Death by Egg & Cheese

A One Act Play

Adrian Fletcher (A.K.A. Randolph Mantooth) as the EMT
Mark Wahlberg (fifty pounds overweight) as the Officer


What would have been a pleasant morning on the Arlington bike-path is interrupted by a macabre scene: a police officer and an EMT stand over the lifeless, awkwardly displayed body of a gore-tex clad cyclist, his face an unsettling shade of blue. Something odd protrudes from his un-quivering white lips.


Officer: Looks like a anutha clea-ah cut case of a bike-ah retahd flippin' ovah his frickin' baahs n' breakin' his frickin' neck. Whaddayathink guy?


EMT: I dunno chief, it doesn't seem like that haahd of a section of bike path, n' what's that hangin' out of his mouth they-ah?

Officer: Aw dyude, it's a egg n' cheese...I think I'm goona baahf.


EMT: Ya, now that I re-look at the situation he-ah, I think the po-ah bastid choked on that shit.


Officer: N' that thing ain't even a legitimate Dunkin' Donits egg n' cheese eith-ah...whatta weah-do*. N' look-it what he's wearin'. My mah always told me to put on clean undah-wears so that if I got in a caah accident er somethin' I wouldn't have no skid maahks or nuthin'. But lookit the faggoty get up this quee-ah's got on. I'd rather die with shit in my drahs** than in some fruit suit like he's got on.


EMT: Seriously, I wundah if his mutha knows he's gay.


Officer: Fuckin' A right!

EMT: Yup, wasn't the broken neck that killed this freak, it was the egg n' cheese.


Officer: For the luv-ah Christ...well, honestly,
I hope that's how I go —


EMT (interrupting): What? Ridin' around on a bike, lookin' like a gay Spide-ah Man?


Officer: Look, I known yuz a long time kid, but if you don't quit bein' a haah-don, I'm gonna smack you in the fuckin' head so fuckin' haahd, yer kids aah gonna come out fuckin' retahded.


EMT: Geez, whatevah dude, c'mawn, I'm just bustin' yer balls fer Chris sakes.


Officer: Alls I know is that I wouldn't mind goin' like that...death by egg n' cheese...but not that weah-do homemade crap, the real stuff from Dunkin's...with bacon.


* Weirdo
** Drawers

Fat Tuesday Part IV

(And a bit of SSUSA)

Height - 5' 10"
Weight - 500 (up 332 Lbs., oops)
BMR - 5939.6 (now I can have waffle fry nachos three meals a day!)
BMI -71.7 (obesity is classified as anything over 30)
Weight Goal - 157 Lbs (ya right)



Wow, I was so spent from the tornado trip to Tucson that I couldn't even muster a lame, Monday—litany of excuses—post. And now, being the perpetually lame-ass that I am, I'm only going to talk about SSUSA regarding how it impacted my quest to make my optimum racing weight. It impacted it like a meteor made of bacon wrapped bacon. Maybe that had something to do with the weight gain—all that bacon wrapped bacon I ate after the race. Or the hot dog outside the Surly Wench. Or the pizza. Or the beer...no couldn't have been the beer. It must have been all that delicious rotisserie chicken we all ripped apart and devoured with our bare hands around the bonfire the night after the race. I felt like a frickin' viking, home from the battle, feasting on...gourmet rotisserie chicken. Vikings kicked a lot of ass and stole a lot of treasure. If anyone could've afforded fine rotisserie chicken; it would have been frickin' Vikings.

The full post will be up on the 29er Crew blog later in the week. Well maybe not the full post. I have plans for the full story. I think Bicycling might want to buy it, that is if I could work it into a piece called: "Get fat fast! Five easy steps to off-season weight gain." No, you're right, they probably won't buy that.

George has some thoughts and words on SSUSA though.

And no, I'm not even really going to yammer about Racing Weight today either. Truth is I haven't even picked the book up since last week, too busy reading for the school to get to it.

I am weak and spent and not at all my typical garrulous self, so I will now half-assedly caption these photos, eat some cheap carbs, and then pass out. I think I may have passed out halfway through writing this post. More words later...

There will be blood. Blood and prickly things stuck in my legs.

But it was a dry-not-16°-like-Boston-heat.

Now that's f-in' teamwork!
That's the kind of not-race it was.
A race with cattle gates in it.
Not a lot like a ski area race.

I have an aversion to cactus.

It might have something to do with the time I dove face first...onto a cactus.

Not on purpose.

Bacon Egg & Cheese on a Boston Cream Donut

Q: In your horribly executed artist's dramatization, why are you depicted as a Lego man with a large human head? And why is The Dunkin Donuts man AKA "Fred" portrayed as a Lego James Bond? Why didn't you just use the footage from your video camera? And what's with the crappy blank green screen?

A: Well, there was no footage to speak of. Apparently I forgot to put a memory card in my video camera and apparently the woman working the counter at the Dunkin Donuts location we chose to use was reluctant to get photographed. I think it has something to do with her involvement with Dr. Mengele's Brazilian Twin Village. She obviously has something to hide. The art department at Big Bikes has been undergoing some budget cuts, they just didn't have the man-power to do anything more creative...or even fill in the green screen background. That and they were feeling a little queasy and a bit off all this afternoon for some reason, I don't know why.

Lego men? They're cheap, practically free. I'm pretty sure it's still legal to keep them as slaves in Bahrain. As sure as I am about anything.



Q: So what's going on above here, is that like a Dunkin Donuts version of a McDLT, a sort of "some assembly required" sandwich?

A: Well The Angel of Death's assistant there was less than cooperative with the execution of the actual making of the sandwich, I saw that as really, really unreasonable. I wound up having to make the damn thing myself. What kind of crap is that?



Q: Describe the taste sensation which occurred when you bit into the "abomination" as I will refer to it from here on out.


A: It was kind of like biting into a chocolate frosted donut. Then you get to rubber-like the bacon and the cheap, oily, liquefied cheese and it goes all to hell. It tastes like you went out to the dumpster at Dunkin Donuts, scooped a fistful of garbage up and shoved it in your mouth.



Q: Why? That's all just plain why? Like Fred or Khalid or Khalid Fred Mohammed or whatever said, "what is wrong with your brain?"

A: It was a fund-raising stunt. I'm trying to raise money to get to Single Speed Worlds in New Zealand next October. And because I wanted to give the American people (except those in North Dakota who don't read Big Bikes...ever) something beautiful, something that would make them stop and say to themselves, "I'm so glad I'm not Thom Parsons. I mean in general, but especially today."


Thanks to Abe for coming out and documenting "the event". And thanks again to anonymous donor Matt from Dedham Bike for making me have to do this.

Now I have to go get on the waiting list for a baboon heart transplant.

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.

The Thom Parsons
(Bacon Egg & Cheese on a Boston Cream Donut)
Project

You may have noticed that little Paypal "Donate" button over on the sidebar there. You probably thought to yourself, "why in the hell would I give money to this guy?" I don't expect you to give me your hard-earned money for nothing, I intend to work for it. It's an experiment, we'll see if it works. I gotta raise the funds for SSWC New Zealand somehow.

This my proposal: I am going to throw a figure out there, say $100, and when I find that there's $100 in my Paypal account, I will then perform a heinous, self-destructive act purely for your entertainment. In the future perhaps I will take requests — I will be your trained bike monkey, stopping just short of murder and the eating of raw tomatoes for your enjoyment.

The heinous, self-destructive act I intend to perform is this: I will enter a Dunkin Donuts, order a "bacon egg & cheese on a Boston cream donut." If the people at the counter refuse to fulfill my order, I will then proceed to order a bacon egg and cheese and a Boston cream donut...and ask for a knife. This will all be caught on film. Perhaps photographs with cartoon word bubbles will accompany the post. Of course I will then eat this culinary abomination.

So go click away. The faster the money makes its way into my Paypal account, the sooner I begin my accelerated journey down the path to cardiac arrest. Every dollar counts. It could take hours, it could take weeks, it could take months, maybe we'll never get there and I'll weasel out of this thing. All I know is if every Big Bikes reader donated a dollar today, we would be 3 maybe 4% of the way toward our goal!

In other less disturbing news, I scouted out another section of The Bay Circuit Trail, the section between Fawn Lake in Bedford and Walden Pond in Concord. I won't say it was the most exciting piece of trail I've ever seen, but it had its moments. Regardless of the lack of awesomeness of the trail itself, its function as a connector between other areas in invaluable. It's always good to know where one can get off the pavement and take off on some dirt. Say you spit on a bright yellow Hummer after the driver...drove by you in their bright yellow Hummer. They might try to kill you. It's good to know where you can duck off the road and make an escape.

Too droopy-eyed sleepy to talk about it right now, words and photos tomorrow perhaps, over on the 29er Crew site.

-t