A New Beginning / Stark Contrast

When I was in college, riding a motorcycle in 40 degree (F) weather was an event.  Because Wind Chill.  It involved long underwear, possibly multiple pairs of pants, multiple sweatshirts, multiple jackets, and occasionally, hypothermia.  With the wind chill, it felt like the cold was penetrating deep into my soul and forcing my body to fold in on itself.

These days...I'm not entirely sure what's different, but all I do is throw on two jackets and ride to work before my hands go numb.  And that's like just a regular Tuesday for me.  Sometimes, at night, the temperature drops below what I'm comfortable riding in, so I just take the stairs up to the 23rd floor and I have enough body heat to last the entire ride home.  I don't know what it is about motorcycles, but blitzing down the highway, weaving through the pathetic peasants who think 80 mph is "fast" is the high point of my day.  And I haven't even mastered cornering on this bike yet.  But it puts me in a good mood that lasts at least halfway through the afternoon.

30 degree weather is another story.  I don't know what it was that made me take the bike, but, whatever.  I show up and it turns out I wasn't the only crazy one.  There was another Aprilia parked at the club.  If I had been more observant...well, whatever.  I don't need any more "ifs" to dwell on.

Let me start from the beginning.

It was the occasional phrase or voice inflection that made me suspect that these girls knew how many guys were in their orbit--trying so hard in vain to get to her only to miss before coming around for another pass--and enjoyed it.  I would wonder if the girl enjoyed it so much that she kept her potential suitors in a proverbial museum of affection.  "That's the guy who gave me my first motorcycle ride."  "That's the guy who made sure I didn't drive my drunk ass off a bridge that night I lost my camera."  "That's the guy who wrote a song about me."  "That's the guy who got me through chemistry."  "That's the guy who something something handcuffs."  "That's the guy who's a DJ at this club and always gets us in because he has a crush on me."  "That the guy who taught me [whatever]."  "Thats the guy who always fixes my iphone."  Etc.  Maybe it was just hubris; I've always hated the idea that I was in some girl's museum, and I've sacrificed more than one friendship to keep my display case empty.

There was one, though, where I screwed up.  I wasn't even that into her when I first met her, it was just a bunch of details that all added up by the end.  Like a certain video game in her drawer, or sleeves with thumb holes, or a stuffed dragon peeking out of her helmet, or maybe it was just the way she smiled.  When you added it all up, it amounted to a truly unique girl, and for one, brief--well actually it was rather long--night, everything was perfect and I thought I had landed the girl of my dreams:  Lindsey Stark.

Sometimes, though, people have different ideas in their heads, and sadly this was one of those times.  She told me she couldn't date another motorcyclist--she was giving up the dangerous life.  Two months later she shacked up with an autocross rider who still lived with his parents and spent his Thursdays drinking and riding.

So quite naturally I became a sad panda and headed to Atlantic city and drank myself stupid.  I should have, at that point, stopped talking to her and deleted her from facebook or whatever.  I mean, this wasn't my first time getting trapped in the old FZ, and it wouldn't have been my first time getting out, but for some reason I just couldn't burn this bridge.  I moved on, but somewhere in the back of my mind a door stayed open a crack.

Not like it mattered.  I mean, I moved 3,000 miles away to a wasteland of cold weather and colder people.  The days were dark and short and it doesn't take long to discover why so many people commit suicide here.

Anyway.

So whatever.  It was a cold ass night, and I showed up at salsa with numb fingers.  Saw another Aprilia; didn't think anything of it.  I'm dancing, or whatever.  Its getting to the end of the night, so I am desperate to get a bunch of dances in a row, trying to work up that body heat so I can make it home without my teeth chattering.  Then this girl asked me to dance.

I thought she asked me because she had seen me dancing, and there weren't too many good people left.  Its probably for the best that I thought that.  When I'm back in the old places, or back with the old familiar people, I tend to revert back to my old familiar self, whether I want to or not.  And before I know it, I sometimes find myself back in the same box they used to keep me in.  So what, though?  There's no harm in playing the role you're given, save for maybe a bruised ego.  However, I didn't realize who she was at first, so I stayed in my typical salsa personality.  Flirty, playful, surprisingly not as dancy as you would think.  This girl was super hot and there was just this familiarity I couldn't explain.  It left like we had great chemistry.  Also, she was clearly into me so I mentioned we should hang out, and let her put her number in my phone.

Except her number was already in my phone.

So she was all like "You don't recognize me, do you?"  I looked in her eyes and I had no idea who she was, until she said "Its Lindsey, Lindsey Stark."

Holy shit people.

In my defense, her hair was short now.  And not blond.  Also, she didn't used to wear makeup.  Or be nearly as assertive.  Anyway.  I did my best to maintain my composure and we chatted.  We had a good amount of catching up to do, so we left the bikes and walked to a bar nearby.  For all I cared my bike could get stolen;  I'll just get a cab. The thing was leaking clutch fluid anyway.

On the way to the bar, though, I had this sudden sinking feeling.  I've been here before;  a girl acts all interested, and appears to show more interest in you than other dudes, and acts more flirty than girls that say they've been in love with you for years, and them BAM you find out she has a boyfriend.  So I had grown reasonably nervous by the time we got to a nice Irish pub.  For all I knew we'd be meeting her lame as boyfriend there...probably some guy who is like an astronaut but still lives with his parents, and I'd be the third wheel again, and I can't believe I sacrificed my bike for this!

But she had no boyfriend.  She even went out of her way to mention that she didn't.  Kind of a nice refreshing change, as typically the Seattle girls go out of their way to say the opposite.

So we caught up.  I was most interested in her trip to France, and she was most interested in, surprisingly, my 3-SAT work.  She happened to believe that P != NP, while I believe P = NP, but really, no one has any idea what they are talking about anyway.  We kissed right there at the bar table.

The very first time I kissed her so many years ago, well, actually the first time I thought about kissing her was on a bridge over a nearly frozen river.  I chickened out then, but that's not the point.  What is the point, is that two awesome people had run into each other again, way up here on the edge of civilization, more than 500 miles from a decent roller coaster.  So I said we should go walking on a bridge.

I pushed her against the railing suddenly--a new move I've picked up in my travels--and bent into kiss her.  She was so beautiful.

And then Lindsey Stark died.

A fucking zombie bit her.  That fucker came out of nowhere.  I broke that shitfuckers neck but it was too late.  She was gone.  All around me, I heard the screams of the zombie apocalypse.

I knew the only thing that mattered, I mean, beyond not getting bitten, was finding some fucking weapons.  I found a bicycle and rode most of the way home, but I got stuck on the denny bridge.  There was a wall of zombies in front of me.  I turned around, but there was fast zombies right behind me.  My only option was to jump.  I stood on the guard rail and looked down on the chaos of I-5 below.  I supposed that if it this had to be my end, I was glad if happened after I ran into Lindsey again.

But then, suddenly I heard tires screeching.  A black sports cars was sliding across the pavement, tossing fast zombies this way and that.  It came to a screeching halt right in front of me with the passenger door open.  A black haired girl yelled out to me:  "Get in!"

I was still trying to pull my seat belt--belts--on (5 point safety harness, nice) when my new heroine did that thing where she backs up  and then slams on the brakes to make the door close.  We raced out of there, and she introduced herself as Evelyn.

We found weapons.  We ran out of ammo.  We found more weapons, including a katana sword, and we fought our way, floor by floor, to the top of the columbia building.  But we were surrounded, and exhausted.  I spent the last 6 rounds out of a revolver and then threw it at one of the zombies.  It was so late the sun was already coming up again.  It looked like we were done for again.  I held Evelyn's hand and we looked at each other.  My only thought was that I wished we had time to fuck before the zombies killed us.  That's when I heard it.  The low beats of propellers.

An old B-17 that was inexplicably flying with working, mounted machine guns.  The gunners laid waste to the zombies, creating a splintering circle of death around us on the rooftop.  Then the B-17 made a single, ridiculously tight turn with a rope dropped out the side.  I realized what they were doing immediately and pulled Evelyn with me as I grabbed the rope.  We hung on for dear life;  the sharp bank allowed the plane to travel slowly enough relative to our position for us to catch the rope, however that type of aircraft was not meant to bank at that angle, and it quickly lost what few hundreds of feet of altitude it had.  It recovered just in time to duck under a skybridge, nearly dragging us along the street, before recovering.

When they hauled us in I looked to congratulate whomever badass pilot had just saved our asses, only to realize it was the attractive and scantily clad girls from Sucker Punch.  Also Han Solo was in one of the gunner cockpits.

Dragons were incoming on our position, so I took the other gunner position and together we fought them off.  The plane banked and rolled, ever avoiding their fiery breaths and inexplicably dangerous talons.  But then we had to face the Big One.  This dragon was about as massive as a typical Hollywood monster, which means it was too heavy to fly, or even hold its on weight up with an internal skeletal structure.  I explained this to the girls, and Han, as we fought it, the Impossible Dragon.

The dragon came around for another pass, but forunately Han Shot First and got her in the eye.  The dragon still engulfed the ship in flames, and we lost too many engines.  The pilot did her best to keep us out of the drink but we were heading down too quickly.  I shared with the girls a remarkable idea that I had just thought of regarding "pulling up" and was replied to with a string of expletives.  It looks like we were done for, when all of the sudden I heard this cyclical sort of groaning, wheezing sound, and a blue police box appeared in the middle of the cabin.

A nice man with a bow tie popped his head out of the police box and said "Come On!"

Evelyn and I were the only ones to made it inside in time.  We had many adventures, but I can't talk about them.  Timey Wimey stuff.  But a lot happened, so pretend you just spent 20 minutes reading all of that.

The Doctor dropped us off on the bridge of the USS Awesome, the first Awesome class starship of the United Federation of Planets.  I designed her myself.  She is like super long ass yards long, and she has super shields and ablative armor, and supercharged warp nacelles, and three warp cores, and a cloaking device, and Ten Forward has stripper poles.  Also, I happen to be friends with Guinan.

When I arrived on the bridge, they called "Captain on deck!" and I sat in the captain's chair, with Evelyn on one side and Jonathan Frakes on the other.  Data, who totally did not die in the last movie, turned around and said "Captain, we are receiving a distress single from the [blah blah blah] system."

I said, "Lay in a course.  Warp 9.  Engage."

When we arrived, we saw wreckage, and a firefly class vessel.  We used a tractor beam to pull the ship into the docking bay.  I went down there to inspect it myself.  The doors opened easily enough, but no one answered when I called.  Data and I looked at each other and nodded.  I pulled out my lightsaber and followed him inside.  What we saw inside was shocking.  Sex Reavers had been on this ship.  There were elves everywhere--female elves--bound with studded leather and with ball gags in their mouths.  The hot engineer girl of the firefly-class ship was all tied up spread eagle on the ...ok I didn't mark this post as XXX, so we'll have to skip this part.......

.........batteries................

...so then I pulled up my pants, turned around, and shot Wesley Crusher in the mouth with my phaser.  And he died, never to return again, ever.  Fuck you Wesley.

Oh, right.  So then Evelyn and I got married, but the death star showed up, and everyone died.  The Doctor died, and didn't have time to rengerate.  All of the Doctor's companions, everywhere, also died horrible deaths.  Jonathan Frakes died, Luke Skywalker died, Michael Phelps died, I died, Evelyn died, Frodo died, Gandalf died and didn't come back from the dead this time, the girls from Sucker Punch died, Han Solo Died, the cast of I.T. Crowd died, Harry Potter died, Kenny died again, Data died, and then Iron Man and Wolverine died also.  Basically every person and character you've ever heard of, that wasn't retarded, died.

Soon then there were these gay vampires that sparkled in sunlight....









So.....that's what it was like to read Game of Thrones..  Fuck Game of Thrones.

Actually this was technically based on some truth...my bike is totally leaking clutch fluid, and I really need to get that looked at.