Animation

Your shadow doesn’t age as quickly as your reflection, so imagine this Disney movie where the two of them carry on a doomed love affair as the image in the mirror turns old and decrepit while the penumbra on the sidewalk stays youthful and vibrant.  Eventually, your gray and wrinkled reflection has to bid a tearful adieu to your forever young shadow, but it’s a lovely moment, not a dry eye in the house, as the ancient image raises a gnarled hand to its still smooth friend, who animates like rippling water as it pedals away, zoetroping on the guardrails of the freeway overpass just like last night on the Lakeview Bridge where the best part about leading the ride is that going uphill slowly means you get to say hello to almost everyone who has come along as they eventually and inexorably pass you on the climb.

A somewhat smaller group of riders than might have been expected on such a lovely summer evening, but that can probably be chalked up to the expectation of much larger numbers for upcoming shenanigans; nonetheless, a couple of dozen or so turned out to be a sufficient data set for testing out Tony’s hypothesis about the phrase “Smoke follows beauty,” which may, indeed, track along the cowboy trail from Texas and New Mexico through to Montana, a conjecture that remains on the table until further disconfirming evidence can be found.

The few who obeyed the maxim never to pass up an opportunity for a swim in the lake were rewarded with water that was almost certainly warmer than the air, no mean feat given that it remained shirt sleeve weather all through the evening, especially around the small, but effective Jenga fire, an apt metaphor, if you think about it, for the ride itself.

In the end, nothing particularly exotic, but the familiar can be plenty delightful when reflection and mirroring connect, the old and the ageless pedaling together.

Bullish

I take these all as markers of a successful Running of the Bulls:

•    Being unable to precisely recall my route home

•    Blood dried black on my shin from what looks like an encounter with a chain ring, but who can be sure?

•    A yard sale of my bag’s contents on the floor of the bike shed this morning, but surprisingly, nothing’s missing (although my rear blinky is gone, but that was noted last night)

•    Plenty of new wine stains on my outfit, (but there’s a year to get them out and plenty of bleach on hand)

•    Freaking out the squares at the Troll!

•    A record number of bulls, I think, including at least one formed on the spot

•    Many a conversation, most of them funny or profound, I’m sure

•    No sash-in-the-spokes, even on that mysterious ride back

•    Perfect weather, a roaring fire, thematically-appropriate music, revelers still reveling when I left

Of course, much more can be said, about the value of tradition and the joy of a certain kind of nonsense made all the more merry through repetition or perhaps one could wax rhapsodic about how strikingly gorgeous our fair city can be on a clear and windy evening in July when observed from across the body of water whose far side you were just swimming in an hour or so earlier, but I’m quite sure that doing so (especially given the weakened state of one’s abilities in the aftermath) would fail to capture how remarkable the thing is and the fact that it still happens, year after year, a state of affairs only slightly less remarkable than that the annual fat-checking pants still fit, albeit more tightly, now just a year short of a decade into their service.

Previous years may have featured more running and I realize this year’s edition didn’t include a lakefront and, as far as I know, no nudity, but in my book, it was lacking nothing.

Except, of course, that blinky.

Immortal

photo by "80's Jeff"

Several points were made apparent to me last night.

First, the circumstances of one’s death do not overwrite the circumstances of one’s life.  That said, however, in the end, family is family and loss is no less keenly felt just because emotions are complicated.  In fact, such complication makes the cut that much deeper.

And second, trite but true: the world is a staggeringly beautiful place, whose grandeur will carry on in spite of us all. 

After we’re gone, the sun will still sink magnificently into the sea while an all-but-full moon hangs out watching; a Great Blue Heron will take this in calmly as it perches on a log in the wetland.  Our atoms will disperse back into the Universe and the cycle of beauty will continue as we become sunset and moonrise ourselves.

Quite a turnout on a lovely summer evening, the somber undertone of the occasion making the inevitable joy of two wheels and dozens of friends stand out all the more starkly.  A small fire meant that we huddled up, just as we needed to, flames being wiser than humans, as is their wont.

DerrickIto, as is his wont, tried to justify bad behavior on the grounds that dangerous, unexpected explosions were an appropriate memorial.  I can’t dispute that, but when I go, I’d like to be remembered with something less likely to put out an eye.  How about yinz guys just light up some joints, instead.

The twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: “Death is not an event in life; we do not live to experience death.”  That’s true, of course, about our own demise: we’re not around for it, at least in our current form.  We do, however, poignantly experience the death of others we have known and especially, cared for.

He continues: “If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”

Be present, live forever, ride on.