The tragic tale of the light blue windbreaker

So, during an epic trail ride on Sunday through Auburn, Buckfield, Canton and Turner, my beloved blue windbreaker jumped off the back of my bike and vanished seemingly forever. What followed was me basically weeping all over Facebook and pleading for its safe return. Let’s be realistic, though. Who’s going to return a sweet blue windbreaker with broken zippers and cool archipelagos of suspicious stains when it might fetch as much as four bucks on eBay? Turns out, awesome people are still out there, because when I returned to the Buckfield trail that night, the coat was there hanging off a post just waiting to be picked up and danced with in the silver moonlight. Or whatever. People celebrate acts of kindness in all kinds of different ways. You can watch the thrilling story on YouTube, but be warned, the language gets rough. I mean, come on. I lost my windbreaker!

I swear

So, my attempts to quit cussing stuttered and stalled Wednesday afternoon as I tried responding to three – count them, three – crime scenes in downtown Lewiston only to be derailed at every turn by $%@#! construction detours. And not only do the detours funnel you like a rat in a cage, but the result is a volume of slow-going traffic downtown that is an estimated 1,000,000 times the usual. I won’t lie to you, friends. I might have swore a time or two.

To be honest

Although, who am I kidding, really? My day of cussing usually begins the very moment I crawl out of bed. Crawling out of bed just sucks, man.

Blue herring

Another annoyance at crime scenes? When you’re just getting settled in and getting cozy with witnesses, a bunch of cops – without any preamble whatsoever – jump into their cars and go screaming off in another direction. Do you stay at this crime scene? Or follow the popo in hopes of discovering an even better one? It’s “Sophie’s Choice” all up in here. Maybe. I’ve never seen that movie and don’t know what it’s about. But I almost always opt to follow the screaming cops and the result is usually that I find myself at the scene of a misdemeanor jaywalking or some such.

Kids these days

So, while hanging out on Bartlett Street the other day, a kid of about 5 spotted the video camera tucked under my motorcycle helmet visor and he was onto me at once. “Nice GoPro,” he said. “Is that the Hero Session? Are you a YouTuber? What’s your channel?” Man, when I was that kid’s age, I was more or less just figuring out that the toilet seat went both up and down.

Let’s get the black hole out of here

It’s funny how, whenever mayhem erupts in downtown Lewiston, people come from all around to comment on how they’re either glad they moved away or they plan to move away because crime is so rampant in Lewiston. Doesn’t matter whether the latest mayhem is completely isolated. I suspect that peace could reign in Lewiston for a thousand years and then, at the news of as little as a purse snatching, the extraterrestrials who have taken over the planet will pile on Future Facebook to deride the living conditions. “Lewiston is out of control,” the tentacled beings will declare. “Sure glad I moved back to Eros.”

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