Rolling Thunder

I was just driving home from brunch, and 395 North (into Washington) was a parking lot. Why? Rolling Thunder. Tens of thousands of bikers, mostly Vietnam Vets and their ladies, descend on D.C. like a swarm of locusts. Locusts with bad facial hair, riding Harleys. I wish they would just get the fuck out of here. Couldn't they just move the Vietnam memorial to Peoria or something?

They are really everywhere. I went to a nearby drug store (I live just outside the city) yesterday, and the parking lot was filled with maybe three hundred bikers. I circled the beer-swilling, profane throng looking for a parking spot. Finally, I found one, but there was the meaty biker chick puffing on what appeared to be a Virginia Slim standing in the middle of the spot. She was wearing a leather jacket which said "Nam Nights Ladies."

"Pardon me, could I just squeeze in there?" I asked.

"What the fuck is your problem, man?" this guy she was talking to said. I am not sure, but it might have been Skunk Baxter.

"I am just trying to get in there." You probably should have some context. There is this guy wearing a baseball cap, a Fat Albert tee shirt and cargo shorts (me) trying to park his late model European car in a throng of Harley Davidsons. And bikers who were various degrees of fucked up from a pointless war.

"This space is full, dude. Try somewhere else." I could push the issue some more. But, there is a good chance that I would go into the store, and come back to just my steering wheel and a twisted exhaust pipe. Nothing else. And then, I would die in some embarrasing way that involved a steering wheel and a twisted exhaust pipe.

So, I took Skunk's advice and went somewhere else. Somewhere five miles away.

Motherfuckers.