Chapter 26: WNBrrrr
We woke up early the next day to get into the city center in time to sign up for the first ever Salt Lake City version of the World Naked Bike Ride. After breakfast, Robbie bade me join him, and we went into the garage to dig a bike rack out of the piles of junk at the back. I initially thought he was going to offer its use to us, but then I realized that made no sense, so I just shut up and helped him with it.
We carried it over to their small SUV, and he sat down with a toolbox to begin bolting it to the trailer hitch!
“You’re joining us?” I asked incredulously.
“Damn straight we are,” he acknowledged. “As soon as Mary told us what you two were doing, Sandra was all over it. I think it’s pretty cool, too. Hand me that half-inch end wrench.”
I did, then asked, “Will Kaitlyn’s mother be joining us?”
“We asked,” Robbie said, apparently meaning he and his wife, “but Mary refused, even after we told her we had some of the kids’ old bikes. Our youngest’s bike is still in good shape.”
“She’s new to this,” I offered. “I guess you two have had more experience with outdoor nudity?” I asked.
“The pool and enclosed back yard, you mean,” he acknowledged. “Yeah, we’ve been doing it for years. It’s a little touchy doing it up here in Mormon country, but there’s also a Western streak of independence in the culture, so we’ve been able to sell it to our neighbors the few times we’ve been caught so far. I think we might get into trouble if we were blatant about it, but…”
“Well, we thank you for inviting us to use what you’ve built here. It’s been not just fun but also helpful. Kaitlyn will be much happier on our ride with her tan deepened.”
“I was pretty impressed,” he said. “Not that I was staring, you know,” and we exchanged a knowing look, “but I was surprised she got it that dark that quickly.”
I deflected him, saying, “Well, we’d been doing a bit of sunbathing out in the desert anyway. She wasn’t that far off where she is now.”
I could see him struggling with it, but I knew the human mind’s tendency to match its internal narrative up with evident information. Kaitlyn’s smooth, deep, all-over tan today was an unarguable fact. Therefore, his memory of how light her tan was yesterday must be faulty. We think of our memory as indelible. “I know what I saw!” we say aloud to each other, but our memory is constantly being modified, every time we re-visit it.
To get his mind off the topic, I asked, “A lot of people get body-painted at these things. They sometimes wear big sunglasses, and such. It can help people like you who have to go on living in the area.”
“Yeah, I think we’ll be doing some of that,” he said, standing up from his work with the trailer hitch. We then went off to collect the bikes and load them up. The bikes were in good shape; they must keep them in the garage and use them regularly, not leave them out in the rain as with so many other suburban bikes. “How about you?” he asked.
“I haven’t actually talked about it with Kaitlyn. I’m going starkers, just as you see me now.” I hadn’t bothered dressing for breakfast, so I’d been naked since lunch yesterday. I’d been putting off getting dressed until we were about to leave. “I’m not a strict nudist, but when I have an opportunity like this…” I trailed off, then added, “Well, thank you again. It means a lot to be able to do this.”
“We’re glad to have you three.”
Then we went back in the house and finished getting ready.
“What are you wearing to the ride, and then on the ride?” I asked Kaitlyn. “I assume you’ve thought about it?”
“Yeah, but I’m feeling indecisive. Do I go naked, or get body-painted, or go topless only, or…?” She looked a bit worried.
“Please yourself. I’ll be happy just to be riding with you. Me, I’m going naked, except for bike shoes, and I’d go without even those if I didn’t have such aggressive pedals on my bike. It’s a slow calm ride, so you won’t need the shorts to cope with the chafing or anything. But, you could grab your new thong, if you wanted,” I offered.
She thought for a bit, then said, “No, I think I’ll follow your lead: 100% starkers except for shoes. Not even socks!”
“Not even socks,” I agreed.
“So, just regular outer clothes, no underwear for the trip to the starting point?”
“Yeah, easy to strip off, toss them in the car, and… Well, I suppose your mother’s driving? That’ll be convenient. She can pick us up at the end.”
“I’d hoped to talk her into joining us.” Kaitlyn said, a bit sadly.
“It’s for the best. We do need a driver, and she is a newbie at this naked in public thing. Even you’ve got loads more experience than she has. If this ride happens again next year, maybe we can get her to join us then.”
“Ooooh, I’m so excited, Davie!” she squealed.
“I was so happy we caught notice of this in the paper,” I replied, and we hugged.
By the time we got to the ride entrance, the sky had gotten completely overcast. Out here in the desert, overcast is usually just a non-credible threat of rain, not a promise of it. Overcast usually just passes on over, with any small bit of rain evaporating in the dry air before it hits the ground. We usually don’t even see it as virga, just as a solid mass of cloud passing right on over, skipping the desert to rain on some place less dry.
This was looking to be one of those days. It’d dropped to 72°F, still warm enough to ride, but much cooler than the mid-90s I’d been expecting.
Kaitlyn and I stripped off right by the car, throwing our things in before we took our bikes down and wheeled them over to the sign-up area. We got quite a bit of attention. Most of the other participants were waiting to disrobe, staying covered until closer to the ride’s start time.
Robbie & Sandra were among this latter crowd, staying dressed until they got in line with the other body-painting patrons, then they hung back behind cover with our bikes until the ride started, while Kaitlyn and I roamed the crowd chatting with people.
Kaitlyn got a lot more attention than I did, but I got plenty. Kaitlyn started getting requests for interviews as soon as we entered, but she rebuffed most of these. She was hunting, I could tell. Every now and then, she’d answer an interesting question and move on.
Then came the fateful question, the one she’d been hoping for.
“Why are you riding in today’s event, Miss?” asked one reporter, a cameraman aiming a large professional camera at her over the reporter’s shoulder to capture both in-frame.
Kaitlyn turned to the woman and said, “I’m riding because there’s a company headquartered in this very city that’s trying to turn my family farm into a strip mine!” Her face had gone from smiling to hard by the end of the sentence.
The reporter was flummoxed by that, but she was clearly experienced enough to vamp for a second while her brain processed the answer. “I see, do go on.”
Kaitlyn did. “They just rode into town and started buying up properties, often using some pretty hardball tactics, not telling anyone what they wanted the land for. We heard what they were up to, and now we’re here to get attention for Mother Earth, to get more scrutiny on this kind of underhanded action!”
The reporter had recovered and had summoned her inner bulldog, letting it loose on the scent of a story. “What is the name of this company, Miss…?”
“Gutierrez. My family’s run a farm south of Moab for a hundred and forty-two years. The company is Jurkovich Resource Extraction, and they’ve got mining operations scattered all around Salt Lake. If you dig back into the paper from early in the week, you’ll find a story laying out the sordid details. And that’s why we’re here!”
That was clever of her, I thought, implicitly flipping the cause and effect of the thing around like that without actually telling an untruth. I just kept on smiling supportively.
“We’ll definitely look into that, Miss Gutierrez.” Then the camera swung to the reporter, who signed off, saying, “This is Jacie Hollingsworth reporting for Channel 5 News from the First Annual Salt Lake City World Naked Bike Ride. Back to you in the studio, Charlie.”
The news crew didn’t even look at me. They probably didn’t even guess that Kaitlyn and I were together; this suited me just fine. I was here to see, not to be seen.
I checked out the other naked people, of course, but I was mainly interested in the overall spectacle. This was like nothing else in my experience. Even seeing footage of prior WNBR events on the Internet didn’t properly capture the feel of being there. I just swam through it, a mild smile on my face the whole time. This is what Saturday in the park should be like, I decided: some small fraction of the public naked, most not, and no one hugely bothered about the first group.
I knew this was a fanciful reading of the situation. All of the hubbub was in fact about the small fraction of us being naked. All the clothed people wouldn’t be here without us. But what if some other event were happening, like a free concert in the park? Would it be so terrible if, say, 10% of the attendees just skinned off, reclined on their picnic blankets, and enjoyed the show? And not just the best-looking 10%. No, young, old, black, brown, pale…a random 10% sample, each according to their wishes alone. Sounded great to me.
About then, I saw a young woman pushing through the crowd towards us. She was wearing a modest bikini and a big professional DSLR camera; nothing else, not even shoes. She was a bit overweight, but in a nicely-rounded plump sort of way. Not Rubenesque, just…well-fed, I suppose, rather than model-thin. It was my friend Jess.
“Glad you could make it!” I greeted her, shaking her hand.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” she said back with a wide grin, looking me up and down hungrily.
“And I’m happy to see you participating,” I added, gesturing at her outfit.
“It’s not exactly naked,” she demurred.
“No, but it’s in the spirit of the event. No shame, Jess, just thanks.” Turning to my fiancée, I said, “Kaitlyn, this is my good friend Jess. She’s the one who set us up with the special equipment we used the other day.” I then gave her a bit of an eyebrow raise, and she returned it. “Jess, this is my fiancée Kaitlyn Gutierrez.”
The two shook hands, Jess devouring Kaitlyn’s body just as eagerly as she’d done mine.
“I am deeply jealous of Davie right now,” Jess said to Kaitlyn. Then she drew Kaitlyn into a hug and kissed her on the cheek.
Kaitlyn looked a little shocked and trapped until she saw me smiling and nodding, telling her to get into it, so she did, kissing her new acquaintance back. Then Kaitlyn, so much more gracious than I am, said, “Thank you for your help the other day. It means a lot to us.”
“It was fun,” Jess replied simply. Then she asked, “Can I take your picture, please? Personal use only, I promise.”
Kaitlyn looked at me and I nodded, so we gave her several good poses, then spent a minute or so chimping, that being where the onlookers go oo-oo-oo! at the glowing camera LCD over the photographer’s shoulders.
Kaitlyn then asked me, “This is the one you’re inviting to our wedding, right?” I agreed that it was, so she turned to Jess and asked, “Would you be willing to be our wedding photographer?”
Jess said, “Sure. I’d be taking photos there anyway, with your permission. I’m no professional, though. I hope that’s okay.”
I jumped in, saying, “She’s being modest. Jess is quite good, Kaitlyn. I’d love to have her do that for us, too. Is it worth gas down to the wedding to you, Jess?”
“It’s no problem,” Jess said, “but if you want to pay for my gas, I won’t refuse.”
“I’ll drop one more burden on you then to make it even, then: my parents will be flying into Salt Lake the day before the wedding. Could you pick them up at the airport and drive them down with you, then back up with you again to get them home?”
“No problem, Davie.”
“Thank you so much. You truly are a great friend, Jess.”
She just kind of waved at me dismissively. I guessed she was looking at it as more overdue maintenance. I’d find a way to pay her back more properly.
When the ride time was called over the loudspeakers, Kaitlyn and I made our way back to Robbie & Sandra to retrieve our bikes, and we all walked out together. Our local hosts were fully body-painted, not much skin showing at all, Robbie in a blue-white-and-black ocean swirl pattern and Sandra in a green-and-brown jungle pattern. Their artists had done a good job, considering the time constraint they’d been under.
Kaitlyn was glorious in her all-over tan, her youthful toned body on full display. I thought she could pass in formal settings that way, as well-dressed as any woman in a thousand dollar evening dress.
Me? I guessed I looked well enough, being in shape, but I wouldn’t dare say my dark skin passed as evening wear. Maybe Kaitlyn would disagree. Ask her.
We got on our bikes gingerly, the men more so than the ladies, and began pedaling down the streets, following the leaders.
To add to the breeze we got up from the riding, the city’s concrete canyons funneled a blast of air down from the Wasatch Mountains, chilling us even further. And with the sun blocked both by clouds and skyscrapers, it got fairly chilly, surprisingly so for high summer. Kaitlyn’s nipples stiffened and crinkled; so did mine, for that matter!
Camera flashes were going off everywhere, battling the lowered light in the overcast city canyon. At some point, an electric golf cart without a canopy crawled up from the back, a news crew’s camera team gathering B-roll for tonight’s newscast. We passed more professional camera crews on the way up. This was, apparently, my 15 minutes of fame! Kaitlyn was radiant, soaking it in.
The ride’s endpoint was a large city park, and we pulled in just as the overcast was breaking up under the heat of the mid-day sun. They’d set up quite a nice party there.
We found Kaitlyn’s mother Mary among the throng. “Ah, Kate-love, there you are! Meet Sharon & Roberto Molina and Nancy & Pat Parker,” Mary greeted us. We shook hands all around, they fully clothed, we fully not. “These are two other friends I’ve been visiting this week. Sandra, Sharon, Nancy and I were all housemates back at college. And this, my friends, is my lovely daughter!” she finished with a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. Then she displayed her daughter on her arm, proudly.
“And this is my fiancé Davie,” Kaitlyn said a bit uneasily, pulling me into the group with her free arm.
I just waved.
“Oh, such a nice couple,” said one of them. Sharon? Names are in one ear and out the other for me.
Mary then pulled us all into a semicircle around herself, showing off the photos she’d taken of the event. Naturally most of the shots were of us, almost enough that we could have pieced together a stop-motion animation of our pass by her. The others handed their cameras to Mary, who scrolled through all of the other shots the group had taken of us. I wondered how many camera memory cards our naked bodies were on right now?
When Jess reappeared, I introduced her to the group, and we passed her camera around, too. Everyone agreed she’d gotten the best shots. Someone asked her, “Where did you get that camera?” and she answered, deadpan, “The same place Shakespeare bought that pen.” I smiled at her. I well knew it wasn’t the tool, it was the craftsman. Craftswoman. Whatever.
“Oh, I’m going to have to do this next year, I think!” Mary said.
“Me, too!” one of Mary’s friends said, but all of the others demurred.
“We’d love to have you join us,” Kaitlyn invited graciously. “I guess that means you’re driving,” she said to one of her mother’s friends who’d refused.
“If that keeps my clothes on, you betcha,” she grinned back.
After spending an hour or so in the day’s new sun at the after-party with Mary’s friends, we said good-bye to everyone except for our Salt Lake hosts, who we gathered up and drove back to their SUV in Kaitlyn’s Subaru, Billie & Sandra still body-painted and thus semi-nude, Kaitlyn and I having quickly thrown on the underwear-less outfits we’d worn out of their house this morning. When we let our hosts out at their parking space, we waited to ensure that they got in okay, so I noticed they both put on their seat belts without getting dressed.
“Mary, please call your friend after she gets home,” I requested. “I have to know how this day ends for them!”
“Definitely,” she agreed.
The smiles slowly faded from our faces. We now had to get ready for the second half of the day’s planned activities. We had a report to deliver.