Ultimate

On the last Thursday of the year, which was also the first Thursday of season on which the days were growing longer, a small contingent of bicycle riders met up by the holiday carousel in Seattle’s downtown retail core and rode downhill and around the corner before ascending for warmth to the topmost top of a concrete structure for storing automobiles in order to enjoy a Viaduct-free view of maritime industry while conjecturing as to the original purpose of a brick smokestack over shots of whiskey and cans of beer.

Soon afterwards, they circled back down the marble raceway, managing, somewhat surprisingly, to avoid hitting anyone’s helmeted head on the low ceiling, and hightailed south for an indoor firepit (and the false promise of singing) to quaff a bit at a place whose name calls forth the spirit of summer swimming pool games where at least a couple of their number got to see how much easier it is to notice differences when a person isn’t distracted by what distracts them.

Eventually, northward movement was effected which eventually resulted in the standard admonition to drink at the bar one shows up to; that happened, and soon enough some who thought they were leaving stayed and vice-versa—a fitting end to the end of a year that had many a fitting end.

The upcoming 12 months promise to hold the promise of better things, presuming our long national nightmare draws, at last, to a close.  As T.S. Eliot (no doubt spinning in his grave at the newly-released theatrical version of his book of practical cats) reminds us in “The Hollow Men,” the world ends not with a bang but a whimper, a state of affairs that doesn’t, apparently, apply to the teens decade of the 21^st century, which seems to be drawing to its conclusion with something more like a cheer, even if said cheer is more of the Bronx-style than the unalloyed encomiums resulting from one final ride of the year.

Cheer

There’s a chapter in Moby Dick called “A Squeeze of the Hand,” in which Ishmael waxes rhapsodic about the sailors’ shared task of squeezing the spermaceti in great tubs as way to soften the globules of blubber into their final unctuous form.  In an ecstasy of Whitmanesque rapture, he sings: 

Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze!  All morning long; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules.  Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, —Oh! My dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy!  Come, let us squeeze hands all around; nay let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

As it turns out, you can achieve the same feelings of joy and love for all humanity by corralling some three dozen of your longtime and long-lost friends into a bike “race” from one park to another with a wood stop in between, warming an entire shelter space with not one, not two, but three humorously-large fires, and then congregating at a great big college bar to bask in the euphonious song stylings of the absolutely most charming, generous, and bad-assed lyrical Elves ever to grace a holiday season.

If that doesn’t make you eschew any acerbities or ill-humor, I don’t know what would; Santa himself surely has no gift any better in his bag, nor any Christmas miracle any more wonderful.

Who needs clappies when the entire occasion is one for full-throated applause?  

Looking up into their eyes sentimentally, I saw every naughty and nice little boy and girl get everything they wanted and more, “such an abounding, affectionate, friendly loving feeling,” indeed.

Full

I suppose there are better places to live—maybe a $98 million dollar penthouse condominium in Manhattan, perhaps on 278,000 of your own ranch’s acres in Montana, arguably a private island in the Hawaiian archipelago—but it’s hard to beat a spot where you can ride your bike to city park at which a ruined foundation provides hearth and chimney for outdoor merriment, and all for just the price of beer and matches.

You know how it goes: the original plan is to simply show up at the start of things to solicit attendance at the annual disaster, but the arrival of far-flung visitors and the promise of backyard destinations compels you to have one more for the road and more road for the one all the way until midnight and why not?  

It’s spring break, winter version, after all.

If you’re half the world apart from your loved ones, you can look at the moon and know that they’re seeing the same satellite you are; when it’s full, your rise is their set and vice-versa, but if you could plant a sign with the words “I love you” in a crater, they’d be able to focus their high-powered telescope and read it (assuming conditions were right) and although they probably wouldn’t enjoy a 360-degree moonbow like those in Seattle’s out-of-doors did last night, the knowledge that we’re all in phase, so to speak, means you’re never alone, no matter how far away.

The holiday season seems to have people budgeting their revelries, which makes sense, I guess; a person can only take so much amusement (although ongoing investigations into the matter on this end will continue unabated), and so the evening’s slim turnout was not a surprise.

As dry as it’s been, though, it hardly feels like December in the Pacific Northwest, but nothing says holiday like riding past homes emblazoned in seasonal lights, except, of course, the main event, coming up Saturday, don’t miss it!

Ascension

We didn’t get as high as I had anticipated, but there were more highs than I expected, especially the ones associated with riding up switchbacks over train tracks and dodging baby scooters for a dance al fresco in accompaniment to the dulcet tones of the Filthy FemCorps.  You can never go wrong with Madonna and Lady Gaga tunes performed by Seattle’s very own “hot bag full of fierce women who aren’t afraid to be weird, genuine, raw, sweaty, confident, honest, loving and real.”

And while we didn’t all ascend to the highest heights of our fair city, a stalwart handful did manage to get all the way down to sea (or, at least river) level and then gain something like 300 feet or so to the top of one of Seattle’s traditional seven hills only to reconnect momentarily with a few friends who’d gone up and away earlier without us.

The stars seemed aligned for re-commemorating that day in 2012 when cannabis consumption was made no longer criminal in the state of Washington with a visit to the tipmost top of our fair city but alas and alack (and “oh well” and “who cares?” too), other elevations rose up instead resulting in a ride pretty close to the Point83’s titular excursion and this on a December evening that was not only dry but also warm enough for just wool and no shell all night long.

Besides, riding along the Viaduct-less waterfront is still a brand-new thrill that never gets old and having the rent-a-cops turn the red and blue lights of their golf cart on you from behind a cyclone fence is just the sort of humorous theatrics that bring out the surly teenager in anyone no matter what age.

In the end, there are as many different ways of getting high as there are highs of different ways to get there; eventually, seen from above, the upward path is just one more way to get down.