How my Miller Lite Ball Cap became a Pirelli Cap

I caught the Lake Express Ferry to Milwaukee Saturday afternoon, and I showed up at the boat docks with a Miller Light hat on my head. As has been my habit, I strolled the sun deck and we had yet to leave Lake Muskegon. So we made our way to the channel under slow and stately speed. A man and his female companion had found a sloping section of bulkhead to recline against and view the scenery changing behind the stern. He offered the trade right away, his black Pirelli hat with yellow text stitching for my beer hat. I couldn't find my Detroit Hard Rock Cafe hat, so that was the only reason why I was wearing that Miller Lite hat, a hat one can't wear to work. I must wear a hat because my scalp is so vulnerable to sun that blazes through my thin hair. And out on the big lake of Lake Michigan, we experienced perfect suntanning and sun burning weather. I thought his hat more attractive than mine, and I declined his offer to swap.

When the Lake Express cleared the arms of Muskegon's breakwater, I made a climb up to the sun deck, now windy as we had accelerated to thirty-one knots per hour. As soon as the wind hit my face, the Miller Light cap flew off my head and got caught in a railing. I plucked it out of gap in the railing where the wind was pushing it through, next stop the lake. "I want that hat!" He cried. I put it back on my head and it sailed off my head once more and got caught on a railing of a lower deck. Taking this as a sign, I retrieved it and surrender it to the Pirelli man. "It was fate," I explained.

He was happy to have it and put it on immediately. He urged, "You must take mine". So I did. It made quite an impression as I pedaled through the Latin section of Milwaukee along National, men calling out, "Si! Pirelli" at 2:30 AM Sunday morning.