Thursday, July 1, 2010

Schadenfreude. Defined.

Man. Last night was too funny and fun.

So on a beautiful evening we head out on the motorcycle to cruise the lakefront, downtown, and - most specifically - drive across the long-awaited, newly opened Humboldt Avenue bridge [closed for more than 2 years for God-knows-what reason]. Anyway, we stopped the Redroom bar where they were having a party celebrating the bridge's completion. As a prize, they were giving away a fixed-gear bicycle via a raffle. The winner was required to take the bike across the new bridge in full view of the party-goers.

A guy wins the bike, carries it out of the bar, and takes off across the bridge. Then, about 75 yards away from everyone's full view, he wipes out. Hard. Down he goes - new bike and all in a pile of flesh, rubber, and metal. After a moment of grave concern (I said, he went down HARD), he collects himself and gets back on the bike and returns to the bar to quell his humility by downing a few Pabsts. I don't think his ego was the only thing that needed salve - he landed bare-chested on the new concrete. He was wearing a huge scrape right across his entire chest - about 2" wide.

Now I'm not practicing schadenfreude, and he was okay except for a major scrape, but that was pretty damn funny. One moment he's on top of the world (I just won a new bike!) and the next he's splayed out on fresh concrete like roadkill in front of a large group of friends and strangers. Funny because once he returned he was able to down a Pabst and laugh at himself with others.

Also funny because usually that kind of thing only happens to me!

On second thought, I'm totally schadenfreuding. Oh well.

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