Oh, no you don’t!

January 20, 2013 § 46 Comments

The dude in the black uniform with the badge and the gun and the handcuffs and the radio and the mace and the Taser was banging on my door. I looked at him through the keyhole, wondering whether I should wait, or ask for a warrant through the closed door, or dash out onto the balcony, hop down to the first floor and make my getaway.

“Who is it?” I asked in my best falsetto.

“Wanker Police! Open up! I’ve got a warrant!”

I cracked the door. “Show it to me.”

He thrust the paper through the crack. Sure enough, it was a wanker warrant, and it had my name on it. I opened the door and the cop strode inside.

“Are you Wankmeister?” He stared at my pink unicorn socks. “Never mind.” Then he took out his pen and looked at me officiously. “You know why I’m here?”

“No. I haven’t the faintest.”

“I’m Officer Smedley, Wanker Police Bureau, Licensing Division. I’m here to confiscate your license.”

“My what?”

“Your license. Your wanker license has been revoked. Here.” He shoved a piece of paper in my face. “Read that.”

“What about it? It’s a copy of the 50+ race results from the CBR crit this morning. So what?”

“That’s your name in third place. You got third place in a qualifying event, which means automatic revocation of your wanker license.”

“What do you mean, ‘qualifying event’?”

“There were a minimum of 60 racers. Held under USAC permit. 40-minute crit. It even says here in the notes ‘Placed after riding second half of the race in a three-man breakaway.’ That seals it. You can file an appeal, but for now you’ll have to turn over your wanker certification. Sorry.”

“Dude,” I said, “you’ve got to be kidding. You can’t de-wankify me based on one stupid race. I had no idea I was putting my wankerdom in jeopardy. If I had, I’d have sat at the back and sprunted with the field.”

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse. By signing your wanker license you’re agreeing to abide by the rules. A top-three placing provisionally revokes your license. A three-man placing from a breakaway is automatic. Sorry.”

“That was no breakaway!” I protested.

“Of course it was. Says right here in the notes: ‘three-man breakaway with Wankmeister, Pinkle Dude, and Furbag.'”

“No, no, no, that wasn’t a real breakaway. You had to be there. Really.”

“What was it, then?”

“It was, uh, a wankaway. Pure wankaway from start to finish.”

“What’s a wankaway?” He looked perplexed and a bit confused.

“Dude, you’re coming here to yank my wank and you don’t know what a wankaway is?”

“It’s my first season,” he apologized.

“Ignorance of the law…”

“Is no excuse,” he finished, sheepishly.

“Exactly. First of all it was a 50+ race, and it’s almost impossible to decertify a wanker in one of those. Didn’t you know that?”

He shook his head. “Really?”

“Fact. I mean there we were, standing at the start, and there was more last-minute diaper changing, and Geritol popping, and prostate pad adjusting, and bifocal fiddling, and tiny pee dribbling than you’d see after yelling ‘Fire!’ at a nursing home. Just the creaking noise from all the legs getting thrown over the top tubes was enough to make you think an elephant was walking on antique wooden floorboards.”

“I see what you’re getting at. Wanker City, huh? But what about the breakaway, er, the wankaway?”

“Well, it all happened randomly and according to no plan at all, which is the hallmark of wankdom. A break went early and got caught. Then a second break went and got brought back.”

“This doesn’t sound wankerish to me. Sounds like a hard bike race.”

“Oh, but the second break had my own teammate in it.”

“So?”

“I helped bring it back.”

“Ahhh,” he nodded. “That’s pretty lame. That’s Cat 5 lame, in fact.”

“And what’s another word for Cat 5?”

“Wanker!” he said emphatically.

“Exactly.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, they called a prime.”

“That sounds legit.”

“But it was for Cialis and denture cream.”

“Wanker.”

“Yep. So King Harold strings it out in the gutter as all sixty-six wankers put their lives on the line for an OTC product they already have at home in the medicine cabinet.”

“Wankers, for sure.”

“Hellz. Then Big Steve blasts around for the prime. Everyone’s roasted.”

“And?”

“And I attack.”

“That sounds like real tactics, not wankerish at all. Attacking after the prime? How much more legit can you get?” He started to scowl.

“I look back and Pinkle Dude and Furbag are on my wheel. I go for a little longer and swing over. Pinkle pulls through. I look back and the whole Pinkle team is clogging the chase. They’ve got ten guys in the race with enough guts and butts to clog an industrial toilet.”

Officer Smedley furrowed his brow. “Yes, but they’re still blocking, and that’s a legit race tactic. Sounds like a breakaway supported by sound team tactics to me.”

“Yeah, it may sound like that, but you had to be in the wankaway.”

“Why’s that?”

“To see the antics of the three wankers in it. You’ve got Pinkle Dude pulling only in the tailwind, if ‘pulling’ is what you call whizzling along in your compact at 123 rpm.”

“And the other guy? This ‘Furbag’ individual?”

“Well, for starters, he’s wearing a mix-n-match outfit. The jersey says ‘Bill’s Sausage Emporium,’ and it’s light blue with green lettering, and the shorts say ‘Team Vegan p/b Mind-Earth-Body Anti-Aging Institute of East Murrieta.'”

“Wow,” he says. “Pretty wankish.”

“Yeah. And Furbag has more hair on his legs than Sasquatch.”

“Well, you can’t call someone a wanker because they have hairy legs. It says so in the rulebook.”

“Exactly. But Furbag hardly ever pulled. I mean, these lousy, slow, lame, fakish little half-efforts for five or ten seconds followed by the Brad House chicken elbow salute and panting and that sadsack ‘Sorry guys I’m too weak to pull but plenty strong to suck wheel in the break all day’ look.”

Officer Smedley shook his head. “Not wankish at all. That’s smart breakaway riding if you’re the weakest in the break and saving for the sprunt.”

“Not him, Officer, us. Me and Pinkle were too lame and slow and weak to drop him. And we tried.”

Smedley nodded. “That’s lame, all right. Wankish lame.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, what about you? You’ve established that your partners were thoroughbred wankers, but how about you? You initiated the break and you powered it to the end, it sounds like. That’s for sure grounds to decertify you on the spot.”

“No, sir, that’s not what happened. First of all, I took all the pulls into the headwind.”

“Oh,” he said. “Wanker.”

“And then with two laps to go instead of easing up I went harder even though Team Pinkle was blocking like the Steel Curtain, and my teammates, King Harold and Ted ‘the Wall’ were covering every move like a blanket.”

“Stupid. Just stupid. How long have you been doing this, anyway?”

“Over 30 years, Officer.”

“Wow. What a wanker.”

“Yep. And then with one lap to go Furbag stopped taking even his fakish pulls and Pinkle Dude refused to come through at all.”

“So you eased up and got ready for them to attack you?”

“Nah, that would have been clever. I just went harder.”

“Oh, Jeez. What a wanker.”

“See?”

“Don’t tell me they sprunted around you in the last 200 meters?”

“No way! They dusted me off with more than half a lap to go. I almost got caught by the field.”

“Yeah,” he nodded his head sympathetically. “There’s no way we can take your license for a performance like that. Those are some pretty hard core wanker moves.”

“Yup.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said, looking over his warrant. “It says here you also won a prime in the break, uh, the wankaway. Is that true?”

“You could hardly call it a prime. It was a half-dozen Depends.”

“Ah, yeah, right. Okay. Well, sorry to have bothered you. We’ll let it slide this time. But don’t be showing up on any more results sheets in the top three if you know what’s good for you.”

“Don’t worry, Officer,” I said. “I won’t!”

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