Rooms on Sunday

(Michael)

Today, my bike and I lost a fight with a truck, I donned a hood reminiscent of Gitmo, got locked in a jail cell, was chained to a ceiling, almost escaped twice, and embarrassed America.

My host brother, Peter, and I were cycling our way to the gym, on the lane that was labeled for bicycles, but used by everything from mopeds carrying heavy loads, to smallish cars, and the occasional truck going the wrong direction. Being the immortal youths that we are, Peter and I raced the way to the gym on foldable street bicycles with no safety equipment, weaving in-between the traffic and various other obstacles with what I thought was impunity until your friendly neighborhood anarchist-truck driver decided to stick it to the man by navigating his BEAUTIFUL, antique, half-paper mache half-plastic Skoda truck the wrong way down the bike path towards me. Luckily for me, the Skoda was moving at its top speed of six miles per hour so I had time to swerve, but I caught my shoulder off the corner of the cab and had a rather intimate encounter with the pavement. I got up and I could have sworn I heard the bass line to ‘Bulls on Parade’ coming from the truck, but I must have been imagining it. With a bruised shoulder, I carried on after the, thankfully oblivious, Peter.

 
After our stint at the gym I regret to say that I fulfilled the fat American stereotype and stopped at McDonalds to console myself after realizing how much weaker I had become after a few weeks of not lifting properly before making our way to meet up with the rest of The Bears at The Rooms for the entertainment of the day. The Rooms are a series of rooms of increasing complexity that a person or party of people attempt to escape without breaking anything.

 
The room was nothing like I had expected. The clerk of the business had us put our hands on one another’s shoulders and out black hoods over our heads and lead us in a few circles before leading us into the ‘Easy’ room. We took off our hoods and found ourselves locked in a wooden cage with nothing but a fake flower bolted to the wall in a vase made of a caped bit of PVC pipe and a small wooden bench in it. I found a key in the vase after unscrewing its base, but this did only so much to aid our freedom as the door to our cell had a combination lock in addition to the standard one that the key I found unlocked. The rest of the time in the ‘easy room’ proceeded in much the same way as it had started, discovering one clue, only to find that our understanding was entirely lacking sp our allotted time elapsed before we could make a real escape. We did manage to leave the room without any huge argument or cannibalism so I call the event of the first room a positive on the whole and it was a great way to spend our last weekend with our current host siblings.