I bought a bike

I bought a bike today.

I already had a bike, but it was one that I have been riding since I was seven. I decided it was time.

Miguel was over at my house one day spouting off about something he had read regarding global warming.

“One day, we’re going to swim to work because all of DC is going to be underwater.”

Thank you Al Gore for making mi amigo paranoid. Even though most of what he was ranting made no sense whatsoever, his comment about the driving of Hummers being for “inverted dickless wonders who like to take up 19 parking spots” made some sense to me. I don’t drive a Hummer, but I do drive and frankly, I don’t like to swim, so I decided to buy a bike.

I usually only see one guy riding his bike to work and he always wears brown pants, squared glasses and has a beard. An un-kept one. I figure that if the hippies want to really get their message across about saving the world and global warming, they need to get the brown polyester wearing, beard having, look like they have been constipated for the last 13 weeks type of people off of the bikes. They look like assholes. The helmets, ay, the helmets don’t help either. Is there anyway to make the helmets cool looking? Anyway…

I decided that it was up to me to help save the world. I figure that if the great people of DC see a sexy Guatemalan like me riding a bike, bueno, maybe they would begin to ride their bikes too. And then maybe we won’t have to swim to work or ever listen to Al Gore again…

The main problem that I have found in riding my bike is that there are cars, trucks and buses on the same street. I quickly made a promise to myself that I would no longer drive extra close to bikers in the hope that they would crash into parked cars. Turns out it isn’t very much fun when it’s being done to you. Oh yes, the game of opening your parked car right when a biker is riding past? Also not going to be playing that one.

After having a couple of drivers show me that they owned the road, I decided that wearing the helmet was a good thing. To the untrained eye, I was just an extremely sexy Guatemalan riding his bike (which is also brown), but I felt like an ass in that helmet. I have decided that I would paint my helmet the colors of the Guatemalan flag and maybe put on an eagle of some kind on this bike helmet. I need to do what I can to make bicycle riding acceptable.

Oh, one more thing. Feel free to punch any bicycle rider who has any kind of horn, bell or other noise making device. They are of the un-kept beard having crowd. It makes me sad to think that I may need to recruit some collar poppers to ride bicycles, but I hope that it never comes to that. Then again, anything is better than having mi amigo quote Al Gore.

Mucho Amor,

El Guapo