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.