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.
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.
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