Superior

photo by Joeball

As Dead Baby Terry observed at Westlake Center, my sister Deb’s cookies are really something special.  Any homemade baked good is appreciated to be sure, but when you sample one of hers, your taste buds do a double-take.  You’re all like, “Wow.  Mmm.”  And you make the little involuntary sigh of pleasure that impels you to reach into the bag for another.  This is something I’ve long known about her culinary artistry and it’s always a pleasure to share it with others for their enjoyment and edification.

Come to think of it, many a Thursday night ride is like that, too.  You show up at Westlake Center thinking, “Okay, here I am; there’s all those other bike-riding assholes; this should be relatively palatable as a way to spend an evening.”

But then, you get out on the route, which includes and unprecedented Home Depot stop and a stirring jaunt through the industrial bowels of the city to a destination whose bonfire potential requires no importing of fuel whatsoever, and as the flames rise higher and the conviviality grows louder, you realize that, as a matter of fact, this is way better than you imagined it might be; your heart does a double-take and remember you should never ever take this shit for granted because it’s really quite remarkable even if you’ve done it before, more or less.

The full moon was so bright that it produced a barely visible spectrum in the mist surrounding it and gave us all moonshadows to follow if we wanted to notice.  I took the opportunity to scream at the top of my lungs for a bit and dance around like Stinky Pete.

Eventually, the flames died down and the beer ran out so it was up and down the hill and over the much-missed Airport Way Bridge to the old standby singing joint.  And even though the karaoke machine only showed background radiation, not words, it was still superior to predictions.

Wassail

It was a genuine Christmas miracle, as the skies, which had been spitting rain all day long, cleared up just in time for Santa and his attendant gang of cycling miscreants to depart Westlake Center fueled by holiday spirit, holiday spirits, and a spirited mix of holiday tunes blasting from tehJobies’ soundbike, whose dulcet tones were a joy to the world within earshot as we wended our way through some of the more populated areas of town via routes and pathways accessible only to those on two wheels or behind the reins of a flying sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.

In fact, the sole cloud cover all evening was precipitated by the decision of an especially festive Derrick to light a campfire underneath the park shelter roof thereby creating an inversion of greenhouse gasses that did little to warm our tiny corner of the planet but managed to momentarily blot out the shimmering stars and glittering quarter moon that were in evidence to anyone on the outside looking up.

Plus, the world didn’t end as predicted, an outcome that would have been particularly a shame given how much hot water there was to consume, thanks to the shared efforts of Santa’s thermos-bearing helpers.

It’s been a somber holiday season so far, due in no small part to the senseless tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, last week, but there comes a time, I think, when the memories of those lost and their loved ones are appropriately served by a reclaiming of the festive mood, and so, while it seemed to take a little time for the toddies and tunes to make holiday magic happen, there’s no doubt that most in attendance were lit up like Christmas trees by the time we pedaled westward to Freelard for a nightcap or three.

Santa Claus is coming to town and we are admonished not to pout or cry; when he’s with you on a bike ride, though, who needs any such reminders?

Christaster

There’s not much I really want for Christmas: world peace, full funding for higher education in the state of Washington, a new 650B wheel with a Son dynamo hub, because other than these, I’ve already received all that any nice (or naughty) little boy or girl could ever hope for in the form of yet another successful Point83 holiday Christaster, orchestrated with singular aplomb by the Angry Hippy, whose attention to detail in the golf-themed race course ought to put him right up there with Tiger Woods himself even though the mood of the event was more in keeping with your John Daly modes of consumption and excess.

I mean, you’ve got to love a race that features not one but three separate starting points, the second of which is designated as “finish” on the map.  (And if starting at the end isn’t an apt metaphor for these sorts of bike-fueled shenanigans, I don’t know what is.)

As for me, even though a slight overindulgence in holiday baked goods left me too distracted to complete the entire route, I did manage to achieve all desired three outcomes for the course: getting lost in the woods, experiencing the magic discovery of lights like Galadriel’s elves in the forest, and, ultimately, making it to the finish line for hot toddies and Reindeer Games.

I eschewed the eggnog-chugging, cigar-puffing, and lake-swimming, thereby eliminating any chances I might have had for a much-needed mulligan but no matter, victory was mine in the end, as I garnered a Lifetime Achievement Clappy Award for waiting longer than anyone else in the vicinity has even lived for marijuana to finally be legal.

My white elephant gift-bag pick was a winner, too, filled with variety of analgesics certain to come in handy on many occasions, although, perhaps surprisingly, no Advil or Ben-Gay is called for this morning, an eventuality I attribute mainly to the therapeutic effects of holiday cheer as embodied by another successful Christaster.

High

It’s not as big a deal as the long-awaited legal sanction for the basic human right to marry the person of your choice even if he or she happens to be the same sex as you, but there’s still something significant about what Timothy Leary called the “Fifth Freedom”—the right to get high”—finally being embodied in law and thus, worthy of being celebrated, naturally on two wheels, and especially when December’s monsoons hold off the entire evening despite being forecast by meteorological prognosticators all day long.

In full OCD mode, I was determined to get to the highest point in Seattle to commemorate the occasion, and bless what Mom used to call the “pointy pea-picking hearts” of my cycling brethren for indulging me not only the initial ascents but also the entire dance card of activities I felt one needed to complete before leaving the room, including even more ups and down just so ice-cream could be eaten in spite of the fact that the inclusion of a munchies stop is, to more than one expert in the herbal art of consciousness derangement more stereotypical than actual—a point that didn’t stop yours truly from scarfing down two oddly-delicious scoops of salted caramel at the pinball parlor.

Along the way, we surprised a charming young couple who weren’t aware that their trysting spot was one of the evening’s destinations and were also flabbergasted ourselves by the pink-lipped biker chick who felt compelled to remind us that White Center was her turf in a manner that, I at least, (in the state of mind I found myself), couldn’t really determine whether was intended as friendly or not.

In the end, though, mission fucking accomplished, as evidenced not only by the facts of the case themselves but also by the unprecedented experience of desiring no more elevation as we pedaled away from High Point even though, according to John Law himself, I had every right to partake.

Elfin

The Monkey was telling me that he expected to feel poorly in the morning while I tried to convince him that this was no reason to modify one’s behavior the night before, and although my powers of persuasion no doubt left something to be desired, I do think I set a reasonable example of my point, as evidenced by the empty wallet and creative bike parking in the storage shed that greeted me in the A.M.

But it was to be expected, as the holidays kicked into full gear beginning with a winter wonderland at Westlake and culminating with Sugarplum Elves in the coffee house on Capitol Hill.

In between, there was a mass ride on the Aurora Bridge, plenty of whiskey at the playground, and a couple of noobs lured into the fold despite the challenge of hauling around a gallon of milk.

When I was about 8, I had a dream that I was running down the street, ahead of all the kids in my neighborhood, including local god, Steven Harrison, a seventh-grader, who ruled the cul de sac.  It took me years to figure out that it hadn’t actually happened, but the memory lingers on and occasionally gets re-animated by moments like the one where suddenly, thanks to my favorite short cut and a dawdling pelaton, I found myself at the head of the pack as it emerged from the I-5 Hobo Trail.

Holiday magic!

Not surprisingly, I didn’t make it back with my calendar, so I’ll just have to suffice with memories, hazy though they may be.  Fortunately, the velocipede is a gyroscope once it’s moving and the lizard brain’s survival mode knows the route home, so there’s still some functioning gray matter for pictures of blinking tail lights high above Fremont and piles of bikes framing singing Elves to reside in.

Never fear the morning the night before; what we remember tomorrow will always make what we did tonight well worth it.

Elemental

You get to ride bikes through the woods at night to a secluded beach near the northwest corner of the continent where the waves, though just squirrel-sized, are actually crashing on the shore, stand around or apart from a cozy fire drinking beer and telling lies; the stars are out and rotating gently around or so it seems from your vantage point on planet Earth; you’re there long enough that the tide comes in, the flames die down, and eventually, you’re treated to a long solitary uphill that’s just familiar enough to be sufficiently confusing to turn into a nice little adventure on the way out of the park and eventually to the bar where friendly faces abound.

And you might have passed that all up for what?  Sports, television, or the internet?

I suppose I could understand the first option, at least if the Steelers were playing, a fun fact about my character that the Angry Hippy duly appreciated when we chatted about the bleeding of Black and Gold at the Boxcar, but even a hometown victory pales in comparison to the Big Dipper overhead and sand beneath your feet, arrived at via two wheels, under the cover of a chilly, but remarkably dry, November evening.

Plus, there was the futuristic thrill of pedaling over the luminous space-age magic carpet not just once, but twice, including what may be the new go-to route home from Magnolia, especially after dark.

For tens of thousands of years, our hunter-gatherer ancestors in the region probably gathered at the very same spot we did; you could feel their ancient spirits among us (or maybe that was just me, celebrating the passage of Initiative 502, albeit a month or so early).

Suffice it to say that homo sapiens’ evolutionary connection to the experience of flames on that windswept corner of land by the  Sound go way deeper than even the bond one might feel with a Steel Curtain.

Immaculate reception, indeed.

Spectrum

Standing around the fire’s dying embers talking about the late afternoon’s double rainbow—which, to my way of looking at it, arched from Windermere to Kirkland for over an hour on my ride home from school—with Darcy and Paul, both of whom had documented their views of the phenomenon on cellphones, it occurred to me that I’d found the perfect metaphor for the human psychological condition:

We’re all at the center of our own rainbows.

Wow. Heavy.

Photographic evidence demonstrated that the same heavenly arc that to me spanned Lake Washington was, from another standpoint, over Lake Union, and to another, behind Beacon Hill.  So, even thought I thought the pot of gold was to be found somewhere around Magnuson Park, someone else would be just as certain it lay near the Hutch and someone else, insistent its location be by the Jose Rizal Bridge.

And this would also explain why there are some many treasures to be found in our fair city; case in point, the aforementioned blaze in Seward Park, upon which I happened thanks to the directions of vintage bike gang rider, Evil Mike, whose path crossed mine as I pedaled down Lake Washington Boulevard in search of drunken bike idiots.

It was a jewel of an evening, the waning gibbous moon shining diamond-bright in its center, several dozen bike riders loosely arrayed around a cheery campfire in the southern part of a Northwest city, each and every one, like me, at the center of his or her personal rainbow.

Even Joeball.

And then, eventually, as the coals’ glow faded and the beer ran out, it was back north, until like moths to their proverbial flame, we arrived en masse (albeit in stages) at the International District clubhouse where Dead Baby Terry and Fancy Fred with the Professor Dave Orchestra customized the Commodore’s hit ballad “Easy” in three-part harmony, heard, of course, from within the central perspective singer’s personal audio-visual rainbow.

Wow.  Heavy.

Masked

As we rolled from Cal Anderson Park, the Caped Crusader asked me whether I was following Fred Flintstone or Elwood Blues; “Neither,” I intoned from behind my witch’s nose and pointy hat, “I’m following a dream, Oh Masked Marauder, following a dream.”

And indeed it was—or became, anyway—one of those chimerical eves where fantasy and reality collide happily and even though at least half of the assembled showed up as pseudo-hipster bike dorks there were still enough fright wigs and fancy hats to make for the sort of annual Halloween-themed shenanigans that this fellow in a dress, anyway, has come to look forward to at October’s end out on two wheels.

Pooh Bear and Ronald McFondle were nowhere to be seen, but the latter’s alter-ego, Bob the Cat-Tree Builder, easily held the fort, as evidenced by his money quote: “Ya wanna get hammered or nailed?” a question that neither college co-eds at Dick’s Drive-In nor flamboyant crooners at Changes Bar dared answer.

On some rides, the miles melt away like butter, on others, you barely break a sweat even in a polyester frock; but sometimes those are the ones on which you cackle with glee all night long, crossing streets by foot to crowd into a place made famous for 21st birthdays but which, it turns out, welcomes pretty much anyone anytime and where the single drinks are doubles and where—despite the fact that most others of those taking the microphone could actually sing—the Karaoke-J still took a moment to thank our gang of loudmouths and Blues Brothers for showing up to play.

It’s been a long time since I’ve made it to the nub of the evening, where bedraggled revelers scoff at local ordinances and build pyres from palettes but this chance was too good to pass up; and although I wasn’t there to see the flames die, I did see them rise as the Dark Knight lay down for a nap.

Emulsion

On the way to the meet-up, when I ran across him near the downtown library, Shaddup Joe opined that some people aren’t really happy unless they’re miserable.

And that seems right.

In fact, it was perfectly well illustrated during the route from Westlake, through the woods and over numerous rivers in parking lots and at intersections, to Wizard Staff Park, in a downpour loud enough to simulate the sound of public fountains as water poured off the roof of park shelters and in rivulets down one’s neck and cuffs on a night the weather gods seemed determined to make amends for the unseasonably dry autumn we’ve had so far.

Drowned rats never had it so good.

(But when Fancy Fred announces that he has a plan for exploring dark and twisty roads that few of us have ever been on before, bike riders come out—unless they’re sissies [who, it turns out, according to graffiti I keep seeing all over town, rule!]—even if the deluge begins right at the allotted rendezvous moment, an eventuality that I, at least, attribute to that long-haired sorcerer pulling out all the stops to make things interesting for those who arrived.)

The more puzzling question is whether it’s possible that some folks aren’t miserable unless they’re happy; that one seems less intuitively likely.

However, I can imagine this converse combination, too, and did, as we wound through the Cowen Park corkscrew.  Joyfully splashing along over tree roots and fallen branches, I couldn’t help but feel sad for anyone missing out on the fun and while it might be pushing it to say that was misery, the additional fact that you could be loving the company lends credence to the claim.

Joeball and I talked about riding gingerly on newly-soaked streets when the oil rises and cars doe-see-doe at summery speeds; ultimately, my own sodden route was neither particularly long nor fast, but ultimately, it was as miserably happy as could be.

Weakling

Sometimes, all you’re really up for on a bike ride is the bike ride.

Thanks, in part, to the demise, in the last second of the fourth quarter, of your favorite football team, and no doubt, to a week of work that involved more hand-holding and back-patting of colleagues and students than you’re used to after the recent months of relative leisure, the undeniable appeals of alcohol and fraternity fail to fully appeal.

You wander the bar a bit, impressed that, contrary to history, the assembled have yet to be 86’ed, and then decide it’s time to pedal home.

The route back’s not nearly so amusing as the route there; it doesn’t even involve a walk across the much-loved Ballard Locks, a place where miscreants and scofflaws turn into surprisingly good citizens, merely wondering aloud what constitutes cycling while still doing pretty much exactly what the signs say one must.

Moreover, you realize that even though you’ve left the ride, it still remains with you: every time you see a bike lamp blinking towards you, there’s that little frisson of hope you feel whenever there’s that chance of running across cyclists you know.

Occasionally, you even consider turning back, but the road unfolds too quickly and before you know it, you’re climbing past Convention Centers and hipster bars and then over the topmost top of the last big hill.

There are still stars visible, a phenomenon the weather prognosticators tell us will be in short supply soon, so you dawdle over the vista before plummeting down towards your final destination.

The last few blocks fly by and then you’re putting the rig away and locking it up.  You stand in your backyard while, noticing it’s the earliest you’ve done so on a Thursday in over a month—not bad for an old guy and thus, you can turn in and drop off soothed by the knowledge that there are others still out there, pedaling the night away.

Routing

There’s a difference between being on A ride and on THE ride, but it seems to me that if you arrive at the place where the cycling miscreants have assembled, then you’re AT it, at least, if not ON it completely, especially if your route there was longer than the one taken by the masses and even more so if previous to your arrival, you’d been hanging out with friends from work enjoying the same sort of free-flowing libations that characterized the earlier part of the evening for the others.

In other words, if the head start they got wasn’t really a head start at all, then, by the time you catch up, it’s fair to say that it’s no longer a matter of catching up at all, but rather, of reminding yourself that as long as it’s a Thursday night and you’re out on two wheels, then you’re pretty much already there, even if you haven’t arrived yet.

I took a route from Kenmore to Crown Hill I wouldn’t have assayed had it been earlier in the day when more cars were out, and, as it was, the shortest distance between two points turned out to be a pretty straight line even if that included a climb up a couple long hills and at least one descent I had to do over when my short-term memory for places was even shorter than usual.

In any case, arriving at the water-wheeling watering hole, I was quickly enveloped in the full-throated conviviality of the assembled, so much so that I was able to stay awake long enough to have the sleepiest ride home I’ve had in a long time, one of those ones where you choose the scariest, least efficient route possible, across high bridges and along busy streets just to make sure you can keep your eyes open until your house finally pulls up in front of you just as if you’d been on the ride all along.

Wizardry

The power of human norming systems is awe-inspiring; peer pressure, even when many of those “peers” are from another whole generation of history, can make a person do almost anything.

Imagine: you arrive at a public park featuring one of the finest panoramas of our fair city in town, on a warm and dry fall evening with the almost full harvest moon shining brightly above, and, at first, you can’t possibly see why anyone would duct tape beer cans together and affix them to their hand to make progressively taller “wizard staffs” to quaff from and do battle with, but after a couple of cold ones yourself and having also imbibed the strange mixture of dystopian fantasy tale and frat party bacchanalia engendered by the activity itself, you can’t possibly imagine why anyone would not join in the sport.

It’s likely that P.J. Diddy ended up with the longest and perhaps widest tower in the end, although the Angry Hippy, boasting that nobody in the world is less competitive than he, had the early lead in the clubhouse.

Later, there was ample opportunity to feel like a kid again, even for those who still are and that old douchecock sonzabitch Miles was right about only getting one chance to go down the slide for the first time, so you might as well go head first and upside-down.

Eventually, though, the hive mind coalesces on departure and pretty soon, just as you’d hoped, you’re following a line of blinkies down the Hipster Highway, an experience that can’t help but evoke a bit of nostalgia for jungles that once were but which also reminds you that there’s no time like the present, especially on nights like this.

There was magic in the air: how else could you get from Airport Way to Chinatown with eyes closed?

And then, another whole world in the mirror, a land where wizards dance and unicorns, thanks to their peers, are never kept down.

Soundtrack

When the face-melting volume of tehJobies bicycle-mounted disco first kicks in, it quickly becomes the ride’s soundtrack, the music behind the scene, even one as strangely juxtaposed as thirty Caucasians on bikes rolling through the city’s industrial wasteland to the throbbing beat of the Geto Boys’ “Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta.”

But eventually, the pulsating vibrations so wrap you up the separation between soundtrack and scene is so flattened that it becomes one thing: you pedal to the beat but it pedals you, as well, and in spite of the fact that what’s playing might be Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero,” it’s hard to tell where the music starts and individual personal identity begins.

So, when the tunes are turned off for a maintenance break as you congregate on a concrete platform over the river at the city’s heart, it takes a few moments to find yourself and you feel, at first, like Presidential candidate Ross Perot’s running mate, Admiral Stockdale, who, I learned last night, infamously opened his remarks at a televised Vice-Presidential debate by asking, “Who am I?  Why am I here?”

But soon enough, you’ve got your land legs back and you’re learning about the history of the shipping container and wondering aloud whether there might be other values to be stressed than just efficiency in the world of maritime trade.

Then however, the freshly-repaired sound system roars back to life and even the most recalcitrant of dancers can hardly help stepping out despite the fact that a fly on the wall glancing at those getting low might wonder briefly whether he’d landed at a park in Seattle or bar in San Francisco.

Fortunately, though, the beer runs out and the ride stumbles to the favorite watering hole of visiting groomsmen where Reverend Derrickito can find his new calling as a pitcher-swilling preacher for whom the word “God” is music—since every time it’s uttered, he takes another swig.

Conflagration

You didn’t have to be stoned to appreciate how beautiful the sunset was as the ride stretched out in a long line along Elliot Avenue en route to the Ballard Bridge, but I’m sure it helped.

The pinks and purples of the dying light made a masterpiece of the background to our speedy convoy, a loveliness engine that propelled an arrival at the traditional provisions stop whose backwards-spinning sign’s clock read merely “8:15” as we rolled up, surely a record even taking into account Derrick’s car wash pit stop.

Dump no liquid!  Drains to bay! 

(Which is sorta what we did in order to find ourselves overlooking the Sound on an evening that while it wasn’t officially the final Thursday of summer was probably the last time this year we’ll enjoy the season’s weather—so it was appropriate that such heat was generated by the fire, whose endless supply of wood continued to be augmented by one larger tree trunk after another, even as the stock of beer struggled to keep pace.)

We were joined by intrepid members and guests of our Dead Baby colleagues including DB Terry himself who later treated us to a rousing rendition of Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive” with custom lyrics for all those with even a little fondness for riding steel horses through the city at night.

I got to yell at some trains and use much larger humans as baffles to regulate the heat of the flames, so what more is there, really; some things never get old in spite of the inexorable advance of the calendar and a school year now just spinning on the rim.

We can never quite know what the future will hold; so bigger fires, louder songs, and longer rides make plenty of sense in some strange way.

You could pedal all the way across the country like visitors from a foreign land, but still, snaking through those woods to the coast, you’d be home.

Glorious

The word “glorious” comes from the Latin gloriosus, meaning  (among other things) renowned, famous, boastful, and full of pride, all of which are terms that could be used to describe aspects of the ride, which—with only a couple of wrong turns—found its way to the charming waterside park I’d scouted out earlier in the day. 

It was Fancy Fred, I think, who described the descent down the fresh asphalt through the woods to Lake Washington as glorious and my fellow aqua-phile Jimmy, I believe, who used the term to refer to the experience of paddling about in the water, which—at this late date in the summer—remains slightly warmer than the night air as we eke out the last few swims of the season.

But there’s another meaning of “glorious,”— an archaic usage that is even more appropriate.  Back in the day, people used the word as a synonym for “blissfully drunk.”

So at it turns out, many were glorious on such a glorious evening. 

Glory be.

I’ll never be the wayfarer that Joeball is, nor an organizer like tehJobies, but I’m glorious (in the non-archaic sense) to note that I did manage to navigate the pack, with only a couple hiccups, to a place that few, if any, had been to before on a Thursday night.  And if my preferred route out of the park wasn’t the one most people took, so be it. 

The quartet that did meander my way were treated to a loping ride on the moonlit ridge and views of Seattle’s downtown industrial core that were, in a word, glorious.

As the days get shorter and the nights cooler, one can’t help but feel a little melancholy at the passing of summer; so it’s heartwarming to stockpile memories of such evenings as sustenance for the dark months ahead. 

Of course, as the night wore on, there fewer and fewer recollection to be had; I’m certain, though, they were glorious.

Alps

As we rode along Eliot Bay, Fancy Fred regaled me with tales of cycling legend Jobst Brandt, who, as the internet attests to, used to cycle through the European Alps every summer, routinely burning up his rims and tires as he braked on the long descents, thereby giving rise, of necessity, to the development of his expertise as a wheel-builder, which just goes to show that destruction is sometimes (if not always) a required precursor to creation; from the ashes, phoenix-like, will rise something new, or at least the conditions for innovation to flourish.

Still, it’s hard to imagine that much will come from the smoldering palettes being sprayed down by an amused-looking firefighter in Fremont as I returned from Ballard after having departed from the ride remnants some thirty minutes earlier, although perhaps there’s a story that might emerge under the right conditions and in the proper time.

In any case, the main thing I thought in thinking about Jobst’s adventures is that while they’d be amazing, I’m sure, a person might just as well satisfy their appetite for stunning scenery while biking by touring the Puget Sound in summer, or even more specifically, just by pedaling around Seattle on an August evening when the sky is smudged with scattered clouds and the setting sun imparts a tinge of pink to their heavenly edges.

Later, on the dock with beer can chinking where I rode numerous extended figure-eights to keep warm, the quarter moon appeared in all its half-moon shaped glory, an apt metaphor, I’d say, for how words inevitably fail to capture the way things really are when you’re there out in it.

A cover charge inevitably split the group up, but no texts were needed to regroup: you just rode in the last direction people were headed and stopped at the closest bar. 

So maybe it wasn’t a summer tour of the Alps , there was still beauty there and tales to be told.

Jump

I sort of regret not riding the bmx bike off the ramp into the lake, but I’m certain that I’d regret a broken neck had I done it and failed even more, so I’ll be content with the memory of having been there and observed those flying wheels and bodies, enjoying the vicarious thrill of momentary weightlessness before two-wheeled splashdown on a perfect summer night for doing so.

P.J. Diddy celebrated his 35th birthday by turning 15 all over again and taking the sort of chances that as a teenager don’t even seem like chances but at a certain age strike me, (at least after a couple beers and in the twilight on a bike with no brakes), as falling just outside the boundary of acceptable risk—an assessment which I realize marks me squarely as over-the-hill, but that’s okay, discretion, as they say, being the better part of valor in some cases.

Besides, it’s not as if the evening needed improving on from my standpoint anyway: shirtsleeve riding all night and a long swim during which I had a fish-eye view of the riders as they went air and then water born, some getting rad, others holding on for dear life, all, in any case, to be commended for their courage and/or mocked for their recklessness accordingly.

The birthday boy himself managed to see stars on at least two of his jumps, one of which inspired Wonder Woman to leap into the lake after him in case rescue efforts were necessary, but fortunately, some precautions had been taken; the lifejacket did its job and no one sank to the bottom like a stone.

See?  As we live longer, we do learn some things—like how to live longer, for instance. 

And if that means going at it more gently, it doesn’t mean we’re not still seeking thrills same as ever, it just means we’re finding them more easily: like right there in front of our eyes.

Pinned

At the end of the evening (for me), I was standing at the bar watching, from the corner of my eye, the oddly-compelling Olympic track cycling team time trial and reflecting on the noble human aspiration to work together in order to create something beyond the abilities of a single person while continually striving for ever-higher levels of performance, but, of course, it wasn’t the onscreen cyclists who had inspired my ruminations, but rather, the activities and actors associated with yet another of tehJobies’ (annual) pre-Dead Baby Downhill Drunken Slip-n-Slide Dance Party extravaganzas.

The idea of “outdoing oneself” is fascinating because it suggests that we have at least two selves, one of whom surpasses another; I might conjecture, however, that in this latest incarnation of the Thursday night ride that precedes the self-styled “Greatest Party Known to Humankind” that the neon mastermind behind things must have had many more than just a pair of identities in order to pull it all together and, even more impressively, convince others to play along.

Tom Sawyer, after all, only had to persuade a couple kids to paint a fence; tehJobies, by contrast, induced several score of (putative) adults to consume cocktails made with grain alcohol, strip down to their skivvies or bathing suits, adorn themselves with glowing plastic, and then proceed to not only hurl themselves downhill over a wet plastic tarp in the dark, but even more impressively, to climb into a kiddie pool filled with a gelatinous goo and wrestle one another to the cheers and catcalls of a rabid crowd.

I myself refrained from most of the shenanigans, believing that, when the cops showed up, it would be easier to explain things if I weren’t topless in a bathing suit, enjoying instead the efffervescent “Pink Elephants on Parade” visuals made possible by bikes and people wearing glowsticks; wonder of wonders, though, the authorities never did appear.

Perhaps next year, though, when selves are inevitably outdone once more.

Hear

If I were riding down the Burke-Gilman trail (or Westlake Boulevard for that matter), and I came wheel to wheel with a line of forty or so cyclists carrying beer and other provisions pedaling to the beat of a throbbingly loud bicycle-mounted sound system who invited me to come with them for a swim in Lake Washington on what may have been the warmest evening of the year so far, I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t turn around and follow without hesitation.

When I mentioned this to tehSchkott, he pointed out that there’s your difference right there: I’d U-turn for fun because I’m the sort of person who does that; all those spandexed teeth-gritting riders we tried unsuccessfully to entice didn’t because they’re not.

Of course, this is circular reasoning, but that doesn’t make the conclusion false even if the argument’s fallacious—which is, I think, a decent metaphor for the evening’s experience: it’s undeniably true that the water is fine, the beer refreshing, and the music festive, even if the manner in which those outcomes were derived is questionable.

The waxing quarter moon formed a perfect ear in the sky as if our planet’s satellite were listening in, making me suspect that Luna, too, would have turned her celestial chariot around to follow the music even if that sometimes meant pedaling dangerously close to the sounds of Katy Perry or yet another playing of Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler.”

Pasty torsos held a meeting in the water while less hardy souls mingled on land as dusk settled and Springsteen crooned; eventually the ride stumbled west to a patio near a different, but still connected body of water—which is, now that I think of it, another reasonably appropriate metaphor for the bike gang experience: the names and particulars are different but the flow is all one, so really, even if you don’t turn around, you’re still part of the same vastness whether you embrace it or not.

Noble

This is how excited I was: on my way to catch up with this year’s Running of the Bulls ride, every time I saw a group of people wearing white tops, I slammed on my brakes, thinking that I had found the assembled masses, a tactic that probably only added ten or fifteen seconds to my route, seeing how fast I was pedaling to get there.

Arriving, then, at South Lake Union less than an hour en retard (quite a feat, if I do say so myself given that I started out for my destination 1500 miles and half a day away, in Santa Fe, NM), I was rewarded with the sight of more than four score cyclists in the customary garb along with a handful of people who weren’t actually bulls but were nevertheless dressed in manner that suggested male cattle, prompting me to immediately take the ceremonial plunge into the water, my first such foray into the drink on this year’s summer riding calendar.

Traditions happen almost by accident as like minds agree to reinvent an occasion occasionally; at the current rate of growth, sociologists in the future may be confounded as to whether Pamplona or Seattle came first.

Who’s copying whom?

Or is it, like the invention of the internal combustion engine, one of those developments that emerges concurrently around the globe, a hundredth monkey phenomenon, the human hive-mind giving rise to a spontaneous expression of our species’ collective unconsciousness?

Or maybe it was just the ideal summer evening, purple clouds filtering golden sunbeams over the park, white clothes stained burgundy through pink complementing the celestial hues perfectly.

Bottle rockets hardly needed launching to augment the festivities, but they were, of course, to the surprise of no one and the chagrin of just a few.

And then, the plastered pelaton was off again, red sashes trailing, and while minor crashes lay ahead, the noble tradition was once more secured, bull taken by its horns.

Flux

One of the main lessons, as I understand it, to be taken from Vedic scriptures is the impermanence of all things.  The Buddhists talk about this, too, and, for that matter, modern science tells us the same thing: even our sun will eventually burn up and out, consuming the earth and destroying whatever remnants of human culture and history might still possibly remain—by itself an extremely unlikely prospect some several billion years from now.

Like the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus said, “All is flux, nothing stands still.”  Reality is constantly emerging, oozing into and out of being; moreover, it’s all just illusion; there is only one unified All; we are merely whitecaps on the vast ocean of Being; in time, we fall back into the One that is Brahman that is Atman that is neither and both.

That said, however, it sure is fun to act as if we are individual monads travelling through space as we pedal about town, not quite sure at first where we’re heading, but relatively confident that as long as you can keep the bike in front of your in sight, you’ll eventually arrive at some place where drinks can be drunk, eats can be eaten, and stones can be skipped in a lake that, this year, at least, turns out to be too cold for anyone, even the putative birthday boy, to swim in.

Summer’s coming slowly this year, but the chill won’t last (nor, of course, will the warmth once it arrives), which only goes to illustrate the point from above: all of this is ephemeral, so we might as well enjoy it as much as we can, even if that means there’s not a perfect outdoor fire nor is the bar something new and different.

Because, after all, even the same thing isn’t ever the same; like Heraclitus said, you can step in that river over and over, all you want, but you’ll never step in it again.

Inflation

You can have your pick of metaphors for .83: how about shuttered liquor stores and fresh booze aisles in the supermarket?  Or maybe an indoor firepit whose main power is to melt the ice in your drink?  Or something like bikes being carried down three flights of steps and then ridden straight up cliff-like hills?

But the one I think does a particularly fine job of capturing the spirit of the thing is how, in order to locate the hole in your tube, you’ve got to pump the shit out of it until it looks like some sort of hilarious donut hula hoop and that’s when you find what you’re looking for.

After all, many is the time the ride doesn’t really get started until things have been pumped up beyond all recognition so to speak and even though last night’s shenanigans never, (for me, at least), attained that transcendent level of overinflation, they were, in a word, sufficiently expanded that I could feel the telling whisper of air that lets you know the mystery’s been solved and you’ll be able to patch things up for another turn of the wheel in days to come.

Plus, as we stood en masse overlooking our fair city from the eastern slopes of Magnolia, there was that toddler ginger on his two-wheeler roaring dangerously around the cliff edges of the park again and again as if auditioning for admission to the drunken bike gang circa 2032 or so.

Alternately, I imagined that the little freckle-faced dude was actually our lord and master, the exalted reborn lama, showing us the way it’s done—albeit in a bodily form unrecognizable to normal perceptions.

But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?  Getting to see what you usually don’t see, even if it requires you to go beyond the usual modes of observation.

And if that means you’ve got to risk the blowout in your face that deafens you, so be it, metaphorically speaking.

Rendevous

I knew I had to be close to catching up to the ride when I was forced to pedal up and back through a switchbacked handicapped-accessible ramp into the deserted park.  And when I crossed not one, but two darkened baseball fields and descended into the lightless bowl of trees, I was confident that if I called out “Brother! Brother!” in the classic Wreyford-style, I would hear the echoing calls of one familiar voice or another, which indeed was the case, as the Angry Hippy welcomed me into the fold of several dozen intrepid miscreants arrayed about in the north (suburban) woods.

There’s something especially satisfying about heading out solo later in the evening to rendezvous with the bike gang, especially if they’re in the out of doors, and even moreso if you’ve already been out for a solid pre-funk of a sushi dinner with your loving family: it’s an embarrassment of riches, frankly, but thanks to liberal applications of sake over the meal, you’re not embarrassed at all.

On occasions like this, it takes but a moment to feel re-integrated into the fold; before you know it, you’re telling lies with the best of them and blowing on the fire to coax it into a blaze cheerful enough to inspire a moment’s panic from some of the assembled when a car rolls by (a feeling  not long-lasting enough to discourage the taking of questionably-legal routes on the way home, but I digress.)

And so, even though my night among the ridership was, all things considered, fairly brief, it clearly had all the elements necessary for complete enjoyment: bicycles, bushwhacking, and beer, and a brief stop at a bar that will forever have a special place in my heart for its bringing together of disparate elements in my own life.

Which I guess is part of the ongoing appeal of nights out on two wheels: when you eventually catch up to the ride, you find yourself, too.

Tug

The thing about life is that no matter how long you’ve been living it, there’s always something you’ve never lived through before.

Like the vision of a vertical rainbow column, as fat as your thumb on the horizon, rising straight up to the taffy-pulled clouds, or the long patio of a new old bar which turns out instead to just be the sidewalk.

Sublime and ridiculous merge where heaven and earth come together, so that even those on the lam from themselves can’t help but be entertained by the route, familiar though it be.

One goes on the lookout for the past and finds instead, the present, suspended above a Superfund with the city’s best tableau in the background.  Where else in the world does the amazing appear so commonplace?  No wonder you better guard the jewels; who can pay heed to safety where such scenery abounds?

Moreover, snaking through Mother Earth’s womb never fails to delight; trail all the memories you can, the wonder keg still gets tapped; familiarity may breed contempt with families and food; on bikes, though, the old never ages.

In dog racing, the greyhounds despair of catching that mechanical rabbit, no matter how often they run, but run they still do, seemingly content with the chase—and after all, isn’t that plenty?

It’s not how far the ride goes but how far it takes you and sometimes that’s all the way back to where it began; I’m sure there may have been earlier events but none with such impact, so we’ll call it the first.

All I know is that life’s too short to be filled with so much; there must be an alternate universe where doppelgangers rack up miles in our memories for all these scenarios to unfold over and over again in new ways. 

Perhaps it’s happening between the superstrings of reality like water molecules dividing the sunset into separate distinct hues.

Or maybe it’s just another spinning of wheels.

Sprung

The Angry Hippy pointed out what was obvious: on no other ride had we ever stayed on the same street for so long and so far.

Granted, besides Rainier Boulevard, it’s hard to imagine any other roadway that could afford us such unbroken mileage—(Aurora, maybe?)—but still, it was pretty impressive to stay in the same lane for more than ten miles, continually scanning storefronts for that elusive watering hole south of Seward Park until, before you knew it—or maybe more like 10 minutes after you noticed—there we were all the way out of Seattle, in a place whose scale is better suited to airplanes than bikes and eventually, drinking beer in a pub that, had it been even a mile or two farther on, might have been the cause of real mutiny, or at least, a heckuva lot more grumbling.

As it was, though, the adventure unfolded into one of those nights where the bulk of the outside portion is on two wheels around the city (rather than on two feet around a fire) and included some fine off-road action as we entered the magic riparian wormhole that somehow connects downtown Renton with north Tukwila.

You know the evening is a success when your tires are covered in mud the next morning but you still have your wallet and keys and all the gear you stashed in your bag but didn’t need given how lovely the weather stayed from start to finish.

Tradition, such as it is, has sometimes had it that there’s a preview of the birthday bike race route the Thursday before the event, but this was much better, especially since it afforded riders the opportunity to pass by 55th Avenue South, one of the few 55-themed roads in Seattle that Saturday’s course will miss.

Which just goes to show how the unexpected is so often superior to the planned-for; even mile after mile on the same road, you’re still surprised.

Illuminate

The highly-unlikely was reported in the newspaper to be slightly possible: they said there was a chance, albeit a slim one, that the aurora borealis would be visible in the late night skies over Seattle.

And while we never did see the Northern Lights, we were treated to an equally stunning visual display: the full moon reflecting so brightly off Lake Washington that a quicksilver fog seemed to hover over the water

Which just goes to show that it’s what you don’t expect that typically exceeds expectations.

Or to put it in more specific terms: just when you think you’ve seen it all on Thursday nights you haven’t.

Like all of sudden in a place you’ve been several times before, there’s a bona-fide skate park with dudes who can “shred” the half-pipe and an African-American youth who slyly mouths “White Power” (although at least one person heard “Bike Power”) when thirty Cacausians on bikes suddenly appear.

At the same time, some things never get old; no matter how many times you get to bomb non-stop downhill for such an hilariously long time it still feels brand-new.

Which isn’t to say there weren’t any unprecedented events; in addition to the moonlight sonata, I’d never seen anyone join the ride by leaving their backpack behind—although I am pretty sure that I’ve witnessed other bailouts than the Angry Hippy’s based on lost articles of clothing before.

And for once, it wasn’t Joeball with his face in the nascent fire blowing on twigs.

Or get this: we actually had more wood than we needed and no one broke a toe or melted their shoes spreading out the leftover coals.

My route out of the park to the final watering hole is one I’ve taken dozens of times. Never before, though, has it afforded me the chance to arrive at the bar concurrently with much faster riders who went the other way.

So let the sun flare and the moon shine.

Works

When I was in India this time last year, one of my teachers, Professor Narasimham, of the Anatha Research Institute, said that yoga is a “technology for liberation.”

The idea is that the practice is purely practical; you can set aside all the woo-woo stuff (at least as a justification) and simply observe that if you undertake the process—following all the “Eight Limbs” of the discipline—you will, over time come to experience God or bliss or Samadhi or whatever it is you want to call that sense of union with the All that we’re consistently seeking whether we realize it or not.

It’s the same idea captured in the famous quote by Ashtanga yoga’s founding guru, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois: “99 percent practice, 1 percent theory.”

Or, as he also put it: “Do your practice, all is coming.”

Same with drunken bike gang shenanigans.

If you assemble the elements: a bunch of people who get a kick out of pedaling two-wheelers around city streets at night, including the return of well-loved and sorely missed Brothers, Scientists, and Loudmouths, (mixed in with the usual Curmudgeons, Functioning Alcoholics, and Sentimental Cynics), add an outdoor fire, stir together with freely-flowing alcohol and other such illuminating molecules, and do so on a night for which even the waxing moon sports a charming grin, you will eventually achieve that sublime state of fretless abandon for which human beings are hard-wired to zealously embrace.

It’s overkill, of course, when the smell of teen spirit is also in the mix and you get to stand above not one, but two freight trains racing beneath your howls and bellows of wild animal humanity, but that’s just how the process works: you put the nitroglycerine and gunpowder together and shake, just like Alfred Nobel learned us how to do.

There’s yet to be one of his prizes for cycling; there is one, though, a Nobel for Chemistry; couldn’t they award it for synthesizing magic?

Merit

This year’s official .83 spoke card, deftly executed by the Drainman Ian and selected unanimously by Derrick in a “vote” that would have done your average Central American Banana Republic President-for-Life proud, features Boy Scout-style merit badges depicting activities associated with shenanigans familiar to anyone who’s been out on a Thursday night ride, including red-light running, beer-drinking, tent-camping, first-aid, swimming, photography, and more.

And while there were no aquatic activities and—to the best of my knowledge—nobody put down a bedroll on the abandoned road at which we conflagrated, most of the other badges could have been earned last night on what turned out to be a model for the old-fashioned theme-less nighttime outdoor two-wheeled adventure for which this group of cycling miscreants has long been passing out cards—or just passing out, as the case may be.

Back when I was a wee lad in the decade known (to someone, I’m sure) as the “Naughty Oughtties” the rule for getting issued a spoke card was three rides and a race, and I’ll never forget how my trembling hands clutched at the precious laminated square with the arcane message “FTBC” after midnight at Greenlake some two or three months into my tenure as a bike gang newbie.

How special I felt! How I’d arrived, I thought, only to discover, in subsequent years, that what I thought was a destination was but a starting point for untold hours in the saddle, around the fire, on the bar stool, and occasionally flat on my back looking up at the stars or raindrops such as the case may be.

But it never gets old—even as I do—as here, into yet another (seventh?) spoke card there’s still new fires to ride to and even though I can’t count the number of instances I’ve witnessed Derrick’s trick of firecrackers in the coals, this was the first time I ever saw Joeball go all Chuck Norris on him for it.

Repeatable

The theme, if there was one, in honor of the day—Groundhog—and the classic film it inspired, (arguably, the greatest cinematic achievement ever, and certainly, Bill Murray’s finest hour) was doing the same thing over and over until you get it right.

And, as Joeball pointed out earlier in the day, the bike gang is pretty much like the movie: people, places, and events recur again and again, slightly differently, but essentially similar. You can almost predict what’s going to unfold, but then there’s a twist.

The Angry Hippie has a flat, for instance, but repairs it with nary an Anglo-Saxon epithet and unkibbitzed at by the typical peanut gallery.

Or we wend our way, as usual, to (a newly-refurbished!) Hop In grocery, but through fancy neighborhoods on steep surface streets never once taken before.

Or, there’s a route through the woods to what I’m pretty sure was my first Point83 swimming hole half a decade ago, but this time, no one goes in the water and the University Police never even show up to shoo us away.

There’s a scene in Groundhog Day where Phil Conners laments the day he’s been condemned to repeat: “I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank piña coladas. At sunset, we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day,” he says, “Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over.”

And although the dozens of Thursday night bike rides I’ve taken part in over the years have never once (thankfully) featured any of Phil’s sea otter hijinks, I don’t lament for a moment the continual sense of déjà vu all over again.

In Nietzsche’s writings we encounter the idea of eternal recurrence: Ask yourself what life would you live if you had to live this life over and over again for all eternity?

I don’t know the answer, but I’m sure there’d be ride bikes on Thursdays.

Waffling

The season’s been shuffled around this year, with winter coming late (and so far, hardly at all), so it’s no surprise, really, that February appeared in January—as evidenced last night by the full flowering (or, make that “flouring”) of the annual .83 Waffle Ride some four weeks before it usually rears its square-patterned head.

But that’s mere testament to the turn-on-a-dime flexibility of the drunken bike gang, able, in just a moment’s (well, two days’) notice turn a proposed Christmas tree conflagration event into one where the fires (such as they were) occurred on griddles rather than sand, and the objects of carbon release happened to be something edible as opposed to adornable.

In short, it was all about fire in the sky morphing into fire in the belly, and I for one, endorse such transformations even if they run counter to tradition, untraditional as it may be.

Hard-core miscreants may scoff at the idea of shit-canning an activity whose legal standing is already questionable just because John Law says “don’t do it,” but if it means that there can be two hall-pass worthy events in back-to-back weeks, I’m all for it.

Besides, think of how what another week of drying will do for the combustability of all those evergreen bombs currently stashed in people’s back yards and alleys.

tehJobies once again worked his electrical magic, breaking the park’s circuit only once in powering up half a dozen waffle irons, including the beloved Hello Kitty model, and Wreyford Senior got his week’s upper-body workout battering the batter into submission, the result of which was enough griddle cakes for all with plenty left over for flinging and burning as usual.

And, of course, Derrick managed to so effectively antique the trail home that riding behind (at least until the I-90 bridge) was like pedaling through a snowstorm, so, all in all, another successful evening of bike-fueled shenanigans, and to boot, now an open spot on Feburary’s calendar.