It turns out I am getting older. One clear sign is the significant number of 40th birthday parties I have attended in the past few years. I can’t say exactly how many because my memory is starting to go, but there have been a lot, by cracky! And at each one, it is generally the same group of people, only a different person is wearing a silly hat or a sash. I don’t need numerous 40th birthday parties to point out the fact that I’m getting older. My aching bones do a perfectly good job of that. Nevertheless, my aching bones went to another 40th birthday party two weeks ago and there are many more on my schedule in the near future. When at last they taper off, the cycle of 50th birthday parties will begin and I’m sure my bones will still be aching. As for my own 40th birthday party coming up in less than two years, you’re all invited. Please come and have a great time. When it’s over, give me a shout. I’ll be curious to know how it went.
Weddings and bachelor parties have also become regular affairs, as many of my close friends, family members, and fellow coworkers who are also getting older are deciding it’s finally time to grow up. Recently, I attended a bachelor party in honor of Land Beaver, Bart’s older brother. Bart of course, as the four or five of you who read this column know, is hands down, without question, one of my most favorite fellow coworkers, and although Land Beaver has a real job and doesn’t work at the bike shop, he is nevertheless a very colorful patch stitched into the patchwork quilt that is the bike shop extended family. He is a regular on our shop bike rides and ski excursions and he helps out each year at our annual bike swap as well as joins us in our bike brigade during the annual 4th of July parade. If you’ve ever been to the bike swap, he is the guy wearing a sombrero, loading up all the free abandoned junk bikes in the back of his car. If you’ve watched the parade, he’s the guy wearing knee-high tube socks and a backpack zooming around on inline skates with a tow rope in his hands who I am cursing at for attaching his tow hook to the back of my Penny-Farthing.
Land Beaver’s bachelor party was nothing like your archetypal bachelor party in Las Vegas, Montreal, or at a rented condo a few towns over. There were no inappropriate shenanigans involving adult entertainment professionals. No tigers or chickens were harmed and no one lost any teeth. There were no cigars, no drinking games, and no keg stands. A mason jar full of fresh corn whiskey, generously donated to our cause by Jesus H. Renko’s fiancée, remained unopened. And even though by 11 pm the nine of us were all sitting quietly around a campfire struggling to stay awake, we all had a swell time, by cracky!
Seriously though, we did have a swell time. Perhaps the swellest time anyone has ever had at a bachelor party, or at least at a mature bachelor party, which is what I would call it, because we are all very mature gentlemen who are all married or engaged. We enjoyed a very mature bachelor party involving two mature days and two mature nights of tenting, mountain biking, archery, primitive weapon making, pine pitch torch burning, glass sculpting, and shooting Peeps at each other with sling shots. We enjoyed a lot of good mature camp food including sausages and beans (insert joke here) as well as polenta, peanut butter, potatoes, and of course, Peeps. Yes we enjoyed a few beers, but as a true indicator of how mature we all are, all but one of us listened to our wives’ recommendations and remembered to drink lots and lots of water. If this bachelor party sounds like a good time to you, feel free to take notes.
Aside from celebrating Land Beaver’s imminent nuptials, and bemoaning his fleeting bachelorhood, the main purpose of this trip, of course, was the mountain biking. We are all mountain bikers, and even though it was early spring, and most of us hadn’t sat on a bicycle since last fall, the idea of two days of epic mountain biking following two nights of mature bachelor party action sounded like a great idea to us. And even though by the end of the second day, the ache in my bones had spread to my back, neck, legs, and especially my bottom, I would do it all over again. I would just enjoy a few less beers and I would bring a much more significant and cushy sleeping pad to rest my aching body upon. Fortunately, the aches in my body have retreated back to their home in my bones, and I’m walking in a normal fashion again. I’m feeling ready as ever for the next mature event, which is another 40th birthday party. As for a gift for the lucky 40 year old, I’m thinking an unopened mason jar full of corn whiskey is a swell idea.
