Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Backwards

Backwards

I’m a better scout than I am a leader; if I were in the army or on the Lewis and Clark expedition, my skills (such as they are) would be put to much better use by sending me off ahead to scope out the territory than by putting me in charge of showing the group where to go.

Some of the reasons for this include:

1) My sense of direction, while not terrible, is more approximate than exact. My usual way of finding someplace is to just keep wandering around in the general vicinity until it shows up.

2) Efficiency is not really that big a deal for me. I’m not particularly bothered by having to backtrack or climb an extra hill or three; while I don’t totally buy the aphorism that the journey is its own reward, I’ve come to terms with the realization that most of the places I might be heading for aren’t especially better than the places I’m already at.

3) I’m relatively slow; any group I might be in front of, I’m not likely to be in front of for very long, and it’s tough to lead from behind the pack, especially when numbers 1 and 2 above are in effect.

All these factors were in play last night, as I showed a small group of riders the general shape of the route for Saturday’s Tour de French Fry, albeit in a backwards direction (counter as opposed to clockwise, I guess you’d say), albeit with more than a few missteps and inefficiencies, including, even one checkpoint that I somehow managed to miss in the dark and coming from the wrong direction.

Still, it was a fun ride on a surprisingly dry night and featured the very first (to my knowledge) .83 police escort, all the way down First Avenue from Denny to Pike, then up the hill past Boren where we were wished safe riding by the cop from his cruiser’s loudspeaker.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Lunar

I rode from a community college in Bothell to one in southwest Seattle and a bunch of stuff happened in-between and afterwards. It all unfolded like a massive Rube Goldberg machine stuttering into motion, and nearly every start and stop was filled with such sensory satisfactions that I couldn’t help but feel something almost like nostalgia for the present.

It seemed that once I realized I wasn’t in a hurry—over and over again—the ride became beyond reproach.

There was that nice steep up and down and up to SSCC, where we cooled our heels over mechanicals and I tooled around the giant parking lot thinking of Formula 1 races on airport runways.

When we finally left, we were rewarded with a tour around the Mini-Ghettodrome in the Japanesy garden and then got to look at airplanes used for mechanic training programs before climbing through a hole in a fence and enjoying the view from Westcrest Park, although the exact sequence of events escapes me.

And then we rode the Bomb down Highland Avenue to Loretta’s in South Park where we made a quiet night at the bar a lot louder and busier and managed to do so without entirely wearing out our welcome, either.

It felt like the ride took a bit of time to hit its groove, but that could have been me; I started having more fun when I stopped looking forward so much, or it could have been that third beer.

Also, the moon was hilariously beautiful on several occasions and it occurred to me that while I know that it’s supposed to be an optical illusion we’re reporting on when we say that the orb is bigger when on the horizon than when higher, I have to say that’s in contrast to what my eyesight reveals.

By the same token, everything I saw last night from the bicycle seat looked even better than it was, if that is even remotely possible.