Amblin'

It’s fun to note how much fun you’re able to have in a little over 24 hours.

From the very first moment when you arrive and can begin your day by amblin’, not ramblin’, around the vast marketplace stocked with all sorts of delicacies from Asia and around the world to enjoy breakfast sushi and inari, along with friendly kibbitzing and joshing, the enjoyment begins.

And it’s always amusing to be the first vehicles on the ferry, two wheels good, four wheels bad—or at least slower.

Surreptitious spirits and canned beer on the float over to the the Peninsula always bring a smile to one’s face, especially when they afford one the opportunity to remotely toast an onboard wedding celebration.  Yay.

Sure, the harrowing several miles along the glass and nail strewn freeway aren’t so great, but when they’re almost immediately followed up by a cold tallboy at the somewhat unfortunately named bar and restaurant, all is good.

Bike touring is fun, in spite of the heat and cars, at least when you’re ramblin’, not amblin’, on old forest highways with a state park as your initial destination.  It’s so nice there, you could take a nap; only the promise of more fun on two wheels impels you onward.

And here’s what really a gas: swapping your human-powered vehicle for a gas-powered one just before the hills become really steep and exposed.  And what’s fun about that is it means you’ve got plenty of energy in camp for more amblin’, not ramblin’.

Thanks to Mother Nature for producing the mycological molecules that turn even the silliest of phrases even sillier: “Ketchup or die!”  “I teach 4th graders!” “Bungie cords hate bikes!”

And doing a little bit of Ian Anderson for the birthday boy: is that fun, or what?  Yes!

Moreover, in the morning, it’s still not over.  Beer, bud, and bacon for breakfast.

Country music and Exile on Main Street in the packed pickup home.

Fun!

Blithe

 

Percy Bushe Shelly’s inspired poem, To a Skylark begins with the line, “Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!” which inspired the title of Noel Coward’s inspired dark comedy, Blithe Spirit, thus demonstrating that inspiration often comes from inspiration, especially when that inspiration is inspired by time spent among the inspirational glories of nature.

The internet tells us that the poet and his wife, Mary Shelly, (author of Frankenstein; or A Modern Prometheus, and daughter of the early feminist philosopher, Mary Wollstonecraft) were wandering among the lanes in Livorno, Italy one summer evening and heard the caroling of a skylark.  

The poet puts it like this:

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 

 

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are bright'ning,

Thou dost float and run;

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

Pretty good stuff to be sure, but one has to wonder how much more lyrical old Percy would have been able to be had he and the missus had bicycles to ride that night, especially were they pedaling not around the hedges and bowers of a port city in Tuscany, but rather, through the industrial core of a port city in the Pacific Northwest with that warm spring light lingering late and making shadows grow long.

In that event, he might have waxed rhapsodic over the way the sun sank to a perfect point behind the Olympic peninsula with the skyline of Seattle in the foreground and he could have directed his apostrophe not to a skylark, but perhaps towards a seagull, whose crepuscular cries may not inspire such pathos as those of the genus Alauda, but which nevertheless offer a perfect accompaniment to the view.

Bring it home, Perce:

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

Instead

Surely, there are better things to do.

You could devote your evening to the cause of global human rights, taking whatever means necessary to curtail widespread human rights violations under El Salvador’s “State of Emergency,” or in Ukraine, where Russian forces tortured detainees in the city of Izium, or in India, where police killings are routine and endemic.

Or you could make music.  Or art.  Or write the next Great American Novel—or at least Pretty Good Local ‘Zine.  Or whip up a delicious four course meal using only items procured by bicycle from your local Farmers’ Market.

You could watch a hockey game.  Or some basketball or baseball.  Or surf the Worldwide Web for videos of cats.

You could even just take a nap—with or without having had a few drinks beforehand.

Instead, however, you ride your bike to the usual Thursday night meeting place, quaff a lukewarm brew while noting the musical choices of the resident hobo DJ, and then spin across the manmade industrial waterway to climb up a parking garage whose football-field sized roof affords a stunning view of one slice of our fair city just as the sun sets behind purple, fuchsia, and pink cirrus clouds.

You then skim the University and public transportation’s space-age infrastructure to meander on two wheels along the usual meandering path before provisioning up at the generous local retailer.

And then, along the taken-for-granted trail through the woods to the giant park where frogs sing your welcome and all are reunited for a short wiggle along the water to the secret glade.  And that’s where you congregate for the next little while or longer, enjoying the unseasonably warm evening in what’s shaping up to be a remarkably remarkable spring, at least in the weather department.

So, you could have made the world a better place.  Or cooked a spectacular feast.  Or seen your favorite team lose or prevail as the case may be.

But this instead.

Stimulation

Perhaps death really is an illusion and our dearly departed loved ones are hanging out watching us from behind that gossamer veil separating two worlds, one for the living and one beyond.  

If so, then they, too, would surely enjoy the view from the highest and most classic of our fair city’s concrete temples devoted to the storing of automobiles, with the added bonus, for them, of not having to decide whether to experience the full 360 degrees out in the elements or a more constrained horizon behind the protecting parapet.

Such trade-offs mean nothing to an ectoplasm through whom the spring bluster blusters freely.

Sometimes, it makes sense to only plan ahead one step at a time; you can trust your future self to come up with something it will prefer when the opportunity presents itself.

Our hopes and dreams make reality real; if we love hard enough, anything may be possible, even reanimation; revitalization is certain even without the metaphysical baggage.

The lowering of the Lake, just over a century ago means that here in the 21st century, we are walking on water our hundred year-old selves would have had to; and if that’s not miraculous enough, consider, in the fullness of time, that the moon is so, as well.

Some days just overflow with sensations: a familiar cycling route made easier due to the power of anticipation; a classroom where real connections are made; local infrastructure working as designed for crosstown access lickety-split; dreamers dreaming onstage and a little luncheon to boot; the usual usual, as usual; happy hour feeling happy; then up and over all over again.

It’s a good thing that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs.  While this may, as Mom knew best, cause minor hiccups or even upchucks in a literal smorgasbord context, metaphorically, it’s all for the best, as it means that no matter how much you see, you can always see more, just beyond that infernal curtain.