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.