Last

If it were my final Point83 ride (not in forever, but for a while, and not including, of course, signature events like the Christmas Disaster, Ben Country, and the Professor Dave race, which surely warrants a three and a half-hour drive across the entire state of Washington to commemorate the start of spring, just sayin’), I would want to ride to Carkeek Park.

After all, no spot more reliably offers—and has historically offered—the opportunity to savor so many of the peculiar delights one reliably (and historically) savors on a Thursday night out on two wheels, including a route there that’s just a little too long, with a bridge across a body of water shimmering in the late summer sunset, some unnecessary climbing but which results in a thrilling bomb downhill, a twisty, turning, dark descent into an old-growth Pacific Northwest forest, and a final destination of a classic firepit replete with freight trains passing by for rock-tossing and LOLs.

I would want, as well, to take a spin around Ye Olde Seattle Center Ghettodrome, because, really, what’s more Seattle than that, unless it’s Dick’s Hamburgers, which would show up, too, in a bag in a mouth, according to that old joke.

I’d also take the opportunity incite the good-natured ire of an old friend with an imperfectly executed practical joke resulting in some sticky residue to remember me by and ultimately, absolution all around.

Plus, I wouldn’t mind the chance to provide some care and solace to a fallen comrade, especially if they weren’t injured too badly after all, whew!

And, as long as I’m dreaming here, I’d also want there to be a visually (if not astronomically) full moon rising up so bright that it would make a subtle rainbow in the pocket of clouds it peeks through.

Finally, when the fire burnt down, I’d do the classic “Irish Goodbye”, so even though I was gone, it would always be like I’d never left.