The old man still has it.

I am in California right now, allegedly for a brief vacation and the Bar Mitzvah of a cousin, though I've spent the better part of the day, of course, on conference calls. We got to the hotel in Redundant Beach around 12, and naturally our room wasn't ready. So we dropped our bags and my daughters, wife and I borrowed bikes from the hotel and went for long bike ride on the Strand.

Around 2, we stopped at a little restaurant in Hermosa Beach, and because we had no locks for the bikes sat outside at a dirty little table so we could keep tabs on them. I must have looked away for a moment, because I suddenly saw some creep riding away with one of the bikes. I imagined having to pay the hotel $300 for a crappy piece of shit bike. I jumped up from the table, grabbed my bike and went after the guy.

In about a minute I caught him. I yelled with my loudest voice (which would cow Pavarotti) "Hey, gimme back the bike."

Apparently I scared the crap out of the punk-ass hood. "I thought it was a rental, man," he said to me. "Did you ask anyone if you could take it?" "I did, and no one said no" he answered.

I grabbed the bike out from under him, lifted it up and rode back to the restaurant carrying it in my right hand.

Not bad for a 53-year-old alte kocker wearing bedroom slippers.