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You know what they say: “You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.”

The same principle applies to bike riding every Thursday night of the year.  Unless you make it out to the first one, you can’t have a perfect record on your annual Point83 drunken shenanigans scorecard.

A quartet, at least, however, are still in the running, and while it’s hardly a goal to which any sensible person would aspire, nor is it an accomplishment you’d want to highlight on your curriculum vitae in applying for fellowships abroad, it is worth noting that, as an inebriated Lao-Tzu would surely remind us, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single stagger;” in other words, a gold star for perfect attendance may still be awarded at year’s end, including special commendation for fixed-gear category.

It was pointed out over whiskey at my very own neighborhood bar, that many a favored route over time has been a result of someone essentially leading the way back to their own neighborhood, a strategy that I only somewhat intentionally adopted, although there were several detours along the way for cannabis consumption and view admiring and the requisite interaction with a lost soul who assured us that he “wasn’t always broke” in his repeated efforts to sell someone a set of Bluetooth earbuds in the shadow of Hermon A. MacNeil’s monument to “Seattle’s Foremost and Best Beloved Citizen,” Judge Thomas Burke, of Burke Museum and Burke-Gilman trail fame.

According to Wikipedia, “Burke frequently organized subscription drives to raise money for Seattle projects, to the point that he often described himself as a ‘professional beggar,’” which seems to me an admirable profession and one we might all aspire to one way or another in the coming twelve months, especially in support of causes earning encomiums like Burke: “patriot, jurist, orator, friend, patron of education, first in every move for the advancement of city and state.”

First and foremost.