From pyramid!oracle!apple!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!att!ihlpl!ihlpa!fish Mon Feb  6 09:45:55 PST 1989


As I promised (or threatened, as the case may be), I will be re-posting the
entire Spike Bike series throughout the month of February.  As there are
a total of 14 installments in the series, I'll be posting one article
about every other day.

For those of you who have already seen the stories, I hope you don't
mind a few re-runs; I've had enough requests for reprints and email
copies to warrant posting them again.  The stories are the same as the
ones you've read, save that I've cleaned up a few typos and errors of
style that I let out the first time around.

In the event you are reading these stories for the first time, a word of
caution: the stories are bitter and violent, what one  of my detractors
called "the paranoid ramblings of a sick mind." This was one of the two
readers (among those who bothered to reply) who did not like the Spike
Bike stories.  The rest of you paranoid ramblers loved them.

Now, without further fanfare, I present:

                  The Adventures of Spike Bike
                        by Robert Fishell

1. Fighting Urban Sprawl

     [The year is 1998.  The Federal  Government  is  the  puppet  of  a
consortium of the 20 large corporations which run the country. State and
local governments  have  been  completely  taken  over  by  real  estate
developers,  whose  goal  it  is  to  turn America into one giant suburb
consisting of subdivisions, apartment  complexes,  shopping  malls,  and
office parks.

     Bicycles have been all but outlawed.  The Bicycle Act of 1992  made
it  illegal  to appropriate tax dollars for bike lanes, paths, etc., and
included a provision that "those persons riding bicycles on public roads
do  so  entirely at their own risk."  The law was originally intended to
stem the flood of imports of Japanese bikes before foreign trade was cut
off entirely in '94.

     However, the ramifications of this law were much more serious. If a
cyclist  were  to be injured or killed by a motorist, the motorist could
not be prosecuted or even sued. It is open season on cyclists.  One  man
fights back....]

----------
     A cloud of brown dust stretched as far as the eye could  see  along
old  route  126. From my vantage point behind an old barn, I watched the
grim parade. For the third time in less than a  minute,  a  huge  gravel
truck  rumbled  past,  spewing acrid, black smoke and kicking up more of
the brown mud-dust and spreading it all over everything.

     Including me.  I'm Spike Bike.  I hate cars.

     Taking out a tractor-trailer rig isn't easy.  You might be able  to
get  a  grenade  into  the  cab,  but  if it bounces back at you, you're
finished. You can sometimes shoot out  all the tires on one side of  the
tractor  and the truck will jackknife, but it takes at least half a mag,
and half the time you won't get all the tires. I had to face  the   fact
that a MAC-10 submachine gun and a few grenades just weren't going to do
the job against these monstrosities.

     My weekly raid on the old Joliet Arsenal yielded what I needed:   a
bazooka and a couple of crates of armor-piercing rockets.  As usual, the
morons the Army has watching the place didn't  see  anything.   All  the
approaches  to the arsenal are pretty well guarded, but nobody expects a
guy on a mountain bike sneaking up from the river  bank.   I  slung  the
bazooka  over  my shoulder, stuffed all the rockets I could carry into a
set of panniers and a backback, and slipped away unnoticed.

     Back in the garage, I set about converting the bazooka and some old
Reynolds tubing into a bikezooka.  When I was finished, it looked pretty
much like any other fat-tube bike,  except  your  every-day  Kleins  and
Cannondales aren't capable of firing antitank rockets out both the front
and back ends.  The bike handled a little funny, but I wasn't  going  to
do any criteriums on this baby.

     I had to ride along 126 for a couple  of  miles  before  I  got  an
opportunity  to  test  it.  There  wasn't a gravel truck in sight, but I
spotted an enormous flatbed carrying a bulldozer.  Both  the  truck  and
its  cargo  were  filthy,  covered  with mud and chipped paint, just the
thing to make my blood boil.  He tried to run me into the ditch, but I'd
expected  that,  and  I dodged him easily as he rumbled past.  He gave a
blast on his air horn that meant "I'll get you next time!"

     There wouldn't be any next time.  I waited until he was  about  200
feet  ahead and let the first rocket fly.  It scored a direct hit on the
rear axles and blew the wheels clean off.  The truck  collapsed  on  the
roadbed  and the 'dozer broke loose from its restraints to lurch forward
and crush the cab.  My second shot ignited the truck's fuel tank and set
both the machines ablaze. I had a weapon!

     My first opportunity to take out one of my primary targets  came  a
few  minutes  later, when I spotted a gravel truck a quarter mile behind
me.  It was big and ugly and loaded  with  dirt  --  a  fat  hog  to  be
butchered.   I  loaded  a  rocket  into  the nose and flipped the firing
mechanism over so I could launch the round out of the back of the  bike.
I waited until he got closer, almost too close. I heard him downshift to
get more power as he headed straight for me. I let  him  have  it.   The
missile  struck  the  radiator  just  above  the bumper.  The entire cab
exploded and  blew   off  the  undercarriage.   With  the  steering  box
destroyed,  the truck promptly and violently jackknifed, turning over in
the ditch and spilling its entire cargo of dirt, rocks, and  debris  off
to the side of the road.  It lay a smoking ruin as I pedaled on.

     I'd only brought along four rockets for this test run.   I'd  hoped
to  get  a  chance to hit another truck, but it was after 5, and most of
the truckers had gone home.  The remaining rocket didn't  go  to  waste,
though. On the way home, I spotted a big, gaudy, new Pontiac pulling out
of one of the myriad construction sites along 126.  A foreman, maybe; he
smoked  a  cigar  and  wore  a yellow hard-hat.  He roared up at me from
behind, hoping to clip me in the side, but he didn't realize who he  was
dealing  with.  I feinted towards the ouside lane, then quickly cut back
to the shoulder, and he missed me entirely.  I could see him flipping me
the  bird out the back window as I fired the final rocket.  There wasn't
time for his expression to change, but I'll bet  he  saw  the  backblast
just  before  the  warhead  blew his car to small metal scraps. I had to
carry the bike over them for sake of the tires.

     It had been a long day.  I headed home and went to bed  early.  The
construction crews start at dawn.
-- 
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/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish