Friday, July 29, 2016

Summertime

Normative judgments about the weather are inherently subjective; there’s no more actually a “nice day” than there is a best flavor of ice cream.  You may prefer a sun-drenched afternoon just as I choose strawberry Haagen Dazs in the frozen food aisle; ask someone else, though, and they’ll take a steady all-day drizzle even as you reach for the Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.

That said, it would be hard to argue that the weather last night for the beloved bike gang’s annual ride into the water wasn’t perfect: an alleged 83 degrees Fahrenheit, not a cloud in the sky, snow-capped mountains visible to the south and the north and nary a breeze to shiver the timbers of dripping wet bodies in the gathering dusk.  “Everybody,” I’ve been known to claim, “likes deviled eggs and Michael Jackson;” I think we can safely add to that list late July evenings on which meteorological summer finally arrives in the Pacific Northwest, the first really hot day of the season after our typical Juneuary and Julyctober.

In our hearts of hearts, we are all, in summertime, adolescent boys and girls, embracing those long school-free days with nothing else do to than sneak a beer from Dad’s fridge and pedal off somewhere to share it with our friends.  The intoxication that ensues is not so much from alcohol as it is the heady mix of forbidden fruit and mutual mischievousness; all it takes to recreate that in adulthood is half a hundred bicyclists, many a half-rack of chilly brew, and a wooden ramp at the end of a T-shaped dock off of which one after another intrepid rider can hurl him or herself astride a BMX bike covered with pool noodles for flotation and padding.

As is my usual wont, I eschewed the jump in favor of back-floating and sky-gazing; nevertheless, my heart leapt each time a rider went airborne, every grinning splashdown made me warm all over, just like summertime.

Friday, July 15, 2016

Toro

Over the years, our beloved Cascade Bike Club has earned the affectionate regard of numerous branches of the local civic authorities.  

We’ve engaged in half a dozen or so friendly conversations with the Seattle Police Department; club members have traded tips on water safety with the University of Washington security forces; Seattle Fire Department has kindly shared with us perspectives on outdoor grilling; Bainbridge Island’s Finest has offered guidance on picnicking under the trees in their neighborhood; the Washington State Patrol has shown a deep interest in combined efforts around bicycle route planning; at least one city park rent-a-cop has joined in the evening’s festivities around a fire; and, of course, Puget Sound Ferry captains have graciously consented to provide advice on proper boating attire en route.

Never before, however, (at least in my experience), has the group enjoyed the privilege of being greeted by the Harbor Patrol, who showed their regard by illuminating the night, thereby enabling a more efficient clean-up and departure for bulls, matador, and runners alike.

The annual encierro successfully achieved escape velocity, which just goes to show that, even in a world where tragedies abound, joy can still be made manifest with the help of two-wheelers, silly costumes, and ample fermented or distilled beverages. 

While nerds with smartphones looked to their handheld devices for fun and games in the virtual world, riders of bikes found delight in a full-throttled four-dimensional existence simply by dressing up, pedaling en masse, singing songs that had little, if anything, to do with an event being celebrated, and, in my case, screaming “Yay” as loudly as possible each time the spirit inevitably moved one to do so.

Although nobody was gored, there was at least one unfortunate human/animal encounter that drew bodily fluid; one can only hope that, as noted taurophile Papa Hemingway put it in A Farewell to Arms, the ‘blood coagulates beautifully.”

And appropriately enough, bulls ended the evening at a Zoo, toro, toro, olé.

Friday, July 8, 2016

Heuristic

In ten years and some three hundred or so rides with Point83, I really haven’t learned all that much.  I still listen to Derrick from time to time; I’m still prone to follow Ben up a mountain; and heaven knows, I still always eat the whole cookie.

But this I do know: it’s a mistake to base your decision not to ride on the weather, especially on the weather prior to meet-up, and most especially on pre-ride weather forecasts on the internet.

Case in point: I wore my rain gear to Westlake and got reasonably soaked coming down Jackson circa eighteen hundred and thirty hours, but by the time, thirty minutes  later, I was wandering around the park and being fairly impressed by the size of the rally and march peacefully (thank God) protesting the killings of Black men by White police officers, the rain had stopped, never to return for the rest of the night. 

Had I decided (as I almost did) not to ride just because it was a little icky early in the evening or due to the fact that weather.org called for showers all night long, I would have missed out on a number of reasonably enjoyable activities, including drinking beer and kibitzing as a simple tire change turned into a tutorial on disc brakes and further evidence in support of my decision to stick to cantilevers; drinking beer and ruminating on the origin of the phrase “All hat, no cattle,” as a dozen or so bike riders relaxed beneath our city’s largest example of cowboy headgear or looked like Hallmark card photos back-dropped by flowering artichoke plants and giant sunflowers ; drinking beer and taking Rza’s suggestion that a bike club ought to ride bikes to heart, thereby spinning, at water level, all the way crosstown to the karaoke joint for a nightcap.

And one final lesson confirmed on the misty ride home: being drunk is still not a mechanical, cantilevers rule.

Friday, July 1, 2016

Onomatopoeia

I’m not particularly proud to be an American; (aside from being, on the contrary, rather ashamed of many of our country’s policies, practices, and dominant attitudes, I think there’s something weird about taking pride in a condition that’s simply an accident of birth), but I am, admittedly, entirely amazed to live in a place and at a time where so astonishing a confluence of factors can come together with a such a bang—not to mention a pop, sizzle, woosh, crackle and ka-boom, as well.

Ironically, something so stereotypically American is really all about the Chinese; if not for the invention of gunpowder during the 9th century Tang dynasty; if not for all those factories in Liuyang, Hunan Province, the world’s capital of fireworks; if not for bicycle framemakers, mostly in Taiwan, it never could have happened that some four dozen people living in the United States, whose descendants, by and large (but not exclusively) emigrated from Great Britain and Continental Europe (including, in my case, the Ukraine) would be able to board a boat constructed in the Seattle area bound for an island named for an English commodore, to pedal through the wooded trails and over a bridge, ending up finally, at a Coast Salish Indian reservation in order for Native American vendors to sell Asian-made fireworks to be launched into the Pacific Northwest night on the eve, more or less, of our country’s traditional birthday, commemorating an event that took place an entire continent away, almost 250 years ago.

Of course, it also required the wayfaring expertise of Fancy Fred, who led us down (and up) those aforementioned trails with only an occasional backtracking and slow-motion endo; it’s hard to get completely lost on an island, but we did our best, although I was reminded that if you follow the path, you’ll eventually arrive, even if it’s by a different route.

Ultimately, no fingers blown off, no eyes put out, no wildfires started; success.  Boom!