It was Monday, May 22, 1989.
I woke up late at about the usual time, probably 9 or 10. I’d been working late the night before, at “Wallaby’s”, a horrible bar stuck under a strip mall in Columbia Heights.
Since I’d moved into the little upper duplex, life had gotten less eventful. Living without an addict in the house was a whole lot less crisis-prone.
But there wasn’t a whole lot going on to fill the time, either. My week pretty much ran like this:
- Monday: Usually Wallaby’s; occasionally Jam’s
- Tuesday: The Mermaid.
- Wednesday: City Limits, normally.
- Thursday: The Mermaid.
- Friday: I took Fridays off. It was one of the perks of being the sleazy DJ service’s favorite jock; I could get out of a prime night. On alternate Fridays, I’d drive out to Eden Prairie to pick up my paycheck. I could have waited for it by mail, but it killed more time if I just drove it. Also, the Spiky-Haired Boss usually took his sweet time popping the checks in the mail. We all knew this; there was usually a crowd of jocks hanging around the office when the checks came out, around 3PM. I was always one of ’em. It was fun. More on the rest of the guys later.
- Saturday: The Mermaid. Ths was always the big night of the week. We’d usually draw a pretty good crowd – it wasn’t unusual to get 1,000-1,200 through the door on a Saturday night.
- Sunday: Either the “‘Maid”, City LImits or Jams’.
And that was about it.
The routine during the day? Most days, it involved jumping on my bike and riding. I rode all over the metro. 20-30 miles a day, back in the day before there were bike paths and bike lanes all over the place. I’d ride whichever way the wind told me to; if the wind were blowing from the west, I’d ride west, across the Lowry Bridge, over to Wirth Park, and off into some maze of northwest-suburban streets or another; I’d have the wind behind me on the way home. I had no goal or destination, really; I’d just ride.
Whiling away the time.
The band thing had sort of tailed off again; Bill the Drummer had started drinking again, and gotten depressed about the prospects, and I just walked away. Again.
But it was a beautiful morning.
And so I rode.
It’s too bad you didn’t get run over by a semi on your ride. Because you would have deserved that.
It was Monday, May 22, 1988
Twenty One years ago today??