Strategy

The whole point of life is to make plans that you eventually come to let go of.

Most of the interesting stuff that happens happens when predictions go awry.

So, for instance, even though the Whiskey Stop ends up being cancelled due to maybe a megaphone, and the hope of catching an earlier ferry is quashed because the creativity of dock workers succumbs to shapes from Detroit and Tokyo, the result is that everyone’s together as imagined, even though no one had any idea things would look or sound like this beforehand.

It’s a shame that all our expectations and plans don’t come out exactly as expected and planned for; on the other hand, it’s way better than forecast to achieve results  that are completely unexpected.  To that end, we do what we can, in spite of the fact that that which we’re unable to do defines each of us more clearly.

It’s harder, actually, to get what you don't want than what you do; that’s why it’s important to thank the Universe every day for fucking with us.

Pain is relative and fleeting; what sticks around, by contrast, are examples of people trying to do the best that they can in difficult situations.  When you allow your eyes the panorama, you see fields of neon ablaze. 

I came to believe in the parade of  Peep’s, but who cares, really?

Especially when you get to stand around the prize pile for long enough to become  a trope; honestly, I think that I’m supposed to steer clear of the assembled loot, but at the same time, one does, in the name of efficiency, at least—have an obligation to identify what hasn’t been chosen so as to pick wisely.

But that’s the point, exactly: that-which-is changes constantly, so you can never really predict how things will turn out. 

Nevertheless, you can be certain the FHR will be grand, although in a manner you’d never have imagined.

Batter

Photo by Joeball

Even if it’s true, as tehJobies surmised, WE are getting old,IT remains as new as ever, and time stands still in honor of the 8th Annual Waffle Ride, returned this year to its traditional time of year when the Sun is in Aquarius.

The promise of free carbohydrates compels even better than free beer as three score cyclists set out from Westlake on a crystal clear evening that one wag called, in deference to New Orleans’ upcoming “Fat Tuesday,” Seattle’s “Get Fat Thursday.” Hah.

In spite of—for those not affected, anyway—the requisite culpability-free bike crash en route, the yearly horde successfully descended upon the Island Oasis and proceeded to produce breakfast at night in under an hour with not a single broke breaker.

Take it as an illustration of the principle that everyone is happiest when they’re helping each other, which is why tehJobies gets to consistently enjoy too much of a good thing.

Langston opined that this was the shortest fair-weather .83 route ever; even if that’s true in terms of mileage, it’s false when it comes to experience. Keep in mind that the ride is almost a decade long even before starting and that before it was over, there were two bridge crossings, multiple tunnel-screamings, innumerable paths along routes unfamiliar to many, and countless intangible places that pedaling parties can take you.

At the end of my night, as I lay in bed with the smell of bakeries wafting through my nose and the dulcet tones of tehSchott’s moving karaoke rendering of “Stand by Me” drifting through my brain, the phrase “Fun is work” bubbled up in my mind and it occurred to me that the phrase is a palindrome--if by “work” we mean something like tehJobies’ tireless efforts at the irons.

And I realized that by such tautologies that the Universe comes into being; something from nothing, existence via identity.

Looked at that way, such fun ain’t old, it’s eternal.

Suds

Photo by Joeball

Everything is a metaphor for everything.

Mist, for example, represents our inability to see what’s right in front of our face.

Destinations remind us that getting there is an arrival itself and being in one place a way to continue the trip.

Daniel Featherhead’s cantilevering split bike stands for the simple truth he does everything biking better than you.

And beer illustrates that we are all just bubbles in the common vat, froth on the shared primordial soup, self-aware suds arising from a single container that holds and is holding everything everywhere always.

And thanks to the fine folks at Peddlar Brewing, it’s all free!

Sometimes, there are miles and miles to go before the libations flow so liberally; on other Thursdays, you’ve barely broken a sweat and already you’re in your cups.  I’m pretty sure that never before, though, have so many ridden so little for so many pints; and I’m absolutely certain it’s unprecedented to do so in a place where you get to walk behind the bar and tap the keg yourself.

Of course, it’s not how far you ride, but how far the ride takes you.  And when you can stand around with a bottomless Solo cup of pale ale, the potential for movement is, like the amount to be drunk, limitless.  Metaphor, no?

The Angry Hippy conjectured that matter and energy precede time; the Kantian in me resists that: my mind’s categories make it harder for me to imagine an event outside time than a thing without dimension.  That said, one does experience timeless moments, especially when a ten o’ clock curfew really means 10:30.

Unless there are beer cells, there would be no beer.  And yet, without the beer, there would be no beer cells.  We’re individuals, of course, but only against the backdrop we share.

No riders, no ride.

Yet without a ride, there are no riders.

Metaphors become metaphors for metaphors.

And still the beer flows freely.  For free.