Route 66.6, AZ—These days I bike almost everywhere I go and my laptop always comes with me, even if my bicycle tires are pumped full of thorns or the weather’s so bad the mailmen stayed home. I’m talking about the place where my insult-resistant rubber hits the road. I have only lost one laptop during my backpack travels. But please don’t mention “The salad dressing incident”—it still gives me P.T.S.D.D. (Post Traumatic Salad Dressing Disorder).

Another thing that can give you P.T.S.D., the real DSM-V version, is making the morning commute on a bike. The first thing I would like to point out to all combustible engine drivers is that I didn’t live all these years, grind through a world of BS, keep my bike serviced, just to die under your tires this morning. No, this isn’t a slam on your driving—just the opposite. I’d rather deal with a reckless driver that just races by than someone who slows down, but doesn’t stop. Like he thinks I’ve never seen an oncoming car before and wouldn’t know what to do. Yeah, maybe, just at the right moment I’ll decide life isn’t worth living and dash myself under his tires.

Another thing that motorists need to realize is this: when I’m on a bike, everything is a road. If I did what I do on my bike while driving a car I would make the national news…every morning. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line or at least a wavering line…um, and sometimes after happy hour a very wavering line. I ride as the crow flies, after happy hour.

There is another way riding a bike can save you money and that’s at the grocery store. You can’t buy too much food at once if you have to hump it over a hill in a backpack after working all day and commuting ten miles. Should I buy potatoes or whip cream? I don’t need whip cream, but it is soooo much lighter and fluffier. Hmm… And, I know you wanted some prime rib, honey, but rice cakes were on sale again.

As if risking your life is not enough, you can also get flack from the cops. This once happened to me:

“Sir, we heard someone riding a bike was committing crimes.”

“Um, if I call in and say someone driving a car is committing crimes, would you stop every car?”

Everyone wants to avoid that DUI ticket, but think about it, I can’t kill people on my bike no matter how fast I ride and believe me and you’re really safe after a few beers because my speed markedly decreases. So bike riding seems like a safer bet for all involved. I got pulled over the other day and the cop says:

“Sir, I want to give you a sobriety test.”

“Cool, I got a great idea for one. Why don’t I ride a bike, uphill, while carrying all these groceries?”

There is another eternal question that comes up when you are riding. Am I a loser because I’m facing the elements while others are coasting by in style? Or, am I a righteous kick ass winner, because I motivated to wake up twenty minutes early and will be staying in better shape, while helping the environment, and even saving a few bucks?

Now ladies before you answer or sneer at that fella you see bike riding, remember a few simple things. First, that guy is fighting his beer gut during his commute. Perhaps even more important is stamina baby, stamina. Who’s going to be better in the sack? The guy risking his life to pump through the miles or the guy that takes the elevator to the second floor at work? Yeah, I’m talking to you, Zano. Kidding, he usually insists people come down to his office.

So does saving money and the environment all while increasing my health make me cool? Or, are you still pissed to see a biker breaking all the rules that you wish you could? Just remember, if we bikers tick you off, you had better stay in your car. If you mess with us we’ll kick your lazy fat ass and then ride over it—during a sobriety test while carrying our groceries.

“Erect not a monument in my honor, sing not the hymns of my feats, for if my deeds are truly worthy my name will transcend and endure.”

— Unknown

Rinaldo Vincent Krugan (1940- 20014) is an overlooked figure in American history and an even more overlooked figurine in the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ziggy Horowitz sculpted the six inch figurine of Krugan as a tribute to a man who: “exudes both inspiration and well-gin.”

When Horowitz was asked why he decided to make the statue of such a great man merely six inches, he explained the piece was created during his Neo-Pipeurian period, wherein he shared an efficiency in Soho and was forced to carry out all of his work in a drainpipe under the sink. He blames the second nose on the statuette—situated where the right ear would normally be—on the chemical cleansers that were stored there at the time. His last great work, depicted above, is of all the famous leaders people threw shoes at. Krugan gives no other explanation for his motivation behind the work, except to say, “The piece speaks for itself.”

R.V. Krugan rose majestically from his humble beginnings as a Beverly Hills playboy to capture the heart of the art community. Some say he even invented First Friday, which he called First First Friday (FFF). Krugan’s autobiography From Jags to Bitches remains a tragic one. His moods throughout his life became ever more unpredictable due to a genetic nose disorder, which by the end of the sixties would leave him smelless. Despite Krugan’s olfactory handicap, he continued to write and paint during the mid-70s but by the 80s he turned to literature.

“Literature, the highest of all arts, is arranging words in certain ways that capture ideas and stuff, like wonderfully worded things…”

The Krugan Foundation later regretted not being able to fit that entire phrase onto his tombstone. The beginning of the end came early for Krugan when at Mann’s Chinese Theater (1957), during the premier of the movie The Beginning of the End he stood up while a giant grasshopper was attacking the leading lady and shouted, “This theater smells like an outhouse!” This offended the star of the film, Peter Graves, who punched Krugan on the chin. Krugan realized after the melee the true culprit was his nose. After the incident a rift formed between Krugan’s nose and his chin, which to the untrained eye appeared to be his mouth. The chin refused to be seen with Krugan’s nose which the artist claims delayed the unveiling of his self-portrait indefinitely. To teach the nose a lesson he got a nose job and had his nose sealing envelopes for minimum wage, a task much more suited for his mouth.

Krugan, like DaVinci before him, excelled in almost every field into which he delved. The one notable exception was gym class. He was obsessed with staying in shape, but his seven and a half feet of awkwardness made this difficult. In his younger days, he almost died of grass inhalation during a high school field day event. His overzealous wheelbarrow partner had not noticed that for nearly three hundred yards Krugan had not been keeping up with his hands. Krugan often remarked how that day marked the beginning of his nose problems.

In 1966 he was almost nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with early psychotropic medication after being the first to make El dopa into a nice white wine sauce for chicken or fish. In 1968 his career took a turn for the worse, however, when practicing reverse psychology he backed over the country’s first psychiatric group house. This was to set back community mental health ten years, and did nothing for his fender.

Krugan is best known for his abstract scrap metal rendition of At the Water Hole with the Greaseweasels. This provocative metal creation propelled him onto the world stage. Unfortunately it was also the leading cause of tetanus at the Art Institute of Chicago, until, upon Krugan’s request, it was lowered into a vat of gelatin. Some believe his pointillism technique matched the skill of George Seurat, though their perspectives greatly differed. Whereas Seurat recommended standing back 12-15 feet to enjoy his Sunday afternoon on the Island of Le Grande Jatte, Krugan suggested viewing all of his work at the British museum from the nearby Tate Gallery—incidentally, so did his critics.

In recent years, Krugan began painting a variety of objects with his tongue in a style he calls Lick Nouveau. This genre includes such works as Light Socket 911 and Metal Pole in Winter (see 911). Although, Krugan’s critics attest the latter is more reminiscent of post-impressionism. Krugan, considered a Belgian surrealist, mastered the style so completely that it wasn’t discovered until years after his death that he was actually Scandinavian.

Art would play a major role throughout Krugan’s life, until he “threw the freeloader out” and went back to dating women. In 1996 Krugan was commissioned to hand paint the labels of several wineries in the Bordeaux region of France. The unopened bottles stored there are said to still be increasing in value to this day.

Krugan’s personal life during became quite turbulent and he often blamed his nose. He spent the majority of the 90s working endlessly on a book entitled How to Get Published, which never did see print. He returned to the front page of all the tabloids in March of 2002 when he started dating Freya, the mythical Norse goddess of beauty. After Krugan’s announcement of their engagement, people began to question his sanity and thought Freya could do better. Upon returning from their weekend honeymoon in Valhalla, Krugan became a recluse. Near the end of the festivities, he allegedly offended Thor after playing Ride of the Valkyries on a 25¢ kazoo. The next morning his only defense was that he was “hammered”. Ironically, this was also his punishment.

Neighbors alleged that when Krugan finally snapped he was yelling something about the psychic gigolo who knew he was screwed, before he jammed a salt and pepper shaker violently up his own nostrils screaming, “Nose of day smell upon me no more!”

When the police arrived Krugan’s mansion lay in ruins and his nose was nailed over the fireplace mantle. The aged artist resolved to give the nose to the great-great-granddaughter of the woman Vincent Van Gogh had fallen in love with. It is believed she still possess Van Gogh’s famous ear.  Krugan, always thinking of his contributions to art, reasoned a few more noses and eyes and she’d have a Picasso.

I had the honor of interviewing R.V. Krugan shortly after his death. He revealed to me for the first time how he had extracted his proboscis. He graphically explained that, like removing a bad tooth, he had tied one end of a string around his nose and the other end to a door knob and gave it a good slam. Krugan spent the last ten years of his life in a Psychiatric center, convinced he was a sweater. He spent most of his time folded neatly in his dresser drawer or writing long diatribes denouncing the use of harsh detergents. When asked about his statue at the Met, he chuckled, and said, “You can’t even say Ziggy missed it by a nose, after my little incident he was two noses off the mark.”