The ACME Night of the Living Dead poker run was on Sunday. Yet another outing for the bloomer suit. I rolled up a little after 8:00 but luckily other folks were still filtering in, and the crowd present was still tucking into Sarah and Christie’s vegetarian chili they had all steamy and spicy on Christie’s camp-stove. Unfortunately, I don’t have many (read, hardly any) photos from the night. It was dark out, and we spent a lot of time riding, not so much hangin’ around, so there wasn’t a lot of photo-op ops. There was, however, a guy dressed up as a can of WD-40. Seriously, check out his cap pure genius. The aiming tube? Is a bubble-tea straw. This guy was a madman, too. There were some mountain bike dudes there, and Harsh spent most of the night airborne, jumping his bike off of every curb and rise he could find. Not to be outdone, WD took his own roadbike airborne off of a curb. Nothing on this earth will ever compare to the vision of a 6′ WD-40 can on a bike sailing through the air. Nothing, I tell you.
Christie announced the first card-pickup point of the run, and we took off. A bunch of us had the ya-yas and opened up a sprint right away. I was feeling pretty sassy, so I ran with this bunch out in front. There was one other girl in this group, a blonde on a carbon road bike, all lycra-ed up to the gills. Being as I was in Bike Ambassador Mode, still, I pulled up along side of her and said “how do” and introduced myself. She looked at me like I had something wrong with me, which, honestly…now that I think of it…sprinting a gas-pipe Schwinn whilst wearing Mary Poppins’s workout togs, I guess I probably did seem to have a screw loose. She gave me that fisheye, then grudgingly admitted to having a name. Holy hell, y’all, I just met my first “arrogant roadie.” And she was a chick! From then on out, it was on between me and Little Miss Spandex. I vowed that by the end of the night, I’d have her haughty guts for garters! Yaaaaarrrr!
The group of us front-runners got to what we thought was the card point, and waited for the rest of the riders to catch up. And we waited. And eventually it occurred to us that we weren’t at the card point at all. Somebody had an idea that our leader had misheard and suggested another nearby park. We headed that direction, but no dice. Another guy thought it might be the lookout at Kessler Park. I was the only one who knew how to get there, so I started leading the pack toward Paseo when Christie rang one of the guys and told us they were at the 9th St. overlook park and to get our happy asses up there and get some cards. So, we got our scurry on, collected our cards, and proceeded on to the next card point, out at Kaw Point. Kaw Point by moonlight is so serene–even with 30 or so bike punks bumbling around, cadging snacks, lighting cigs, drinking stashed grog, and in the case of two guy who had some kind of weird rivalry, trying to rack one another. I didn’t ask–in fact insisted I didn’t want to know.
Backing up a bit, on the way out to Kaw Point, Miss Spandex America and I got into another sprint-fest and were busting a serious move, and we blew past two guys who were in the process of building a little momentum themselves, and I heard one of them exclaim, “dude, we just got passed by a couple of skirts.” God, those words were music to my ears!
Fast-forwarding a bit, we rode back from Kaw Point, aiming to cruise through the KCK haunted house district which is actually a pretty big deal. There were a couple of street parties happening, and a lot of seeing and being seen to do. However, as we pulled up to our next card-stop a bunch of people started noticing flats. The trip out to Kaw Point brought in a bumper harvest of puncture vines and we were all pulling goatheads out of our tires. I managed to collect two flats for myself and learned that people find it mighty hilarious when a chick in a bloomer suit mutters “cocksucker.” It was at the flat-fixing party that Miss Spandex and I parted ways. There was a flat party, in an actual flat, with heat and booze a few blocks away, and about half of our alleykat took off for that venture. The rest of us, after an orgy of picking burrs out of tires and replacing punctured tubes, went on back to the shop, collected enough cards to make a hand, and partook of the free shit. I won a Salsa Cycles teeshirt and an alleykat event shirt, size XL, which I’ll later cut down to a more me-sized garment.
The whole affair was a massive lot of fun, and I could go on more and more, but I won’t. I’m tired, and I’m sure it was more fun to participate in than to read about.