Muse

I’ve been writing these post-Point83 ride reports in 20 consecutive years now, and I keep thinking I ought to stop.  Enough is enough and all that.

But one could say the same thing about the rides themselves and while, occasionally, you hear rumblings about the demise of Thursday night shenanigans, here they come again, complete with stoney pedaling, convenience store nachos, illicit firepits, and the prospect of the authorities arriving rather than just roaring by, flashing lights and sirens ablaze.

I started this practice in part as a way of letting the world know that I had survived the ride home, often quite inebriated, from some far corner of our fair city to the central area in which I reside.  

I imagined that it could be an open question for some as to whether Professor Dave arrived home safe and sound, and so, in somewhat of the same fashion as I always (except on those very few occasions when the Bolivian Marching Powder has been marching) send a midnight text home to confirm my salubrity (if not sobriety), I took to penning (well, keyboarding, to be precise), these little 327-word post-mortems as a kind of message in a bottle that I wasn’t lying in a ditch somewhere or squashed flat by an 18-wheeler somewhere within Seattle’s vast industrial core.

I could stop, I really could, but then how could I so easily reference events from the past, like that mock funeral for a now long-lost friend, may he rest in peace, or that other time, on the occasion of the bachelor party of his “sister,” perhaps my favorite of all these hundreds of postings, because of what it didn’t say, not what it did.

Point83 has been a reliable muse for me all these years, encompassing, at one time or another, all nine of the classical Goddesses, although it’s probably the one responsible for comedy, Thalia, who predominates.  

Still laughing after so many years, aren’t we all?

Homage

One screenshot equals 327 words (well, down to 313 including this.)  Thanks, Dr. Ian!

Primo

Merrick was right: we had been to that parking garage before and it didn’t have rooftop access that time, either.

The mind is a strange beast; what goes in doesn’t always come back out; but the good news there is that if you don’t remember something, then doing it once more is like doing it for the first time all over again.

I suppose that’s the promise of advanced senility: every day is brand new; you can do the same thing repeatedly and never get bored.

Which is pretty much the program for Thursday night rides; now entering into my 20th different year of doing this, it still can be fresh; while I’m sure the route to Georgetown is one that I’ve taken before, it remains nevertheless remarkable not to have to take the bridge over the tracks—as far as I can recall, anyway. 

Who knows what the new year will bring; perhaps a two-wheeled spin around the industrial heart of our fair city is a way of avoiding the inevitable; or maybe things will proceed pretty much as they always have, and I suppose that as long as you can keep on doing what you’ve been doing then there’s really not that much to complain or worry about, especially when the rain holds off until long after you’re home abed and the annoying sound emanating from your rear wheel that you thankfully diagnosed and treated never returned, making you fall in love with your bike all over again—the theme of the evening once more.

At this point, what’s behind is way more than what lies ahead, but that doesn’t weigh you down; it just creates a solid foundation for ascent.  We are our histories, but we’re also our futures; where we’ve come from points the way to where we’re going.

Will there be beer in heaven?  Will there be bikes?  No one can say for certain, but surely it’s heavenly that they’re here now.