Today around lunchtime, JDI comes waltzing into my office. He has that look in his eye. And if you don't know that look, it's a cross between amazement, lunacy and the recent passing of one's gas. But it means something's a'brewin.

Well JDI takes one look at my bike, and decides that he will commandeer it and ride over to McDonalds. This caused a small explosion of sorts in my brain, because I had a hard time trying to understand what drove him to this decision.

On the one hand, JDI hates buying gas. He has a small car and usually shuts it off if not moving more than 10 mph. He once refused to buy gas on the grounds that it was too expensive. I believe he actually found a way to enable the car to drive well past the point where most people's cars would have run dry, but he will not reveal any secrets.

So that makes sense, but it's JDI, and it's a bike. Two things that should not merge. If the end of the world was near and the only thing saving JDI from impending doom was a short ride on a comfortable bicycle, I think he would just lay down and accept doom.



Long story short, this was happening. He was going to ride the bike, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I tried to prepare him the best I could. I told him to stop at red lights. Don't hit cars. Don't hit people. Don't hit light poles. Don't forget my bike at McDonalds.

And off he went. Into the wild. Into the expansive wilderness, with nothing separating him and the earth but a couple slowly-spinning wheels and a prayer.

Fast Forward About Thirty Minutes
The first thing I saw round the corner in the hallway way a bike tire. Shortly behind that was a sweaty, cattywompus and otherwise unrecognizable JDI. He had safely returned. Or had he? Was he suffering heat stroke? Was he breathing? It was hard to tell. So I just looked at some paperwork in my hand and pretended not to notice him.

At some point several hours later, he made his way back to my office, bike and McDonalds bag in hand. There was a partially-disfigured beverage container in one of the bike's bottle holders. This was about what I expected, short of a phone call from an EMT who found my bike next to a pair of sunglasses and an unidentifiable smear of human remains on the pavement.

Slightly regaining consciousness, JDI began to tell the tale of his laborious journey across miles and miles of treacherous Central Illinois passageways (about 1.2 miles). There were laughs, there were tears. I think we both learned some lessons today. One of them being to roll up your right pant leg. The other being that in order for the bike computer to accurately record your speed and data, it must be connected to the bike, not lying in the road a quarter mile away.