Big Bikes

Battle of The Bulge Road

First things first, I have to get my excuses out of the way...er, I mean "further hype" the Thom Parsons (Bacon Egg & Cheese on a Boston Cream) Project. Despite the fact that I received a generous donation from an anonymous donor, I was not able to schedule the execution of the gastronomically dastardly deed over the weekend. On what I call "Normal People Thanksgiving," morning I met up with fellow Ice Weasels co-promoters Rooter and K-Sweet for brunch to discuss how we can design the most horrible course ever. The plan was to have Rooter film "the event" after brunch...after brunch...at Soundbites. Awesome plan, great job. For some reason, after ingesting enough calories to sustain Dicky for three weeks in one sitting, I wasn't feeling the Bacon egg & cheese on a Boston cream thing.

Hey, did I ever say I was really, really smart?

No. But maybe I did say that sometimes when I ride I like to rock out
wicked, wicked haaahd to Judas Priest. Families walking down the Battle Road on Thanksgiving morning love it when some guy in a black leotard rolls by singing "Turbo Lover." A disapproving scowl is a New Englander's smile.

Why do I call it "normal people Thanksgiving?" Because my family has Thanksgiving on Saturday. This, despite the fact that Abraham Lincoln's 1863 proclamation calling for a national day of thanksgiving was pretty much directed at my ancestors who had a habit of scheduling their thanksgiving to conflict with other holidays which were popular in the middle part of the 19th century in America — like Administrative Professionals Day (known then as "Secretary's Day) and Yom Kippur .

An excerpt from Lincoln' proclamation:

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People (the WHOLE American people, that means you, you crazy Raymonds you). I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part (especially Massachusetts and especially Wrentham Massachusetts)of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them (you know who I'm talking about) that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness (I'm talking to you Auntie Neil) and disobedience, blah, blah, blah.

Sometimes, just randomly our family's Thanksgiving fell on the last Thursday of November, until Thanksgiving 2003, when cousin Sam stood up in the middle of dinner after a few glasses of hard cider, threw a blueberry muffin at my grandmother's head and slurred "I have a proclamation...I proclaim that from this day forward the last Thursday of November shall be known as 'Abraham Lincoln is a dick day, ' and we're gonna have our Thanksgiving on frickin' Saturday."

It is funny that Lincoln's proclamation from earlier that same year never caught on as well as Thanksgiving — the one calling for "a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer." Can't figure that one out. Americans love holidays that call for not eating and not buying a ton of crazy crap. That's why they're so thin and have piles of money in their savings accounts.



I'm out of time, guess I will never get to explain the title of this post or talk about the great ride Miriam, my brother-in-law and I had on Thanksgiving.