Unique

You could ride your bike halfway around the world like our new friend from Downunder, BlakeAndy, and not have a single other opportunity to experience what, around here, is fairly regular, if not downright commonplace: meandering through industrial wastelands on two wheels with several score like-minded ne’er-do-wells and fuckups, bursting lungs on what appears to be a freeway overpass complete with an eyes-closed pray-to-God crossing of those lanes halfway to the summit, then single-tracking through the woods to an abandoned gravel roadway where the firewood’s free, the beer is cold, (well, cool, anyway), sparks rise like libidinous angels in the night, and eventually, as the embers coalesce to cheery heartwarming coals, everything is as illuminated as a medieval manuscript, only better, since in this gallery, the portraits’ fire-dancing eyes follow viewers everywhere as the circle of humanity draws closer.

Seansweeny was telling me about a yoga class he went to that included dance music and a DJ and my initial reaction was well, that’s just too much, but then I was reminded that if beer is good and biking is good, then beer and biking is even better, so why not?  And adding a bonfire and stars just serves to enhance; perhaps there is no limit to augmentation after all.

In his objection to St. Anselm’s Ontological Proof for God’s existence, the monk Gaunilo asks us to consider a perfect island, that by Anselm’s logic would necessarily exist; but since it doesn’t, Anselm’s argument is allegedly disproven by reductio ad absurdum. 

Anselm responds that unlike God, who is infinite, an island is finite and so can continually be improved upon by addition, thus Gaunilo’s analogy, and by extension, his objection, fails.

But what if the island reaches such an ideal state that any addition would be subtraction?  Perfection might be a point achieved when conditions are balanced just so.

If that’s the case, then biking halfway around the world is but a short uphill pedal to God.