Category: Asia

Obstacles To A Successful Bicycle Tour…Meet The Psychotic Roosters Of Asia

It is 4:19 am and I am awake.  Click, clack, click there are tiny footsteps dancing outside the door of my bungalow.  The mountains here in Laos are getting cold so I have ventured in for the night to a guest house bungalow. Click, clack, click the footsteps appear to be busting out with an early morning tango……Cock A Doodle DOOOOOOO, the song is startling, a disastrous operatic melancholy melody that could make Pavarotti roll over in his grave has just begun outside the thin walls of my wooden bungalow.  
Dog Rooster
Asian Psychotic Rooster

They don’t seem to understand how early it is, psychosis from too much singing has surely eaten away their senses.  Roosters have gathered like a doorstep Christmas carol choir, lacking any real talent to pull off a hit song and they certainly can’t skate by on their dance moves or cute looks alone.
 
The roosters here in Asia are not your run of the mill roosters, although I do wish they would run a mill instead of the roads. They are psychotic; their cock doodle doo is in need of a good dose of psychotherapy, a straight jacket and a voice coach. Their short tempered feathers are constantly ruffled and they have developed some serious issues concerning magic bicycles. For days now, I have been trying to quietly sneak by them unnoticed but they can smell a magic bicycle from a mile away. And despite my stealth bomber efforts as I pedal by them, they shed their straightjackets and click clack click themselves to the side of the road, cock their greasy uncombed feathery heads, open their alarming blood shot eyes and Cock A Doodle DOOO a psychotic howl straight out of a B grade slasher movie.
bungalo blog baby
notice the hearing aid in the women’s ear due to the fact that she grew up around here
Magic bicycles are indeed a special breed, can render even the most secure, green with envy, however, psychosis and jealousy are a dangerous combination in a strange bird with a terrible singing voice, who has aspirations to form an early morning choir with all his equally ton deaf bird friends.  It is now 4:36 AM, the morning rooster chorus is in full swing, busting out poor quality original tunes and discussing their application for the AM talk show circuit. Let’s applaud them for effort and secretly hope they do not find success for I assure you that if they went global, the world at large would suffer a serious shortage of high quality earplugs.
rooster band
Although I agree that this would make a fine album cover, I assured them to keep practicing and Opera will just come to them!
 

The Loogie Launch-Jakarta, Indonesia

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My left calf pulsates as if being eaten by an army of ants, my lower arms radiates with a fume ridden blackening stench, coffee brown grit encapsulates my teeth as I pedal through a battlefield of serenading chaos. I am not alone, far from it, I am crowded in on all sides by a human burr of motorcycle exhaust. I lean over Pandemic The Magic Bicycle’s glistening gritty handlebars to scratch the sweaty reddening hives on my arms. I glance down at my calf through the garden of Jakarta smog to the bouquet of pulsating pollution hives that are shocking my claustrophobic legs of oxygen . The traffic light overhead is shaded in by hobbling ailing exhaust. Thoughts of rigor-mortise and Asian standards of air quality pass quickly as the word rigor-mortise lingers in my stop, go, teeter-toterring conscious. I squint my murky blood shot eyes as my brow sags with pond brown perspiration. The middle-aged traffic light triumphantly flickers as I cough forward in a flu of Jakarta motorcycle dust.

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As the sickened smog radiates, dust particles blur my vision as I search for the harbor and ferry terminal for a boat to Malaysia. As I squirm throw the claustrophobic mass of people, I feel something wet land on my leg. I look down and I have been hit, not by a truck, car and motorcycle but by a gooey, sticky, yellowish projectile in possession of nauseating capabilities. A loogie the size of Mexico has landed between two hives on my left calf. And, It is hanging on for dear life as I zigzag and swerve Pandemic The Magic Asphyxiated Bicycle through the trafficked crowd of triumphantly proud world renowned Asian loogie launchers.

lo 001

The population of capital city, Jakarta remains one of the highest in the world. This is due in part to how challenging it is to navigate through the polluted residence and streets and leave this fascinating all be densely, polluted, populated city of millions. My boat connections from the pornographic jungles of Borneo canceled, an ocean and ailing visa time have forced me into Jakarta.

I emerge baptized by loogies and arrive at the ferry boat to Malaysia. The soat and hives from the urban adventure have tangled themselves into a puzzle of rash, hives, loogies and brown city slim, a sudoko puzzle of urban planning complexities. I decide to rinse my legs and arms in fresh dirty water and bust loose on the Muslim dress code and expose my full arms and legs from the knees down to the ocean air. I am now siting on the ferry boat on the open deck, on top of my camping sleeping pad, tucked under the stairs and while whipping a brown pudding like substance from my face I watch a freshly rinsed dancing bravado of hives and a chorus suitable only for the Sudoko Broadway of smog.