best friday ever.
My period is here. Who's excited? Generally speaking, the first day that it comes and visits, I writhe around on some flat surface, bitching, drinking tea and thinking about sharon stone, in horrible crippling pain. Jake's friend Harriet heard my bitching and gave me a pamphlet on menstrual alternatives, though, and I set myself up with one of them, gave my uterus the finger and zoomed off down lincoln street, hellbent on getting to critical mass on time.
Stupid. It started around seven. I was bombing down lincoln street at five.
Much street hopping and car dodging later, we pulled up to Daley plaza, which was crammed to the gills with bikers. It was a beautiful sight.
We spent a lot of time making friends with people by saying things like, "you're ridiculously good-looking, what's your name? " We got candy and phone numbers out of it.
The ride took off and at first, it was all sheer excitement at the throng of people and the honks of motorists. We started picking up on the general idea of how a mass works, and spent some time corking intersections. Kara and I got separated after a bit, and corked different intersections. She got punched in the face and I threw my bike (my incredibly heavy steel-frame '63 schwinn breeze) at a minivan that was trying to encroach. Although she only got punched in the face once, there were hundreds of spontaneous traffic stopping blocades and a general anonymous unity between people with two wheels, in some cases three. This being one of my first experiences disturbing the peace in a large group (no on 36 protests and planned parenthood-ing aside) I was riding very fucking high on the thrill of danger and all the potential.
If everyone who owned a bike came to critical mass, the city wouldn't move for hours. le sigh.
We split off at Palmer square, in desperate need of food. We built a bike tower outside of Jonny's Grill with KFo, jen, kara and i. We ate and got some booze and rode off in search of a party. On the way there, my attention was captured by a gorgeous girl in a shiny red dress. There was an unconscious reaction on the part of my body in which the words "hey girl" came out of my mouth and my head instinctively turned.
Unfortunately, instinct isn't always conducive to awareness of to surroundings, drunk, a little high, caffienated, speeding quickly on my bike and other factors i still haven't taken into account. In this manner, my bike veered to the right and hit one of those steel plates. I kept going and the bike made a very curt stop, allowing me, for the first time in my short biking career, the chance to fly up and over my handlebars. In chronological order the items hitting the ground went like this: right foot, right knee, bike, hips, hands, stomach, face, backpack and u-lock, which first slid over the top of my head, thanks to my ever-present beanie. I slid a foot or two on my stomach and whatever else was touching the ground. I slid because I landed on the steel plate and not the ground, which I feel would have dramatically impeded the process had I hit it first. I stopped with my face an inch away from the curb, rolled over and said something (according to jen) to the effect of "look at you stopping traffic girl, you're beautiful!" I don't really remember this. Kara, KFo and jen pulled over to check me out and laugh at me and we went on our merry way.
The party was lots of fun. Jake showed up with his baltimore friends (cool kids) jen and i shared some forties, and kfo did amazing things on guitars. I lost track of Kara for a while, and realized that that made me a little sad. I don't like losing track of where she is.
So KFo wrote a song about baltimore and critical mass and hey girling into things and generally everything, and she's awesome.
Then Chris from SLO showed up on the blue line and we went to rescue him from wicker park, collected a few people, crashed the Red Hen dumpster for some ridiculously good bread and pretty much called it a night.
this is just a "what happened" update. I have some more things to write about, in real writing style. I just wanted y'all to know that kara got punched in the face and i threw my bike at a couple of things and also, that forties in the freezer are a-mazing.
Stupid. It started around seven. I was bombing down lincoln street at five.
Much street hopping and car dodging later, we pulled up to Daley plaza, which was crammed to the gills with bikers. It was a beautiful sight.
We spent a lot of time making friends with people by saying things like, "you're ridiculously good-looking, what's your name? " We got candy and phone numbers out of it.
The ride took off and at first, it was all sheer excitement at the throng of people and the honks of motorists. We started picking up on the general idea of how a mass works, and spent some time corking intersections. Kara and I got separated after a bit, and corked different intersections. She got punched in the face and I threw my bike (my incredibly heavy steel-frame '63 schwinn breeze) at a minivan that was trying to encroach. Although she only got punched in the face once, there were hundreds of spontaneous traffic stopping blocades and a general anonymous unity between people with two wheels, in some cases three. This being one of my first experiences disturbing the peace in a large group (no on 36 protests and planned parenthood-ing aside) I was riding very fucking high on the thrill of danger and all the potential.
If everyone who owned a bike came to critical mass, the city wouldn't move for hours. le sigh.
We split off at Palmer square, in desperate need of food. We built a bike tower outside of Jonny's Grill with KFo, jen, kara and i. We ate and got some booze and rode off in search of a party. On the way there, my attention was captured by a gorgeous girl in a shiny red dress. There was an unconscious reaction on the part of my body in which the words "hey girl" came out of my mouth and my head instinctively turned.
Unfortunately, instinct isn't always conducive to awareness of to surroundings, drunk, a little high, caffienated, speeding quickly on my bike and other factors i still haven't taken into account. In this manner, my bike veered to the right and hit one of those steel plates. I kept going and the bike made a very curt stop, allowing me, for the first time in my short biking career, the chance to fly up and over my handlebars. In chronological order the items hitting the ground went like this: right foot, right knee, bike, hips, hands, stomach, face, backpack and u-lock, which first slid over the top of my head, thanks to my ever-present beanie. I slid a foot or two on my stomach and whatever else was touching the ground. I slid because I landed on the steel plate and not the ground, which I feel would have dramatically impeded the process had I hit it first. I stopped with my face an inch away from the curb, rolled over and said something (according to jen) to the effect of "look at you stopping traffic girl, you're beautiful!" I don't really remember this. Kara, KFo and jen pulled over to check me out and laugh at me and we went on our merry way.
The party was lots of fun. Jake showed up with his baltimore friends (cool kids) jen and i shared some forties, and kfo did amazing things on guitars. I lost track of Kara for a while, and realized that that made me a little sad. I don't like losing track of where she is.
So KFo wrote a song about baltimore and critical mass and hey girling into things and generally everything, and she's awesome.
Then Chris from SLO showed up on the blue line and we went to rescue him from wicker park, collected a few people, crashed the Red Hen dumpster for some ridiculously good bread and pretty much called it a night.
this is just a "what happened" update. I have some more things to write about, in real writing style. I just wanted y'all to know that kara got punched in the face and i threw my bike at a couple of things and also, that forties in the freezer are a-mazing.