The long, cold, bike ride

Winter 2008

(Second hand account by TS)

Jaime calls Lancester County, PA home.  He's located in mountain area, surrounded by state game lands, and miles from anything but a local bar and a few places that are only open between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

One of the places that is miles from Jaime's little bungalow in the woods, is his job site.  Jaime has had a couple other jobs since we got to know him, but his primary source of employment hasn't changed.  Actually, he's responsible for helping our planes fly, keeping our seatbelts in place, and making sure the cruise control stays on when you get lazy on the highway (these facts may prove disturbing in future posts).  It's about 35 mile round trip for him, and on occasion, he's been known to ride his bike instead of taking the car.  Most of the time, it's for recreational purposes, but that's usually restricted to the summer months.

Jaime's car decided it needed a night in the shop, so on a Sunday afternoon, he dropped the car off to get looked at the following morning, in time to get it back for second shift.  Unfortunately, work calls after the drop off to inform him he needs to get for the shift beforehand, and so he's stuck with no other option than to ride his bike to work the next morning.

Now, at this point, one might go and get their car back, or consider other options, but not our fearless environmental warrior.  I mean, this is the guy that flies down the sides of mountains at 2am with nothing but a headlight and hope that he won't clip a tree.  So, he decided the best course of action was to get up earlier than normal, hop on his bike, and get to peddling.  Unfortunately for Jaime, it was the coldest day of winter so far, but off he went.

Off Jaime goes into the frozen tundra of a PA morning.  Peddling in cold weather like this must be a lot like trying to get into the ocean in the north east.  You know it's going to be cold, so you bolt in for a swim to avoid as much discomfort as possible, and then once you're in and adjusted, you commit to staying in for as long as possible since you don't want to go through the process again.  He gets going, and decides there will be no stopping until he reaches his final destination.  Along the journey, something happens which causes a tear in the crotch of his pants.  No stopping, can't stop, losing feeling in fingers and a bit of hypothermia.

Roll up to the office and time to jump off the bike....

YOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!

See, when one is peddling at a high speed, in the frozen wind and arctic sunless cold, you kind of lose the ability to feel anything.  Add sitting on a cold bike seat the entire way, and well, think of A Christmas Story and the pole incident - only this time with balls.  That's right, our fearless peddler had somehow found a way to tear through multiple layers, and get scrotal skin stuck to the seat that is making every guy reading this right now cringe.   I can only imagine likening it to tearing the band aid off, but, well, I'm sure it's still no where close.  

What did he do?  Went to work, moved on, and I didn't ask about the after effects or visual proof.  That's for someone else to do.

Why did I start with this story?  Answer might disturb you:  this is light in comparison to future posts.  

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to completely verify that everything I wrote here is 100% accurate, though it's just a matter of details regarding the journey, the end result is definitely the real deal.

See ya next week.

Who is Rigel??

Meet Rigel.  His real name is Jaime Cooper, and for those of us lucky enough to call him our friend, he has been providing countless hours of entertainment over the years.

I'm sure the first thing you ask is: isn't that friends are for, and what makes him special?

The answers will be revealed to you on a weekly basis, with a new story (past or present) being posted covering such topics as rampaging flying animals, 3am bike rides down the sides of mountains, and break ins involving crow bars and other things that have been turned into weapons.

You may ask yourself from time to time if in fact a person like this actually exists: the answer is yes, the picture above will provide truth (thanks Tera).  Many people have asked the same thing in the past, and have been half amazed to meet him in person, and see that he's actually alive and doing pretty well considering his previous misadventures.

Why a blog for him?  Well, he should really have a book or movie (we're not going to try and go the Tucker Max route here, but...) and as I said before, these stories have kept some of us doubled over for hours laughing ant their obscurity, and struggling to share the story with others because it's just too hard to repeat.

Rigel will be doing most of the work here, picking his favorites along the way and sending them over to be  posted.  For those that know him, please feel free to send me photos to be posted, or make suggestions for stories that should be told, and I'll talk to Rigel about getting them posted.  All names in these stories will be altered to protect people from possible future prosecution or not to destory their chances at running for public office.  We don't worry about Jaime, that opportunity waved "bye bye" to him years ago.

Be warned, some of the postings might create seizure like spurts of laughter, definitely offend some, and make you question his mortality.  Trust me, if Darwin was still with us (he turned 200 the other day) I think he would be completely baffled, and may alter his scientific theories on evolution.

Oh yeah, Rigel is his middle name, it just sounds so much cooler than Jaime, so we're going with that.

The blog makeup will change, this is just the beginning, so buckle up kids.  

First story comes on Monday.