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.