There were three Bike Club hospitalizations that weekend, or at least there should have been. Lil' Dan got hit by a car in front of Palmer's. I've met many people here who have been hit by cars on tallbikes, and they all tell me the same thing: They landed in the windshield rather than splooshed under the front end or been brunched by the grille. Could a tallbike increase one's chances in an encounter with a car?

It happened that many of Dan's brothers were inside Palmer's at the time, so when word got out they piled out of the bar and chased the driver. An SUV cut her off and the gang surrounded her car, kicking and punching it. Then Roscoe swarmed up and they dispersed. Lil' Dan got three staples in his scalp.

Luke, charged with anger at the assault on Dan, twisted his ankle after zooming down the street, up a flaming plywood ramp, in through the front door of the West Bank School of Art and Culture Center, and through a flaming table. The accident occured on the fifth attempt. His posterior was also set afire.

And some fellow named Posso handed his knife to Sven and said, "Gimme what you got." So Sven cut him on the arm. They laughed heartily but suddently the cut sorta popped and fatty tissue mushroomed out. Sven freaked out but it weren't no thing but a gold-plated chicken wing bling bling to Posso, whose other arm had been cut off by a train in a tagging accident and then reattached. He was just pissed that Sven picked his good arm.

...and one arrest, some fellow hopping a fence while dumpster-diving to theft some flowers (?!)

I saw a unicycle gang of six or seven, but I was on my way somewhere with a pack and couldn't flag them down.

We were biking through some southern neighborhood when some guy started yelling, "Vicodins! Vicodins! I got Vicodins!" He pronounced it "vahkaDINZ! vahkaDINZ!"

I have seen many things I didn't think possible here... people getting around on trip-highs, a use for those crappy department-store suspension bikes, the legendary Unridden, Tennessee Stud, recumbent tallbikes and trip-high recumbents, the Meatwagon grill bike, and of course the Tallest Bike and the mini-Tallest Bike. The Tallest Bike in the World makes a great bike rack, because it isn't going anywhere. It never need be locked up. I've been using it, as I am staying at the new Bike Club house. The folks here are feeling a bit disconnected after Imminent Domain took the junkyard where Per lived, which is also why there was chopping going on out back of the Weinery when Matt the Rat and I showed up.

Sidecar bikes are everywhere. Tallbikes don't draw a second glance. There are so many things that aren't done, too, like I haven't seen one funnybike. Not too many people ride choppers, build commuter bikes other than tallbikes, or use trailers (what with all the sidecars).