don’t blow up my bike
September 14, 2008, 5:14 pm
in the middle of a completely insane busy day saturday, i squeezed in a brief white house tour. the tour itself was totally lame, i suspect because the president was in town and i think someone important from ghana is around, but OMG the secret service wanted to blow up my bike.
apparently i parked it a little too close to the white house (about a half block away), and my little basket in the back was filled with dirty clothes, which understandably looked bomb-like. by the time i got back to my bike after the too-short tour, some security guard warned me that my bike was very suspicious-looking and because a bomb threat had been called into the white house (which i assume is a common occurrence), they were about to cut my lock and blow up my bike.
blow it up? that is so cool. HOW? and WHERE? i actually already accept the “why,” but i want to understand the logistics of this. and how many bikes do they blow up a year? and would you ever find out if your bike was blown up? explain!
however, if my bike had to go, it’d be pretty sweet if that’s how it went. very literally in a blaze of glory.
So I guess they decided to spare your beloved bike? Or did they actually try and blow it up but your paper cut-out bicycle withstood the explosion?
i got there before they could take it away. THANK GOD.
ha! that’s so funny; i thought they no longer did guided tours of the white house? well, that’s what i was told. how often do they run?
[...] bike parked too close the White House alarms the Secret Service. Don’t blow up my bike. Too Much Skunk in your [...]
[...] and came back to the spectacle of alarmed Secret Service personnel about to cut her bike loose and blow it up. Apparently dirty clothes in a bike basket look like bombs. Posted in The Daily Feed | You can [...]
[...] from Skunkgal via We Love DC, something I’m really not surprised to hear. in the middle of a completely insane busy day saturday, i squeezed in a brief white house tour. [...]
I wonder… would they have left you a note? “Dear Suspected Terrorist, We took your bike because we need to blow it up. If you’re not a terrorist, then, well, you know, our bad. Best, Secret Service.”
Bikes that are left locked up in DC aren’t safe and the problem isn’t theft. Check out this blog post for a story about a bike that was confiscated from a bike rack because it was deemed to be unsightly – http://bicyclespokesman.com/an-ugly-bicycle/