Success

There are many ways to measure success: an Olympic gold medal, a McArthur Fellowship, landing a man on the moon and bringing him safely back to earth, but sometimes, it’s enough just to bring your dear friend to the top of a parking garage you’ve failed twice before to manage. 

Or earlier, simply to note the Meth-odd acting of a couple tweaked-out street performers.

Standards are surely important, but lowering one’s standards to what may reasonably be accomplished on an early fall evening in the Pacific Northwest, where the meteorological adumbrations of what’s in store start adumbrating at the beginning but then, back off considerably for the rest of the evening, is a tried-and-true strategy for satisfaction. 

We’ve got to calibrate our expectations with what can reasonably be expected.

Still, the secret places are places in part, because they are secret.

As John Stuart Mill asserted, one of the keys to happiness is not to want more from life than what life is capable of bestowing and so, if it bestows upon you the opportunity to safely surpass the historical danger spot, to do a little nose-thumbing at the big brother store, and to observe how the heteronormative economy on which society depends is still doing fine, then who wouldn’t want to celebrate it in the best way they know how.

A friendly parking garage rooftop is a civic amenity; in California, all beachfront access is public, right?  (Anyway, it should be.) The views atop those places ought to be available to all, not just us.

The most comfortable place, out of the wind, is not always the best place to be.  And radar isn’t always the final answer. Every dashboard has to be interpreted.

Wherever you are, there you go; and when you do that by bicycle, you’re never alone unless you expand the definition of you.

In which case, you and your bicycle are one.

And one still finds success on two wheels.

Adieu

My second time to the Orient Express on a Point83 ride was somewhat more successful (or maybe just successful in a different way) than the first.  

At any rate, I got out of there without having to use my credit card and I also sang and danced way more than before.  

So, all in all, a fine evening overall, and that doesn’t even include the lovely pink and purple sky witnessed from Bread War Park and the rise on the low bridge, nor the visit to the Chelan Café at an unprecedently early time, all in support of a fond far-thee-well to our gang’s prime ceramicist on his way east to seek higher education at the celebrated kiln of his choice.

There was, perhaps, a little more indoor activity than would have been expected on such a lovely late summer eve, but who cares, right?  You still got to spin south and west and east and north on mostly empty streets and there were nevertheless opportunities for outdoor imbibing; no one crashed spectacularly (nor even simply) and rendezvous were effected even without planning.

It was one of those times where not everything has to be everything; everything is still something, and something is something that’s enough.  

As always, if you keep in mind what an amazing privilege it is to have the good fortune to be even a little bit disappointed about what didn’t happen when what did happen is—compared to all the terrible, awful things happening in the world that it wasn’t—a goddamn bountiful harvest of good fortune, then how in the world could you possibly complain, even if the karaoke system audio buzzes a bit and the words don’t always show up onscreen for the audience to view.

Which is just another way of pointing out that pretty grand time was had by all, even in light of the somewhat bittersweet nature of event, given the imminent departure: Godspeed Timmy!  Make us proud!