Tom's Riding Journal

Why I haven’t had time to ride lately:

I hear a lot of excuses for not riding and some are pretty good. One woman told me yesterday that her pregnancy prevented her from riding her tri-bike lately and I could buy that one. She was pretty puffed up. However as far as excuses go I have the Mac Daddy as far as I’m concerned, because I have a lot on my plate, as you will read below:

Finally, I say with a long sigh, finally, we appear to be getting moved in to our new residential compound. It’s been a long arduous process obtaining permits for the underground bombproof chamber and the hermetically sealed bicycle storage unit. It took two days of backbreaking labor just to stack all the ammo boxes and to hide all the guns out of reach of all our nieces and nephews who will eventually be crawling all over the place.

While we were finishing up the Houston facility a team of specially trained and vetted engineers were putting the finishing touches on the Flatonia compound and they tell me they are about 25% finished on the tunnel that will connect them both. So within the year we should be breaking through from our end, somewhere beneath Columbus, and shaking hands with a dirt encrusted tunnel engineer from the Flatonia side. The goal is, of course, to be able to hold the first subterranean charity bicycle ride from Houston to Flatonia. As a side benefit I guess we could use the tunnel to evacuate when the next big hurricane hits. Then we could avoid all that traffic.

After we install the anti-tank barriers in Flatonia I was thinking of setting the place up as a church so I could avoid some taxes. I’m working on my first sermon as I write this in a little used wrinkle of my brain. I have my basic platform laid out but I’m hung up trying to reconcile the polygamy part with the treating all humans with respect and dignity part. I’m drawing on a shallow reading of many different religious books, taking little bits and pieces here and there creating a religious quilt which I will use to keep all my parishioners warm and cozy. I’m thinking the membership will probably be limited to adult females with me serving as the figurehead. Of course I haven’t yet discussed this with Judy. I am afraid she might have some serious reservations about the whole plan. She is so focused on decorating the two buildings she hasn’t even noticed the anti-personnel mines going into the septic tank’s leech field in Flatonia. As a salesman I recognize that she may be my toughest sale ever. I’m formulating a written sales strategy in my spare time because that sale will be crucial to my ultimate goal of establishing a separate and sovereign nation within the current boundary of Flatonia governed by my religious doctrine. Now you can begin to see how all the pieces fit together and you can see how busy I’ve been. You have to admit that as excuses go, mine rules, just like I will soon rule Biketopia.