Bonus

from space.com

Honestly, when the evening begins with a corkscrew spiral to the top of a previously-untopped parking garage commanding a spectacular view of the sun setting over the Puget Sound (and a peek inside the kitchens of several urban condo dwellers), everything subsequent is playing with house money, so to speak.

It’s all bonus time after that, whether it be:

1) a quick spin around the traditional mini-velodrome, 

2) a relaxed refreshment stop on the roof of another parking structure, this one festooned with multiple vegetable plots and not one, but three, tiny backyard lawns, perfect for reclining with a cold one while marveling at the crepuscular conjunction of the waxing crescent moon and an extra-bright Hesperus, 

3) a short, but suitably terrible hike-a-bike on the way to the “easy” route towards Seattle’s largest city park, 

4) a thrilling descent of a hill that is way steeper going up than down, or 

5) a congregation and conflagration waterside under the starry heavens with ample space and time for everyone talking at once, often in violent agreement about topics of shared interest and eventually communal exasperation.

Once again, nature’s bounty proves ever bountiful, especially when enhanced by the pleasures associated with experiencing them via bicycle.

Naturally, as the traditional structures of civil society continue to fray, it becomes more incumbent upon each of us as individuals and as members of the groups of which we’re part, to create our own shared rules and norms.  When primary among such rules is that there are no rules, things get more complicated.  

That’s when it’s okay for sticks to come out to enforce some modicum of common sense, but also the time to be reminded—typically by the common sense challengers themselves—that it’s been proven time and again that more than enough turns out to be just the right amount in the end.

The bonus, in other words, isn’t really a bonus, after all.  

Too much, once more, is just enough.