Dive

photo by joeball

It’s as corny as a Celine Dion song sung by a unicorn on a rainbow, but it’s true: sometimes it’s not about where you go, but how you get there.

Greenlake is as mundane a destination as there is, but when you arrive via a spin around the Ghettodrome, a climb over Queen Anne, and a thrilling descent which takes you across the Aurora Bridge in the so-called “bus lane,” it’s as special as anyone could hope for and at least as unusual as nachos in the park, an experience that in more than half a century on the planet, I’ve never ever experienced before.

Advice is, almost by definition, trite, but I offer it to myself on these occasions and am reminded never to pass up a chance to swim when it presents itself.

Forty eight hours before, you’re floating on your back under a full moon in the Caribbean Sea, but paddling about in a city park pond is equally glorious in its own way since, among other things, it doesn’t require twelve hours of travel time in aluminum containers but rather, is reached simply by snaking through one’s hometown astride a steel two-wheeler.  It may not be a glowing turquoise paradise, but all the elements are there for a live to be lived as fully as possible, hackneyed and pedestrian as that sentiment surely is.

But, of course, it’s not all old hat: pretty soon you’re arriving by bike at a splendid old local watering hole you don’t ever recall drinking at before, and it’s even got a self-styled “deck” in the back where Soccer moms strategize about how to get their kids to school and ballet lessons before being descended upon by a dozen or so beer drinkers who laugh loudly enough to drown out their conversation and earn the friendly ire of the joke-telling bartender who runs the joint.

And then you’re riding home, one more destination whose journey is that, too.

Leap

photo by joeball

The important thing is that no one broke a neck—not their own, nor anyone else’s.

Few things, I expect, would put a damper in one’s evening more effectively than having to see your friend or acquaintance hauled from a lake, limp and bleeding, and reduced to eating through a straw in a wheelchair for the rest of his or her life.

Fortunately, (and perhaps somewhat surprisingly), there was none of that, in spite of the slipperiness of the dock, the wonkiness of the ramp, and the intoxicated enthusiasm of riders as they hurtled towards the water on a brakeless BMX bike that wobbled and fishtailed on the plastic wood walkway.

My heart was in my mouth more than once as I could envision wheels sliding sideways and heads hitting corners, but instead of worst fears being realized, it was all good fun until someone loses an eye—and since no one did, “Woo-hoo!  Spring Break!” (To quote the departing Dr. Tittlefitz, who, if I recall correctly, didn’t cycle off the ramp, but who is pretty much doing the same thing in his life as he leaps headlong into the Midwest, Godspeed, sweet prince.)

Presumably, mad math skills could compute trajectories of flying two-wheelers, but even the most innumerate among us can calculate that bikes, beer, (a few) costumes, sun, swimsuits, and peer pressure will add up to times that might require something more like 3-D IMAX to really capture on film.

We may all be living the best action-adventure buddy-comedy neo-noir musical extravaganza ever and it’s in surround sound smell-o-vision, too.   No one knows how it’s going to end, but it seems like a scene where the hero rides his trusty steel horse off into the sunset ought to be in there somewhere.

Flames shot out of the top of the chimney at Gasworks and the shelter smoldered but didn’t ignite.

That’s some Oscar-winning performance, the role of a lifetime, no dry eyes in the house.

Grapple

photo by joeball

All I ask is that I never get inured to this nonsense, that I never fail to be utterly gobsmacked by the over-the-top inanity of it all, and that I’m always giddy and gleeful a the gleeful giddiness glowing before me in rainbow Technicolor when Everclear is mixed, slides are slipped, and vegan Jell-O in a kiddie pool provides the perfect venue for what turns out to be some pretty serious rasslin’ when bike nerds in bathing suits go at it for real.

If you ever catch me yawning, rolling my eyes, or making comparisons to previous events when this crazy shit is going down, I respectfully ask for a kick in the pants or possibly a nutpunch just so I never forget that it’s unforgettable every time—even if many of the participants will have trouble remembering the details afterwards.

Any of it would be more than enough which is why all of it can almost seem insufficient, but only for an instant until you recall that nowhere else in the Universe is this commonplace or expected, much less unprecedented and unbelievable.

Those kids on skateboards flying down Second Avenue among the disco bike horde had their peak moment and that was only 2 minutes into things.

People come out of many a woodwork to witness for themselves that such hijinks exist, but it’s those sights you can’t unsee—like naked bowling balls hurtling down the plastic-coated lawn or headlocked hillbillies thrashing like alligators in chunky green goo—that are hardest to believe your eyes over.

Seattle has a long tradition of Seafair shenanigans, and I like to think such escapades as these fall squarely into that exalted history; we may not be pirates “kidnapping” beauty queens from local diners, but surely future archeologists unearthing plastic bits and bike grease will have to conclude that the local customs were certainly uncustomary, in spite of the fact that you can almost, over time, become accustomed to them.