Friday, September 25, 2009

Out

The superior feature of the evening out last night was getting to be outside all evening.

I didn’t have a roof over my head (except for about 15 minutes when I stopped into the deserted soccer bar off Aurora for a coke and a pee) for almost seven hours, from when I left Bothell after post-meeting libations with colleagues around 7:00 until I crept into my house at nearly 2:00

In the interim, I got to cross town east to west and north to south, wander around a beachfront while the quarter moon sank into the sound, scream as loud as I can in duet with a train roaring, clattering, and whistling by, climb the steep hill out of Carkeek Park twice, hone in on and meet up with a couple dozen cyclists in a supermarket parking lot, roll down a dark wooded trail behind and in front of others who shared the hilarity of not running off the path into a tree with me, stand around a hardwood fire that eventually burned as a hot as a blacksmith’s forge, talk my way out of trouble with a cranky security guard, dodge pushpins and bottle rockets launched from a homemade blowgun, and finally, before the night was done, pedal another fifteen miles by myself along my new favorite route in town, so that by the time I arrived at home, all I wanted to do was let my trousers wrinkle down upon my ankles and my shirt flutter atop it before lying prone upon by back and staring at the ceiling to recall the sights and sounds of the night, including crows silhouetted against the dying glow of the day, crackling embers and shiny faces, and one unopened PBR can left sitting on our backyard table, a mute but eloquent illustration of all that happened and didn’t in the out of doors I got to be in for all but an entire day’s worth of starry night.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Miles

photo by joeball
It’s easy enough to forget that one of the best things about bike riding is riding your bike.

When so many nights’ entertainments include lake-swimming, or bull-running, or fry-eating, one is liable to overlook the part about bike-riding which, while admittedly, is not entirely what it’s all about, is the common feature that binds things together.

But then, you get a night like last, where before there’s even a stop to pee, you’re as far south as you usually go, and even before beer is bought, you’re sufficiently distant from downtown that kids on BMX bikes are riding over from the skatepark to see what the fuck is going on, and even with a hill so long, you can test the hypothesis that cursing acts as a painkiller over and over again, you still arrive a waterfront park in a whole different municipality more or less completely sober and early enough that the unofficial caretaker is still sufficiently awake to get in his car and drive over to check that no graffiti is being painted or litter left behind.

I’ve been wondering a lot lately about whether free will is an illusion in our deterministic universe, but if it is, I sure am glad that events have unfolded since the Big Bang such that my participation a thirty-plus mile bike ride after dark on the last Thursday of summer was not only possible, but inevitable, and that even with all the pedaling, there was still time to hang around a fire on the beach and close down not just one, but two bars before the night was out.

The switch-backed gravel road out of the park was steeper than I remember, and longer, too, but it eventually earned the kind of downhill that goes on and on while your heart rises higher and higher in your throat and reminds you once more how utterly fine it is to be out on a bike ride, riding your bike.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Liberty

photo by joeball
I don’t really buy that old canard, “Freedom isn’t free.”

Seems to me that most of the examples people cite to support the claim aren’t so much wars of liberation as they are battles for economic supremacy. Even the Revolutionary War can be construed as an more of an effort to secure financial rather than political liberty, and certainly, none of the armed conflicts the U.S. has been involved in over the last half-century or so have obviously contributed to the maximization of we citizens’ freedoms.

On the other hand: to the extent that the victims of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 are our nation’s most powerful symbols of lives lost in support of American independence, I wholeheartedly honor that sacrifice.

Where else in the world, I ask you, would a person be unconstrained from joining several score of fellow bike riders on a cross-town jaunt to a bar where a grease and potato-eating competition was taking place, or from consuming 11 12! baskets of French (aka “Freedom”) fries to win said contest, or from ingesting so much booze you’d have to lie on your back around an outdoor fire for a solid hour or so, sitting up only to see if the night was still spinning and then puke out your guts when so affirmed?

Fallen freedom fighters, I salute you!

This year’s .83 9/11 Never Forget (How Fat You Really Are) Bike Ride and Freedom Fry Eating Contest was once again an unrestrained debacle in celebration of all we hold dear and the valiant eaters who gave freely of their innards to compete a heartwarming embodiment of rights—notably that inalienable one to pursue happiness—we cherish.

And the fact that yours truly was free to (over)-exercise that right but still sufficiently looked-after by compatriots sharing the evening’s struggle that I wasn’t left lying on my back outside makes me not only proud to be an American, but grateful beyond measure to be alive.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Underdressed

photo by joeball
When I arrived at Westlake Center for the weekly .83 ride, I witnessed in attendance, two of my constituencies: non-squiddy bike riders and old people.

The latter, especially the scores of gray-haired liberals sporting cardboard signs in support of health care reform, looked pretty much as to be expected: lots of relaxed-fit blue jeans over white running shoes and t-shirts with pictures of whales and dolphins on them; the former, though, by and large, were stylin’ and profilin’: ladies in evening gowns with opera gloves to mid-shoulder, fellas sporting white shirts, ties, and vests; it looked like some kinda bike-themed Senior Prom or maybe auditions for the remake of Bugsy Malone.

In faded polo shirt and cardigan sweater, I felt a bit like the golf pro at the country club and was kinda bemoaning my inability to fit in anywhere, but thankfully, Mork the Delayer pointed out to me that there’s all sorts of other communities to which I belong: schoolteachers, Hempfest attendees, people who like to drink, and I didn’t feel so left out, and why should have I, really?

Probably by the time we were cruising down First Avenue, being honked at by suburban housewives (a community I’m not a part of) on our way to the fancy new SODO liquor store, and certainly, when we arrived at Anarchy Point for piƱata smashing and bottle-killing, I couldn’t have felt more included even were I fully bedecked in the proverbial soup-and-fish.

A full moon had risen and the early September evening was surprisingly warm; I talked to a guy who caught three hefty Pink Salmon in the Duwamish but said he was a vegan and that the haul was for his mom; later, after the beer shortage became critical, the ride spilled downtown where bikes were hauled up steps and the elevator to a party where the formalwear, even though a bit limp in some cases, seemed right at home and so, there, alone, redressed, went I.