Conversation

 What’s been missed, among a million other things, is just hanging out and shooting the shit with people; seeing their whole faces, and being able to interrupt with timely asides, no lag.

So, it was especially rewarding to stand underneath an engineering marvel at whose precision to the eighth of an inch the Angry Hippie marveled at and share stories of teaching and biking and the relative efficacy of cuss words as adjectives.  Combined with beer and a nautical twilight that lasted long enough for the nearly-full moon to rise overhead, casting a circular moonbow, I guess you’d call it, on the clouds encircling it, there was naught to want on this first Thursday night of the new season.

Oh, sure, we could have assayed another parking lot and, of course, Seward Park remained out there untouched, but what more do you want, really, than a waterfront spin towards the setting sun, a relatively unusual waterfront destination, plenty to talk about, and then onward and upwards to short steep way to another reasonably unfamiliar public gem, surprisingly empty of those in need of a place to sleep outside.

Softcare pointed out how the baseball stadium with its light-up pink octuple-XXX graphics made the joint look like the world’s largest strip club and you had to agree.  Still, the vista was hardly marred by this revelation; our fair city looks pretty swell from such an angle; who knows how things will shake out (literally) when the big earthquake hits, but for now, the insatiable human lust for making more things looks pretty good from on high.

Spring break, such as it is, was referred to obliquely; no shirts were cast off and there wasn’t a single piña colada in sight.  Nevertheless, the spirit of the equinox was certainly celebrated, not only in words but in deeds, indeed, as well.

Every bike ride is a conversation between rider and machine; every conversation a kind of ride, too; say what?

Hope

 It’s started to feel like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and while there’s always the possibility it’s a train in the distance bearing down brakeless upon us, I’ll take the evidence of several return faces as support for a more widespread impression of positive possibilities.

Or, it could have just been the sunny afternoon, so clear that the Mountain bared its shoulders all the way down to its waist and in every direction you looked, there were snow-capped peaks sending telepathic geological messages southward to their big brother.

On my way to the usual thing at the usual time in the usual place, I meandered through Beacon Hill, with a beer stop at the softball fields, whose infields, recently dragged and graded, looked almost ready for recreational recreations; if, as legendary Washington Post sports reporter, Thomas Boswell, put it, “time begins on opening day,” then it almost feels like we’re minutes—or more like only a couple months—from the clocks finally starting again.

Plus, there was so much traffic on First Avenue coming south that I had to keep checking my phone to make sure that there hadn’t been some natural or unnatural disaster that was causing everyone to hop in their cars and hightail it out of downtown; a solid line automobiles, two lanes thick, from SODO all the way south as far as you could see.  

Consequently, it was especially pleasing to greet a few more than half a dozen familiars, just to verify that the apocalypse hadn’t yet arrived (other than the slo-motion one we’re involved in and have been for the last couple centuries).

I was glad to be reminded of the destination I had in mind all along even though I was all but ready to acquiesce to going right back to where I came.  

And ye of little hope, there really is, as hoped, a waterside “park” at just a little farther up to the left.