Christmapocalypse

It’s fun to have fun, isn’t it?

The holidays are often a chore, as we work overtime to commemorate the season in dutiful and predictable ways, so it’s a welcome relief to be able to celebrate fairly irresponsibly even if it involves more than a modicum of planning including at least ten packages of playing cards and more than four dozen people on bicycles willing to pedal through the woods and up steep hills just for the sheer nonsense of it.

A steady drizzle early in the evening did little to detour the faithful and while it may have dampened one’s outerwear, it sure failed to throw any water on the celebratory mood of things—which, also, no doubt was aided by the number of Christmas lights that adorned people’s rigs, not to mention a reasonably dirty Santa and a dancing evergreen tree.

I figured out a new strategy for my checkpoint stop; last year, racers earned their bonus by joining me in the enjoyment of my stash; this year, by contrast, I provided the opportunity for participants to return the favor to me, a successful plan that resulted in my going all giggly for many hours afterward.

The reindeer games were a rousing success and made more hilarious by the setting which afforded you the opportunity to stagger around over fallen logs as you continually forgot that there they were all around.  That no one threw up—at least on my watch—is probably a minor Christmas miracle and, as far as I can tell, there was only one significant crash, and that happened on the way home, more evidence, I believe, that the Lord surely does love fools, particularly around the immaculate birthday of His only son.

Gifts were exchanged, songs were sung, and dance floor Chelanigans abounded; it felt like the best sort of family affair, one abounding with drunken uncles and crazy aunts, real holiday spirit and not just all those in people’s glasses.

Likeable

When I pointed out to Sarah-with-an-H that there were plenty of other things a person could be doing besides peddling through a mid-December drizzle on a dark and dreary end-of-autumn evening, she said, “Yes, but I like this,” which only goes to show that you're not the only one willing to illustrate Mom’s observation about people who haven’t the sense to come in out of the rain and frankly, why would you want to when being out in the weather offers opportunities for gliding along the glistening roadway, your tires hissing while your face gets a free derm-abrasion and moisturizing treatment along the way.

I’ll never know for sure if the precipitation stopped while we stood under the overpass drinking the magically-appearing beer because, as tehSchott maintained, I never went beyond the edges of our concrete umbrella, but I’m choosing to believe that either coincidentally or because the weather gods have a particularly wry sense of humor, the drizzle ended during our roadhouse-without-a-house intermission, only to resume as soon as we set out again for our remarkably close by destination.

It was one of those nights when the club really lived up to its name or so it seemed until the ride home, which was surely longer than 83 one-hundredths of a mile but by that time, who cares about getting wet, especially given a good two hours of indoor drinking to prepare for it.

And besides, you do have to be impressed with such a solid turnout of old and new on so crummy of a night, a phenomenon that makes you wonder what else, really, could folks be doing this holiday season: watching It’s a Wonderful Life on TV while sipping an eggnog?  Stringing popcorn garlands which to adorn the Christmas tree?  Gathering around the burning Yule log to sing songs about Jesus and Santa Claus?

All of those, certainly, are worthy endeavors, but when it comes to what’s liked on a Thursday, two wheels wins once again.

Blowhard

While there were a good many instances when the wind, whipping through the corridors of buildings, made your bike veer suddenly one way or another and brought an involuntary “Wheeeee!” to your lips, it nevertheless seemed like the earlier forecasts of an all-out windpocalypse were somewhat overstated.

As we stood at Drink Quick Park in Queen Anne overlooking Our Fair City, we saw flashes of lightning in the distance and Little Stephen gleefully pointed out how the tall skinny cypress trees waggled their tops like tickling fingertips, not a single rolling blackout nor exploding transformer was in evidence anywhere.

Serendipity abounded, though, as the subsequent stop at nearby Targy’s Tavern to pursue our own version of rolling blackouts coincided remarkably well with the one drenching shower of the evening and provided an authentic opportunity to see illustrated that idiom about being busier than a one-armed bartender, although “paper-hanger” strikes me as slightly more evocative.

Eventually, there was the picturesque descent and space-age bridge crossing to meander through the blustery waterfront for an opportunity to view the fabled “Murray’s Fault,” which turned out to be no more impressive than the weather—even though, potentially, it’s likely to be far more damaging to our local infrastructure than a handful of downed trees and power lines.

And then, it was off to the Gardens of Bush where we managed to wear out our welcome as usual for what hardly seemed anything more than a little spirit of the season in the grand scheme of things.

Looking back on it all, you might say that the experience failed to live up to the hype, but that would be to misconstrue the wondrous ability of human beings to make predications about the future but still be surprised by the outcome.  The space between what we expect and what actually occurs is where life takes place and if it can do so on a day where nearly everyone sees rainbows, then that’s living.

Swamp

At the beginning of the evening, chasing a dream, I knew when I ran into Fancy Fred that all the desired connections would be made.  There he was, in the flesh, right in the middle of where it seemed like what we both were looking for.

Pretty soon right away thereafter and thanks to some words exchanged via outer space, we were all bombing through Interlachen to the standard provisioning stop and jumping off place for adventures northeast.

It seemed for a while that woods and shelter would be the first destination but here’s the most amazing bit of all: a brand-new warm and cozy gathering space in a spot that’s always been missing the one component it’s always needed.

See how the simple addition of the simplest addition turns a swamp into home?

Somewhere off towards the University, a spotlight glared its eye at us.  But my fears were assuaged when I realized, by walking a mere twenty yards or so from the assembled, that our level of external illumination was all but invisible in contrast to everything around—which also was another lesson in the healthy narcissism of the human condition.

The rain really only called for the non-existent evergreen canopy for about ten blustery minutes, just long enough to start noticing that as long as you continued rotating slowly near the hearth, you could balance the wetting with the drying, an enterprise arguably more about angles than anything else.

A two-fire night was proposed, but just in the nick of time, did Kevin WC survive his encounter with a bungie cord to reprovision; the drizzle dried up and until the beer quickly ran out, you got to experience that fine balance between the greatest feeling in the world that as homo sapiens we’ve been hard-wired by tens of thousands of years to feel great about and the concurrent observation that you’re standing outside in a muddy wetlands should anyone care enough to take notice.

Elfin

It was more about sleigh rides than bike rides as the Thursday night sojourn, such as it was, assembled at the annual Sugarplum Elves calendar release party to quaff quaffables and bask in the holiday glow of pure adorableness that is the preferred festively clad troupe of singing and dancing elfertainers for all right-minded people, not to mention those associated with Point 83, ba-dum-dum.

Less cake, more frosting to be sure, which was my experience, too, coming from up north on a dry moonless night to arrive just in time for the final few numbers on the Elves’ set-list, so while I got to enjoy their dulcet tones and charming arrangements (and the way they put the songs together, too) for a couple of tunes, I bemoaned the fact I didn’t get to see them perform a few of my longtime holiday faves, notably the ever-popular, “I Want a HIppotamus for Christmas,” alas.

On the other hand, the good news is that—unlike last year—I did manage to arrive home with my calendar, although that did require my acquiring a second one, after my first purchase was apparently snatched up (when I set it down on the pool table) by someone more avaricious, or perhaps, drunker, than me.

But in the holiday spirit, I bequeath that one to whomever walked away with it; I sure hope you appreciate Kablouie’s signature on her Golden Birthday day, customized for yours truly, so help me God.

I’m generally opposed to Christmas celebrations prior to Thanksgiving, but was glad to make an exception in this case; it felt like December 20th, not November 20th, albeit, thankfully, without the endless loop of country music versions of the holiday classics that will inevitably predominate our shared audio space a month from now.

As it was, the whole evening felt like the best kind of gift—one that keeps on giving even abed and beyond—as visions of sugarplums dance in our heads.

Fullness

photo by altercator

Technically speaking, the moon wasn’t full—that, the internet tells me, happened at 2:22 in the afternoon.

But it was the night in this cycle upon which luna was fullest, so bright, eventually, that we stood around the backyard barbecue bathed in milk, our shadows sharper than they’d been in any daytime all week.

And I didn’t need no world wide web to tell me those concentric moondogs rippling out from our planet’s satellite like fried egg rainbows were a once-in-this-lifetime, anyway, phenomenon that all but made the cannabis-induced visuals superfluous, albeit enhanced.

You don’t have to ride lots of miles to go far on such a night; the ghosts of our Duwamish predecessors and even whichever later settler left us his chimney gather ‘round; Tim Burton does the set and when the music’s turned off and you can hear yourself think, you really don’t have to: all that’s required is a set of eyes to drink it in—well, that, and a six-pack of beer, a box of Duraflame logs, some lighter fluid, and three dozen or so of your old friends and new acquaintances out for a bike ride together, more or less.

“The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao,” says the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao-Tzu, but, of course, everyone knows that; language fails to capture the totality of All; and you can no more put into words what such experience is really like than you can enclose God in a box. 

Suffice it to say, then:

And let the empty space speak for itself and remind you of spidery flames climbing the fireplace, clouds parting to reveal the smilingest Man in the Moon and his French rabbit counterpart gleaming like crazy, the soft ground underfoot, useless hills beneath your tires, and just how unlikely yet inevitable these scenes are.

I mean, really: the moon reaches fullness only once every 28 days; this shit I’m not talking about happens every week.

Sprung

photo by joeball

Bungie cords hate bikes.

Recently, I believe, one attacked Kevin 3.0’s bike as he was trying to leave Gasworks some Thursday, and last night, mine decided to tear from its roots the wire connecting the generator hub to my front lamp while I prepared to head from Carkeek, thereby creating the only dark spot on an otherwise luminous evening drinking bicycles and riding around fire.

Or vise-versa.

See, what they do is wrap themselves around things until forward becomes backwards and the problem before you goes from surprising to confounding to hopeless which turns out to be fine if there are still people behind you and extra redundancy backup also as well, too.

Time did a similar rewind last evening, turning 2014 into 2011 and even earlier for a while with visitors from previous eras and their hosts showing up to pedal north under the mildest of mid-October skies in memory, so dry I could even forego my usual aversion to the Ballard Bridge grating.

Such it was: a night of seeing things differently, coming, for instance, in conversation with Custom Garth to an appreciation of the two-stroke motor, or being content with merely watching, rather than yelling at trains.

Nevertheless, the traditional remained equally well-represented: firecrackers were tossed in the fire and launched from outstretched arms, Joby passed around whiskey, and more than one person had trouble finding his bike when the time came to roll out.

It’s the stretchiness of bungies that is both their blessing and their curse.  The same characteristic that enables you to proudly bind a bundle of wood to your front rack is the one that makes your ride home so unusual; a flashlight isn’t much of a headlight—which means that the best way out isn’t the flattest, but rather, the brightest.

How tightly something can grasp when it winds around itself is a revelation; no wonder we hang on for deal life as the ride once more rides itself.

Ramp

photo by altercator

I can think of no better advertisement for the bicycle than the phenomenon of forty or so cyclists snaking through four lanes of bottlenecked traffic at rush hour in tune to the throbbing bass beat of contemporary dance music emanating at jet engine volume from speakers mounted on the rear rack of one such two-wheeler.  Were I another of those poor saps trapped behind the steering wheel of my metal cage, I’d want only to leave my motorized vehicle behind and pedal off with new friends to go drinking outside around a fire on a doomed freeway ramp beneath the nearly still full harvest moon of autumn.

But too bad, suckers, that’s what you get for destroying the planet with your gas-guzzling monkey-boxes; next time, put the fun between your legs, why doncha, instead of sinking that posterior deeper into those heated leather seats you paid so much extra for?

Now, don’t get me wrong: while I may not be the biggest fan of the internal combustion engine, I certainly appreciate the automobile infrastructure, without which, most of the routes one finds oneself pedaling over would be non-existent (although, as last night’s ride illustrated, there would still be gravel paths and wooded trails to get momentarily lost on) and, even worse, there’d be no abandoned early 1970s highway projects to cavort and gambol upon until the cops show up and shine their spotlights in a half-hearted attempt to chase you away.

It’s kind of heartbreaking to learn that our city’s beloved ghost ramp is coming down in a couple weeks; standing on its glass-strewn surface and being awestruck by the candlelit shrine and the perfect Zen moon reflecting on the marsh below brought to mind years of moments I’ve enjoyed there--from Derrick’s famous kayak-cleanup inspiring shower of beer cups to White Trash sprints to last night’s post-apocalyptic dance party and bottle-throwing extravaganza.

They called it “the bridge to nowhere,” but it always took you somewhere grand.

Quantum

photo by joeball

Science fiction conjectures about the implications of relativity theory and quantum physics suggest (at least to science fiction writers) the possibility of wormholes through the fabric of space-time continua that allow for travel faster than the speed of light.  Intrepid travelers could avail themselves of inter-galactic shortcuts to transcend the limits of three dimensions and arrive in a straight line at point C from point A without ever having to go through point B.

Of course, one can do this already, just by following the tail lights of fellow bike riders as you swirl through the forests of West Seattle to suddenly, as if by the magic of aboriginal dreamtime, arrive at our city’s original lifeblood where, in short order, a conflagration ensues and humans return to their simian roots, albeit with certain post-primate accouterments such as gasoline, canned beer, and racy playing cards.

Having been welcomed to the woods through the primordial teardrop Shakti yoni, I suppose it only made some kind of paradoxical sense that Dick Pic Park would live up to its name, although its former moniker, the Hidden Hobo Firepit was equally inappropriately appropriate, especially when the flames from one more than too many palettes threatened to ignite the overhanging trees and bushes into a blaze that would not have been hidden even from outer space astronauts gazing at the Great Wall of China with their naked eyes.

There were trails through trails on the to the early bar and subsequent fire, at least one superfluous hill climb, and perhaps, unfortunately, a new member of the broken collarbone club to boot; but it was easy to remember to resist grumbling no matter how much huffing and puffing was called for: efficiency is an overrated virtue when it comes to Thursday night rides. 

And even with shortcuts through the insides of atoms, the two-wheeled universe is huge, but there are no wrong turns when where you’re going is where you are and nobody’s ever lost when the ride rides together.

Pied

photo by drdiatom

In some versions of the famous musical fairy tale, the legendary Pied Piper gets a bad rap for spiriting the children of Hamelin away with his magical flute.

This seems unfair. 

After all, he’s simply responding to the treachery of the town’s mayor, who's promised him a bag of gold for clearing the town of rats.

And nobody ever talks to the kids themselves, who obviously prefer following and gamboling to the Piper’s dulcet tones rather than continuing their lives of boredom and drudgery in the uptight medieval burg of their birth.

Some things never change, do they?

Here in the 21st century, the strategy still works, as the inner children of half a hundred putative adults willingly pedal along in the wake of traveling music and pretty soon find themselves in a land by a lake where all one’s cares and woes are forgotten—and in more than a few cases, where one’s bike is parked and where one’s pants have been left slips the mind, as well.

The route to the familiar provisioning stop was unprecedented and delightful, affording participants an awe-inspiring panorama of the lingering late summer sunset and, even more thrillingly, innumerable moments of glee as the rolling audio caravan ignited one more individual or group explosion of booty-shaking on the part of pedestrians and bus-waiters as it passed by.

It may not be, as Meghan Trainor claims, “all about that bass,” but the sub-woofer sure helps, as something about the phenomenon of so much sonic extravaganza emanating from a two-wheeler encourages people to partially disrobe and start shaking it with impressive alacrity.

Of course, the fruity cocktails don’t hurt, either.

Some people collect stamps; others nerd out on tying flies or putting ships in bottles; all cool hobbies, sure, but as Joby pointed out when discussing his own avocational interest in electronic high-fidelity, they rarely result in pants-off dance parties al fresco—not since the days of the original Pied Piper, anyway.

Faith

photo by joeball

Sometimes, when faced with what seem like two equally plausible options, you’ve got to trust whatever remnant of naturally-endowed wayfaring ability remains in your consciousness and boldly opt for descent, accepting the possibility that—if you’re wrong—it means slogging all the way back up the canyon in the dark.

At the same time, it’s quite a relief to live in a day and age where satellites and plastic can provide much-needed guidance after you’ve taken the plunge and ended up lost at the far western edge of things when it’s actually the northernmost land mass you’re seeking.

Because it forever remains a miracle to propel oneself through silent overgrown pathways and suddenly happen upon shoreline revelry with numerous human beings, copious amounts of stimulation, and—even though summer’s tenuous grip on evening the makes it a boon rather than a requirement—plenty of fire around which to congregate and bloviate or just bask in the implausible reality of it all.

Some parts of the physical, (and for that matter, immaterial) universe are really only accessible by bicycle; perhaps one could arrive on foot (or by boat) but no one, not even rail-riding hobos would; and certainly, the height of levitation that’s achieved would be unachievable without the assistance of human-powered two-wheeling.

Remarkably, you find you’ve pedaled up to a place where, just around the corner, and only for as long as the rising tide allows, is another whole mystery laid out for your pleasure, complete with tent-shaped driftwood and clattering castanets as smooth rocks wash in and out.

And you realize—given the current arrangement of atoms in our dimension—that none of this, especially all these carbon-based sacks of mostly water arrayed cheerfully about, would be manifest without the invention and manufacture of the velocipede.

So, I guess it’s the least you can do to carry your bike all the way up the steps to get out—given all it’s enabled you to get into.

Grail

photo by altercator

Among the central tenets—if not THE central tenet—in the Advaita Vedanta, (which is one of the philosophical schools underlying Hinduism)—is that, as human beings, we routinely misidentify ourselves as an individual self as opposed to what we really are: the Universal Self, the fundamental ground of all Being, Pure Consciousness, the Atman, identical to all of Reality, the Brahman. 

Or, something like that.

Contemplative practices like yoga or meditation are designed, as the sage Patanjali says in the Yoga Sutras, to “still the fluctuations of the mind” so that our true nature is revealed and we can see ourselves—to use a common analogy—as the whole ocean rather than as individual whitecaps upon the sea.

As it turns out, however, instead of say, retiring to an ashram to chant the 108 names of God from dawn until dusk, you can achieve the same result by gathering up about fifty people on bicycles, have them ride to a wooded park on the edge of a warm, glassy lake, where—inspired by so-called “distributed scalable cocktails”—they will mingle and dance to a bicycle-mounted sound system whose highly-efficient power diodes make possible an audioscape in which it becomes impossible to deny that we are all part of the same thing, at least when Lil Jon’s Get Low is blasting through the speakers.

It makes you eternally grateful to be part of an entity in which whiskey-aided field repair of complex electronics by the light of bicycle headlights takes place and soon results in that classic marker of authentic transcendence: girls and boys dancing on tables in their underwear.

And while, in the Western tradition, spiritual pilgrims searched far and wide for their Holy Grail, mine was right there: a night-time swimming hole with an outdoor fire to boot!

Seems just like what the Vedanta is saying: this is simply too much for a single self; a more likely explanation is that it’s all our Awesome.

Merge

photo by altercator

Solipsism is the view that one’s own self or consciousness is the only thing that exists in the Universe.

It’s easy enough to see how this perspective arises: all we know of the world is our own perceptions of it; we conclude naturally enough that everything in nature is simply a product of our own minds. 

But as the eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell pointed out, even people who purport to be solipsists deny their view just by reporting it.  After all, to whom am I supposed to be defending solipsism if there’s no one out there but me?

Another puzzle for solipsism is to explain the incredible diversity and complexity of all nature.  I may have a reasonably good imagination, but really, is any one mind creative enough to come up with phenomena like the platypus, or the Milky Way, or especially the myriad and ever-shifting array of human interactions and experience? 

Even the mind of God, where someone like the 18th century British Empiricist George Berkeley has everything taking place, seems too puny to account for the vastness of it all.

Case in point: one group of several dozen bicyclists sets out from its usual Thursday evening spot and, after amply provisioning, pedals to a relatively secluded, but reasonably familiar platform strung several stories above a Superfund site just in time for the spectacular summer sunset; unexpectedly, another oddly sympatico gang of two-wheelers rolls up soon after and instantly, Venn diagrams overlap like crazy. 

Even the most committed of solipsists will have to admit that no one could possibly see this coming; it’s simply too marvelous to be conceived of from nothing.

Moreover, the night continues and former strangers—now instant best friends—are reunited in one bar after another and while one’s own consciousness contracts under the influence, the possibilities continue to expand. 

All this, and a three Scott night to boot!

Sorry Mr. and Ms. Solipsist, you just can’t make this shit up.

Unimaginable.

Prom

photo by lizlemon

Time so sweetens memories that most of us, ten years afterwards, will recall an event that featured torn streamers, deflating mylar balloons, and an impoverished sound system puttering away in a shadowy high school gymnasium with the fondness reserved for Broadway extravaganzas designed by Hollywood musical directors especially for one’s own personal enjoyment,; so imagine how warmly we will regard a truly delightful evening a decade hence.

Think of how sweet it will be to look back in a tenth of a century on a perfect summer night where pink clouds are smudged across the horizon above a smooth disc of water in a park in which honey locusts glow golden before the setting sun and you get to amuse yourself by cozying up under a banner celebrating a dance that begins on two wheels and makes its way, by twists and turns, through familiar streets made satisfyingly unfamiliar by the assembled multitude, the shared frivolity, and the ongoing promise of unexpected expectations and unanticipated anticipations.

Plus, consider the stories you’d have to tell at your own high school graduation if you had a dad who rode you across the high freeway bridge on a trail-a-bike; if that isn’t at least as memorable dry-humping in the backseat of your father’s Oldsmobile, the forgetfulness is coming early.

The most memorable proms typically feature some heinous event: think of the final scene of Stephen King’s Carrie, or they way it unfolds in untold film comedies like Mean Girls or It’s a Wonderful Life.

For me, though, being able to get all Footloose is what it’s really all about; the opportunity to kick off my Sunday shoes and savor the fewer than seven degrees of separation connecting me to Kevin Bacon and the world-at-large means that the desired level of losing the blues has been achieved.

I could have stayed at the dance a little longer, but I already had enough to remember and already, happily, a bit to forget.

Slippery

photo by fatasian

I’ll tell you, Officer, that Cascade Bike Club sure knows how to throw a party, don’t they?

The term “Felliniesque” comes to mind (or maybe Kafkaesque), but if we’re in the business of neologisms based on people’s names, then perhaps we should add Jobyesque to the list.  This would refer to an event whose carnival-like imagery is something out of the Parisian demi-monde of the Belle Epoque as performed by Cirque du Soleil on mushrooms; you’d see a lot of things that you could never believe were happening and even more that you could never unsee no matter how hard you tried.  And it would all happen pretty much on two wheels.

When I was a rambunctious adolescent, my mom used to counsel me as I headed out the door on my latest adventure to first, not break my neck, and second, refrain from getting arrested.  Some of her acquaintances, I’m told, reproached her for setting the bar so low, but, when you consider all the kind of trouble that such joyful boyful energy can get into, it’s not so obvious that this isn’t a fairly conservative admonition after all.  It’s clear, in any case, that when one pushes right up against the boundary of those two limits, that nonsense can expand to fill all the available space.

It was a spring-loaded visual feast as one more pale body would disappear down the slippery slide and suddenly detonate an exploding rainbow of multi-colored wands being launched skywards; the leftover ordnance from our nation’s birthday celebration was hardly warranted, but why the hell not, in the name of Seafair and all—relatively speaking, 'tis barely a whisper compared to the afternoon’s Blue Angels and hydroplane races.

And while the campsite rule was probably violated, it’s hard to feel too terribly guilty given how lovely the hemlocks and Doug Firs looked with their glowing adornments.

Maybe Cascade can send out someone in a kayak to pick up the pieces.

Bridge

The new South Park Bridge is an engineering marvel, as evidenced by its ability to propel two dozen or so bicyclists over it and up an almost endlessly-rising roadway just to idly stand outside a gated softball complex near a well-appointed disc golf course in order to drink beer and doctored beers and feast on spicy watermelon before gathering up to drink more beer at a bar that, as Joeball pointed out and Joby concurred, is like a model for the sort of place at which beer should be drunk by two dozen or so bicyclists on nights such as the one in question.

The tequila tasted like vodka, which might just mean the place has two flavors of well liquor, clear and brown, but that’s just fine, as the largesse of our neon round-stander was such that it overextended the watering hole’s supply of shot glasses so that some lucky recipients were served their portions in rocks glasses, but the friendly bartender took in all in stride, even the part where pretty much all the assembled shouted along with the music when the traditional theme song came on the jukebox.

On a three-Kevin night, a former regular returned from the drought-stricken Southland to experience the lushness of our Pacific Northwest, where even under the final leg of an airport flight path, Douglas Fir, Bigleaf Maple, and Western Red Cedar trees flourish with exuberance.

This might be the only place in the country where a Hooter’s Casino is turned back into a Red Apple Supermarket; the pies may not be as fresh as he former décor, but the place does feature a section to source all your supplies for appropriately south-of-the-border themed libations and snacks.

Eating marijuana can make you lose things: a Velcro leg-strap, a favored beer cozy, and the Altoids box for pre-rolled mini-joints is the toll over consecutive Thursdays, but so be it; forgetfulness is a the price you pay for such memorable nights.

Meander

Eventually, the ride will find its way, even if it takes standing around for a quarter hour outside an apartment in which wool jerseys are being allocated and Fancy Fred’s ankle is swelling up like a sausage on the grill.

photo by altercator

Finally, options will be discarded and someone will take enough initiative that people can start following behind one another to a place where beer can be bought before climbing to the summit of our fair city’s wildest park, a place where the clouds overhead are like pulled cotton candy and the sand, backlit by the pinkening skies, makes it look like people are doing cartwheels on a movie set for a Southern California beach movie, hang ten Moondoggie, go!

It’s not always high-concept shenanigans with costumes and a theme; sometimes taking ridiculous routes through some of the town’s worst traffic is plenty for a laugh.

And sure, a swim would have been nice, but how can you complain about an outdoor gathering on a bluff at the edge of a continent (relatively speaking) where you get to indulge in so many libations and conversations that you can barely keep track of all your pieces and parts, some of which—although thankfully not the wallet or phone—may not have finally made it home in their complete and undivided form?

Of course, one wants to have standards, and there’s nothing wrong with aspiring to everything always being turned up to eleven, but what you realize, having navigated crazily through the walking trails criss-crossing the dunes, that what you really want is to find that place where expectations and reality embrace and you can’t imagine wanting something other than what you’re getting—which is way more than anyone deserves, especially given these increasingly scary times in which we live.

We could always desire more: miles, nonsense, karaoke participants, random booty-shakers, but why?  When an evening out on two wheels provides so much useless beauty, it's perfectly delightful to coast.

Submersion

photo by altercator

“What is this?”  “Who are we?”  “What is the meaning of life?”

These are just a few of the questions that inevitably emerge as four score cyclists in white with red accents stream through city streets and public thoroughfares on a perfect summer evening, accompanied by no less than half a dozen other two-wheeling free spirits bedecked in taurean disguises along with, of course, a matador.

“How can this possibly be happening?” is yet another query that’s inspired in spite of the fact that the tradition, such as it is, goes back to at least the previous decade and at this rate, promises—in the future—to eclipse the original Old Country version in the collective consciousness or at least the bucket lists of thrill-seekers the world around.

Say what you will about the decline of American exceptionalism, but you’ve still got to hand it to a place where a first-generation immigrant from South Asia can dress in garb inspired by an event in Spain and ride an English invention manufactured in China all around a city on the edge of the North American continent beneath a rising nearly-full moon that’s the same all over the world but nowhere more striking than in the eastern sky of a north-facing freshwater bay.

You see the bobbing heads of giggling swimmers and you know there’s a body treading water beneath every one; similarly, it’s readily apparent that all of us, underneath the surface of our delightful differences, are, like the fruiting mycelium, each connected as a single entity.

It’s a good thing we have ribcages is all I can say; otherwise, such shenanigans would surely cause hearts to burst forth from chests, swollen as they are by camaraderie, spectacle, and fermented grapes.

Artistry happens by accident on purpose: burgundy splashes and splatters on summer-bleached t-shirts and sundresses put tie-dye to shame.

Such loveliness fills the eyes to the brim; tears of joy salt-watering the lake with every deeper dive.

Overstimulation

photo by joeball

It’s pretty amazing what you can pack into a mere 18 hours on two wheels: beer on a patio opened just for you and your friends; a ferry boat ride with more than forty fully-loaded cyclists, all of whom are cleared from the “poop deck” by the power of Derrickito’s crop dust; something remarkably similar to bike touring on country roads past naval bases on a peninsula; then up and up to a vista point that really afforded one some swell vista, and all this before setting up a campsite where beer and spirits far outnumbered water, and many, if not most, stayed up way beyond the horses’ bedtimes; afterwards, come morning, there’s still plenty of time to roll downhill, make a return boat, and be showered and shaved at pretty much the same hour you would have anyway had you never experienced the entire whirlwind in the first place.

Many a rule was broken, notably the one about not following the Angry Hippy up a mountain, but it turned out to be well worth it, even if coming down meant a snapped front brake cable for the effort and since you learn something new every time you go bike camping, the lesson here is twofold: first, bring a spare when you go to the woods and second, in a pinch, you can substitute a gear cable if you jam the leftover end of the broken wire into the lever socket to keep it from slipping.

I lay in my tent with the sound of a screech owl behind me and a lilting chorus of Karadactyl squawks, Botorff bellows, and TicToc gongs towards the front—animals and humans in the wild, making their own presences being heard.

Somehow, if you’re lucky, you may even get forty winks in before dawn breaks, but if not, it hardly matters, since, like Fancy Fred, you remain in a waking dream state with all that happens at the speed of bike.

Tribe

photo by altercator

On my way home from the day on which I cleared my desk to officially start summer vacation, I took a route I never take and stopped at a store I never stop at to buy beer and lo and behold, upon exiting, there was a Wild (well, actually at this time of day, Mild) Joeball, waiting for me with an invitation to a pre-funk picnic in Myrtle Edwards Park.

That’s the sort of day it was and such good fortune extended well into the night.

The plan, as I understand it in retrospect, was to ride to a bar we’d never go to again and start another streak of getting 86’ed from a bar—a worthy ambition indeed.

So, we crossed the water going east and kept on going. 

I thought when little Stephen would appear at intersections and say “The goose is just down there,” he meant the proverbial wild one being chased and so I kept on pedaling on through the lingering twilight.

My only sadness was when the group got split and there was just a pair of us gliding through the miraculously well-tended paths and boardwalks of Bellevue’s Wilberton Hill Park; it broke my heart to imagine that my fellow Thursday night riders might be missing out on such transcendent rad-getting.

So, I was delighted to hear that, when eventually the main group arrived at our chosen destination some twenty minutes and half a pitcher after we did, they had found the dirt, as well.

As it turned out, our efforts to get thrown from the Goose fell short; instead, it was mainly convivial and commensal; I made a new best friend of a truck sales executive from Kansas City who remained flabbergasted by our favorite statute of the Revised Code of Washington, the one that makes these unusual shenanigans so usual.

And then the tribe leads you home; you’ve no idea where you are, but even so, you’re somehow never lost.

Angel

photo by joeball

Theistic philosophers offer up the so-called “Fine-Tuning Design Argument” as evidence in favor of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent Creator.  The basic idea is that the Universe is just too perfectly “fine-tuned” for the emergence of life to have happened without a Cosmic Designer. 

If, for example, the force of gravity had been even slightly less, then stars would never have formed, there wouldn’t be any planets, and no living things would ever have come into existence.  The odds are simply too long to have been beaten by chance; a Divine Hand had to have stacked the deck so that living things—and above all, human beings—could win the ontological sweepstakes.

The most important response to this is the “Objection from the Anthropic Principle.”  The thought here is that there’s nothing surprising about the fact that we observe a Universe that is fine-tuned for life as we know it, because, after all, if it weren’t, then we wouldn’t be here to observe it.

Same thing with Point83: as remarkable as it is to happen upon several score cyclists gyrating around a two-wheeler with a rack-mounted discotheque affixed to it, the undeniable fact that there you are, observing it and gyrating along yourself means you should hardly be amazed that it’s happening—amazing as it is.

Lazer Heather opined that it’s not a party if it happens every night, but what if it happens every Thursday night?

A different gambit assayed by theists is what’s called “The Argument from Miracles.”  Miraculous events happen; the best explanation for them is divine intervention; therefore, God exists.

K-Sep was there to bear witness: unbeknownst to me, my wallet apparently bounced from my bag coming down the steps into the Gasworks shelter. 

Suddenly, Hobo Angel Jacob was there at my side, handing it over, all the money and credit cards still inside.

Then, he sat me down and smoked me out!

God may not exist, but the evening sure was divine.

Wow

photo by altercator

Everyone was so excited by the music, they accidentally left the music behind.

TehJobies got catastrophically dropped on the way out even though his wheels were the source of all the commotion driving the congregation along.

Which just goes to show that a bigger part of everything is mainly the idea of it—although the actuality can be that much more flabbergasting when you stand slightly to the side and overview the panorama of it.

We inhabit the universe inside our heads, which is one reason why being out on two wheels doors of a spring evening so soft and fluffy that it could have been an etching of a watercolor or vice versa becomes so apt a reminder that on nights like this it’s almost impossible to believe what you see.

Still, you can tell that you’re catching up to the music bike by the beatific look on the faces of trail-walkers passing by, and so even though a few broke rule number one by following Derrick, there was never any question that reunion would be achieved.

Romance was certainly in the air as I think it was Monica who noted and Stephen who observed and pretty soon all the loneliness and quiet of the way out was forgotten and there arose more good old-fashioned SOC and PDC shimmying than anyone deserves to go along with everything else that plastered a smile to one’s mug.

I chalk it up to all the pollen in the air or something, the birds and the bees, and flowers and trees; we’re just animals, after all, albeit ones with a striking ability to convert alcohol molecules to conga lines at dusk.

One must have done something really good in a past life to enjoy something like this in this one; perhaps many of us were similar heroes bringing tunes and intoxicants to our own little kin groups or high courts; if ever left behind, we’re definitely all caught up now.

Benign

photo by Shahan

Human beings do all sorts of strange things: write poetry, build skyscrapers, come together in fifty-thousand seat arenas to watch men in tights throw themselves at one another in pursuit of a pig bladder, but pretty much all such endeavors pale in the weirdness department to the phenomenon of thirty or so putative adults riding bicycles some sixty-plus miles on rural highways and deserted logging roads just so they can stand under blue tarps in a downpour at a closed campground in order to drink heavily and, in some cases, consume psychedelic mushrooms, before rising at dawn, more or less, to pedal back home in near deluge conditions just for the sheer ridiculousness of it because, after all, why the hell not?

It was miraculous how the Olympic Rain Shadow kept casting its dry umbrage over things whole way out; as long as the ride kept moving, you never had to don your rain gear at all.  Returning, by contrast, was a different story: only the prospect of getting home to a warm shower made it possible to put up with the drenching spray from tractor-trailers and SUVs on the shrinking glass-strewn highway shoulder.

Crossing the Hood River Bridge on Saturday was spectacular; Sunday, however, not so much.  Day 1 was like a postcard for God’s handiwork; Day 2, you were praying to whatever deity suits your fancy to not be blown sideways into a motorhome.

But I wouldn’t have changed a thing—except maybe that part where I overdosed “Fat”(neé “Skinny”) Rob by letting him eat 7/8ths of the whole cookie.

Huddled together in the steady drizzle around our campfire, it occurred to me that, given the weather conditions and what we’d been through on the roads and trails all day, I ought to be miserable, but pretty much the exact opposite was the case: I couldn’t stop smiling and whooping and in every direction I looked, I saw humans just as strangely delighted as me.

Mayday

photo by Ajat

All those cops on horseback and in riot gear were no doubt, to paraphrase the words of former Chicago mayor, Richard Daley, “not there to create disorder, but to preserve disorder” and, from all accounts, they did a fine job, with scarcely a broken window reported, but had they followed several score bicycles from the downtown retail core of our fair city to its favored beachfront on this International Workers’ Day, they’d have been able to witness all the mayhem they could handle as the perfect combination of record-breaking warm temperatures and overflowing liberty, fraternity, and equality gave rise to some serious maypole-dancing that couldn’t possibly be legal given how deliriously delightful it was in all its many forms

Perfect trines formed in the sky between the moon, Jupiter, and a handful of lucky stars, depth charges of beer in the fire exploded not once, but twice, and sedate computer and engineering professionals morphed into pagan minotaurs, all of this well before the waxing crescent had even set in the western horizon.

Human beings everywhere acted human and while I felt a little bad for the quiet couple who had cuddled up under a blanket to share a romantic evening only to be descended upon by a scene from Fellini, it wasn’t a night for apologies, but rather, for embracing the sheer exuberance of it all no matter what you’d expected in the beginning.

I wonder what adaptive advantage the ability to perceive beauty has provided for us; did our hunter-gatherer ancestors who could stand out on the savannah and experience aesthetic awe at the colors and shapes around them do a better job of passing down their DNA than their less appreciative brethren?

Or perhaps it’s just an anomaly, and atavism like the appendix, there, but not really doing anything; if so, I take it as a miraculous gift, one Marx himself would endorse, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Upgrade

photo by Joeball

Being unable to hear yourself think is not such a bad thing when, as a result, you're able to experience everything in its pure state as the alternative.

Devout adepts since time immemorial have immersed themselves in meditative and reflective practices to still the fluctuations of the mind and turn off the internal chatter; that same desired outcome can be achieved almost instantaneously by eating a cannabis cookie and riding your bike behind tehJobies’ latest incarnation of the music bike, this one fitted out with two rocket-booster shaped speakers delivering an even more face-meltingly loud volume for your cycling and dancing pleasure, despite the initial tune of the night being a perennial front-runner in the ongoing contest for most annoying pop hit of all time.

Still, it’s hilarious to see people come running from all directions and stop in their tracks to point and cheer when the parade of bikes and beats rolls by.  My face hurt from smiling after a mere two or three blocks to go along with the flayed fabric of my eardrums as I experienced something akin to Pure Being or maybe just another Thursday night out on two wheels.

Spring was at its vernal best; the stiff southwest breeze following record-breaking rain had cleared out the skies and it remained warm enough all evening for light wool, especially around the cheery fire at Seward started by the chain-smoking Ito on a bed of firecrackers which happily hoist him by his own petard in its lighting.

The Angry Hippy asked around at Westlake for something to get him started on his drunk for the evening; I’m not sure his request was met then, but by the time, several hours later, he was observed sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk outside karaoketown, one could assume, and not just by the coffin nail, that mission was accomplished.

My peak moment was slightly earlier, pouring from the park to Jello Biafra’s incomparably dulcet tones: Point83 Uber Alles, indeed.

Resurrected

Neither DNF nor DFL; that’s the baseline. 

Then, my metric has long been to take my age and minus the place I come in from it; highest number wins.

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” is how I remember Patti Smith putting it.

Resurrection Seven; it’s on the road to being long enough to be its own cult. 

Someday in the future, people will describe Easter as the day after the race and while some moldy old scholar will attempt to review which came first, it will all be chickens before eggs and vice-versa, those oivoid spheres being the ones in which manifests come.

You could tell which ones had directions in them, but only after you’d already picked it up and undone the tape, so it worked just as well to grab randomly, an admonition that’s probably not too far off.

Nor is the one that says just ride them in order, and it might not have been such a bad idea to do so, although I thought my route, surprisingly, wasn’t so bad. 

I got the gluttony over first with a shot of chocolate sauce in Nora’s Woods. 

Then, it was up and over to the Gum Wall where a tourist was even worse than me at using my camera phone; proving that pride goeth before a fall, especially on such an enthusiastically spring day.

I did envy in Queen Anne, although there wasn’t a thing I wished I had that I hadn’t. 

Thanks to the sage advice of Tall Bryan I next got wrathful at Golden Gardens, destroying the shit out of a joint before heading up and over the hill straight up to 85th and a more or less straight shot to sloth in Ravenna, albeit with a five-minute dumbhead penalty for turning the wrong way.

Lust at the Bridge to Nowhere meant holding hands with a damp teddy.

And then: Gasworks; greedily burning wood and drinking around a fire. 

Praise Jesus.

Backwards

Surprisingly, there’s always something you haven’t yet seen, like a blinking cursor that’s always been there, although staying closer to the water in order to ride boats of a spring night on which the sky was three different versions of wonderful (and those were only the ones remarked at and remembered) before ending up at a pond and a bridge in an impressively dangerous public space without a single trash can as befitting something that isn’t a park, but rather a facility, where self-lighting charcoal plays the role of a fire, is plenty, especially when you take into account that not even a hint of rain was dropped and shirtsleeves and a vest were sufficient all evening long; that’s what you ask for, and the fact that it was the most familiar of routes run backwards and under quite different mental conditions than those underway at 8:30 in the morning only makes it that much more satisfying.

Enough really can be enough when you’re given opportunities like this to notice it’s all too much, just like this, less than usual but still more than expected and certainly deserved.

Balance

photo by joeball

“It’s a world of abundance,” is how the New-Agers in the nineteen-eighties used to put it as a way of making the somewhat Pollyana-ish, but generally veridical point that the Universe is an awfully big place and usually will provide if only you’re willing to not cling too tightly to what you don’t have and allow nature to grant you all you really need and most of what you really want, as well.

It’s easy enough to become fixated on what’s lacking in our lives—lottery wins, free parking, admirable world leaders—and fail to notice all the treasures we do possess, although drinking beer outside on a vast wooden pier at the foot of a post-modern city overlooking a shimmering bay with shafts of sunlight piercing fluffy clouds like an advertisement for God’s existence tends to make one grateful right from the start of the evening.

All it takes is willingness to put people over principle, an admonition that probably won’t earn me much cred as a tough negotiator but will, I think, allow for a more whole-hearted embrace of options by those faced with another embarrassment of riches in too short a span of time.

That’s the thing you love about a fire pit as opposed to a fire place; the latter forces one to privilege a single perspective; the former, however, enables a full circle of possibilities and conversations.

On the vernal equinox, day and night effect a truce; they recognize that neither exists without the other and that both are merely two side of the same eternal Oneness, where there is no time nor space but all is nameless, changeless, perfection.

Stars seem to rise among the heavens in a single night—but that’s just because we’re spinning; they march across the sky from season to season but only through our movement; on nights like this, the world keeps turning beneath our tires; we simply need to pedal on for dear delicious life.

Trails

photo by joeball

The contemporary philosopher, Cornel West, says of the human condition that we are “featherless two-legged language-aware creatures born between urine and feces who will one day be culinary delicacies for terrestrial worms.”

So there’s that.

But we’re also rollicking two-wheeled fire-imbued rascals pedaling between sewer and waste dump who sometimes opt for the refulgent embrace of supernatural dreams.

Unironically.

We congregate on bricks and rattle past gum walls before rolling over water to tarry by pillars and eventually slither through an enormous yoni-shaped entrance to dirt, mud, and gravel again and again and again and again.

And again and again and again.

It was the first crepuscular start of the year on a day whose dawn broke so resplendently that even rare early-risers got to be awestruck by the heavenly conflagration.

 “Agape” comes in parallel forms: mouth wide open or unconditional love and there were both as we baffled one another by the single-walled fire or looked out over the water by continent’s edge.

I count myself lucky when I get be lost for so long and then suddenly appear at the familiar location; this magic has happened before while trailing behind Joeball but it never fails to delight.

And when you can bomb downhill without have to climb back up afterwards, well, that’s too good to be true.

And yet, so true to be good.

Our merry little blaze walked closer to us all night with a little help from Fancy Fred; the tide fell ever lower until right when we left; all that space between fire and water remained filled with conversation and laughter as the featherless bipeds cavorted with abandon.

And then it was time for a wind-aided gallop towards Chantilly lace and a pretty face and a pony tail hanging down.

A wiggle in the walk and giggle in the talk make the world go ‘round—so much so that you ride west in a circle before east on your usual spin home.

Highlights

The German philosopher, Schopenhauer, is supposed to have said that the best thing would be to never have been born and you can see his point: life is suffering and all that so think of the heaps of misery you’d have avoided had you never come to be.

But, on the other hand, consider everything you’d have missed out on. 

Take, for instance, a single night on a late winter’s evening in one tiny corner of one small edge of noplace remarkable.

Remember a handful of moments in this single occasion you’d never experienced had you forever remained unbirthed.  Like:

•    Cop chat and youth group confusing even before anything began
•    Perfuming alleyways and cheering for book nerds up the hill
•    Enticing strangers to join
•    Arriving, via the second-best route, at destination number one
•    Being overwhelmed by choices but eventually settling on something
•    Bombing Madison
•    Snaking through the Arboretum, doing 180’s in search of the perfect pagoda
•    Noticing light pollution and, for the most part, being glad of it
•    Turning the way you don’t expect upon exiting, eventually enjoying the preferred water route to a place you’d never imagined

And that was just for starters.

Pretty soon, it was all drummers and fire dancers and people falling in love all over themselves. 

Firecrackers were included much to the initial consternation of those for who such sounds are overly reminiscent but by the time the SOC Pussies were feeling their oats and PDC was making a dual appearance in Technicolor, I’m pretty sure no one had any complaints other than to wonder why every day besides Thursday isn’t like this.

Sometimes, it’s more about unity than distance; you see how far you can get with as many as possible.  If that means staying along the shoreline and being flabbergasted by the view, then yes.

Granted, the never existing version of you never struggles up superfluous hills but when you figure in the downhills, you will have to agree life’s worth it.

Metaphysical

Which event is the event? 

How can you tell whether what you are doing is the thing being done or the commentary upon it?

When does the alternative become the norm?

Here’s one thing I know: that was a nice ride through the woods. 

It’s fun not to have to worry too much about how to get where you’re going; Disneyland with seatbelts for grownups; that’s how comfortable it feels at this point.

I remembered a minor shortcut at the beginning and then, the general shape of things: you can be pretty confident that whenever you go down, you’re going to have to go up again.

A somewhat smaller crowd than usual of late and not a single unicycle in sight.  I missed the opportunity to climb for whiskey, but, at least, I didn’t drop my bike on the ferry and have two months of wrist recovery like last year.

Why do we do these things?

A hamster, of course, will spin the wheel; we’re apparently willing to explore the same dynamic by circumnavigating an island; I’ve no complaints about this; it’s just amusing to see how picturesque is our favored contraption, in spite of the fact that many of those bedecked in fluorescents seemed overly eager to be done with the whole thing.

Having experiences cannot possibly be about having had them, although, increasingly, it seems like there’s some of that.

Here I am, after all, reminiscing, when the whole day is still warm.

Somehow, I managed to miss one last trail; instead, I caught a boat, but if the result of that is a heightened likelihood of a slightly simpler future, then so be it.

It’s important, I think, to sometimes ride no-handed; this will remind you how easily one balances when conditions are right.

Never underestimate, though, how magical and marvelous is such an opportunity, 

And note how this time it’s pulled  off with a minimum of effort pretty much by accident on purpose.

Up

How do beliefs and outcomes work together?  Ever notice the way anticipation plays with what ends up?

I don’t know how not to be committed to the idea that this is the best of all possible worlds, though I couldn’t possibly believe that, could I?

Yet, there you are with waffle irons perfectly matched to people’s attitudes in times when not enough is too much rather than the converse.

Here’s some of what I think I know: the rain never came but often seemed possible, yet becalmed.

So many new folks: at least three.

And, I still think, might have happened: a tailwind in both directions.

Could this be the Ninth Annual Waffle Ride?  What else have you done for so long?

I kept being unsurprised by people’s ages: we’ve done this since childhood.  And some, like Derrick, for several of them.

No one climbed the rafters, but there were enough attention spans to make possible two separate theaters, both of which complemented another.

A warming fire was constructed vertically and many, if not most, had an opportunity to enjoy.

When you stepped out from under the shelter and its soothing fog of waffle vapor,  there was Orion’s Belt: you’d be happy with a single star, but there they are, all three of them, dotting the heavens.

The possible and actual are in continual dialogue.  There’s what you think it’s going to be and what it is, which is determined, in part, by what you think it’s going to be.

And then, it’s something different than either of those, but no less expected or unexpected.

Ground-level fireworks in the tunnel made for especially voracious vocalizations on the way out there; heading west was all about drinking it in; I let the corridor sing me.

Although among the last to leave our home away from home across the water, I’ll bet I was among the first to sleep; my more than sufficient capacity for fun, more than fulfilled.

Imperfection

Hills, yes.

But don’t forget bombing down the endless wooded corridor as payback for breaking one of the cardinal rules: Never follow Ben up a mountain.

And remember that many other guidelines were questioned as well, including the admonition not to ride down steps in the woods.

But at least there was general agreement over one of my own standard pieces of advice, which is to have a drink at the bar if you come to the bar, even if, in this case, there were two of them simultaneously.

The Angry Hippy and I talked about nothing for a while and pondered the instability of it, which is, after all, something, I suppose.

Plus, the Backyard Barbecue was in fine form, sucking flames into its flue on a full moon’s winter night that felt more like April than Valentine’s eve.

And I’m pretty sure someone puked, even before the serious drinking began.

So, you see, it is all hearts and flowers (or steak and blowjobs) when it comes to a Thursday night out on two wheels and is, as Dada might attest to, way harder to pull yourself away from it even when you just show up at Westlake to do a blessing of the bikes; before you know it, you’re tumbling down muddy forest pathways and demonstrating a range of emotions all the way from pensive to thoughtful with everything in-between.

BtAH explained to me that another answer to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing at all?” is that nothing would be static and so, if I understood correctly, couldn’t therefore exist in time—which implies, of course, some sort of change.  Nevertheless, there are those magic moments, recurring for all eternity, like Derrick’s repeating of the same joke about a pipe over and over.

I agree: if it’s funny once, it’s even funnier four or five times.

Unchanging perfection, like nothing, cannot possibly exist; the perfectly imperfect, though, happens all the time.

Wonder

You might be surprised to see how long you can go with still being surprised.

Even when you start out on the most familiar of routes, there’s still room for wonder.

The fix may be in, as Brother Botorff suggests, but that doesn’t mean you won’t experience the unexpected, even if it turns out to have been scripted beforehand. 

One thing’s for sure: you can always trust the wayfaring skills of G.S. Barnes, who will take you through many places you’ve been before but in several new, unexpected, and far less hilly ways.  Sure, you’re likely to end up with muddy shoes and scratchy fenders, but it’s worth it to discover unimagined pathways to delightful destinations.

No less a familiar than Derrickito himself got to feel momentarily all turned around and lost, which is just what happened to his skepticism about following that father of two in the non-bike-specific coat.

I learned that the legendary firepit exists after all, at a far higher elevation than I had imagined and that, as a matter of fact, it actually is a firepit and not merely some rich person’s backyard.

The Big Dipper was out, cinched tight by Orion’s Belt over the field of dreams, but hardly anyone noticed given the ineluctable warmth of our civically-approved conflagration.  It’s really quite amazing how much wood you can get for $3.99 and a QFC card when you’re able to convince others to carry it and how handy a package of kindling figures into the equation when you only have so many Boy Scouts on hand to set things alight.

Birthdays abounded along with kudos for parents who preferred to get busy in the spring and as we all cast our imaginations back across the decades it became more and more apparent that consciousness might just have to be a natural feature of matter in the universe.

It probably wouldn’t answer everything, but it might explain how riding bikes can surprise you so.

Inferno

Photo by Joshua Trujillo, SeattlePI.com

tehJobies wondered what, with a fire suit and four handles of Everclear, could possibly go wrong, and the answer, it turns out is nothing, apparently, as yet another bicycle-powered post-Christmas War On Christmas (Trees) bonfire and drinking party went off without a hitch (besides the ones on bike trailers) and, as far as I know, not a single third-degree burn, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Fancy Fred and a few others were missing some eyebrows in the morning.

The prospect of seeing several score dry evergreens combust to illuminate the night sky really brings ‘em out; lots of old familiar but rarely seen faces showed up at Westlake for the only-slightly-faster-than-Critical-Mass speed parade to Golden Gardens with a stop at the Peddlar Brewery to strap trees on bikes, in backpacks, and atop at least one pickup truck.

Riders were greeted at the beach by incognito Elves who delighted one and all with grownup hot chocolates garnished with baby marshmallows floating in 190-proof goodness.

Everclear’s effect, appropriately enough, is not unlike the way a month-old Christmas tree bursts into flame: suddenly, you’re all aglow and the formerly sedate are now laughing and lying, screaming at trains, and occasionally semi-disrobing.

Think of all the memories embodied in those flaming firs: sparkly-giftwrapped presents under their lowest branches, stars and angels atop their highest reach.  Then, in an instant, the transformation to sparks and cinders takes place and a brand-new recollection is burnished on the brain and in the heart.

If I come back as a Doug or Noble in Chubby and Tubby’s lot some December, this is how I want to go, that’s for sure.

You can almost get used to the sight of thirty-foot high flames and so, come to feel jaded when, afterwards, all that’s left is a crackling fire that warms dozens for hours. 

But then you remember that just because the spectacular has become commonplace, doesn’t mean the commonplace isn’t spectacular.

On fire, in fact.

Sparse

The Scientific Method—the ability of human beings to explain phenomena via a process of observation, hypothesis, testing, and analysis—is arguably the means by which all of human technology, broadly construed, exists.  We certainly wouldn’t have computers or bikes or beer were it not for this powerful means of applying human reason to human problems.

We might still, though, have acquaintances who program those computers or ride those bikes or drink that beer, and no doubt they would be the ones doing empirical testing of the proposed propositions and so, it should come as no surprise to learn that everyone’s an engineer when there’s a chance to discover whether you really can put out a hearty fire with wet driftwood.

By the time the flaming mastodon head is ignited by Duraflame logs and firestarter, anyway, it’s been proven that, under certain conditions, even in a gale, as long as you’re inside a park shelter, the fire will inexorably dry the soggy branches and add them to the conflagration.

One could quibble over the size of the test sample, but like a ride of less than a dozen, it still counts as statistically significant.

Sound experimental design would have us creating opportunities to see our hypotheses disconfirmed, and so, if upon arriving, one presumes it might be more fun to bail on the evening, it becomes incumbent to search for a counterexample and just start pedaling.

And then, when riding out the storm in the perfect park shelter to do so, amply provisioned and with endless supplies, it turns out, of combustible fuel, one ought to be perfectly delighted to be proven wrong, since after all, in doing so, new knowledge is generated.

I hypothesized the downpour was over when I left the park not needing a coat; twenty minutes later, though, there was plenty of data to contradict this view; I was perfectly happy to be proven wrong, but happier still I had my rain pants.