President 6th Grader
When I was in 6th grade, my best friend Scott and I would ride our bikes out the giant sand pile across the street from the landfill by the Connell Highway rotary (what people in New Jersey and Pennsylvania call a “traffic circle” and what the British call a “roundabout”), where we would race our BMX’s to the bottom. Scott had a bright red Sears BMX he called “The Baron”, named for Manfred von Richthofen, the notorious Red Baron of WW1 (I had an orange Rampar, and had no need to name my superior bike). Along the slope were moguls that we had built up from which to pop wheelies and catch air. I remember when Scott nearly killed himself shooting over a mogul, screaming “Aiiiirrbooooorne!”, then losing control, and crashing bike-first, into a rusting tractor. I’d nearly forgotten about those days until I read Dan Froomkin’s “White House Briefing” today:
“Confident that a U.N. resolution on southern Lebanon was essentially complete, Bush broke away from his ranchhouse for a spin around his 1,600-acre Texas ranch, across single-track trails that he helped hack out of the dry, dusty environs.
[snip]
“Bush does not ride quietly, constantly shouting out in his Texas twang the names of trees and geographic features and yelling at himself to pedal faster.“‘Air assault!’ he yelled as he started one of two major climbs, up Calichi Hill, which he named for the white limestone rock from which it is formed.”
Yes, he actually yelled out “air assault.”
The man is 60 years old, and acts like my friends and me when were were 11.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
