Friday, June 17, 2016

Longest

At first, it’s just a tiny campfire, barely staying lit against the night breeze; but soon, enough fuel has been added and sufficient accelerant applied, that people’s eyebrows are being singed and any sprinkles of rain descending evaporate before they can even hit ground.

And this goes not only metaphorically for Point83 as a temporal phenomenon, but also, literally, for the little beach fire that Lieutenant Dan coaxed, eventually with the help of many a driftwood log dragger, into a conflagration that somehow managed not to attract the attention of the local authorities (at least during my tenure) but also, more pertinently, succeeded in lighting up a night that would be the shortest for any Thursday this year.

How appropriate, therefore, that the ride itself was likely the longest of 2016, and did, I believe, add a new southwest corner to the club’s bounding box.

A giant bottle of tequila provided much of the inspiration for the southward trek and magically disappeared back into the pack just at the moment when Burien’s finest cruised by our roadside re-group, one of several that did a remarkable job of keeping together what a smiling youngster counted as 56 bikes in a line of which, at that moment, I brought up the rear.

But it was also probably the wealth of lumens we all get to ingest this time of year in Seattle, when a single five-hour energy shot is all it takes to get you through the set and rise of nautical twilight.  It’s no wonder folks are so willing to be intrepid; night’s not so scary when it only dark for a handful of hours.

Of course, being able to catch the light rail for much of the way home doesn’t hurt, either, but that’s legit when you have to navigate the road under the airport runway to locate the station.

Those jets passing directly overhead are impressive on take-off; but it takes a bike to really fly.

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