Sparse

Of course, there were other better things to do: you could soak up some culture at the Capitol Hill Art Walk; or get your sports fix on by catching the Seahawks pre-season football game; or even prepare for the inevitable autumn darkness by sorting your socks and underpants drawer; any of those—and almost anything else—would have been a superior use of one’s time and energy, but yours truly, along with barely a handful of other stalwarts (or, as some might put it, “losers”) combined with a trio of relative and absolute newcomers, opted for Ye Olde Thursday Night Ride and while it didn’t involve several hundred feet of plastic sheeting or a kiddie pool filled with food-grade rasslin’ slurry, by missing it, I would have missed out on a number of notable, (if not remarkable) experiences afforded by the experience, including (but not limited to) the following:

• Voicing my opposition to the Pike Market gum wall as we rolled through groups of startled visitors at Seattle’s most disgusting tourist attraction
• Sharing reminiscences of wool clothing and retro-grouches with my contemporary as we meandered alongside sailboats racing in the Puget Sound
• Following Fred, not down a gravel road, but through a forest path littered with twigs that only he, with his elven carriage, could walk across without breaking
• Enjoying a single beer and a sliver of sunset backlighting the clouds at a semi-secret street-end park at the foot of Seattle’s least dense neighborhood
• Sharing the rest of my tallboy at the one sort of divey bar in the area with a crazed 33 year-old woman going through heroin withdrawal on the mean streets of Magnolia of all places
• Learning that a backed-up sewer in a restaurant has the characteristic odor of Parmesan cheese
• Discussing tattoos over a final nightcap on the patio of the number two karaoke joint
• Riding home along the waterfront and through the city after midnight feeling little, if any, pain