It’s Bike Week in AZ. And next week, too! Hoo Hah! Seems every week it’s bike week somewhere, right? Another fine idea mutates into a burlesque of itself.

Here in splendid North Scottsdale bikers from every dental office, accounting firm, roofing contractor, and welding supply distributor from here to Chicago are donning their leather vests, pasting on their tattoos, and fixing what’s left of their hair.

In Laughlin Nevada/Bullhead City AZ garrisons of highway patrol officers from both states are girding for the real bikers who'll be showing up for the River Run next week. The Annual River Run is where serious bikers settle old scores and create new issues that will turn into old scores.

There are no serious bikers in North Scottsdale. They’re baby boomers doing what we baby boomers do best—recreating by re-creating our youth.

Here’s North Scottsdale’s Bike Week in a nutshell: At the Road Apple Resort Suites (caveat emptor on the free breakfast buffet, boys!), which is down the street from the office, two large vehicle haulers unloaded 100, or so, scooters from a Chicago contingent who flew down to meet their bikes.

What in the name of Sonny Barger is that all about? A bunch of dudes from CHI send their bikes to AZ to save themselves the trouble of riding their bikes? The North Scottsdale Bike Week featured other cool stuff like baby boomer girls wearing mid-riff barring, Harley tank tops with their daughters, or granddaughters, low-slung Levis. The gals had plenty extra humanity, gut-wise and pelvis-wise, that didn’t fit into their jeans or tank tops. I don’t mind pictures of grannies wearing nothing but chaps in Daytona, but this is my neighborhood girls.

The Laughlin/Bullhead River is something quite different. People ride their bikes there. Nasty dudes sporting their colors ride there. Dudes bring their hardware. Dudes bring their business. Dudes kill other dudes.

Laughlin Nevada is an assortment of casinos stuck on the opposite side of the Colorado River from Bullhead City, AZ. Laughlin has everything Vegas has except for everything. It’s equidistant from LA and PHX. The only way to get there is through the stinking desert. Dudes are hot, tired, dusty, and thirsty when they arrive—bad moods get worse as people jockey for position on the road, at the bar, and within the bad-guy hierarchy.

Eventually, thirsts get quenched. Tempers flare. Bikes roar. People die. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it should be. That’s the life chosen. It beats guys who ship their bikes to avoid the hassles and hardships of the life.

Great ballclubs are built up the middle of the field, and while the words "great" and "Tigers" should remain at a distance, let's give the Bengals credit for putting bona fide major league players in those key positions--catcher, 2nd base, shortstop, and center field.

Let's applaud our good fortune at signing Pudge. He brings baseball savoir faire to an organization that is sadly in need of someone who can play the game. Yes, we may have been his last and only choice, but so what? It's our bad luck that a glut of free agents intersected with owners who finally, (after what? three decades) learned to forget about the Reserve Clause and learned to benefit from an open market for players? Cynics will moan about greedy agents, indifferent players, and colluding owners. It's easy and obvious argument to make, and thus it will be a popular argument. Like many counterfactual arguments, it's strength lies in the numbers of people who believe it, and their need to be consistent, rather than any matter of factual evidence. Instead of belaboring the obvious, let's consider this: Baseball may have, and modern pro sports may be, changing their economics for the better.

One more thing, Fernando Vina is an important signing, too. He plays the game hard, and he plays the game smart. He's a joy to watch. I've followed his career since his All American days at ASU and then when he was with St. Louis. He's a dervish on the base paths, and he can still get to his fair share of ground balls. Look for him to be a steadying influence for the new shortstop we acquired from Seattle and to be one of Pudge's on-field lieutenants.

Opening Day is nine weeks away! The Tigers are back on their way to playing the game the way it's meant to be played. It's our good fortune that the market turned sour for Pudge!

Hail Pudge!

Just finished the Da Vinci Code. The writing is awful. The story behind the sacred feminine is interesting, but rather than showing the sacred feminine in action, Brown writes a bad 1970s TV crime drama full of stupid plot twists that made Barretta, Mannix, and Starsky and Hutch both hilarious and nauseating. I felt like an idiot after wading through all the bad prose to get to the assinine ending.

If you want how the sacred feminine influences outcomes, check out the work of Neal Stephenson, particularly Cryptonomicon or Quicksilver.