Wow

Could there be an evolutionary explanation for the aesthetic sense? 

Is it possible that our prehistoric ancestors who more consistently appreciated glorious sunsets and splendid moonrises did better at passing on their DNA than their contemporaries who were less taken with such fine examples of natural beauty?

Frankly, it seems kinda far-fetched; more likely, I think, is that the propensity to recognize the loveliness of striated clouds turned blood red by the setting sun or the exquisite tableau of evergreen trees painted milky white by an almost full supermoon is merely a by-product of our developed consciousness.  It’s a gift, really, that confers no particular adaptive advantage on those who possess it.

We can think of it kind of like the way in which natural selection produced creatures like us who can walk erect (more or less, until the whiskey really kicks in), and this has made possible our ability to throw our legs over a bicycle top tube and pedal en masse to a repurposed military installation turned magnificent city park, but it’s not as if that latter faculty is a product of selection pressures—particularly given the fact that it’s barely a hundred years of human history since folks have been pedaling together.

That said, it’s surely to our advantage, (none the least, as Joby pointed out, for one’s mental health), to have arrived at a point in humanity’s march through time where it’s possible to combine bikes, booze, and bacchanalia with some regularity come Thursday evening.

And it’s even better when it can be done in an environment where even the least aesthetically-inclined among us can’t help but be moved by the colors and patterns of the evening and in which those for whom beauty is more salient (thanks, perhaps to an artistic nudge from tetrahydrocannabinol) can’t hardly shut up about it.

So, ultimately, beauty may be in the eye of the beholder; we're just lucky to be out on bikes to behold it.

Flight

Presumably, if you keep doing the things you did when you were young, you’ll never age. 

As long as you’re able to continue taking flight on a bicycle, off a dock, into a lake, you will remain suspended, as in the air, above emerging decay and decrepitude.

And best of all, even just watching, beer in hand, from the shore, (or even better, in the water, where you can effect a continuous stream from mouth to lake), infuses you with such a sense of childlike wonder that the years melt away and there you are, in junior high all over again—except this time, you don’t have to hide the Rainier from your parents.

It’s become a summer tradition to set up the wooden ramp so folks can hurtle down the dock on a bike that floats and launch themselves into the water; not only is it not getting old, it perfectly illustrates how the longer you do such things, the younger they make you.

No one broke a neck or drowned and the accidents that did occur were minor enough to be funny—at least to those who were watching, not wrecking.

The weather was warmer and clearer than anyone prior to this strange Southern Californian summer could have reasonably expected, and the first quarter moon slipped away westward following a fine showing after sunset.

We learned that not all waterproof cameras are indeed fully waterproof and that there’s a window in one’s inebriation that opens after about half a bottle of wine or three beers and a joint to allow for ramp-jumping, but which closes half a bottle or three beers and two joints later to prevent the effort; it’s a phenomenon familiar to recreational bowlers, although in that case, what’s being thrown while tipsy is a plastic ball not one’s own body.

Someday, maybe, even those who refrained from flight will jump; we’re still not that old, but in the future, may be that young.

Capacious

photo by fatasian

It’s Joby’s world; we just live in it. 

Barely.

Surprisingly, no one died of amazement, or had their minds blown to pieces by the spectacle, or melted into a puddle of joy, or literally cracked up laughing; it’s a testament to the integrity of the human body that so much capacity for entertainment can be embraced without entirely overloading our circuits and completely frying our brains.

Barely.

The form is familiar, but the instantiation unique.

This time, for instance, the traffic lights on Rainier got into the act and enabled the block-long pelaton, with music at the front and at the back, to pour southward at a record pace and with a minimum of automobile anxiety.

Joby Juice was rendered and distributed in the usual manner, but in this year’s edition, the astronaut’s favorite, Tang, played a more prominent role, at least until the container of powder mysteriously went missing.

The Slip n’ Slide performed its traditional part as supersonic psychedelic flesh ball bowling alley landing runway except, for the first time ever, you could navigate it on a plastic pizza slice.

And the “Jello” wrestling “pit,” perhaps due to the mildness of the weather, (or, in some sort of subconscious nod to the Republican Presidential candidate debate, which took place earlier in the evening and featured very similar—thought not nearly as entertaining—moments of naughty grappling), attracted record numbers of participants and an audience whose enthusiasm was heretofore unmatched.

Plus, this year’s version featured merely drive-by authorities and a clean-up that might fail the “white-glove test,” but surely meets the standard of your average Seafair Sunday barbecue.

If you yourself were lucky, and had the help of the Ringling Brothers circus, you might be able to pull this off once; maybe if the US military pitched in, you’d be able to arrange an encore; but to get to three, four, and now five it’s gotta be your world, the rest of just living in it.

Gladly.