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.
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.
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| photo by altercator |
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.
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