Moist

If fear of the weather is what kept a person from the traditional Thursday night bicycle ride last evening, then they blew it.  

For most of the time, conditions were swell: a soft and gentle mist (at most) enveloped riders in a sweet Cascadian caress; wool sans shell was plenty and you could even enjoy a previously un-enjoyed park beside the mighty Duwamish without hardly fogging up your glasses.

This is how I remember late January rain in Seattle: the worst of the season’s storms are over and what falls from the heavens now is the first harbinger of spring.  Crocuses are peeking from the soil, robins have begun appearing everywhere; the Lunar New Year rings in and with it, the promise of fresh growth, or at least the hope that one’s cycling gloves will no longer smell like cheese all the time.

A scant assemblage braved the mean streets around Westlake Center; riders were almost outnumbered by cop cars closing the barn door after the horse had already left McDonald’s yesterday; maybe the solution to gun violence should be to have a trade-in program of six-shooters for two-wheelers; pedal-pushing instead of trigger-pulling, how about that?

Not that cycling is a balm for everything: some people in SUVs sure get angry when a handful of bikes slow them down for all of three seconds; I couldn’t take the pissed-off lady’s exhortations seriously because, for the life of me, I thought it was Derrick in his truck pretending to be mad—that’s how incoherent and over-the-top her rage seemed to be.

I get it though; my blood would boil too if I had to be encased in a metal cage with only podcasts and Googlemaps to keep me company on such lovely night to be in plein air.

After all, there are people who come out for the ride from all the way on the other side of the world; proof that missing out really is missing out.