happy Bicycle Day, all y’all.  you do remember Bicycle Day, yes? It was on April 19th, 1943, that Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman decided to experiment with an interesting molecule he had synthesized in the Sandoz Lab where he worked, a molecule called LSD-25. Sandoz thought there might be a use for lysergic acid, perhaps as an aid in reducing blood loss in women during childbirth.

Well, we now know that, while LSD-25 didn’t do much in the way of controlling blood flow, it had some unexpected and literally mind-blowing mojo of its own. Mojo that was nothing less than staggeringly impressive.  Albert became the first person in history to get a taste of this skull-splitting voodoo on that afternoon of 4-19-43, when he decided to take a teeny tiny dose of 250 micrograms (250 MILLIONTHS of a gram) at 4:20 in the afternoon (!) and then hop on his bike, go home, and see what happened. During the bike ride home, something indeed happened. And stayed happening. All through the night. It mostly scared the bejesus out of Hoffman, but the next morning, he had to admit………wow. everything was really……..super.

Much mischief, ecstasy, raving, understanding, and misunderstanding has taken place in the 75 years since this most remarkable Bike Ride (to put it mildly).

We at Jive Radio have a connection to Bicycle Day.  It goes like this.  1. without LSD, there’s no San Francisco Hippie Experiment of ’65-’68. 2. without the Hippie Experiment, there’s no birth of super groovy, super psychedelic FM “underground” radio (KMPX, KSAN, KFAT, etc. etc. etc.) 3. without super cool FM underground radio, there’s no entities/models to inspire schizoclectic internet broadcasters like us at Jive Radio here in the 21st century.

So there ya go!  Happy Bicycle Day!

And a dandy song to listen to on Bicycle Day is……BIKE,  off the first Pink Floyd album and very probably the most psyched out bike song ever (written by one of the greatest of all LSD enthusiasts in 60’s rock, Syd Barrett)

“I’ve got a bike, you can ride it if you like

It’s got a bell and a basket and things to make it look good

I’d give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it”

the song concludes with the sound of a quacking rubber duck…..scariest rubber duck EVER.  hey, what can you say? it was 1967! and things were getting……re-calibrated.