Intro

If it were my first, rather than my 500 and somethingth Point83 ride, what would I think?  

I’d notice, at first, that it was mostly all dudes and most of them were older than I might have expected.  This one guy, for instance, was clearly pushing 70 and even the younger ones looked like their 20s were well in the rearview mirror.

There would be a shirtless guy who wore his watch on his arm, and a guy with a kind of summer mullet and tight shorts; one dude would have an electric tallbike, that would be pretty cool, and he wouldn’t seem too badly hurt when he crashed coming out of the parking garage.

That would be something new, by the way: climbing ten circular stories to the top of a downtown parking garage.  The spectacular view of Elliot Bay and the entire industrial core of Seattle, including to the north, the newly-renovated pier and Aquarium alongside the lit-up big wheel at sunset would be a first; I’d probably never had had the opportunity to share a beer with someone ten stories up outside like that, either.

And while I may have navigated Pioneer Square before, this would be the first time I’d done it in a group with such little regard for “sidewalk closed” signs and traffic lights; crossing the Jose Rizal bridge my not have been novel, although I probably never would have enjoyed such long shadows doing so and admired both stadiums lit up so brightly before.

I would never have taken the route to Jefferson Park from the Beacon Hill Red Apple through the alleyways before, and I surely wouldn’t have had the opportunity to stand around a little one-pallet fire in the park for so long; even to those more experienced than me, the cheery blaze really seemed to linger.

I probably wouldn’t have stayed to the end; Irish goodbyes always in order.

Would I come back?  

Same time next week.

Novel

Nothing is really ever the same, of course.  

The subatomic particles that make up everything—whether they exist as material objects or are just perceptions in the Universal Mind—are constantly changing, so it’s never the case that anything is ever what it once was.

So, for example, even if you’ve taken the same route out of the same place at the same time on the same two-wheeled contraption more than 500 times, each of those times is different at the fundamental level.

That said, it can sure seem like déjà vu all over again, but only if you don’t notice that even after those myriad versions of the apparently same thing, there are still aspects of the experience you’ve never experienced before.

To wit:

• Accessing the bridge over the freeway from a wide concrete bike path that previously was more famous for its incarnation as the Davemuda Triangle
• Taking a left through the urban mountain bike park leading to the “flat way” down towards the water
• Corkscrewing along university sidewalks that weren’t there when you were a student to arrive at a dead end that was
• Hair-pinning at the bottom of the viaduct bomb to emerge from the underground right into the shopping mall village
• Legally drinking British-sized glasses of beer at an official sidewalk café where historically, it’s been illegally quaffing hidden tallboys in essentially the same place
• Sausages and hotdog buns at the friendly home firepit; seeing the latter burn green for some unknown reason; the preservative, maybe?
• Riding home from said friendly home more or less sober; not even coming close to a crash

It’s not obvious why human beings should have a taste for novelty; you’d think that from an evolutionary adaptive standpoint, we’d prefer everything to be the same as much as possible, but whatever the reason; it’s abundantly clear that all you have to do is pay attention to notice the difference; maybe that’s the most novel part of all.

Little

So, we didn’t lay out 150 feet of plastic sheeting, fill the trees with glowsticks, load up an inflatable swimming pool with gallons of green goo for slippery rasslin’, and pass out fancy drinks made with Tang and Everclear to dozens of revelers well into the wee hours of morning, but, nevertheless, it was a fine evening for a bicycle ride and a swim near the traditional venue.  

And granted, the lake is full of milfoil, especially in the shallow parts, but why complain when you still can lie on your back in the water and gaze up at the cotton candy colored clouds before returning to the shore for libations and conversations with old friends and a lollipop that lasts for half an hour minimum?

Not everything has to be everything; something is still something, and when that something includes a ride en masse down what really should be the main north-south bicycle thoroughfare of our fair city, but which really only feels feasible when ridden en masse, then that something’s plenty even if it isn’t the everything that it could be (and has been in years past).

Sure, we should all aspire to greatness most, if not all, of the time, but that doesn’t mean we should always be dissatisfied with pretty-goodness; it’s important to calibrate one’s expectations and if you don’t expect too much, then you’re way more apt to be satisfied with what you get no matter what.

It would be awesome, of course, to be an Olympic athlete and win a gold medal in one’s chosen event, but man, a silver or even a bronze wouldn’t be so bad, either.  

If you were the third best gymnast or table tennis player or slalom canoeist in the world, that would be something to be very proud of, so, for heaven’s sake, a perfect summer evening out on two wheels with a lake swim to boot, even without historically-insane shenanigans is pure gold, too.