As a morale-boosting exercise, the Tri-County Board had all been watching a gritty motorcycle drama together on Wednesday nights and decided what we really needed was more of an outlaw spirit to up our street cred and attract better food trucks, so they organized our first and only Motorcycle Gang Festival. Of course the weekend the motorcycle gangs arrived, none of the food trucks showed up, thinking only two-wheeled vehicles were allowed. Without anything to eat, and on account of the gas strike, flocks of burly men were hungry and stranded all over the Tri-County Region all the way up into the following weekend, right into our annual Hot Air Balloon Festival and Inner Beauty Pageant.

The motorcycle gangs quickly took a liking to the cordoned off Inner Beauty Pageant Arena, getting all the health care they never had time or access to otherwise, really taking advantage of getting all sorts of X-rays and MRIs and ultrasounds, and most of them were so thrilled to learn their baby was going to be healthy or to just get a formal diagnosis for a slipped disc that they didn’t even get angry when the judges would say things like, “Wow, with innards like that, I have no idea why you entered the competition.”

Not long after, tired of waiting for the gas strike to end, they hijacked most of the hot air balloons and were soon enough ferrying themselves and their bikes across the skies. That year’s Inner Beauty Pageant queen, a biker who had absolutely stunning kidneys, just looked up in awe and waved them off, yelling, “Y’all never did appreciate how quickly I adjust to variations in my electrolytes.”