The other hairy situation left me short-handed, literally. One chill autumn afternoon I was ripping through the trails and, fueled by the Bravado of a full summer of shredding, I was going a bit faster than would have been logically reasonable… Having just come off a nice extended rainfall, the terrain was a comely combination of slippery and sticky, offering just enough give to let the wheels dig in and tear it up. Coming around one corner that I had ripped up dozens of times before, I found a tree had fallen and was blocking the path, directly perpendicular to my route… Fuck.  It happened so fats and I was carrying so much sped, that there were only two options… 

1. Bail off the bike and most certainly crash… HARD.
2. Rev the engine, pull up the front end, lean back and hope the bike got over the tree.

Of course, I chose option #2, instinctively. I charged at that tree, and hoped for the best, and what happened next was just about… the… worst… thing… that could have happened. The front wheel never came up. I just hit that tree head on, like a brick wall, and got thrown over my handlebars. I rolled over three or four times and the damp forest floor and finally came to a stop and collected my wildly spread senses. Well, that was a new one. Id never been felled by an errant tree, but then again, Id never even ridden a motorcade as of a year ago… When. I finally managed to get back to my feet, I did the normal checklist for a bike crash… Arms, fingers, knees and toes… They all work. Neck and head… check. Shoulder shrug. Well, done, so… shoulders shrug. But then it came to what makes us human… the Thumbs! My left thumb want mobile.. it wasn’t responsive… in fact it was FUCKED. Its couldn’t move, or grab, or grip… Which was going to be a significant problem, soldiering that the left hand is what controls the clutch, aka the gear shifting, aka what makes a motorcycle actually MOVE! And here I was, down, and almost out, but not quite, in the middle of nowhere in the woods, and I was gonna have to figure out how to get back to the Emerald city of York, New comma York.

I wrestled the bike back auto upright position, no easy feat, con siding my simian digits were compromised, but when it was finally pointed back at the the sun, is when I felt the burn… the burn of torn ligaments and broken bones. There was no question. It was my thumb, and it was toast. I wasn’t going to be able to squeeze any life out of this clutch, much less any gears. Which was going to be a huge fucking problem, since I was 17 miles from home, and buried deep into a wooded area I was legally prohibited from being inside of, especially when in control of a motor vehicle. So I stood up straight, and dusted myself off, and thought, what would Seth Enslow do. And then it came to me, sudden as a lighting strike during a drunken dusk dawn… He would man the fuck up and get that bike home. So thats what I decided to do.

I lopped my right leg over the seat, found neutral and fired then engine up. It started with out a problem, so I already knew that a lot less than half the battle had already been won. And then I tried to grab the clutch, so I could drop it into first. My first and second fingers pulled the cloth lever ever so slightly forward, and then my thumb tried to complete the transaction… But nope. There was nothing doin. It wasn’t gonna happen. Pain shot through my left thumb and hand and splayed out like splintered sunlight Ito my forearm and right up through my entire arm and shoulder, sending the completely indelible message that… YOURE FUCKED! But I knew there was no way I was gonna give up… I was gonna get this bike back to 150th street,. Tow Trucks were for Sucka Ducks and I was a god damned G. So I swept the left of the bike and got it back up and two wheels and I commanded it to head back to Manhattan. It was super slow going at first, became I could barely get it to even move through all the dirt and brush. I had to slam the shift lever down into first without being able to engage the clutch… or more accurately I engaged it by using my 4 fingers and using them in the reverse way to pull it back to slam the bike into first and then let the clutch out and let the engine do what it did in first gear and then let the bike run out at 1st gear speed… This meant having to tumble above the rustic of leave and branches and sticks at a heavy controlled speed with not room for nuance… which also meant hanging on and trying to maintain control w with one and one half hands… Which worked pretty fine for a while, until I finally made it out of the woods (explain here how I had found alternate ways out of the woods…) and one I made it to the main road, it was a whole other challenge. Then it became rumbling among the breakdown lane, in first gear and just getting ny as fast as the gears would allow me… and every now and then I would juts dry fifth into 2nd gear… which was obviously bad for the engine, base don all the grinding sounds it made, but at least it allowed me to go a little bit faster… And then having to dry shift back into first gear to undo the speed when traffic swelled up…. all that herky jerky motion was rough on my hand, and my thumb. And to this day it’s never healed properly. It gets sore after a long day of riding. playing catch with a baseball mitt. Ah, the horror!

Double Dragon Tattoo on west 3rd street and 6th ave! THE SAME PLACE IVE BEEN SEEING MY DREAM BIKE. Wait, could it be? I asked if he parked directly right out in front, and lo and behold – he DID!! They say when you really want something, you open your self up to the universe, project your desires, and will them into existence. It isn’t simply that easy, as you have to be doing your part. I believe that kindness, especially to strangers, positivity, openness and generosity are some of the most powerful forces we can put out into nature, and that they are magnetizing, bringing the same energy back to you. It’s how I live my life, and good things come back to me in spades, so there must be at least some truth to that. But you can’t force these things, they have to be GENUINE!

Once the bike was mine it was time to ride. I’d like to say I started slow, but, well, c’mon. I’m crazy, but Im not completely stupid, so I started out just riding around the city, at first obeying all the traffic laws. But it wasn’t long before I started bombing the streets, splitting lanes, riding between cars at stop lights, and the quickly graduating, or escalating, into riding between cars in slow traffic, then faster traffic, then full speed up and down avenues, police be damed. I must say I quite enjoyed the courtesy, professionalism and respect they showed by so very rarely pulling me over.

Once I had the streets mastered it was time to get down to the real business of why I bought this thing, and that was to get it off-road, out into the dirt.  I had heard about a set of trails off of the Sprain Ridge Parkway, and had the loosest directions on how to get there. After a lot of trail and error I found what I was looking for… a set of power lines that ran along the west side of a golf course, and located an opening that looked like it would allow me access. Except it was blocked by a gate. And going around the gate meant rolling down a hill of DEEP brush and weeds, through a moat of murky still water and back up another hill. Well, thats what these bikes are MADE FOR, right?

<insert part about buying mtorocross gear>

So I backed up, took a deep breath, got my ass up off of my seat and gave it more than a little gas. Im not sure exactly what happened, but I was rattled all around yet somehow my feet never left the footpads and my hands remained their steely grip on the handlebars, and I WAS IN. But now what? The Powerlines rans up a very steep and rocky ridge. Well, I had done some reading about how to ride off road, and there were a few simple tips I remembered:

1. When you encounter tough terrain, get your ass of your seat and put all your weight on the pegs. That lowers your (and the bike’s) center of gravity. SO even thought you’re standing up, that puts your body weight down on the lower part of the frame, rather than higher up on the seat, thus increasing stability. Science IS BITCHEN!
2. When going uphill, move your body forward over the top of the front of the bike, putting more weight, and thus traction to the front wheel.
3. When going downhill, move your body back.T his puts more weight over the back wheel, and less over the front, the allowing the front wheel two come up and over any obstacles, so as to avoid going sailing over the handle bars if you hit an obstruction.

It’s a good thing I didn’t a little reading, because this hill with the power lines was STEEP, and since one of the main rules of physics is “What goes up,  must come down” I knew I was in for all three of them, and QUICKLY. 

My pedestrian understanding of physics also told me that if you were gonna try and go up a big hill, it would be best to go into it with some. momentum, so once again, I pointed this machine at the hill, took a deep breath and cracked the throttle. Brrrraaaaaapppppp the bike took off towards the hill and right as I hit the incline I came up off my seat and leaned over the front of the bike and stayed on the gas. Which, even though you know is the right thing to do, is extremely fucking TERRIFYING, especially when doing it for the first time. The bike was jumping up and down off of all these rocks, and kicking to the left and to the right, but I kept my focus forward, and, eventually, we reached the top of the hill. Together. Just as I was running out of steam. And it couldn’t have come a second too soon . I let the bike come to a stope once I was on level ground, and it’s a good thing I did, because there was only about twenty feet of flat earth before the descent began. I pulled forward enough so that I wouldn’t be visible to any passing cars on the road below, as what I was doing was illegal, trespassing on SOMEBODY’s property, I assumed, hence the gate and the crazily clandestine entry point. I put the kick stat down, which cut the engine, and go t off there bike. I hadn’t been off road for more than 3 minutes, yet I was already covered in sweat and my heart was racing faster than my engine in second gear as it climbed that hill. But I was proud. Proud of myself for having gotten after it and gone and did this thing. But then I walked over to the descent, and looked over the edge, and that’s when the horror set in!

Sometime you don’t find the motorcycle, but rather, it finds you. Actually, that’s most of the time. Ive never gone in search of a motorcycle. But Ive owned 5 different ones now. In fact, one of them I owned twice. And three of them were stolen. And of the 5 bikes Ive owned there have only been 3 models. That’s right, Ive owned two models twice each.

The first bike I ever bought was a Kawasaki KLR 650. It was the same bike my best friend St itch had bought when we were living together in Harlem. It made me want a bike, badly. But really what made me want to be a motorcyclist was the primal sense a little boy gets when he sees a motorcyle… Man these things are COOL. It’s impossible to ignore.

But a motorcycle wants to be in my future, or so I thought, and Stitch told me so.  “Man, the way you drink, theres only one way that’s gonna end.” And he was right, if I had bought a bike in 2000 or 2001 it wouldn’t have been long before it killed me.  But then things changed. Slowly. I met a woman I wanted to be with. I stopped drinking for 30 days, which led to 3+ years, and then finally one day I decided I wanted a motorcycle. Back before high speed internet turned everyone in to a blogger, I was a magazine addict, and I used to stoat a magazine shop with a tattoo parlor in the back, at West 3rd Street and 6th avenue a lot of nights on my way home from Tribeca Rock Club… and I used tis see a Red KLR parked outside. I just kept seeing that bike over and over, and I decided that’s the bike I wanted.

As summer turned to autumn, I remembered hearing that autumn was the best time to buy a bike. Conventional wisdom said that people bought bikes in the spring, and then sold them in the fall. The spring was a time of optimism, of sunny days spent riding twisty mountain roads. Of end of year bonuses burning a hole in people’s pockets.  But when fall came, so too did the realties of the impending winter. Of the need to stop the bike., of there being no chance to ride it at all. And to the realty of the fact that there was a very expensive machine that you almost never used, collecting not just dust, but piling up expenses in the form of insurance, parking garage fees, or maybe even tickets. And all that psychic energy got was eating up.  So that’s when I decided I was gonna go and find me a Red KLR 650, just like the one that I kept seeing parked outside the magazine / tattoo shop.

BUT FIRST I WENT AND GOT MYSELF A MOTORCYCLE LICENSE – which is a whole other adventure in itself that will be told at another time.

A few days later I walked into the parking garage on 155th street where me and the lady kept our Toyota Matrix, and what did I see but a red KLR 650 with a for sale sign on it… This was the 2003 model, which had just hit the streets in the spring, with price tag of $5,000. I called the number and asked the guy how much he wanted for it. He said $3,000. I told him Id give him $2,000, but he said his price was firm. No dice, I said, politely, and hung up. A week or so later I called him again and offered him $2,000. He said no way, but that he would sell if for $2,700. Again, no die. A week after that I called again and offered him $2,000. He said, pass, but Ill take $2,500. I figured I had the advantage, because who was gonna buy a used motorcycle in the fall.

The next time I went to the garage, I noticed something else, the bike hadn’t moved and was actually starting to collect some dust. I asked the garage attendants what the deal was, and they said the owner had brought it in and just left it there, hander been riding it. So I went and took a closer look and realized that the right side had a bunch of scratched on it. Tell tale scratches… HOLY SHIT THSI GYU HAD DROPPED THE BIKE, WHILE IN MOTION. Of COURSE he wasn’t riding it anymore, and OF COURSE he was gonna sell it to me for $2,000.

So Called him again and told him I knew he had dropped it and thats why I was offering $2k. He finally relented and agreed to that price tag and so I went and met him at the garage the following day with $2k cash in my pocket.  We made some very brief small talk, and then he agreed to let me take int out for a test ride. I did, and I LOVED it. The KLR is not a fancy bike, but it suited me perfectly. It was an endure bike, which meant it was big enough and stable enough to take out on the highway… but that it was also nimble enough and tough enough to take off road and tackle the dirt trails. A literal DREAM, as I had become quite hooked on watching motocross and the Crusty Demons of Dirt video series… So I couldn’t get a straight up street bike.

When I pulled back into the garage, I was TOTALLY SOLD, and bought the bike right there on there spot. As we started filling out paper, I asked him about the low mileage and asked where he had been riding it to. He said he had taken it to Coney Island a few times, but that he mostly just rode it back and forth to work. I asked where he worked and he said Soho. I said, “Oh yeah, what do you do?” A tattoo artist… Oh yeah, where’s the shop?

Why does California always seem to represent freedom? Is it because the NorthEast was the beginning of America? And has never really been able to shake the puritanical stench?  And that when people grew tired of living under a new version of the old boss, they headed west…? In search of the vaunted American Dream? From what we learned in school, it was the wild mean that headed west. Those who didn’t have anything , so they had nothing left to lose. It was the dreamers, the explorers, the prospectors, the homesteaders. The risk takers. The miners. The 49ers. The wild men. The Lewises and the Clarks. That was the 1800s.

Then who was next. People with automobiles could get out there easily enough. Or it was open to hitchhikers. But it was always someone in search of something new. Or those looking to get as far away as they could from what they knew back east. I used to think it was just those looking for sunshine. And sure, California ostensibly has plenty of that. But where has it gone. This autumn has been one of the worst in recent memory in SoCal when it comes to sunshine and warmth. It’s been a grey and wet and chilly autumn.  Yet here I am. Chasing the freedom that no snow, no literal freezing temps, and no one physical location ca give me. And the freedom I find on two motorized wheels.

It’s been sort of freeing to be in no one single place, and not even really have one single home in this offseason. I have been doing os much traveling whether by two wheels or two wings. And having my stuff always split up into at least two locations. Thank goodness I have so many more than two good friends out here. I think pretty soon Im going to start dedicating a new blog post every day to a great friend. Giving back gratitude and letting my friends know how much, and more importantly WHY I love them. Which is going to be daunting. 

Because, sure, it’s easy enough to write a paragraph about why you love somebody. But 1,000 words. That’s not gonna be easy. Well, here’s a little bit about why I love Rodney so much, for starters. Or at least about why I love how much he loved music. For years, I would open the side door on of Wetlands on Laight Street in Downtown Manhattan and there would be Rodney on the other side of it. His job was to be cleaning the place, but more often than not I would find him in the DJ booth, playing music. Back in the day then we had dual Denon CD decks. The Pro DJ kind, which were equipped with pitch shift, so you could try and match beats, like a DJ would with vinyl. It was damn near impossible to do with the CD players, the way the manufacturer had hoped it would be anyways.

But Rodney had a whole other plan for the pitch shift. He would be playing CDs all day, often times making mix tapes. And he would always do it with the tempo pitched up as high as it could go, which I believe on this decks was 8%. It agave the music a slight Alvin and the Chipmunks feel, but not so much to be bothersome, or to really transform the music into any sort of unrecognizable form. But just enough to notice that it was somehow… off. Just not exactly right. Which was enough to sort of throw you off, especially if it was a song you loved. Because music was all about FEEL, right? You just FELT IT when a perfect song came on.

But with that slight variance in tempo, it always gave the songs juts a little more urgency, and, I figured, helped Rodney get that extra pep in his step and that last extra gear and anergy he needed to clean the whole club by himself. So I never bothered him about it. I always just let him do his thing, and sort of appreciated from afar how he had gamed the electronics system of the club to his energetic advantage.

This went on for years and years until one day IK thought to ask him the story about what made him start doing that. I think maybe somebody else asked about it, and I thought it would be insightful for me to have Rodney explain it in his won words. So one day I wandered into the DJ booth and said “You know, Rodney. Ive always admired how you played the songs sped up a bit, to give yourself a that little extra pep!” I was quite proud of myself for congratulating him on this little life hack.

But his look let me know that I was as far off as could be. He shot me this look, the look only he could deliver, that let me feel foolish and inquisitive at the same time. Dying to know what the real reason was. He quickly shot back “Jake, I play the songs sped up so I can listen to more songs in less time. There’s a whole lot of music in this DJ booth, and Ill never get to hear all of it if I play it at regular speed.

BOOM. HEAD = EXPLODED.

That made so much damn sense to me right there in that moment, and to this day still explains Rodney’s passion for Rock N Roll in a way no other story could ever hope to capture. Rodney wanted it all. S important was music to him, that he wanted to get as much of it into him as he possibly could. To be honest it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if you told me that he would often listen to tow different songs on his headphones at the same time, one in each ear, just to also get as much music as possible into his brain. And it also wouldn’t surprise me if you said that his brain was so complex that it could fully process two songs at the same time as well.

God damn I miss him and that big rock n roll brain of his.

#RodSpeed

So I’ve been wintering in LA. It’s the second time I’ve done this. I did it in 2010 as well when I was dating a woman who was living here. That time I stayed in Santa Monica. This time I’ve been splitting my time between Hollywood and Topanga. Two great places. I’ve always had a fondness for LA. Growing up I was so entranced by NYC and LA. The big two. I’ve never really understood why anyone would want to live anywhere else. I guess I just always wanted to be near the action. Any sort of action.

LA and NYC always held special sway with me, i guess because the only way outside of my little world where I grew up were TV and movies. And to a lesser extent magazines and books And all I saw when I looked at those were LA and NY, where they make most of those things. Sure you would see DC, but that always struck me as a huge bore. Politics is just entertainment for boring people. And more and more obviously nowadays full of complete pieces of shit. Though it’s been great seeing the quick and sudden ride of people like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. I love Bernie too but there needs to a huge of influx of young new blood that was raised on the internet and knows how to communicate and fight. For what’s right. Other than burning the whole hunt down it’s people like that who will actually affect change. But I digress.

Anyways – Los Angeles and NYC. And Vegas and San Francisco and New Orleans. Those were all my bucket list American cities from as far back as I can remember in my childhood. And they still remain the only cities I could conceivably imagine living in to this day. And I can’t even really imagine living in all of those. Only New York and LA, really. And the longer I’m staying in LA this time around, the less I think I could make a full time life for myself here. But I’m wondering if that’s maybe because I’m only here as a visitor, and have been house hopping with various amazing friends. I think I’m beginning to feel a little unsettled, because I’m exactly that. I haven’t been settled anywhere since before Halloween. And even before that I was bouncing back and forth between coast for two months. But that’s another story for another day, and will be during whenever i decide to do my deep dive into my love of motorcycles, as that’s what’s drawn me to LA this time.

After my first and only year of college I had two offers for internships. One was in the accounting department of Don Law Concerts in Boston. The other was i the PR Department at Relativity Records in LA. And I knew a guy who said I could crash on his couch for the summer in LA. So that was a no brainer. I bought a one way plane ticket, packed a bag, and headed west of New York State for the very first time at the ripe old age of 19. When I landed i got it immediately. California. The air just smelled different. The sky was bluer. The trees were greener. California was just… cooler. Still feels that way every time I get off the plane at LAX. That was an amazing extended summer I spent here.  Broke, no car, and a shitty paying job. I gave up on the internship after one day when I realized it was going to be a 5 hour round trip

commute from Hollywood to Torrance on public transport. So i went out looking for work and found a job at a pet store in the Beverly Center. I never even made it back from my lunch break on my first day. But I quickly found a job at the Tower Records on Sunset and I was in heaven. I borrowed $300 from my buddy and used it to buy a 50CC red Honda Scooter that I found i the old “Recycler” newspaper. I had wheels. I was free. I rode tyt thing all over the damn place. Rode it to Santa Monica. Eve. Rode it up over the Hollywood Hills and down to Ventura Boulevard.  I wouldn’t do either of those things today on a 50CC scooter, but back then, there was such ignorant bliss in not knowing what you didn’t know, that you’d totally try to do ANYTHING at all. I guess I still have that tendency in me. As evidenced by sketchy shark cave diving in South Africa, bungee jumping in Zambia, and willing getting into a full

grown Tigers’ cage in Thailand and actually grabbing the tiger by the tail, and laying down on it like it was a big pillow. All of those I’ve done in n the past five years, and all of them I did without even simply googling the relative safety of these things. Had i done that first I probably wouldn’t have done any of those three things. But, ya know, I live my life by one guiding principle, and that’s “What’s The Worst That Could Happen?” Like, even if jose things killer me, they all would have been pretty cool ways to go. Not that I thought that at the time. In fact, I didn’t even consider that there could have been an awful outcome. I just sort of trusted that if these businesses were in business, well then so was I!

As Richard Branson says “Screw It. Let’s Do It!”

So I did whatever the fuck felt right at the time and Ive continued to do it over and over again and it’s brought me back to California so

Many times over the years that I’ve literally lost count. I probably landed at LAX a dozen times in 2018 alone and and rode my motorcycle hundreds of miles out of the city and back 3 or 4 more times. And it never gets old.

New York May be home, but California, knows how to party!

Sadly I never got to visit Cali with Rodney. I fucked that one up big time. I always thought I had plenty of time left with him. And that’s never a given. Do why you wanna do. When you wanna do it. Every time.

Thankfully done with all that Aussie nonsense I decided it was time for a change of scenery. I had spotted a bar the was just called THE WHO BAR and the sign was their classic old red white and blue logo. I figured they would be playing music by The Who. But I was wrong. Very wrong. I earlier upstairs and Bohemian Rhapsody was blaring at ear splitting volume. And the bar was full of a half dozen young Japanese men, all of whom, including the bartender, were singing along to every word, with surprising accuracy, maybe I’d found the holy grail, a group of locals who spoke English!

Oh, did I mention that they were all shirtless? Including the bartender. For reasons that are now a complete mystery to me, i actually surveyed the scene, took it all in, grabbed a quick video, and headed back down the stairs. As i looked around the alley for another bar, suddenly i was struck by Japanese lightning. WHY ON EARTH WAS I NOT PECS DEEP INSIDE THAT NIPPON NIGHT FEVER RIGHT THIS EVERY SECOND. And then it made sense. I was only a few drinks in. Which sometimes keeps me from doing outrageous things. But not always. Nope.

So I turned around and lept up those stairs in a single bound, shedding my shirt mid-spring and joining the party just in time to scream “MAMAAAAAAA OOOOOOHHHHH OOOOOHHHHHH  OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHH” and the party somehow got kicked into yet another higher gear! Pretty soon we all had our arms around each other. This was waaaaay better than Karaoke!

This went on and on through innumerable songs by Led Zeppelin and the Doors. We were all carrying on and on and these guys knew every single word to every single song. I was in heaven with my new friends! But then there was a lull In the music for a bit, so was stoked to get to know these hombres. And that’s when I came to the crash crash sudden realization that these guys didn’t speak English. At all. Like, not a drop. Sure they could sing along to every word of every song that came on. But they had zero idea why it meant. And I totally understood! It’s like – i can’t speak German… but I can sing along with Das Schutzenfest by Faith No More!! And actually that’s a lie. I speak a hunch of German. Like Gezundheit. That means health. Do you think it was Germans who invented blessing someone after sneezing? That would be cool, I’m gonna go with that and add it to the fun facts I have filed away about Germans. Also Danke Shein, do you think a German wrote that song for Wayne Newton? That would make sense to me. Because Germans live visiting Central Park. And one of my favorite lines in the song is “i recall / Central Park in Fall / when you tore your dress / what a mess / I confess”

Do you think that’s the writer confessing to what whatever it is that caused the dress to be torn? Could be an early Me Too situation. But alas, while he confesses… I digresss

Back to the matter at hand. Which is these loopy Japanese fellers. Once I realized I couldn’t communicate with them through words, it was time time to go to the TRUE international language.  And I’m not talking rock n roll… or mine… but maybe something t 

Hat combines the both of those things… PRO WRESTLING! the international

Language of platonic man love.

Anyone’s who’s watched any amount of pro wrestling knows what chops are. Right? When the guys give each other back handed slaps to the chest. The slaps usually can be heard in th whack rows of the arena. One of the master a of the chop is Ric Flair. In fact, nowadays when you go to match and the guys start chopping each other, the arena fills with Ric Flair’s patented    “WHOOOOOOO” with each chop landed.

So I decided to take he dangerous route to finding out if these shirtless guys in the bar were wrestling fans, by laying a lethal chop onto one of them.  I didn’t think to hard about which guy to pick, so just grabbed the guy next to

Me by the shoulders, put him into position, and without much warning at all just gave him a vicious chop! It landed with a crazy loud THWACK that broke through the already insane volume of the music. People didn’t so much stop what they were doing as they did hush, and the guy looked as if he was confused for about a second and a half… then let out a loud roar that would be familiar to any wrestling fan, and which let me know I was in the clear. And then he grabbed me by the shoulders and positioned my body the same way I had his, and I knew I was about to get it. And get it I did. He let out a roar and reached his arm back and leveled me with a chop that sounded a deep THUD. That’s the things with chops. The higher the pitch of the sound they make, the more impressive they sound and carry through a hall, and the more they sting but the less they HIRT. The ones that thud on the other hand are all pain. Everyone in the bar grained, as if to say they felt my pain.

I wondered if he knew what he was doing and if he had done it on purpose. But it was fucking on, so i grabbed him and returned the favor. But I delivered another loud SNAP!! And everyone in the bar roared!! They got it. They knew the SLAP was the desired result.

Before you knew it the entire bar was in chip fights. Thinking back about it now I can’t believe they didn’t put on the song “Everyone Was King Fu Fighting!”

But I doubt the Japanese fellers would have know the words to that one. but Rodney sure would have. He knew the words to EVERY song. Man I miss him. #RodSpeed