Celebrity

It’s wonderful when a friend or acquaintance gains some well-deserved notoriety for being wonderful and it’s even better when they show up on a cargo bike with two old rescue dogs who apparently take it pretty well to go faster than any dog their size has ever gone before.  

With that in mind, the evening was already a success before it even really got started, and even though it was, for me at least, a pretty short evening, it was plenty packed with plenty of the sort of enjoyments that have been rare to enjoy these past 12 months or so, including seeing familiar and less familiar faces (albeit masked), cracking wise with wiseguys (and gals), and quaffing lukewarm beer in a public park after dark.

We stood near the monument to Thomas Burke: “patriot, jurist, orator, friend, patron of education.” 

When I die (probably after the evening’s birthday boy, but, according to some of the assembled last Saturday, in all likelihood, after e-bike aficionado, DerekIto), I wouldn’t mind being eulogized in a similar matter, as long a “patriot” refers to being patriotic about what’s best about our native country (including the freedom to ride bikes and drink beer in a park) and not so much about owning military-grade firearms.  

I don’t think I want a statue built in my memory (not that I imagine anyone is planning on that), but it would be swell to have some kind of willow tree like those around Burke’s memorial for friends to sit under and remember me.

Or not; it doesn’t matter once you’re dead, does it?

But it does matter—before we’ve shuffled off this mortal coil—to have opportunities like those experienced in the hours between 7:00 and 10:00 on a Thursday evening in spring to gather together—socially-distanced still, of course—to spin uphill through the woods together; to celebrate successes, triumphs, and another year around the sun; all bodies on bikes, all of the time.