I first met Prattipus in February of 2002. I had just started working at Red Rock Bicycle Co. after returning from my LDS mission. This made for an eye-opening experience, going from being surrounded by Mormons to being the only one despite the fact that the shop is located in Southern Utah.
In another twist of irony, the shop was located right next to an LDS chapel which gave access to the back of the shop to anyone who happened to pull into the back side where parking seemed more logical. This meant that at any given moment there could be a friend, customer or random person entering the service area of the shop.
I met Bryce coming through that door.
He had a blue Mohawk and I remember earrings. He was wearing a hockey jersey and was immediately referred to as Crash. He was coming in to see the other guys that worked there, ProZac and Mr. Gurr, and was organizing a group ride on the Barrel Ride that he had just finished building. This turned out to be the first of countless rides since.
I didn’t know it at the time, but when I bounced down one of the lines and rolled up to the group to exclaim, “That was fucking awesome!” Kind of sealed my own fate.
In 2006, I was riding my bike to Chile. Bryce and Cimarron invited me to spend some time at their house in Tucson. Here’s an excerpt from my upcoming book describing that time.
I have absolutely no idea how to get back to Bryce’s house. He has fallen down at least once and everywhere we turn there are college kids. For whatever reason, every time I see one that has a vagina, I yell, “Hellooooo nurse!” like I’m some Animaniacs character. I’m pretty sure we have ridden around the Arizona State University campus more than once, but for whatever reason we can’t find that one street that takes us the few blocks back to the Pratt-Chacon residence.
The evening had started pretty much like every other one that I had passed for the week or so that I had been in Tucson. As the sun started to get low, we would wander over to the liquor store, buy a bunch of booze and then spend the evening sitting around the pool and drinking said booze. This particular evening, it was just Bryce and I. Cimarron was out of town. Pratt had informed me that there was some “Progressive Wine Party,” but he didn’t feel like going.
Full steam ahead.
If I remember right, and my memory of the evening is just some blurry images that
are still rattling around in my head, we had both purchased a six pack that
evening. After about two hours of drinking we were just about out of beer.
Suddenly Pratt jumped out of his Adirondack next to the pool. It was weird
because I couldn’t figure out how he was moving so deliberately after drinking as much as we had. Either that or my brain was just processing the action so slowly that it seemed like he had jolted out of his chair. We were now going to the party.
I feel confident in saying that the motivation to attend the party was almost entirely the fact that we were out of booze and thinking about staring at each other for the rest of the evening sanz booze was a little more than either of us could handle. Hell, I was supposed to be on the adventure of my life, not sitting around a pool drinking. Let’s fucking go somewhere.
s house and once that party starts to die, you just pick everything up and move to the next house. This particular wine party was to celebrate the 100th birthday of Franzia. It seemed like plenty of reason to celebrate. At least everyone was drinking.
The only thing I can recall from the first house is having a conversation with a girl that I found quite attractive about riding my bike to Chile. She ended up being the girlfriend of the dude within whose house we were drinking. I can assure you that if I had ran into that girl the next day, I wouldn’t have recognized her. The most poignant recollection was her grey corduroy pants.
Then it was off to the next house. Everyone grabbed their bicycles and we headed down the road like some moving street theatre. It was an odd sensation to be around that many people on bikes all at once. I’m sure that we were a rolling shit show, at least we were a show.
For some reason, I feel like the next house was more like a theatre. Someone had a big ass long lock that locked everyone’s bikes together and then we went inside. Maybe we were behind a theatre, I don’t recall. I just remember the sign on top of the toilet. “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.” I read the sign. I understood the sign. I wanted to obey the sign, it made sense, conserve water. But everyone out there, knew I was going to the bathroom. I couldn’t just not flush. How rude would that be? But if I flush everyone will think I took a shit and that will be almost weirder than not flushing at all. Damn you Tucson hippies with your toilet signs!
And then without noticing, out of habit, I turned and flushed the toilet and walked out.
I’m fairly confident that was the last party we attended. The next thing I remember is being lost on the ASU campus. Apparently there was a huge block party so every fucking student was on campus and the roads were blocked off. Pratt lived close to the campus and worked on the opposite side, so it wasn’t that he didn’t know how to get home. It was more that we were drunk off our asses riding bikes through a huge party with beautiful girls everywhere. The roads that we had used prior to this occasion were blocked. So yea, we got lost on the ASU campus for a while. I don’t remember for how long and I’m sure it doesn’t matter.
Tucson was like looking through a window that is being pounded from the other side by water. It wasn’t the most direct route for me to take to get to Mexico, but once I had been invited it never left the itinerary. Bryce and Cimarron had invited me to stay for a while at their house and then organize a sendoff to get me over the border and into Latin America.
There was a day in that small shop on Main Street. Mr. Gurr was going off on how he was soo sick of being stereotyped because he had grown up in Utah that everyone that he was Mormon. It had something to do with the Captain.
I was growing a bit weary of the conversation and was taking something out to the trash just as Bryce was walking in that back door. He asked me if I was going to play some basketball.
My response was, “Oh, just because I’m Mormon you think I fucking play basketball?” No one got the joke but me. And I think I scared the shit out of Bryce.
P. L. and R.
