Spies Go VroomVroom

MOOD TODAY:


It's Bike Week here, which means 200,000 roaring Harleys (and lesser machines, as the others are called) going round and round our little city. They love it because:

1) We gots sunshine. Spring weather here is very beautiful--upper seventies, no humidity, beach has ladies in bikinis.

2) We gots honky tonky bars. Yes, girls walking around in leather. T-shirts with Born To Be Wild (except that the patrons are now looking rather gray).

3) We gots The Annual Coleslaw Wrestling. This is a notoriously R-rated event. It's sexist. It's disgusting. And you'll be amazed at all the INTERNATIONAL bikers who fly here just to videotape it. A few Australian bikers stopped me one day years ago to ask me directions to the field that has that "awesome coleslaw wrastling."

4) We gots the Main Street Bike Festival. You'll never forget the experience of seeing hundreds and hundreds of Harleys parked in a row and people in leather and headgear with horns parading with women with skinny leather bikinis with umm...tassles.

We writers (and readers) sneer at stereotypes in our books. But really, everyone becomes one when they are attending an event. Going to celebrate Bike Week? Even the secret-agent-nerd will appear on the scene in leather and sunglasses. The myth of the Hot Rod Bad Boy is every man's fantasy this weekend, I guess.

I used to go to a few of the events to soak in the atmosphere with a big Viking of a biker named Moose. He was fun to go out with because he was loud, gregarious and a favorite with the ladies. He was a real biker-type, no weekend warrior, and wore a bike helmet with these huge moose horns stuck to them while on a bike. A stereotype, yes? He would sneer at the "new" bikers, the cleanshaven young 'uns with their Japanese machines. "Coz they ain't gots what it takes to be a biker, that's why." Moose went to the Coleslaw competition one year and ended up IN the coleslaw with the ladies. Ah, those days were the wild days ;-).

Are you a "bad boy" fan? How do you stereotype your bad boy? Do you have any bad boy stories to share with us? Are you secretly married to one? ;-) Beware of bad boys with the face of a choir boy and the manners of a mamma's boy. They know they can be bad, you see, and get away with it every time. And no one willl believe you because they look and act so angelic.

And no, Mei, Dee, Elaine, and the many anonymouses...Jed is definitely not a BAD BOY.

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