Kick Start Only, No Flip Flops...

Many years ago, and good friend and I shared a garage space. We kept our bikes there, road together, wrenched together and often times left random notes to each other about some miscellaneous task or reminder.

At the time, I had a bike that I was selling, and posted it on Craigslist. Likely due to the $800 asking price, random people kept showing up interested in buying it. We all know the Craigslist process of dealing with people that show up, and that uncomfortable feeling of letting some perfect stranger test ride your bike. I've never been one to care much, figuring that if I'm selling it, someone is going to want to test it out. And in this case, it's $800, so what the Hell could it even matter.

Well, one guy shows up this afternoon with his buddy to have a look at the bike. He's in shorts and flip flops, and just has that nervous look where you simply know that this guy has never ridden anything before. But I'm up for a laugh, so I told him he could have a go at it. Watching this guy try and kick start the bike in flip flops was easily one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Of course there's an art to kick starting any bike, and each one has it's own personality. Even a season rider could have trouble starting another man's bike. So here's this guy, with no real clue how to get the feel for kick starting it, and over and over again, he's giving it everything he's got. His flip flops kept getting folded over and caught up on the kick starter. Sheer comedy, and it took everything I had, not to start laughing. Eventually he got it to fire and off he went on his awkward test ride. Surely in pain, and now having to shift with the bare top of his foot. I'm not quite sure what he was thinking.

After all was settled, he and his friend left, and I jokingly told my garage mate of the story. We laughed and that was sort of the end of it. A couple days go by, and I find a note in the garage that my buddy left. It simply read "Kick Start Only, No Flip Flops..."

Out of sheer humor, I revised the Craigslist add to include that statement. Purely for my own amusement. I wish I would have kept that note. I'm sure it got thrown in the trash, but the memory of it lives on, and every once in a while, one of us will randomly text that to the other. Definitely good for a laugh.

The guy with the flip flops came back a week or so later and bought the bike. He had shoes on. I wonder what happened to him.