Reverse

We live in a topsy-turvy world, just like Dr. Peter Venkman said in Ghostbusters: “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!”

The putative adults allegedly running the country act like children; young people, still in high school, present thoughtful and mature perspectives on the pressing issues of the day.  Multi-billion dollar corporations complain publically that the costs of doing business are driving them out of business; small local companies happily pitch in to make their cities better places.  Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups become just a minor player in the Reese’s candy company product line; M&M’s melt in your hand, not in your mouth.

So, you may as well embrace the backwardness of it all; or, I guess, in keeping with the upside-down theme, have it embrace you.

Case in point: instead of the usual route from south to north behind Husky stadium, (where nearly every day commuting to work, you “say a little prayer for Dan” at the spot he did his Halloween face-plant), you ride the reverse route, down through the Ravenna trails—which turn out to be remarkably shorter on the descent than the ascent.  Fremont Boulevard, typically a late night bomb down towards the water, then, becomes an early evening slog up to provisioning and then a charming little spot overlooking the vast light industrial wasteland of Freelard.

And as Mullet (né Mohawk) Mike observed, you can sometimes, if you try, turn the setting sun around instead to the become the rotating earth; lean back and enjoy the ride; imagine the planet-sized Ferris wheel slowly somersaulting heels over head.

“Life,” said the proto-Existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, “can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”

Well, sorta.

As we’ve seen, there are times (often between the hours of 7:30 and midnight on a Thursday) where the living happens in reverse; little joys become huge; the mundane spectacular; movement stillness; and the many, one.

Understanding, though, looms forward, still to come.

Trains

What’s the rush, really, when you’re outside on a perfectly pink and sky blue evening with everyone who’s anyone to such a degree that no one isn’t someone; you wait for one train going south until (at least those who are responsible for others than themselves) realize that railroad crossing gates are there for a reason, to wit, not getting killed by a giant metal behemoth that takes a minimum of a mile to stop.

Good to see some of the recently unseen and even if no one is ever as special as they think they are, the good news is that more than one person was reminded they do like riding bikes after all.

Post Ben Country, any fear of being abandoned with no direction home is minimized; I might have gotten lost, with effort, but only in the sense of being out of touch with those that might have brought me there.

It’s surprisingly comforting to realize that the mere act of keeping one’s eyes open constitutes something; the question then is whether being something is any reason for anything.

I did learn that a freeway median really can be a park if there are picnic tables and a patio.  It’s like how the selection of cold beer at the Gross Out is kind of limited for a place that sells toilet paper by the palette, but if you’re willing to take a chance on a brand that couldn’t even make the cut for Trader Joe’s, you might end up being reasonably satisfied with the outcome.

Not a lot of miles when all was said and done, but plenty of smiles nevertheless; the combination of Derrick and Long Island Ice Tea never disappoints in the department of LOL AF.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results; when you keep on riding and once again the expected hilarity is manifest, though, that’s just insanely great.

Mitzvah

photo from Dada

A “mitzvah,” as even your average atheistic non-practicing cultural Jew can tell you, refers to something you’re commanded to do by God, and while no one would accuse the Angry Hippy of being an all-knowing perfectly good Creator of the Universe, I’m pretty sure most of the thirty or so cyclists on this year’s version of his annual bike-camping debauch, Ben Country XIII: The Ben Mitzvah felt—if not commanded—at least strongly advised to fulfill their quasi-religious duty to ride a bunch of unnecessary hills, traverse miles of unexpected trails, and best (that is worst) of all, complete an absolutely ridiculous hike-a-bike (or just camping gear for those whom discretion turned out to be the better part of valor for) through “half a mile” of deadfall and brambles at the end of an already long day in the saddle and under the influence.

But just as Abraham unquestioningly raised the dagger to slay his son Isaac when Yahweh told him to, so did the assembled obediently transgress numerous secular commandments (such as the admonition never to follow Ben up a mountain or Fred down a gravel road) when the route called for it; so great was our faith that we’d be rewarded, not in some possible afterlife but right here and now in this one—at least when we finally managed to stagger through the woods to the washed-out highway to which we were directed.

The suburbs go on for a remarkably long way, but when they finally turn into pastoral valleys and gorgeous mountain watersheds, it’s hard to believe that all those McMansions are just through the woods over the hill.  It’s a little—all right, a lot—of extra work to get to real seclusion, but when it means you can roar as loud as you want for as long as you want, it’s worth it.

If Ben Country were a young Jewish boy, he would now officially be a man.

Mazel fucking Tov.