical window-replacement project, wherein we got royally fleeced and taken to the cleaners because we didn’t take my all-knowing brother’s cogent advice to buy our replacement windows from the back of the faded blue Econoline in the Rochester slums for only a “hunderd” dollars per unit, to be installed by ourselves with bobbie-pins and paper-clips. (“All ya gotta do is hose off the blood!”)
My Uncle-Bill built the entire Ben Franklin suspension-bridge single-handed with only one toothpick.

“GeezerGlide” is what I call all Harley Davidson cruiser-bikes. My loudmouthed macho brother-in-Boston has a very laid back Harley Davidson cruiser-bike, and, like most Harley Davidson riders, is 50 years old. So I call it his GeezerGlide.

“Linda” is my wife.

“Dubya-sticker” is a Bush-Cheney 2004 bumper-sticker. All insane traffic-moves seem to involve Bush-supporters. They seem to think they have the right.

“5&20” is the main east-west road through our area; State Route 5 and U.S. Route 20, both on the same road. 5&20 is just south of where we live.

There is a “Porta-John” place nearby on 5&20; called Crescent Moon. It has 89 bazilyun Porta-Johns standing at attention.

“Hunderd” is how my blowhard brother-in-Boston noisily insists “hundred” is spelled.

RE: The huge Ben Franklin suspension-bridge, over the Delaware River between Philadelphia, Pa. and Camden, N.J., opened in 1926; and at that time was the largest bridge in the world.

My “Uncle-Bill” was the first-born of my mother’s family, and was a blowhard who claimed he knew all, and also claimed he was the “world’s biggest leprechaun.” He weighed well over 200 pounds.