Seam

The Duwamish runs like a seam down the middle of our fair city and is really, of course, a big part of why Seattle is here at all, so it’s almost like stitching the town together when you ride across; and it’s especially like sewing together the past and future when, after doing so, you arrive at an old bend in the river to enjoy a park so new the concrete has hardly even cured yet, making hot rocks crack steamy smiles right along their hidden seams, as well.

It was shades of 2007 as (Not As) Young Remington appeared and pointed out the impending onset of his 10th anniversary 21 year-old ride and Double-Dad Diddy pedaled up from beneath the overhead tracks like an emissary from the previous decade.  Meanwhile, patrons of Link Light Rail were treated to brief pyrotechnic displays in honor of their trains’ own artistic luminance, a ribbon of blue winking southward as orange fingers waved merrily below.

I’ve heard Joby (who, lo and behold, but in keeping with the chronological theme, just happened to be celebrating a going-away in the very same watering hole at which we eventually nightcapped) remark that one of the primary technological advances in the history of the bike gang has been tehSchkott’s introduction of accelerant, and I must say, I concur: Girl Scout water rocks!  (And rocks rocks, too, as we’ve learned.)

For me, the most dramatic seam of the evening was earlier, when V., apparently needing a wake-up call from the adrenal gland, caught his front wheel on a crack between concrete and tarmac and, while darting left to correct and recover, narrowly missed being clipped by a Subaru, crisis averted, heart rate level achieved.

The gap between what does happen and what might have occurred is vanishingly slim and yet thankfully, does exist.

On the other hand, when the space between what should have transpired and what does arise closes, that’s when even stones sing.

Blaze

I wonder about the intrepid holiday pioneers who first started the Christmas tree tradition; according to our paper of record, “for six successive seasons, Riga and Tallinn—the capitals of Latvia and Estonia—have waged a feud over which was the site of the world’s first decorated Christmas tree. Riga says it was first, in 1510. Tallinn claims a much earlier event, in 1441.”

But whoever’s responsible, I picture those first tinsel throwers trying something out for the first time—decorating a spruce with fruits and candles, dancing around it, then, a few days later, burning it to the ground—and enjoying things so much that they repeated the action again the following year, and the next, and so on, and before anyone knew it, a tradition was born.

That’s how it happens, I guess, and so here we are, some six centuries later, drawing upon those time-honored practices to forge new rituals which also emerge, almost by accident, from simply having a good time.

Who’d a thunk, for instance, that the goofy pleasure of strapping a dried-out and discarded Christmas tree to your bike or body and pedaling crosstown to a sandy beach in order to set it ablaze would be something that anyone would want to do even once, much less at least at least eight years running now give or take a few?

Similarly, could anyone have predicted that a silver metallic fire suit would become pretty much as iconic a holiday outfit as Santa Claus’ red coat and black belt?

And my goodness, isn’t it charming the way some of our city’s most dedicated and professional first responders have joined in on the merriment, making what has now, apparently, become an annual visit to the festivities simply in order to protect us from ourselves and make sure we tidy up before leaving?

The holidays may now (officially) be over, but the tradition carries on, burning ever brighter, just for the fun of it.