Bikin' at night in the D

We participated in a bike tour last night through the D to work off some of the vacation excess. However, I wouldn't recommend doing it on one of the busiest nights of the year downtown next time.

Our group took a three-hour ride past the new riverfront path (which I'll be excited to try out with my rollerblades after work one day) during the River Days celebration. It was a nice idea but much, much too busy for 40-some bikers to try to navigate.

And some drunk kid poured beer on one of our bikers.

It saddened me (and probably ruined the ride for a lot of bikers) and yet reminded me of the stupid things we did as kids. I remember how my brother, our little buddies and I used to toss crabapples beneath speeding cars as they drove past my uncle's home in Traverse City, Mich. during our summertime visits. Uncle John, who was really my mom's uncle, lived on a 40-acre farm off a two-lane highway, and we kids used to make a game of seeing who could smash the most crabapples beneath the wheels of the fast-moving cars.

One time, a crabapple thrown by our friend, Paul, took a funny bounce and hit the door of a car. And to our dismay, that car slammed on its breaks and pulled over to the side of the road. That's the last thing we saw before taking off through the fields, with the tall grass cutting against our legs as we ran past the first garage, past the second garage and all the way to the third abandoned garage. We hid on the roof of that garage -- our hearts thumping with fear -- until we were sure the people had left.

Of course, that didn't stop Paul's dad from giving us a good hollering-at, during which he claimed that if something happened to those people, they would've sued him, my parents and my grandmother. The fictitious lawsuits would've claimed the houses of those three parties.

On a side note: his message almost was lost on me when I realized that he didn't say Paul's grandma's house would've been claimed, too. After all, it was Paul who threw the errant crabapple.

Anyway, kids sure do some stupid things!