Iowa City is a beautiful place in the summer time. The town that wraps itself around the Iowa River has a certain shine to it during the summer months. The students have mostly cleared out. Traffic is light. The downtown area is relatively peaceful. It’s usually too hot for the panhandlers to sit outside all day in the Pedmall and bother people. The nature trails are filled with residents enjoying the journey through the heart of this wonderful city.
Back in the summer of 2006 I was taking in one of these glorious summer days with a good friend of mine. In those days, I worked in the public service industry which meant most of my Saturday’s were spent on the grind. This particular weekend afternoon was unusual. I was not needed at work. The entire day was mine.
My friend and I decided to kill some time by cruising the beautiful city while enjoying some cold soda pops. Both single, enjoying each other’s company, chatting about times gone by and times to look forward to. Even though this day was just 4 short years ago, times were completely different.
We found ourselves on the far outskirts of west Iowa City. Right about where the edge of town gives way to cornfields and rural highways. It was stifling hot that day. The sun beamed in through the windshield. The windows were rolled up and the air conditioning was blasting. Montel Jordan’s “Something for the Hunnies” hummed on the car stereo. We came to a 4 way stop sign.
A puzzling figure grabbed our attention. To our immediate left, stopped at the stop sign, was a man riding a bike, who was wearing some type of skin tight black suit that covered his entire body. I’m talking head to toe. Not even his eyes were revealed. The sight was so startling that we both recoiled in our seats like he was lining up to shoot us or something. Yelling ensued and we sped away down a country road screaming at each other, “WHAT WAS THAT!?!?!”
The sight of this man was disturbing for a few key reasons. One, we were in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t a car in sight. We didn’t see him coming at all. He just appeared out of nowhere at the stop sign like he was the Invisible Man from that bad movie in the 1930’s. Two, he was covered in that skin tight black suit. Picture spider man only without the blue and red spider pattern all over his suit. There were no holes in the suit to accommodate vision. How could he see and ride a bike with that costume on? Three, it was a brutally hot and humid summer day in the Midwest. If I were to choose the last thing on Earth I would possibly want to be doing on that day I would choose, “Putting on my skin tight black suit and riding a bike alone down country roads in Iowa.” It was so hot that day it probably was hazardous to his health to be dressed like that while working up a sweat.
I’ve concluded as the years have gone by that health was probably the motivation behind the outfit. The rider may have had some type of skin condition where he couldn’t expose any of his skin to intense sunlight. He had a passion that he was going to pursue regardless of his health. Good for him. It was either his health or some guy who just got a kick out of freaking out random motorists that encounter him and his black suit on the outskirts of Iowa City. What do you think?