Gold

I first realized the Olympics theme when Lee pointed out, as we were descending the steep drop and then immediately ascending in the bowl-shaped alleyway behind Eastlake, that this could be the half-pipe event. (Actually, that’s not quite true: somebody earlier had said that handing over a lit joint while bike-riding away from Westlake counted as a 400-relay passing the baton kind of moment, although that's Summer Games.)

But that’s when I really got into the Olympic spirit, and after that, for the rest of the evening, I couldn’t help noticing the connections everywhere.

Rolling down the switchbacks on Lake Washington Boulevard to the water was like the bobsled run. Getting into a good rhythm farther on down the road reminded me of cross-country skiing. Mixing up Genessee and McLellan and overshooting the more direct route south was my nod to Bode or Lindsey crossing their tips and missing a gate in the giant slalom. Even the back-to-back mechanical stops were able to be construed as our very own version of the biathalon. Or maybe curling.

Joeball had the podium taken care of: bronze monkey cocktails, in a park whose central sculpture filled in for the Olympic flame, then a quick stop by the Silver Cloud Inn, before finishing the night at Goldies.

Clever, huh?

I insisted we augment the runner-up medal by doing shots of silver tequila at the bar; fortunately, nobody proposed we follow that up by pounding Goldshlager.

But the peak Olympic moment for me was when a dozen or so of us lined up for a two-lap relay footrace on the tight path around the Martin Luther King Memorial Park fountain. “On your mark, get set, go!” and a gaggle of Apollo Ohnos were tearing around the short-track, speedskating on bike shoe cleats and jostling for position. And while I didn’t medal, I did, at least, end up vertical and managed, by tapping in my much faster partner, Chase, to not get lapped.

Talk about golden.

Love

It was like the good old days: Derrick and Ben arguing interminably about where to go and what route to take until finally the exasperated angry hippy growls something about just fucking following him, hops on his bike, and before you know it, people uninterested in being run over by cars are getting dropped behind those with more of an appetite for running lights, but eventually, everyone more or less clumps up and then we’re climbing and climbing and then climbing a little bit more until the bluff in Discovery Park appears under a starry sky and a perfect upturned grin of a moon with the Puget Sound spread out before us like an indigo desert and people are milling about, accepting the club President’s kudos for arriving, as planned, in time for a beer before the locks close, and then, even more surprisingly, leaving in time, too, having polished off the half-rack and quarter that Specialist Sean(welcome back!) huffed up there in his pack, we’re walking across the water and then going uphill some more until at last we find ourselves at the first stop in our tour of bars that have 86’ed .83, only this time, they love us so much that the bartender shares with us her tale of another drunken bike gang that showed up a couple years ago and got drunk until 2:00 in the morning, (leaving out, I guess, the part about one of its members peeing on the bar) and really, the only reason there’s any urgency at all to leave is that the fiancé of the girl Derrick has just exchanged motorboats with shows up and besides it’s time to head downtown for white-boy hiphop, but not before, for me, anyway, a ride through the zoo smell on Aurora and then across the bridge and a new route down to Dexter and finally, after a couple songs, back uphill once more and I’m home, all aglow with bike love.

Lived

I sure was glad tehschkott broke his wrist (apparently) the second time the Karate Monkey ate shit on the slick train tracks on Harbor Island, because the first time it happened, he easily could have had his head smashed like a soggy melon by an 18-wheeler.

It wasn’t even really that close, but all the elements were there: the bike skittering sideways toward the back wheels of the semi-trailer, his helmetless noggin heading straight for the massive tires, the driver of the huge rig completely oblivious to the drama unfolding right behind his cab; I could envision it perfectly and was very glad it only happened in my mind’s eye and not the real ones behind my glasses.

That would really have made me feel bad about pushing to ride around my favorite man-made island in all the Duwamish waterway. As it was, the place was accursed enough, causing, in addition to at least two spills, two flat tires, one a spectacular tube rupturing, again precipitated by those infernal tracks.

Still, we did manage to find ourselves at one point atop a parking garage, admiring a spectacular view of downtown I’ve never seen before, so for me, at least, given that the flat Gods chose not to single me out for punishment, and, more importantly, that I didn’t have to be traumatized by the sight (and the sound, which really would have been unforgettable) of a human head being flattened by the back wheels of a petroleum tanker, I count the evening as a genuine success.

There was enough rain to keep the crowd down to just bike nerds, though not enough to really be miserable and although we were unable to lure either Joeball or Henry to the Skylark or Nine Pound Hammer respectively, “Uncle” Ito did show up at the first place all well-groomed and sober in the Jetta—which frankly, if you wanna know the truth, was a sight even scarier than tehsckott’s first tumble.

WR5

I thought I stayed pretty late; (it was after midnight when I got home and my clothes smelled reassuringly of breakfast), but apparently, I missed the real shenanigans where people got doused with batter and thrown out of bars; even so, it was a night as full of hilarity as stomachs were full of waffles and as trash cans are of empty containers this morning at that odd little corner of the universe where electricity flows all year long for, as teh Jobies pointed out, “recreational purposes,” an end admirably pursued on this, the Fifth Annual .83 Waffle (The Empire Strikes Back) Ride, the current version, a bit earlier in February than in years previous, but still so hungrily anticipated that no one could possibly have held off another week, even in spite of the nationwide Eggo shortage.

I managed to catch onto the ride just as the line of—I’ll say about 60—bikes laden with fixin’s, toppings, and intoxicants—began pouring through the I-90 tunnel, riders screaming echoes east to west and then there was that heartwarming sight of taillights dotting the entire length of the bridge before all of a sudden a picnic shelter fully lit up from inside and an eight-pack of waffle irons steaming and a pitcher of Manhattans pouring and pork strips frying and some sort of scary-looking sausages spinning slowly on an even scarier mini hot-dog circus cart.

And eventually, of course, people were hanging upside-down from the rafters and spitting bourbon at the fire and a Frisbee-shaped waffle was turning to mush in the rain and then, just as miraculously as things appeared, they eventually were packed up and, although I bet the maintenance workers are scratching their heads this morning over what went down last night, I’m sure the imprint on my memory is more than ours upon the park, though less than the iron upon the batter making those sweet squares that you fill and fill you.