The Heavy Metal Hippie

I'm ashamed of myself pretty often, but I think I've outdone myself.

I've become a cyclist.

I know I've made allusions to it recently, but I'm just going to come out and say that I'm now a hippie cyclist and that I've been thinking more and more about buying some of those stupid clothes that cyclists wear so that my genitals and ass would enjoy maximized comfort!

But I'm not going to do that.  I refuse to listen to my idiot brain.

You see, I can't afford a second car.  I'd love to have a second car so that I didn't have to do lame things like expose my skin to the sun or get cardiovascular exercise that might extend my life.  That stuff is dumb!  It usually makes me all sweaty, and then my coworkers and anybody else who is just hanging around complain a lot.  It's almost as bad as when I play my Last.fm at work (Pig Destroyer radio is so awesome)!  I invariably walk into the building, glistening with sweat and slippery as an eel from the sunscreen that my wife insists that I wear.  It's very handy to be so slick for when your boss tries to catch you to talk about team building and stuff, but mostly it's time consuming to apply and annoying to have running down your arms and face while you ride around in traffic.  But turning into a hippie turd muffin really did sneak up on me; after all, I'm more of a heavy metal hippie, where my smartphone/music player is generally playing some crunchy fucking GRIND while I thunder down the Austin pavement.  It isn't always grind, though.

The worst part about being a hippie now is the constant brushes with death that I have to deal with on may way to and from work.  For example, many days a Toyota 4 Runner with a couple of lesbians in it buzzbomb me right around the half mile where the road is downhill but the bike lane suddenly and inexplicably disappears.  It's a scientific fact that lesbians are weirded out by giant straight dudes who do things that giant straight dudes aren't supposed to be doing, like riding bicycles and looking like me.  And how do I know they're lesbians?  Because they have all the rainbow siguls all over the back of their clam-powered rocket sled, and because I've caught up to them at stop lights to give them a passive aggressive stink eye because I only managed to dodge their side mirror by divine intervention.

I'm not going to say anything to them, though, because two lesbians would fucking KICK THE SHIT out of me.

Or yesterday, I was riding past the community college, watching some motorists turn into the parking lot so that they could go better their lives like a bunch of assholes.  I was paying close attention, because this kind of situation is where people always try to kill you for no reason.  Sure as sugar, on my immediate right, a red Buick came thundering up from behind me.  I gazed at it helplessly as it hovered with its taillights just out of my view and thought "this bitch is going to make this turn right--" and as I had this thought, she jammed on her brakes and cut hard right in front of me, barely making the turn into the parking lot.  As I jammed on my brakes and pictured myself hitting her stupid Grandma mobile and flying into the passenger window and out the driver's side window like a cartoon character, no less than a dozen pedestrians and motorists looked on in horror, no doubt picturing me flying over the car like a motorcycle-riding henchman in some action movie where the villain is a Japanese guy with a cat.

We were all in suspense.

Then I stopped, less than a foot from the side of her car.  I began yelling at her as she drove away and kept on my way.

I'd like to throw in here, right now, if this scenario sounds familiar to you and you drive a red Buick to ACC around Bittern and Metric, you're a CUNT.

So how do I reconcile myself to my newly developed hippie ways?  I haven't been able to decide how I'm going to do that yet.  Mostly I've been listening to Rotten Sound and Victims to make sure that the old brain doesn't go all squishy and force me to start listening to reggae and techno like an asshole.  Fuck that shit!  I just want to make sure that I don't start getting interested in protesting and Ron Paul and fixies and dreadlocks.  I'm not like that!

I don't know what I'm trying to say here, other than "Help!"  Since I'm not in college anymore and am employed full-time, I don't get the luxury of just being poor.  I've become a lame, sweaty, bike-riding boner who's increasingly worried about his stupid health.

Oh, God.

Also, if you're ever riding around Austin, around Metric Boulevard, and you see a tall dude doing a wheelie downhill on an ancient mountain bike, say "Hello!"  That's Freddie, and that dude is awesome.  If you're ever just down the road from where Freddie is and you see a heavyset dude on an ancient road bike wearing a Kill the Client sleeveless t-shirt, that's me.  Say hello to me, too.  But don't try to murder us with your car, because it's fucking frightening.