Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 17:22:23
Subject: I spent yesterday with Sid
From: skipvskip@hotmail.com
To: freddyfingers@treemail.com

Fred,

Thanks for sending Sid my way.

My thanks and regards to Tree and the rest of the Rainbow People.

You're a lifesaver.

Sid visited twice yesterday and ever since I've seen life in a new shining light. Amazing things are happening to me, Fred, truly amazing things. I haven't felt this good since the Enron shit started coming down.

Yesterday I took Sid with my morning coffee.

Sid came with me to work.

Sid was riding with me, on the handlebars, all day long.

Sid really kicked in around noon.

Some folks, I'm sure, would get nervous about operating their TREK 7200 at high velocity while Sid is around.

But Sid was clean, Fred, Sid was clarity.

The bike and I became one living organism. I could feel the knobs of my Bontrager tires gripping the asphalt. My spine and the aluminum frame were one. My nerves were twitching in the Shimano derailleur.

At one point I nearly expired when Tom Cruise's fingers in VR gloves on a Minority Report billboard on the side of a CTA bus flew out from the advertisement towards my head as if to flick off my helmet, enormous digits reaching for me.

Around lunchtime while I was making a delivery near Daley Plaza the crowd became an actualized river of flesh. Bike and I and Sid were moving through its currents, weaving S curves around its eddies.

All I needed to remember to say was "Sign Here." I think a few times I may have said, "Rind Beer" "Hi Near" and "Bind Rear." At one point my jaw was pretty slack and I was reduced to pointing emphatically.

The shades stayed firmly affixed.

One receptionist was briefly a Medusa. The next a Cyclopes.

After work Sid and I renewed our acquaintance and went to the Lincoln Park Zoo.

There were green alligators and long necked geese, cats and rats and elephants and above all chimpanzees.

I spent much of my early evening in the monkeyhouse communicating with one of the subordinate males who had the face and soul of my grandfather.

Anyway, it was good to see Sid. Many of my friends haven't seen Sid for a long time and our time during this visit will pass very quickly. We're hoping to see more of him. I'd happily make the trip up to the farm in Wisconsin to bring Sid back to Chicago for a longer stay.

Thanks again for making the Sid arrangements.

Hope to see you and Sid again soon,

Skip