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.