You Never Forget How

Of all the bullshit Crumby was fixing to learn during his Christian Americano upbringing, the only surely true bullshit was, Once you learn how to ride a bicycle, you never forget how. That’s right. You never forget how. Even if you don’t ride a bicycle for many years, you can easily jump on a bicycle anytime and away you go, lickety split. Christ on a bicycle!!!!

For example, Karl the Tracker Druid told Ray, and Ray told Crumby, about this one time when Prissy and Ajax, totally disappeared. You may recall that Prissy and Ajax are a saddle horse and pack mule respectively. Karl, of course, was totally distraught at the loss of his equine friends. Not to mention, Karl’s tracker business was ruined. He had no transportation and no colleagues available for consultation.

But the situation was fixing to get even worse. Anon, Karl received a ransom note from rustlers. The note read:

Dear Karl the Tracker Druid,

We have rustled your stock. You need to pay us a million dollars. Otherwise, you shall never see your pet horse and mule again, alive. Plus the mule is giving us a lot of trouble. So if you don’t pay up really fast, we shall sell the mule to an interested dog food vendor.

Here’s what you must do to get your pets back.

The rest of the ransom note provided instructions on where Karl was to leave the money. Only once they had received the money or million dollars would those rustlers release Prissy and Ajax.

Hmm. I am not fixing to put up with this for even a nanosecond, Karl said to himself. But how the heck am I supposed to get along without any transportation. I need a ride to get Prissy and Ajax back. Mercy!

As the tracker stared out his office window despondently, fretting for his lost friends and business partners, Karl suddenly remembered, I have a dang bicycle.

Yes. Karl had a bicycle stored in the shed. Let’s see here. Well. The bell still works. And I can get some of my tracking gear in this basket. But the tires are flat.

Yes. The tires were flat. But Karl found replacement tires, tubes, and rim jobs on Ebay. Karl paid extra for overnight delivery. Then Karl discovered, once he got the new tires on, that the wheels wobbled. They wobbled so much they hit the brake pads of the caliper brakes.

Yet elbow grease got that bicycle up to snuff after a while. Anon, Karl was off, lickety split. Because, you never forget how. Yes. Karl was off, tracking down the rustlers on his unsafe at any speed bicycle. Not only was the bicycle unsafe at any speed, that particular bicycle was too tall for Karl. Correct. When Karl stopped the bicycle, he had to stop adjacent to a curb because his feet could not touch the ground otherwise, on or out of the saddle. Dang, thought Karl. I must have shrunk.

However, Karl is the greatest of all trackers the world has ever seen or acknowledged. But the rustler hideout was up in the mountains. Jeez Louise, thought Karl. I thought my bicycle had more gears than just this one. But Karl, despite having just the one gear, kept on peddling. You never forget how. But you may need to eventually get off and push the bicycle for a ways on up the hill or mountain.

Eventually Karl rode his bicycle close enough to actually epsy the rustler hideout through his trusty binoculars. Yes. There was Prissy. There was Ajax. They were cruelly hobbled next to the hideout with only a little horseweed (Conyza canadensis) for company.

Karl made a plan. The plan was to hang the rustlers by their miserable necks until those dirty bastards were sincerely dead. After Karl hung the rustlers, Karl rode Prissy back to his office. Ajax had to tote the bicycle.

So that’s how Karl was able to recover his lost business associates and property. All because, You never forget how.