Costume

The evening immediately got better once Axl Rose changed into Winnie-the-Pooh.

Not that it had been all that bad so far, cavorting with the Cookie Monster and some sort of dragon/alligator/dinosaur thing with a healthy appetite for Pabst Blue Ribbon and even though it seemed like a relatively sparse crowd on such pleasant night, all things considered, for costuming up and pedaling off, Cookie Monster himself said it best when he described the assembled as a “lean, mean, problem-causing machine,” and it certainly seemed like that at the first two places we tumbled into, initially, a joint pretty much empty except for a drunk guy who wanted nothing better than to repeatedly toast his whisky glass into the balled-up paper tits of my own Sixties-folksinger-from-London’s-Carnaby-Street drag (call me “Donna, Donna Linda”) outfit and then next, what someone referred to as a “handbag party” at store that apparently sells boiled wool and polar fleece outfits to outdoorsy people who like to drive cars to spots at which they can don expensive gear and recreate until Sunday night when they motor back to the Eastside, but at which we were pretty much immediately asked to leave from unless, as the owner told me, we were prepared to buy some stuff, not, though she added to sound crass about it—as if “crass” might be an attitude that would bother someone who then spent the next half hour outside her store stealing sips from other people’s beers and cracking up as the Dinosaur sucked helium from pilfered balloons and flirted with bypassing coeds in a high-pitched pigeon Spanish while Pooh stayed in good humor at least until his supply of suds ran low.

Then it was back uphill to more or less where we’d come downhill from where Donna Linda arrived first, drank alone somewhat abashedly until others arrived, and then headed off, flower print dress waving in the wind, singing “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” all the way home.

Baffles

Most of the places in Seattle that I would never have been to I’ve been to on Thursday night rides and I’m pretty sure that every time I’ve been politely asked by the authorities to pack it up and get out of here have been, too; but even though I apparently missed the second of the two times out of three places that happened last night, it was still more than plenty all around as tehJobies overachieved as usual (which, I guess would just make it achieving) what with the two-wheeled mobile disco party, many scary cocktails, and a set-up under the freeway that for the life of me looked like something right out of a music video beer commercial in its post-apocalyptic splendor.

You could stand on a metal ledge around a freeway column and gaze right at the subterranean cathedral of vaulted concrete or eyes front at cars barreling southward mere feet away or, by sliding down gravel, descend into a bunker where, word has it, raves once took place and it was easy to see—and hear (that is, not hear)—why.

And if that weren’t enough, the shadows cast by moving bodies made for an hilariously apt allegory of the cave scene; I imagined being, like Plato’s famous prisoners, bound by the neck so I could see nothing but those pale imitations of reality before me, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t, at least for a while—as it was for those sorry souls—enough of a glimpse of the ways things really are to satisfy.

In the story Socrates tells Glaucon, of course, one certain fellow is released from his chains to ascend from the cave into the light; he’s blinded at first by the intensity of it all, but eventually acclimates to see even the pure form of the Good. Funny how back in the day, those ancient Greeks did it all on foot; these days it happens by bike.

High

It’s a shame that one of the finest western-facing views of the Duwamish is reserved mainly for cars; I’d never known until last night that the ten! story parking garage at First and Marion offered such a spectacular vista, but even so, I’ll bet hardly anyone goes all the way to the top like we did just to enjoy the scenery, and that even fewer do it on two wheels, corkscrewing upwards to the summit and then, after drinking in the sight of West Seattle backlit by the amber glow of the newly-set sun, rolling down, like aggies and catseyes in a marble-raceway track.

By contrast, it’s delightful that a park on the other side of the water, suspended above a Superfund site by cables so thick that even Sketchy can’t shake them hard enough to inspire authentic concern on the part of airborne revelers, offers such a picture-postcard panorama of our fair city (and, I came to learn, the vast array of containers supporting society’s insatiable appetite for consumption), it too, however, best accessible by bike—especially on a September evening so lovely that even beer-free mechanical stops hardly made the natives restless at all.

No nuts were punched, as far as I know, at Nutpunch Park, although the head puncher himself did appear later at the bar where one could thump his cast by way of remembrance; I sat in an Airstream trailer and dreamed big with Reverend Phil himself until it was time to admire the animated Hamm’s Beer sign one last time before heading towards home, accompanied by not just one, but two Wreyfords on ultimate and, I think penultimate, Thursdays, respectively.

Pedaling along, I heard a tick-ticking-ticking noise from my fender and pulled over to find a nasty packing stable protruding from my flatting back tire; even that repair, made more interesting by my weakened state, didn’t rankle; why be down on 10 minutes more of air on so elevated a night?