CHRISTMAS IN DOVER

By Don True

As I rode to Dover that cool December morning, I marvelled at the pure beauty of the snow-covered hills, the cool crisp air, and Dover nestled in the bottom of the valley.  At the top of the big hill, I stopped and viewed the town.  It was beautiful, with four inches of fresh snow and several strings of Christmas lights still on from the night before.  From my vantage point I could see the town square, decorated with red and green Christmas lights; Rudolph the red nose reindeer; and a thirty-foot Santa Claus.  The Baptist church had set up a nativity scene next to the plastic Santa, sleigh and candy canes.  Wise men on camels carried treasure for Mary, Joseph and a newborn Jesus.  Young children were sledding in the park and a group of carollers were on a street corner, greeting passers-by with Christmas cheer.  If Norman Rockwell were still alive, he would be painting Christmas scenes in downtown Dover.  It made me wonder why I ever considered making fun of Doverites.

Our ever-efficient State highway workers had cleaned the road there in the wee hours of the morning.  And I had no problem riding to Bike N Bob’s Bike Store.  I was looking for gifts, to put on my Christmas list.  Hoping that maybe, Judith my loving, understanding, non-biking wife, would spring for an expensive Descente Solar Jacket or a pair of Pearl Izumi lobster gloves.  As I browsed the shop, I don’t know why I let Bike N Bob’s talk me into it.  You’d think I’d wise up, but being the super salesman he is, I couldn’t resist…

Bob has just started selling Santana Tandems out of his Dover Bike Shop.  And sitting in the centre of his display floor was the new Santana Team Titanium Ti-26.  Six thousand nine hundred and ninety-five dollars worth of mountain biking fun and action.  As I stood there, drooling over the best looking frame I’d ever seen, Bob sneaked up behind me and whispered in my ear: “Like to take this baby for a spin?”

The words ran into my ear and strange thoughts started circling inside my brain.  “Me, on a $7000 bike?…  Hammering down hills at over 50 mph…  Powering past roadies, as I, on the captain’s seat, barked out commands to my Stoker on the rear.”

“Faster Dog Breath” I envisioned myself yelling at the poor Category One Racer I had chained to the rear seat.  Finally, I could ride with the big boys!  No more being dropped when they sprinted for the next stop sign.  Hey, they’d be wheel sucking off me for a change!

“I’d love to Bob!  But who am I going to ride with?”

“I’d take you myself, but I’m awful busy straightening the frame on your MB-3.  Just leave your MasterCard on the Counter and ride with the next person that comes in.”

As I nodded my head in agreement, and slipped my card onto the counter, the shop door opened.  That little bell rang, announcing another customer; and in walked...

Jim the Animal!

“Oh no, not Jim!” I thought silently to myself.

I found myself on the back of a rapidly accelerating tandem, as we rolled down Main Street, east toward Topeka.   Jim and I had argued about who was going to sit up front for a good fifteen minutes.  Bike N Bob, wanting some peace and quite in his shop, finally flipped a coin and Jim won the toss.  He elected to drive.

The first thing I noticed was I had no control over anything.  I couldn’t steer, I couldn’t brake, and I couldn’t even stop pedalling and coast.  I was at the complete mercy of Jim’s thundering thighs.  He was quickly shifting through the gears and the cranks under my feet were whirling at the highest cadence I had ever experienced.   With every shift onto a smaller clog, my quads would groan and refuse to work.  But Jim’s powerful stroke would force my legs around again and on the upstroke my calves would scream out in pain.  Each time I heard the click of the derailleur, my mind prepared itself for a river of pain that would shoot up through my legs.  When we finally got on the big ring up front and the smallest gear on the freewheel, Jim yelled back:

“Are you ready to Hammer?”

 Since I couldn’t breath very well cause one lung had just collapsed, I wheezed out:

“Slow down, I can‘t last!”

With the wind noise generated at 30 mph and my pitiful cry, what Jim heard was: “Bla, Bla, Bla, Bla, Fast!”

When he caught that, he put his head down and increased the now furious cadence we were cranking.  At 40 mph we hit the base of a large hill and Jim decided to stand and really turn those pedals.  This set up a horrible oscillation.  The bike shook from side to side as we tried to stay on the road.  When the bike would jump left, Jim would throw all his body weight right.  In my dazed and weaken condition my reflexes were a little slow and I would lean left when Jim steered right.  We zigzagged down the road in utter terror like this for a quarter of a mile before slowing and bring the bike under control.

Now riding smoothly and together for the first time I begged Jim to stop and give me a small rest break.  I just needed a chance to recover.  A chance to refresh my burnt out legs.  As we passed a house with a “Garage Sale” sign out front, I suggested he could browse while I rested.

“You could maybe find a cheap Christmas present for your mom here, Jim.”  I pleaded, hoping he would at least stop riding for his mother.

Since Jim’s always looking for a bargain, and he hadn’t bought his mom a present yet, this ploy worked and he pulled into the drive.

I jumped off the back of the bike, and collapsed on the ground.  I lay there and watched Jim look through all the junk this guy had to sell.  I should have yelled “NO!” when he bought the Propane Bar-B-Q grill.  But I was still too exhausted to even speak.  We were ten miles from Dover and I knew the ride back would test the limits of my aged and underdeveloped body.

Jim strolled over with his prized trophy.  It was a rusted out, heat blackened, propane Bar-B-Q grill.  It stood about 3 foot high with a wooden handle on one end and two small wheels on the other.  My job, as Jim informed me, was to hold the handle on his mom’s new grill and keep that end from hitting the ground while we towed it back to Dover behind the tandem.

As we started back, the three-inch wheels on the grill let off a shrill high pitch squeal.  The sound was so loud and intense it started to make my eyes water.  I guess the wheels had never been oiled and we were giving them a severe test as Jim brought the ship up to cruising speed.  The faster we went the higher the pitch of the squeal was from the grill’s wheels.  The only purpose this sound served was to wake up every farm dog in a ten-mile radius of Dover!  As we rolled by each dog’s property line, they were waiting for Jim and me.  Several were even standing in the road with big vicious grins as we approached.

What I didn’t realize is they weren’t waiting for Jim and me, but really they were just waiting for me.  Jim could maintain a pace that kept the dogs just at the rear of the tandem.  He was safe and out of the way of the snapping jaws while I was left to fend off their attacks holding onto a Bar-B-Q grill with one hand and keeping a death grip on my handle bars with the other. I would scream for him to speed up, as the dogs jumped and snapped at my legs spinning madly on the back of the tandem. If they got real close, I’d swing the grill over, and try to try run them down with it. I thought I even heard Jim chuckle once as he coasted just out of range of a German Shepard’s vicious, drooling, teeth filled mouth, while I cussed profusely at the ugly mutt.

It was the Doberman at the bottom of Dover hill that caused all the problems.  We were almost home free and back to Dover when this lightning fast Doberman took up the chase.  We had descended the hill at a little over 50 mph and the wheels on the grill were starting to sing real good and loud now.  The dog followed us into town snapping and growling while I swung the grill back and forth at him.  Just as we were approaching the Dover Christmas display, the damn dog sunk his teeth into one of the wheels on the grill, and ripped it off its axle.  The bottom of the grill set up a wall of sparks as it skidded down the street behind a now out of control tandem.  This heated up the propane tank and right before the explosion, I saw that Jim had lost control of the bike, jumped a curb, and was headed directly toward one of the Three Wise Men in the Christmas display.  We hit the one holding the Frankincense and Myrrh.  He toppled over into the other two and they fell on top of a poor plastic shepherd boy who was then decapitated as the tandems front wheel skidded over his head.  About this time the propane tank let loose and a 10 foot flame shot out the side of the tank and propelled us like a rocket through the manger, who’s straw roof and walls instantly went up in flames, and straight toward the 30 foot Santa, which was holding up the main string of Christmas lights, that were strung throughout downtown Dover.

The bike tried to go through Santa’s legs, Jim and I bailed off in a snow bank.  The tandem still upright and powered by the propane went through Santa’s legs.  But the grill was too large to make it through and became lodged between his legs.  We watched in horror, as a 30-foot Santa, with his crotch on fire was pulled down the sidewalk by a jet propelled Santana tandem, trailing 3000 feet of sparking Christmas lights along behind.

As Santa rolled down the sidewalk, pedestrians screamed and they jumped for their lives out of its way.  He ripped the Christmas lights from each pole as he past, and suddenly the electrical power to all of Dover went dead.  When the out of control Santa approached the City Park, several young children on the play ground equipment, saw the Santa from hell about to run them down and fled screaming in terror.

Santa’s last stop was, unfortunately for me, Bike N Bob’s store, Bob had come out to see what all the commotion in Downtown Dover was about.  Santa crossed the park, shooting 40-foot flames from his rear and made a beeline for the front of Bike N Bob’s.  Bob, wide eyed, couldn’t believe he was seeing Santa on a Santana, and threw him out of the way seconds before Santa crashed through his main display window.

It was here that Santa had his final meltdown, right next to several Treks and high dollar Cannondales. Titanium melts at 1455 degrees Fahrenheit.  And the Santana was no exception to the laws of chemistry and physics.  It and seven other bikes were fused with 30 feet of red and white plastic to create an interesting piece of modern art sculpture that now sits somewhere in the Dover land fill.

The fire was contained to the display window and the heat almost reached the cash register counter where my plastic MasterCard sat.  The edges of it were curled and blackened, but somehow Bob was still able to read the numbers off it, and billed me $27,395.

So if you don’t get a present from me this year, I’ll hope you’ll understand.