Thursday, December 22, 2011

Home

Ironically, on my first Thursday night out in a many a moon (well, probably only about one and a half to be precise), the ride went so close to my house that had I been there, I probably could have pedaled out, stood around the fire, and been back in my living room reading Edith Wharton before even my dog would have noticed.

As it was, however, I got to enjoy the full menu of delights on the evening’s agenda, including hot buttered rums, warm peppermint patties (the liquid version), tunnel screaming, Pioneer Square bar-shopping which resulted—on a successful search to locate a “historical” watering hole—in having our very own subterranean clubhouse christened beneath Seattle’s oldest drinking establishment, and then, a short, but bracing spin to what’s become, more or less, the “go-to” spot for belting out tunes, although, admittedly, I only lasted a beer’s worth before heading home right about pumpkin hour.

Motormouth Matt provided the warm libations in honor of the day Seattle’s first municipal ordinance (against drunkenness and disorderly conduct) went into effect and so it seemed particularly appropriate that most of the evening was spent breaking those constraints, but what I noticed was that in spite of this, no matter where we went, it was all about spreading the love, from some random neighbor walking his dog just about to run home, grab his bike and join in, to the bartender at our underground hideaway who was all but ready to give us keys to the joint for next time we came back.

“There’s no place like home for the holidays” goes the old Perry Como classic and though uncontentiously true, it therefore comes down to what qualifies as home. Family comes first, natch, but then there’s the extended-play version which includes all those undiscovered and rediscovered routes through our fair city that routinely involve fire and fellowship and lead through history and hijinks to home’s traditionally preferred location, the heart.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Holitacular

One of the standard proofs for God’s existence is the so-called “Fine Tuning Design Argument,” which begins by observing the innumerable universal constants that had to be just right for our Universe to come into existence and ultimately support life, and concludes that the likelihood of this happening is just too infinitesimal to have happened without a designer—namely God, who therefore, exists.

As it turns out, people make a similar argument when, at the finish of a bicycle “poker run” in celebration of the winter holidays, you show up with a hand featuring all eights which—even though they weren’t wild as would have befitted the event’s .83 sponsorship—was immediately judged as too perfect to have resulted from mere chance.

“That’s a cheater hand,” is how the Angry Hippy put it, which, of course, raises the question of what actually constitutes cheating among a group of miscreants for whom rules are anathema.

And although I’ll admit that I did do some persuading of the good people handing out cards at the checkpoints, I don’t think the mere implausibility of my perfect deal is alone evidence that it couldn’t have arisen naturally.

After all, even a royal flush is not nearly so unlikely as what went down overall: a rain-free December evening in Seattle, complete with often-visible full moon; several dozen drunken fools on bicycles scattering blindly through a public park at night without a single broken collarbone; feats of strength including not one, but two, skinny dippers in the freezing Puget Sound; an hilarious holiday bacchanalia with prizes for many and gifts for all; live music by the Summer Babes, gratis; all this organized and made possible with no motive other than good, clean, and sometimes embarrassing fun by nonsense-makers of the highest order, for just four bucks a head.

You want to talk unlikely? That anyone, anywhere should be lucky enough to do shit like Holitacular 2011.

And even more improbable? Six years running.