It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part CXIX

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.

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