For a couple of days following the Challenge, I didn’t want to ride. I forced myself to commute to work on the Surly on Tuesday, but other than that, I had been generally content to just try and be normal for a few days. Tuesday afternoon, Matt called me up & told me that he & Charles (another wrench from the Union Ave Outdoors store) were going to have some beers and ride their fixies around, and I was welcome to join them. Ryan (who has been having an equally hard time recovering) was hesitant, but eventually gave in and agreed to go.

In a perfect world, I’d insert photos of the story as I told it, but, well, there are a lot of photos, and WordPress is a pain in the ass in that respect, so you’ll have to read and periodically scroll down to the gallery for illustrations.

When we arrived at Matt’s, he and Charles were at the nearby corner store. They soon walked in with pre-ride provisions- Budweiser and 4Loko. Someone broke out the duct tape, and they played a quick game of Edward Beer Hands (see photo gallery below). I could have told them it was a bad idea, but it would not have mattered…

15 minutes later, Charles had verped a little bit on Matt’s carpet (and his Celebration Station t-shirt), and Matt was sitting on the floor fighting a similar urge (notice the “natures miracle” carpet cleaner in the photos of Matt at the end of the couch). Fortunately, both parties rallied and Ryan, Matt, Charles, Cathrine (Charles’ woman), and me struck out to meet Joy (future bike shop employee) and visit various drop-type spots in the area.

P.S. Natures Miracle won’t take red #5 out of carpet.

We ended up turning the night into what can only be described as a Memphis-style pub crawl. Along with the bike spots, we stopped at several corner/liquor stores along the way. The locals are awesome. However, while we’d narrowly avoided drunken disaster earlier, it came back while we were at a spot they’d deemed the “Joy Drop” (since it was the size of Joy).

Sometimes, young men and large quantities of alcohol are a bad combination.

Jokingly, I took Matt’s phone. Matt got mad, and somehow it turned into Matt and Charles nearly getting into a fistfight. After a lot of yelling and shit-flipping, Matt and Charles took their bikes and went home. We followed Matt by a few minutes only to arrive at his apartment to find a fist-sized hole in the wall and him with a bleeding hand. We spent a while talking him down. Somehow I managed to make him laugh once or twice.

While the night didn’t end well, it was encouraging that I was able to get on my bike and have a great time not trying to go as fast as possible while ignoring all signals from my body to stop. I hate that things went south for the group, but in all honesty, sometimes we all just need to let loose, yell, and punch holes in shit. Charles is, as far as I can tell, young and immature. He just makes that behavior a habit. Matt is a 39 year old trapped inside a 23 year old. Sometimes the 23 year- old Falcon Punches the 39 year old and runs amok for a while. We’re all our own brand of crazy. It happens.

Without further adieu, the night in photos…