Shirt

photo by Drain

Of course, it’s more important to accumulate experiences than things, but when you can do both in a single night and be plenty lost and all turned around for most of it, that’s success. 

Familiar routes turned unfamiliar and the map of Seattle spun like spin-art.  There was congregation and consumption and carrying; quaffing and quibbling and qualifying; you had to marvel at the level of organization that made such disorganization possible and then, if you’re lucky, you find, in the morning, a souvenir of the event that you can put in your dresser drawer next to a favorite band shirt for sartorial splendor in the days and weeks to come.

“Victory Heights” sounds to me like the title of an aspiring Great American Novel, something Jonathan Franzen or Richard Powers would write, but according to Wikepedia, it’s named after the Victory Highway, now Lake City Way, that borders its eastern edge.  Whatever the provenance of its moniker, you have to count it as a win when, after a rousing pedal-monium through our region’s most important Research 1 University followed by some sort of unprecedented downhill bush-whacking, you arrive at its namesake recreation area for Christmas morning of a sort, albeit one on which the gift-passer is far trimmer than old St. Nicholas himself.

And along the way, if uphill twists and turns make it possible for you to raise the ire of at least one homeowner who isn’t amused that her own private driveway provides two-wheeled passage from one place to another; then sorry, but on the eve of September 11, isn’t freedom what it’s all about?

The worst route ever is, from another perspective, the best way forward and maybe counts as a kind of self-imposed hazing for which shared outfits are a piece of the prize.

Later, there were wizards of a sort, and while no spells were cast, it’s certain magic was in the air, not to mention on saddles and handlebars, too.