By Larry Flesler

I was glad to see my friends Mike Schlopp and Wadi Sawabini join Van, Marie Rice and myself at the cottage.

We had a great couple days together. Mike brought his wife and Wadi brought his partner Garth. I thought it was his partner in business but they were holding hands, french kissing and groping each other during our game of Bridge so it must be something more than that.

Mike’s wife Carolyn is a tennis player and very competitive. One morning Van and I were on our daily newspaper run on my bicycle built for 2 when suddenly Carolyn darted up from behind us like a bat out of hell. She was on roller blades and whizzed up to us screaming, “Outta my way you old bastards, last one to the store is a rotten egg.”

We could not let her beat us.  Van peddled like he was trying to get to the bar for last call, I had to keep up as the bike shares the same gear.  But as hard as we tried, we could not shake Carolyn, she was right next to us. Van then grabbed my hair pulled my head back and yelled “Pedal faster, fatty!”

I got my second wind and we started to breakaway from her.

We let our guard down for a second and coasted when suddenly she was right on us again.  Van watched as she grabbed a metal shank from her sports bra and shoved it into the spokes of our back wheel.  “Take that, you f-ers” she said as we flew head over heels from the bike to the concrete below. Van’s face hit the handle bars (sending his dentures flying) and the left side of my face was scratched, bleeding and swollen from the fall. I also had a sharp pain on my left buttock, which turned out it was Van’s teeth.

He said I could leave them where they were and he would try to get them back in without using his hands.

We finally gathered ourselves, wrestled with the mangled bike and walked back to the cottage. Wadi was outside walking with Garth when he saw us approaching.  Garth grabbed the garden hose and sprayed us down while Wadi ran into the cottage and came out with some band aids, scissors, gauze pads and baby oil. He cut off our clothes even though they weren’t that damaged and began tending to us. He applied the gauze and then gave us a baby oil massage. Van said his inseam was really sore and Wadi went to town. Not sure why but Garth ran to his car, retrieved his video camera and started taping. We must have looked like quite the site, both lying on beach chairs getting oiled up by Wadi Sawabini.

When I told Van he could get the paper by himself tomorrow, he just moaned and asked if I had a cigarette.