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.