Classic

photo by joeball

Hopes fulfilled.   Expectations exceeded.  Sunset and moonrise.

And, I swear, a tailwind in both directions.

All you have to do is stick with it, keep pedaling, and yet another outdoor venue appears, complete with its very own celestial moment, whether that’s  our favorite local star lapping up the lazy waters of the hometown lake as it sinks behind the nearest ridge of our fair city or the dirty toe of a moon sliding sideways across the western horizon like a bouncing ball in the cartoon musicals.

You won’t find any of this in the palm of your hand, but it’s right there for the grabbing on your bike.

This one was a summer classic from the start: Second Avenue en masse; grandeur over the city bridge; shadow cyclists animating beside you on all the fences.

There was tunnel-yelling at the top and bottom of your lungs, too.

I laughed aloud at the absurd beauty of the Lake Washington crossing: that frog-like sound the cars’ wheels make an accompaniment to water-skeeters on two wheels. 

Try to capture THAT on your device; you have to make a photograph with your heart instead and even that’s just a snapshot of the comprehensive 3-D Surround-Sound reality.

The Island’s marble raceway over and over; how many corkscrews can a corkscrew screw if a corkscrew can screw screws?

Perfect timing for the endo-less beach arrival: sunlight gilding the waters for plenty of time to get wet and pruny while emulating otters.

Some aerobics, then provisions, then another beach, this one complete with a folksinger, are you kidding me?

Consensus achieved and the lights twinkled and blinked westward, still in shirtsleeves after eleven.

You can cite the particulars of what becomes a classic most: miles ridden, beaches taken, strokes swum, beers consumed, jokes told, lies believed, overhead orbs admired, but it still fails to tell the whole story. 

For that, you need to be there embodied, dripping and squirming, like a newborn, born anew.