The Grateful Bike

Pig Pen says, "Don't steal this bike right off of the street."

On my way to work, I came across this sweet bike.  Why is it so sweet?  Because it's blends two of my favorite things into one really favorite thing:  bikes and The Grateful Dead.  Also, it's doing a good job in the anti-theft dept., and that's also a favorite.

I started listening to the Dead in high school.  I wasn't alone.  Jerry had died in 1995, so people were talking about them, and most of my friends, at some point in the next couple years, would buy a copy of Skeletons from the Closet.  But when everyone else stopped at "greatest hits," I kept going.  And when a friend of my brother's - a guy with impeccable taste in music - lent me his copy of American Beauty, that was it.  I had found "my band."  The next couple years were spent wearing giant tie-dye shirts, sandals in all weather (easier to do in Hotlanta than here in the NY), and taping over my dad's old sermon tapes in favor of the Grateful Dead Radio Hour, which used air late Sunday nights on Z93.  The trick?  A little scotch tape over those square holes on top.

I'm a long way from high school now. The shirts are gone and the sandals come out a little less often. But the Dead remains.  And most mornings, if you ever pass me on the Q'boro bridge, trying to pedal over that beast without my heart exploding, there's a really good chance I'm listening to the Dead.  Maybe from Europe in the 70s, or post-diabetic coma Jerry in the late 80s, happy to be alive and playing like it.  Hell, it might even be something from the studio.  That's right, I even love the albums.  Now that's a fan for life.