Took the Hi-Riser down to 63rd street to visit Blackstone Bicycle Works and raise the handlebars up a little higher for greater comfort. While I was down there, I found a nice little woven basket with plastic flowers on it for the front. The Hi-Riser's lookin right purdy.

I didn't ride the whole way, ooohhh no. That's 12 miles each way. Being a little girl's bike (modern PC euphemism: "Smaller step-through frame"), it has wee tiny pedals, so you have to spin 'em like a hamster in a wheel in order to get up any steam. Not good for long distances. So I took the train until it ended and rode the rest of the way.

Yes, dear reader, your intrepid host rode a little girl's bike through the south side of Chicago, notorious for its crime, poverty, and hostility, seeing nary a white face from the minute the train left the loop until meeting the volunteers at the bike center, with the same results on the way back, seven miles through a city that may be the most segregated in America (just look at this map, at the solid yellow swath on the south side that represents 90-100% African-American). Some sort of suicidal game of counting coup? Not at all. I didn't receive a single threat, yell, or buzz by a car. As soon as I was back in the loop, it was back to being called "jagoff" and "faggot" again by rich white businessmen in luxury cars. I don't know why this is. Maybe it was the crazy-honky factor, like I was such an anomaly in Woodlawn that people were too stunned to react. Personally, I think it's because Joe Ulcer, in his $40,000 Lexus, knows that for all his success and acheivement, I'm out there having more fun, and this pisses him off.

On the way back, I encountered an interesting and unexpected quirk in the mass transit system. You're allowed to bring your bike on the train anytime except rush hour, right? So between 4 and 6 the attendants won't let you on. Well, I boarded at about 3:30, and by the time I got to the loop, it was past 4 PM. Apparently, if you remain on the same train, you can stay on all the way to your destination, but if you try to transfer trains, you're shit out of luck. So the rule is not "you can't ride during these hours" but rather "you can't board a train during these hours", which resulted in me being escorted to the exit and told to come back in two hours. If my destination had been along the green line, I would have been allowed to go home, but since I had to switch to blue, I was politely but firmly escorted down the platform, up an elevator, through a set of double doors, up another escalator, out the gates, and through the front door, while the whole time the CTA staff's walkie talkies jabbered my location as if I were some crazed gunman that they were staking out. Imagine! Me wanting to ride home on the train, with my bike, like the people in the posters they put up in every station and on every train! What am I, some kinda looney?

So here I am stuck downtown with three options: Wait two hours, catch a cab, or ride five miles on this little clown bike. I remembered that some Critical Mass folk would be flyering downtown at that time, so I just joined them, and put our little party invitations into the hollow seat posts of every bike we saw. That's what the ride is, really, a party on wheels.

Then I was scooped up by a passing angel, as Singular came and picked me and the Hi Riser up in her car. We headed to the Ha Mien Vietamese restaurant for another Feast of Fools. This one was definitely more bizarre than the last one.

Sure, there was the usual- fire eating drag princess playing violin, Joan Crawford impersonator, aggressive dyke poetry involving flung sausages, amazon witchcraft, dyke rock- your basic bizzarro theater. But this show also featured a male nurse, drunken sleazy priest, a female Elvis impersonator, Joan Jett-Blakk (Cockette and former candidate for President), and some weird red-skinned, gold-wigged bishop who sang while he cut the penis off of his guitarist/altar boy.

So in other words, I had a pretty ordinary day.