This month bike party's theme was "Science Fiction and Fantasy Ride." Virginia and I had fun with this one.

     

First of all, we reincarnated the clothes we'd worn for that Star Trek ride, back when spaceship TNVA-147 had boldly gone out into the universe. This time, I brought a couple of bags of old science fiction and fantasy novels. The idea was to get as many people as possible to take a bit of science fiction or fantasy for a ride. The first to take the bait was Bryan, who emerged from the hunt with A Darkness in My Soul.

  

At some point I got Moya to take possession of one of those science fiction novels I'd bought because I'd liked the cover art but was never able to finish for some reason. I think she also picked that one because it was light to carry, being a thin book.

     

Ian, our fearless leader this month, picked this book "Because I've met Larry Niven."

  

Some people just posed with a book for a moment or two. Then it was time for our fearless leader to read "How we ride."

     

Then we were off. Virginia and I had signed up to bird the second or third turn, the right on Brokaw from Coleman. We rushed to get there before bike party.

  

We even had the blinkies deployed on the dangerous bumps before anybody got there. Those little red things blinked red from the bumps in the road that had surprised and jolted us on the first test ride. The plan was for Virginia to yell "RIGHT ON BROKAW!" and then I would yell "WATCH OUT FOR THE BUMPS!" Hopefully we could keep a lot of people from the jolts we remembered.

     

I found myself doing a sales job for the Mind Behind The Eye. "This book was done by a guy that worked for NASA and pondered what a constructive interaction with some other planetary intelligence might look like." Didn't mention that the guys job might have been tour guide for tourists or something like that. Whatever the truth, the book was one of those interesting reads for sure.

        

I just had to find a home for SIASL, as some Heinlein fans call it. Too bad the picture of the art on Starmasters Gambit didn't come through, it was one of those books whose cover art was worth the purchase price, just because the image is dramatic.

        

More than once, someone else told me they didn't want one because "I don't read books."

     

     

     

        

        

     

        

        

At the second regroup I went back to giving away science fiction. Andy Singer was one of the authors I met on book tour. By the time it was over I'd given away a shopping bag and a half of old books, some of which I really liked a lot. Hoping they make someone else into a reader, but it seems a bit unlikely.

     

     

I was muttering to myself about how those batteries in Kat's rig were probably powered by the fossil fuel grid when I suddenly realized that a lot of cop cars were passing us.

  

Then the traffic got seriously plugged up. We went around to find out what the issue was. When we got there Booble was surrounded by cops. There were more cops coming on foot from wherever they parked nearby. The gist of it was that somebody had complained about the noise and they were there to ask us to turn it down. Jacky started yelling "Roll past conflict!" to get the crowd moving and diffuse tensions. We got moving to, partly to give those that were dithering about what to do an example to follow.

     

For the rest of the ride we were much quieter. I almost felt sorry for the guys pulling sound trailers. All that work just to haul a silent ticket magnet.

We didn't quite make it to the end. That last left would have meant at least another half hour awake. We just kept going, headed home. We talked about what we'd seen as we rolled along. That was a lot of cops to write a ticket! Booble can take care of himself, but still, we worried about what it all meant. We got back to Virginia's after 2 AM. Thank you bike party for another fine evening!