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.