Tradition

The comforting thing about the holidays is their predictability: you know you’ll have at least one opportunity to get a bit tipsy on a weekday afternoon while half-heartedly gift shopping; you can be assured that a big box of Deb’s cookies will come in the mail; and you can sleep well knowing that on the last Thursday or so before Christmas, there will be a roaring clusterfuck of a bicycle race around Greenlake hosted by a drunken loudmouth who will crack you up with awkward and hilariously inappropriate observations about participants and attendees, which will culminate in a perfectly unreasonable amount of alcohol abuse and, of course, another win for now three-time Race of Champion winner, Padraig Patrick, who once again prevailed—although admittedly, without having to compete against the absent and magical Daniel Featherhead.

Conditions this year, unlike in last year’s Snowpocalypse, were perfectly ideal for riding; imagine a mid-December evening in Seattle where one doesn’t even get rained on! And while I didn’t, as I’d hoped, make it to the Westlake meet-up, there was something fitting about catching up to the ride mid-stride, as I’ve done this year all quarter long.

As it was, I arrived just in time to take off with the start of the December race-in heat, in which I rode just long enough to finish the traditional racetime victory cigar which, as usual, did little to propel me to victory, but which did alleviate any pangs of conscience I might otherwise have felt about bailing on the competition so early—without even trying to reprise my Rosie Ruiz schtick from last year.

As for the human drama of athletic competition, I’d have to say the high point of the evening was the footdown competition, in which the Angry Hippy once again demonstrated the old adage that “age and treachery will always triumph over youth and enthusiasm,” a message no less apt for being obvious, nor any less welcome for being traditional.

Backyard

Joeball has gone on record as saying he sometimes feels a little guilty when he advocates that the ride head for somewhere on his side of the West Seattle Bridge; his conscience troubles him a bit to be seen as pushing for a destination close to his home when he knows that may be a long haul back for most everyone else.

I, on the other hand, being not nearly so considerate, experience no such misgivings about stumping for a spot in the general vicinity of home and hearth, and so it’s certain that from now on, my default vote will be for the newly-discovered (or, at least, newly-ignited) tumbledown chimney we congregated around last night, a hilltop hideaway so close to my house that I was able to take the unprecedented step of stopping off chez moi halfway through the evening for a change of socks and a bottle of beer from the fridge, much to the surprise—and even consternation—of the wife and kid, who never expect to see me around at times for which I’ve secured a hall pass.

Remarkably, I first arrived at the abandoned barbecue all the way from Bothell before anyone else got there just from Westlake, but the only explanation I could initially figure was that it must have been decided the place was too exposed and that some alternative destination had been set out for; yet when I came back from home half an hour later to cavort with the assembled, I was pretty surprised to see how secluded the place turns out to be, its only downside being an inability to ring the fire, although it is sort of fun to stand above and toss logs into the chimney.

The moon sat over Lake Washington through spindly, leafless branches, giving things a charming Nightmare Before Christmas kind of feel; teh Jobies delivered Chinese; I’ll have no qualms at all about campaigning to go back time and again.

Pile

It has always made me happy to see a pile of bikes outside a joint, especially my own neighborhood version, and tonight was no exception.

I got to continue the discussion I’d been having earlier in the evening during class about the greatest good for the greatest number and the problem of how Utilitarianism seems to commit you to accepting injustice towards the few in service to the many, which is just, I fear, what happens to any of us who end up giving more than our share—whatever that is.

And then I got to admire the manner in which our next destination was set out for: like some sort of hive organisms, we buzzed around for a while and then set off, following the rider in front of us; that was fun.

And then, we got to hang out under a cherry tree whose spidery arms against the indigo and chalk sky illustrated how thoughtfully planned was the fantastical setting.

Afterwards, and just as we regrouped somewhat painfully, the tailwind seemed to cup me from behind all the way across the Cut and then up around the University to farther than I would have gone without such meteorologically-induced momentum.

And then I was reminded of how fruitless it is to fear the weather yet to come at this time of year, for on the way uphill from the water the rain was slanting from behind and I was sure I’d be paying for it on the way home.

But get this: after just one drink, I started south and already it was warm and dry again, just like the evening started off.

That was all part of the night’s lesson for me, I think: if the utilitarian principle tells us that acts are right insofar as they maximize overall happiness, it follows that usually, the right thing to do is maximize the size of bike piles and elongate (within reason) the length of bike rides.

Advertised

The promise was that at least a couple people would be offended, and it was probably more than that, although I’ll bet fewer of those on the bike ride and more of those who worked at the joint, especially when people started hula-hooping.

The Hooter’s Casino itself is strangely wholesome; pretty much the most erotic thing going was Derrick getting down with his hot wings—(right up there on the offensive scale, too)—and since their gambling features only cards, no dice, I was happy to just drink beer and puzzle out American foreign policy with the Major and the evil librarian.

Above all, I was delighted to have caught up with the ride after last week’s failed search and frankly, surprised that I actually knew the way there, over the bridge and along the Duwamish trail to south South Park. I had almost given up when it became apparent that here in the 21st century, nobody answers their phones, they just ring back—which doesn’t really work when you’re calling from one of those drug dealer-proof pay phones in Pioneer Square that blocks you from speaking on incoming calls so that you just stand there holding the receiver helplessly while the person on the other end goes, “Hello? Hello? Anyone there?”

And it would have been particularly offensive to have missed out on the first return visit of the season to the hidden hobo fire pit—which I never could have found on my own—where Joeball fell from the trees and tore a big old rotten tooth of a post from the ground and burned the hell out of it.

Once again, lack of beer eventually impelled us from the site, just in the nick of time to keep open the kitchen at the Orient Express restaurant, where we were installed in our very own Blue Velvet-inspired private karaoke room.

The place was so perfectly creepy, I could only stay for two songs.

No offense.

Tutu

photo by joeball

After circling around Ballard for a while, trying unsuccessfully to raise anybody via telephone, and even attempting to manifest the ride by taking an individual safety meeting at the deserted Fremont firepit, it became obvious that the only way I was going to locate the bike gang, out on its annual Halloween dress up catastrophe, was to don my own outfit and trust that the magnetic attraction of asshats on bikes in costume would inexorably pull me towards wherever the collection of characters—including, I knew, a pocketless Fred Flintstone, at least one Santa, and the inevitable Ronald McFondle—had tumbled into.

And it worked like a charm: for no sooner did I slip into my Tonya Harding tutu, than I passed by, on the Burke, near Gasworks, a rider already calling it a night, who informed me that people had already left Flowers in the U-District and were heading towards the Wild Rose on Capitol Hill.

I figured that, at barely 10:30, it was probably way too early for that plan to take hold, so I reckoned the Met, and was rewarded in my conjecture by happening upon the bike pile outside the Crescent on Olive, guarded, sorta, by Batman, Pee-Wee Herman, and the random G.I. Joe, I guess.

Inside was, among others the Crayola Crayon, the Unicorn, and scariest of all, Mini-Me Derek, complete with five o’ clock shadow and Kozmo.com bag.

Songs were sung, beers were swilled, and eventually, the anthem was shouted, which made it all the more strange that a microphone should disappear (later, I’m told, to reappear) as we made our way back on two wheels into the night.

They loved us at Dick’s—at least I thought so—and Cal Anderson park welcomed the bedraggled pack of remainders; I pedaled off towards home after sharing a nightcap with Herr Flintstone; unlike some, I’ll bet, I didn’t wake up in costume; I know, though, that magic is found when it’s on.

Margins

Wendell Berry, in his essay, “Solving for Pattern,” offers a number of criteria of what he calls a “good solution.” Among these is that a good solution has wide margins.

The idea, as I understand it, is that a good solution is one in which you can fuck up royally and still succeed. He cites the example of Earl Spencer, a farmer who managed to make his farm profitable by doing more with less, the point being that when you develop solutions whose tolerances are way too tight, too much can go wrong too easily and consequently, nothing really works.

I mention this because the lesson has been for me these last two Thursday nights that the bicycle has such margins.

Last week, for instance, a person (admittedly one like no other) could take a swan dive on metal diamonds and still be up for a night out six days later. And then, tonight, another human being can roll his bike smack into the front of a speeding car and still arrive for tipsy karaoke singing less than an hour afterwards.

Compare either of these to similarly spectacular accidents on four wheels with a motor and all of us would have been attending two funerals in the past 8 days, which isn’t to say that we all shouldn’t be saying, “Fuck! Be careful!” but which is to notice that if you’re gonna be a stupid idiot, then there’s no better place to do so than on a bike.

Put the fun between your legs, definitely, but I guess it’s worth noticing that if you’re dead, it doesn’t matter where the fun is, anyway.

The other thing that’s become patently obvious is that while homing in on and catching up to the ride is kind of like a satisfying detective novel, what I really miss is arriving at the start of things, having no real idea how they’ll turn out, but being confident that wide margins will prevail.

Sobering

In the list I’m compiling, “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in point83”, number .27 is “If you want to see a bunch of drunken assholes turn into paramedics, take a face plant.”

I’ve witnessed it happening twice now in person and have read evidence in other instances, my point being it’s a reliable principle, and no longer needs to be tested empirically, okay?

The predominant experience for me this evening was how fine it was to see faces, familiar faces in familiar places, faces I like to look at, faces to be seen.

At first…

Everyone was on their worst behavior:

I showed up at the ride just as it was getting kicked out of a bar more or less on purpose. We split up all over the place on the way to the Knarr, even though both Derrick and white Scott (welcome home!) were wearing dresses.

One of the notions I recall bandying about was the valuable function of just getting drunk sometimes; to do so has got to be an element in the human condition; I’ve seen it lots of times and shared a case for it with Ben; we are allowed that.

The sobering thought for me is how much more important are the connections among us than the differences between us.

I guarantee that all the shit any of us were fighting over, either in our heads or with one another or both, is set aside when you see somebody wreck on their bike, or even, as in my case, come upon the crash to be right there witnessing that transformation I mentioned above.

We all know what really matters—even though we require misfortune to notice—is simply being there when we really need each other.

We had to call for an ambulance; I like living in a city in a state where that happens; it’s all going to be okay, but only because we’re in it together.

No on I-1033.

Minds

One of the standard chestnuts in philosophy is the so-called “problem of other minds,” a puzzle which emerges when you notice that, on purely empirical grounds, it’s impossible to be certain that anybody other than you has subjective mental states.

It’s possible, in other words, that the people around you are just zombies or robots and that unlike you, they only exhibit behavior without the attendant psychological motivation that drives your own actions. It’s a kind of solipcism, the view that all that exists in the universe is oneself and one’s perceptions, a position that Bertrand Russell is reported to have been amused by when, at some party, a lady said to him that she was a solipcist and was surprised there weren’t more people like her.

In any event, one of the typical responses to the problem of other minds is to address it by analogy: since other people exhibit the same behaviors you do and since you yourself have mental states, it’s reasonable to conclude—even in the absence of empirical proof—that they do, too.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that it’s clear my fellow cyclists are not zombies or robots because they, like me, appear to enjoy riding from one end of town to another and then back again the other way in order to drink beer, tell harrowing stories of consciousness-altering gone wrong, and even throw peanuts at one another.

And because I would eschew that last practice, preferring instead to stand outside and appreciate the irony of a deserted warehouse with a sign on it reading something like “Industrial Revival,” I’m compelled to conclude that something has to be going on inside their heads, too.

So, what’s kind of amazing, when you think about it, is how even with all those different internal experiences happening simultaneously, you can all end up, via bicycle, in the same place, at the same time, experiencing the same thing, only different.

Out

The superior feature of the evening out last night was getting to be outside all evening.

I didn’t have a roof over my head (except for about 15 minutes when I stopped into the deserted soccer bar off Aurora for a coke and a pee) for almost seven hours, from when I left Bothell after post-meeting libations with colleagues around 7:00 until I crept into my house at nearly 2:00

In the interim, I got to cross town east to west and north to south, wander around a beachfront while the quarter moon sank into the sound, scream as loud as I can in duet with a train roaring, clattering, and whistling by, climb the steep hill out of Carkeek Park twice, hone in on and meet up with a couple dozen cyclists in a supermarket parking lot, roll down a dark wooded trail behind and in front of others who shared the hilarity of not running off the path into a tree with me, stand around a hardwood fire that eventually burned as a hot as a blacksmith’s forge, talk my way out of trouble with a cranky security guard, dodge pushpins and bottle rockets launched from a homemade blowgun, and finally, before the night was done, pedal another fifteen miles by myself along my new favorite route in town, so that by the time I arrived at home, all I wanted to do was let my trousers wrinkle down upon my ankles and my shirt flutter atop it before lying prone upon by back and staring at the ceiling to recall the sights and sounds of the night, including crows silhouetted against the dying glow of the day, crackling embers and shiny faces, and one unopened PBR can left sitting on our backyard table, a mute but eloquent illustration of all that happened and didn’t in the out of doors I got to be in for all but an entire day’s worth of starry night.

Miles

photo by joeball

It’s easy enough to forget that one of the best things about bike riding is riding your bike.

When so many nights’ entertainments include lake-swimming, or bull-running, or fry-eating, one is liable to overlook the part about bike-riding which, while admittedly, is not entirely what it’s all about, is the common feature that binds things together.

But then, you get a night like last, where before there’s even a stop to pee, you’re as far south as you usually go, and even before beer is bought, you’re sufficiently distant from downtown that kids on BMX bikes are riding over from the skatepark to see what the fuck is going on, and even with a hill so long, you can test the hypothesis that cursing acts as a painkiller over and over again, you still arrive a waterfront park in a whole different municipality more or less completely sober and early enough that the unofficial caretaker is still sufficiently awake to get in his car and drive over to check that no graffiti is being painted or litter left behind.

I’ve been wondering a lot lately about whether free will is an illusion in our deterministic universe, but if it is, I sure am glad that events have unfolded since the Big Bang such that my participation a thirty-plus mile bike ride after dark on the last Thursday of summer was not only possible, but inevitable, and that even with all the pedaling, there was still time to hang around a fire on the beach and close down not just one, but two bars before the night was out.

The switch-backed gravel road out of the park was steeper than I remember, and longer, too, but it eventually earned the kind of downhill that goes on and on while your heart rises higher and higher in your throat and reminds you once more how utterly fine it is to be out on a bike ride, riding your bike.

Liberty

photo by joeball

I don’t really buy that old canard, “Freedom isn’t free.”

Seems to me that most of the examples people cite to support the claim aren’t so much wars of liberation as they are battles for economic supremacy. Even the Revolutionary War can be construed as an more of an effort to secure financial rather than political liberty, and certainly, none of the armed conflicts the U.S. has been involved in over the last half-century or so have obviously contributed to the maximization of we citizens’ freedoms.

On the other hand: to the extent that the victims of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 are our nation’s most powerful symbols of lives lost in support of American independence, I wholeheartedly honor that sacrifice.

Where else in the world, I ask you, would a person be unconstrained from joining several score of fellow bike riders on a cross-town jaunt to a bar where a grease and potato-eating competition was taking place, or from consuming 11 12! baskets of French (aka “Freedom”) fries to win said contest, or from ingesting so much booze you’d have to lie on your back around an outdoor fire for a solid hour or so, sitting up only to see if the night was still spinning and then puke out your guts when so affirmed?

Fallen freedom fighters, I salute you!

This year’s .83 9/11 Never Forget (How Fat You Really Are) Bike Ride and Freedom Fry Eating Contest was once again an unrestrained debacle in celebration of all we hold dear and the valiant eaters who gave freely of their innards to compete a heartwarming embodiment of rights—notably that inalienable one to pursue happiness—we cherish.

And the fact that yours truly was free to (over)-exercise that right but still sufficiently looked-after by compatriots sharing the evening’s struggle that I wasn’t left lying on my back outside makes me not only proud to be an American, but grateful beyond measure to be alive.

Underdressed

photo by joeball

When I arrived at Westlake Center for the weekly .83 ride, I witnessed in attendance, two of my constituencies: non-squiddy bike riders and old people.

The latter, especially the scores of gray-haired liberals sporting cardboard signs in support of health care reform, looked pretty much as to be expected: lots of relaxed-fit blue jeans over white running shoes and t-shirts with pictures of whales and dolphins on them; the former, though, by and large, were stylin’ and profilin’: ladies in evening gowns with opera gloves to mid-shoulder, fellas sporting white shirts, ties, and vests; it looked like some kinda bike-themed Senior Prom or maybe auditions for the remake of Bugsy Malone.

In faded polo shirt and cardigan sweater, I felt a bit like the golf pro at the country club and was kinda bemoaning my inability to fit in anywhere, but thankfully, Mork the Delayer pointed out to me that there’s all sorts of other communities to which I belong: schoolteachers, Hempfest attendees, people who like to drink, and I didn’t feel so left out, and why should have I, really?

Probably by the time we were cruising down First Avenue, being honked at by suburban housewives (a community I’m not a part of) on our way to the fancy new SODO liquor store, and certainly, when we arrived at Anarchy Point for piñata smashing and bottle-killing, I couldn’t have felt more included even were I fully bedecked in the proverbial soup-and-fish.

A full moon had risen and the early September evening was surprisingly warm; I talked to a guy who caught three hefty Pink Salmon in the Duwamish but said he was a vegan and that the haul was for his mom; later, after the beer shortage became critical, the ride spilled downtown where bikes were hauled up steps and the elevator to a party where the formalwear, even though a bit limp in some cases, seemed right at home and so, there, alone, redressed, went I.

Accidents

First off, let me state unequivocally that I didn’t mean for the Obama mask to end up at the bottom of Lake Union; that said, I also have to admit that I wasn’t really sad to see it go.


I’m not sorry that I winged it over my shoulder; I do apologize for drowning it and for any pain or sense of loss experienced by its owner.



I throw myself on the mercy of the court. What can I say? 



Accidents happen.




Just ask anyone who hit the curb of the “ghettodrome” in Seattle Center and fell on her wrist breaking it bad enough to misplace a debit card; or somebody else who imbibed Jello shots and woke up with a mouth tasting of cat shit; or consider all those, yours truly, included, who spun out on the wet grass of South Lake Union and are regretting the way their groin muscles feel today.



Accidents happen.



“The best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry,” wrote the poet Robert Burns, and when you’ve got a drunken bike gang whose plans, such as they are, aren’t so much lain as thrown down in a heap like a giant bike pile outside of a nightclub, then you’ve got to expect that sooner or later, in the course of an evening, the unanticipated is going to occur.



“Boom! Take your drawers off!” wrote the rappers The Lamborghiniz, and when you’ve got a got a white guy in a blackface mask slithering around stage, it can’t help coming off a little racist awkward, don’t you think? So if my ire at the Obama mask was slightly over-the-top, I can’t help thinking that it wasn't entirely misplaced.



Besides, on a purely aesthetic level, the thing was just bad: when I first saw it, I thought it was a Nixon face with a phoney spray-on tan.



Here’s the lesson I take: we can all do better, mask-makers, wearers, and tossers. 



That’s no accident.

Unreal

photo by joeball

I wonder if in the future people will look back on nights like the one I got to have last night and doubt such things could really take place. 



In the post-apocalyptic Mad Max-scenario dystopia, when humans have scorched the skies, cities lie in ruins, and the lakes have all been drained for bottled water, who will believe that you could congregate a gang of about three dozen bike riders and pedal across town under a luminous and non-lethal sunset, roll up to a liquor store and supermarket right next to each other for provisions and libations, and make it, just as dusk is settling in, to a smooth-as-glass body of non-toxic water, whose temperature is just warmer than the velvety night air, swim, dive, and paddle about, before wobbling ever so slightly through quiet residential streets to a bar called the Monkey Pub, that seems right out of Central Casting’s version of a divey college watering hole, then manage somehow to find yourself later, still en masse, around a blazing fire that no one even fell into, although, I believe, some arm hair got singed?



Won’t it seem impossibly quaint to our descendants, like stories of goin’ downriver on the Mississippi on a homemade raft, or pickin’ out a piece of gingham for Molly at the ol’ general store?



I kept having the Truman Show moment, where it was all too impossibly perfect to be real, although if it was just another episode in the series, the one thing I wish the director would have done differently was the end of the night, where it seemed to me that the departure home was like ball bearings dropped in a skillet, people scattering off in all directions, so that my route back to bed was far more random, solitary, and beset with concerns for my fellow revelers than anticipated, and did make me wonder, even in this day and age, whether all that had happened was really real.

Magnanimity

The way I learned it, Aristotle identified two different virtues related to the disposition to share with others. 



For regular folks, it’s generosity; among the hoi polloi, the virtuous person willingly gives to others in need, helps out friends, buys the occasional Real Change newspaper from the vendor on the street. 



For the leading citizens of Athens, though, it’s called magnanimity; among the oligarchy, the virtuous person makes grand gestures in support of the people: finances the building of temples, supports the Olympic games, hosts the season’s bacchanal for all who attend.



That’s the virtue I kept thinking Joby the neon-demon embodied last night as he pretty much single-handedly threw for us the most fucked-up and wonderful 12 year-old birthday party bike ride imaginable. 



There was more booze than people could drink (in such a short amount of time so early in the night, anyway), then something like 800 linear feat of glowstix, that in a most charming display of hippy-dippy bicycle craft activity was eagerly zip-tied to everyone’s rigs, each in our own special and characteristic way, then groovy black-light dayglo dance music roller skating for anybody who wanted to—(and once we got a look at it pretty much everybody did.)



And while the aspiration to stay up for 5:00AM bicycle breakfast wasn’t universally fulfilled, the Technicolor nonsense did continue well past Last Call, even though bridegroom Ben, who I enthusiastically pedaled crosstown to fete on the eve of the eve of his wedding, probably won’t recall.



But I’ll remember, long after the light of the glowstix on my bike fades, well past the time my roller-skated hips stop aching, and the image that’s going to shine longest, I think, is the view of some three dozen hard-core heavy-drinking hobo bike gang delinquents going all Martha Stewart on the grass while decorating their two-wheelers; talk about good-clean wholesome all-American fun; I didn’t even really need that magic cookie; magnanimity made for psychedelia all by itself.

Summer

Lemke the Shirt God said that this one is shaping up as the best summer ever and the claim seems hard to dispute: last night, for instance, was the third night in a row—and about tenth overall—I’ve ridden by bike to Lake Washington for a sunset swim, (although it was the first time I’ve done so in a pack of urban cyclists invading the tranquil shores of west Mercer Island) and it’s still not even August.


About thirty of us descended upon Groveland Park Beach, stripped to our farmer-tan pastiness and took to cavorting in the water and throwing ourselves off the diving platform; the place, wholesome at it is, was surprisingly unsupervised, so nobody really seemed to be bothered by our antics or our open containers, least of all the pack of Asian teens tossing each other into the air in waist-deep water.


Eventually, the dying rays of sunlight turned those assembled by the diving board to glowing silhouettes backed by a sunburst horizon right out an Eagles song, and, after finishing all the dessert wine, people were ready to start drinking, a goal accomplished with relative success at Mercer Island’s Roanoke Inn, whose impressive back lawn made me wonder about all the shady real-estate deals and adulterous liaisons which must have gone down there.


And then, completing the thematic bookending I’d once ruminated about, a big clump of us managed to find our way, by different routes, to the Roanoke Tavern, the unrelated, but somehow similar—in a little brother sort of way—drinking establishment on north Capitol Hill.


Unfortunately, I left before the big condiment fight, but I still count the night as a rousing success: a reasonable number of miles ridden, a satisfactory amount of beer consumed along with adequate cannabis to keep it confusing enough to be interesting; and a night so warm it was shirtsleeves in the moonlight all the way home.


Best summer ever? 


Definitely in the running.

Eyeful

Mom always said, “It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye,” and once again, last night, that maternal wisdom was proven true as the joys of pelting each other with loaves of dumpster bread and hard rolls declined precipitously after Joeball got clocked in the eyeball with a mini-ciabatta, and although he didn’t actually lose an eye, the smart money is on him waking this morning with a major shiner and a funny explanation for it.



Prior to that, though, it was all shits n’ giggles circa June 2007, as we rode to the site of the old .83 southern edition clubhouse, formerly known as the Pacific Rim Pub, now reopened as Big Al Brewing, where we mingled around outside, drinking pitchers and listening to the some Jeep’s stereo play Michael Jackson tunes over and over.



I found it heartwarming to ride along the Longfellow Trail, a route I haven’t enjoyed in over a year, and while nobody topped the feat of Aaron Goss carrying a Lazy-Boy recliner through the woods on his Bakfeits like before, you had to be impressed by riders who did the gravel and hills on fixies without—at least by the time I left—not a single broken collarbone in sight.



The right combination of somewhat unfamiliar streets and quite familiar intoxicants made West Seattle seem terribly exotic; on the way from White Center to Alki I was able to imagine that I was somewhere I’d never been before even though I’ve taken that route lots of times and have even been towed by the Huffalicious stinkmobile along part of it.


It’s funny how the commonplace can be exotic (and vice-versa, too, I guess); there was a time when last night’s ride would have been so typical as to be almost boring; this version, with echoes of past editions, including Bread War Park, while reminiscent of times past, was all brand new and shiny—just like Joeball’s eye, I’ll bet.

Gore

photo by joeball

It’s kind of amazing when an offhand comment on an electronic bulletin board turns into about forty people dressed in all white with red sashes and bandanas showing up for a drunken bike ride and the opportunity to chase somebody else sporting horns on his helmet and terrycloth bull testicles on the back of his saddle around a city park; if that’s not evidence of the chilling power of the internetz—or that we live in the fucking end of days—I don’t know what is; I’m am sure, however, that the memory of last night’s shenanigans will provide comfort and solace as I reflect back on it from my deathbed some years hence, at least what I can recall of it, which is almost as spotty as the drops of spurted red wine on my formerly clean white shirt.



Oddly enough, dressing like a person running with the bulls at Pamplona doesn’t really solicit stares from passersby in Seattle; I got no double-takes as I rode alone to the meet-up; on the other hand, when you’ve got three or four dozen similarly-attired cyclists in a pack, people definitely tend to hoot and holler.



And when you congregate in an outdoor amphitheater and stage mock bullfights while sharing a handle of cheap whiskey, no one can resist.



Surprisingly, none of us got gored, even when we descended upon the frat-boy western-themed bar to ride the mechanical bull, an endeavor I somehow managed to eschew although I did undermine any future political ambitions by singing a Foreigner song at karaoke later in the evening.



What will stick with me longest is the delightfully random stupidity of the whole event; that’s the human condition laid bare: we do these absurd things because why the fuck not and if that means you wake up on the couch with your shoes on and wine spatters all over your one good dress shirt, so be it, the memories alone are worth it.

Details

photo by joeball

I took as a good omen, not getting creamed by the truck that barreled past me on the left as I started a U-turn to the Elysian Fields brewpub on Occidental, but as the assembled group agreed, we’d all have wanted the trip to go on anyway, even were I flattened on the pavement, especially if someone had the good sense to rifle through my panniers for the shortbread cookies I’d brought along.



And luck held out all the way to Joeball Mountain and back, although, like most of my fellow travelers, I did manage to get smashed in the figurative sense around the fire later in the night—a nearly perfect one, by the way, with the waxing moon appearing before sunset over the trees, and the temperature so mild the flames were almost too much, especially with plenty of anti-freeze in me, especially as the hours careened past midnight and the second wave of riders arrived, got quickly caught up with the earlier contingent of revelers and ended up singing and spitting booze until the sun began to lighten the edges of the horizon all around.



My memories of this year’s edition of Joeball Mountain are all smooshed together like fingerpainting, but I do recall being amused by my proclamation to the effect that it's logically impossible to cheat on your fiancé; only on wives and girlfriends does it count; and I know I laughed at lots of other things people said and did, including somebody’s observation of somebody’s observation that you should never create anything because, as the story of Dr. Frankenstein reminds us, the monster will always turn on you and the villagers come with torches and pitchforks.



Although I’m not sure that principle applies to events like this: because while it’s true that the ride and the imbibe did kick our collective asses, I saw no one taking up arms against it; on the contrary, if schedules didn’t require a race downhill to the ferry, we’d still be there.

Simple

It’s easy enough to spend so much time and energy focusing on everything you don’t get that you overlook all you have—a trite observation, but a common occurrence (at least for me), in any case.

Like last night, what I initially wanted was a forty-some mile roundtrip bike ride and a longshot victory with commensurate payoff in the last race at Emerald Downs; instead, I got a trip of about twenty miles from home to home and warm fire in a waterside park shelter in West Seattle along with many conversations, plenty of beer, and the occasional drama here and there to spy upon and take note of.

So, I could be all, “Wotta bummer, less than, coulda, shoulda, woulda,” but for why? Whatever was was good enough, since, after all, it had a goodly amount of pedaling, quaffing, and dissembling, and there was even singing at the end of the night, although that’s when I, after a twenty-minute search for a misplaced helmet, eventually made my way home.

It’s all about expectations, I guess. I could decide to bemoan that fact that what I was planning for from the evening didn’t come to pass; or I could simply savor what did occur, which was, truth be told, all a person could really hope for when it comes to Thursday night bike-riding and beer-swilling.

My favorite moment was pulling up en masse at the pile of salvaged wood neatly stacked under the trestles on the far side of the West Seattle bridge; logs and sticks were stuffed into messenger bags and panniers, and strapped with varying degrees of success to people’s racks. Way more than enough fuel made it the rest of way to Lincoln Park, in spite of a faggot or two falling to the pavement here and there.

So, I might have hoped for a bigger conflagration, but I have no complaints about all that did ignite; ultimately, it’s way more than I deserve.

Regulator

I’m not even sure what it means, but chanting it over and over—regulator-rectifier, regulator-rectifier, rectifier-regulator—is what enables me to scale the backside of Graham Avenue as we cross the spine of Seattle the hard way—perpendicularly—from Seward Park, where we’d been swimming right up to the last rays of the nearly midsummer night’s sun; that was a dream to be sure or at least a vision from one: twenty-some pasty white torsos poking from the quicksilver and amber water, beers being launched from shore far more effectively than bottle rockets caught in shoelaces and if this wasn’t enough delight, back it all with the realization that with classes over and grades almost in, the immortal words of Alice Cooper resound, “We can’t even think of a word that rhymes!”

School’s out, not quite forever, but about 90 days until I have to actually think about what clothes I’m going to wear on a given day (before donning pretty much the same outfit anyway) and if last night is any indication of what can be expected before the leaves turn in the fall, then sign me up twice.

Not only did I get to drink tequila out of flask after throwing lake muck at drunks, I also got to sit on bar stool quaffing a cold one after belting out the thematically-apt (for me, anyway) buttrock anthem to that same collection of douchecock sonzabitches, fucking “boosh” as the kids today put it.

The bicycle is freedom, just as it has been every single summer since I was eight years old and I rode all the way from my house to the swimming pool on my Schwinn Typhoon and while in that case, I’m sure I didn’t wear a helmet, I also probably wasn’t as tipsy as I was by the time I started pedaling home last night, ending round one of almost 100 with no more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks.

Fine

photo by joeball

Getting fifty-some alcohol-fueled cyclists fifty-some miles north and west across open water requires dedication, commitment, and plenty of beer, all of which were on display for the last twenty-four or so hours courtesy of Ben Countrywide: The Fourclosure, this year’s version of the annual two-wheeled clusterfuck that celebrates the birthday of .83’s self-styled president and resident angry hippie.

When the call went out of a 9:30 meet-up, I thought it was kind of overdoing it, since surely we wouldn’t take more than five hours to haul our sorry asses up to South Whidby Island State Park, meaning we’d arrive at our campground early enough we’d have no choice but to do something awful like play Frisbee or even worse, take a nature walk.

Fortunately, though, tumbling the huge clattering carcass that was our conglomeration of riders took way longer than that what with multiple mechanicals, many a stop for regrouping, and at least one accident involving a dog, a derailer, and a trailer, and we eventually didn’t roll into camp until almost eight hours after our initial meeting time.

Everything was just as shitty and wonderful as a person could hope for; we got rained on hard enough early in the day that our mettle got tested, but most of the time, I didn’t even have to wear any plastic at all, wool was just fine.

Whidbey Island was doing its best Middle-Earth impression, especially when we rode en masse over a hard-packed trail atop a levee way out in the middle of a beautiful nowhere of Puget Sound tidal pools.

My peak moment was one of delicious suffering: climbing another of the last long hills to our campground, sun breaking through the pines, I popped a piece of chocolate in my mouth and as it melted, little flashes of joy exploded like flashbulbs all around.

And this was before the fun even started, fire and firewater into the wee hours; unforgettable to any able to remember.

Empirical

photo by joeball

Not every ride has to be epic, especially if you cruise through a vast industrial wasteland on a man-made island formed initially by cargo ships discharging their ballast at anchor, and hang out in a deserted public “park” wondering whether the attendants manning the tower in the massive swinging drawbridge above really do spy on people from their overhead perches.

So even though we almost certainly rode fewer miles than we drank pitchers of beer, I, for one, had no complaints—other than, early in the night, as we rolled down Second Avenue when, just as three or four of us were sidling along a few cars as we closed the gap to the back of the pack, this fucker in his Mini Cooper Clubman lawnmower swerved right at me, so suddenly and blatantly I had to chalk it up to stupidity and cluelessness rather than anger and maliciousness else I’d lose all faith in humanity, even those who lock themselves in metal boxes on such a lovely spring evening.

But every ride has to have a moment, like this, when we proved that yes, the bridge attendants are watching, and here’s how: at the bottom of the bikeway leading across to West Seattle, the gang pulls apart, one contingent wanting to take the direct way to Georgetown, the other looking to add a few miles the long way around over the Duwamish. The latter pack forms raggedly, trying to convince the former to follow with cries of “Nine Pound Hammer!” the destination all are in serious agreement about.

As we’re climbing the initial rise, heads turned, urging our fellows to follow, the bridge attendants must be taking it all in because at the very second the first of our group is about to cross onto the center section of the drawbridge, the gates come down, blocking our way.

At that moment, the attendants had to be laughing at us, but not as much as we were.

Drink

The main thing for me tonight was experience and the way it looked.

First time I noticed was in the parking lot of the liquor store on 4th, I guess, when a shaft of sunlight opened up a blade in the sky; Bob Hall lamented that we were not in Myrtle Edwards Park and while I shared his aspiration, I had no complaints; in any case, we both agreed that Seattle goes easy on the eyes.

Then, it was all about noticing how the drawbridge opening brought us all together; that gave me the courage to ride figure-eights on the bridge (why the fuck not, there’s nothing coming in the other lane) passing the time pleasurably.

Next, as we rolled down towards the 7-11, I seem to recall me and Shannon noticing how ironic was the loveliness of what we were seeing combined with the knowledge that those waters aren’t as lovely as the look.

But eventually, it was the colors of hotdogs before discovering Jack Block park, where Daniel Featherhead flew and I first got punched in the nuts by Derrick.

That place is magical. The view it commands and the time it would take to get to you make me feel safe, even though I know escape would the problem.

Visually, the cartoon panorama of lights from Magnolia way past SODO sticks hardest.

Emotionally—when all was well—was when Ben got high, at least for me, and later, when the prone Stick Man said his name.

On our way to karaoke, a bunch of us hung out in a spot would we never have been in were it not for bikes; a freeway underpass is an environment worth looking at.

A Goldie’s, I enjoyed seeing others sing so much I wanted to try it myself.

And because I’ve actually given some thought to this, I sang Whip It.

That was fun, right up there with the ride home, yet another feast for the eyes.

Backwards

Backwards

I’m a better scout than I am a leader; if I were in the army or on the Lewis and Clark expedition, my skills (such as they are) would be put to much better use by sending me off ahead to scope out the territory than by putting me in charge of showing the group where to go.

Some of the reasons for this include:

1) My sense of direction, while not terrible, is more approximate than exact. My usual way of finding someplace is to just keep wandering around in the general vicinity until it shows up.

2) Efficiency is not really that big a deal for me. I’m not particularly bothered by having to backtrack or climb an extra hill or three; while I don’t totally buy the aphorism that the journey is its own reward, I’ve come to terms with the realization that most of the places I might be heading for aren’t especially better than the places I’m already at.

3) I’m relatively slow; any group I might be in front of, I’m not likely to be in front of for very long, and it’s tough to lead from behind the pack, especially when numbers 1 and 2 above are in effect.

All these factors were in play last night, as I showed a small group of riders the general shape of the route for Saturday’s Tour de French Fry, albeit in a backwards direction (counter as opposed to clockwise, I guess you’d say), albeit with more than a few missteps and inefficiencies, including, even one checkpoint that I somehow managed to miss in the dark and coming from the wrong direction.

Still, it was a fun ride on a surprisingly dry night and featured the very first (to my knowledge) .83 police escort, all the way down First Avenue from Denny to Pike, then up the hill past Boren where we were wished safe riding by the cop from his cruiser’s loudspeaker.

Lunar

I rode from a community college in Bothell to one in southwest Seattle and a bunch of stuff happened in-between and afterwards. It all unfolded like a massive Rube Goldberg machine stuttering into motion, and nearly every start and stop was filled with such sensory satisfactions that I couldn’t help but feel something almost like nostalgia for the present.

It seemed that once I realized I wasn’t in a hurry—over and over again—the ride became beyond reproach.

There was that nice steep up and down and up to SSCC, where we cooled our heels over mechanicals and I tooled around the giant parking lot thinking of Formula 1 races on airport runways.

When we finally left, we were rewarded with a tour around the Mini-Ghettodrome in the Japanesy garden and then got to look at airplanes used for mechanic training programs before climbing through a hole in a fence and enjoying the view from Westcrest Park, although the exact sequence of events escapes me.

And then we rode the Bomb down Highland Avenue to Loretta’s in South Park where we made a quiet night at the bar a lot louder and busier and managed to do so without entirely wearing out our welcome, either.

It felt like the ride took a bit of time to hit its groove, but that could have been me; I started having more fun when I stopped looking forward so much, or it could have been that third beer.

Also, the moon was hilariously beautiful on several occasions and it occurred to me that while I know that it’s supposed to be an optical illusion we’re reporting on when we say that the orb is bigger when on the horizon than when higher, I have to say that’s in contrast to what my eyesight reveals.

By the same token, everything I saw last night from the bicycle seat looked even better than it was, if that is even remotely possible.

WR4

photo by joeball

Evolutionary psychology is all the rage these days. That’s where you can explain any human behavior in terms of its adaptive fitness, so you get people telling “Just-So” stories about how, say, the fad of wearing baseball caps backwards can be made sense of according to how it allegedly confers an evolutionarily adaptive advantage on males who turn their brims around such that our hunter-gatherer ancestors who did something similar were more likely to pass on their DNA by doing so.

Frankly, I’ll be glad when the fad passes and we go back to Freudian rationales for our human quirks, but even so, I do love me any event where I get to feel like I’m reliving something like the kin group experience that our ancient forbears enjoyed out on the savannah tens of thousands of years ago.

And here, of course, I’m speaking of how swell it is to be amidst a gang of about four dozen self-propelled homo sapien sapiens who descend upon a public space, light fires, cook food, and intermingle for a couple hours before packing up and heading out, leaving only a few drops of uncooked batter and some bacon grease in their wake.

Waffle Ride IV went off last night in fine form, with tireless cooks churning out literally hundreds of textured griddle cakes which were greedily consumed under layers of everything from whipped cream and blueberries to guacamole with peanut butter.

I met up with the group en route by the I-90 tunnel and shared gingerbread spaceman cookies which, serendipitously, turn out to have built-in calibration markers: eat just the head and that’s where you feel the effect, add the body and you can count on a more corporeal response; finish up the legs and feet and you might have to sit down.

I snacked on slightly more than one man over the course of the evening; I doubt whether it was evolutionarily advantageous, but it sure tingled my DNA.

Champ

You'd of had to be crazy to be out in a car this Thursday night on Seattle’s icy streets; on a bike, you just had to be determined.

In spite of the weather—or maybe because of it—the Greenlake Race of Champions was declared ON this afternoon and so anybody with an ounce of self-respect wouldn’t have missed it—and me neither.

The scariest part of the evening was just making it down the back alley from my house; once I was out on the streets, I felt progressively safer and safer as the evening wore on, an emotion only partly to be explained by the usual; additionally, as fewer and fewer automobiles attempted to navigate the roads, the real danger out there diminished. While there were a couple times during the evening when I skidded out, the only really frightening scenarios involved cars.

A good dozen-plus congregated at Westlake and spanned the gamut from Chase on his fixed gear with skinny tires to Lee on his Pugsley bedecked in Christmas lights which Featherhead, test-riding, wheelied on the bricks.

We had a sort of shakedown cruise along Westlake and Eastlake to the Zoo for warmth and prize pick-up then proceeded apace to Greenlake where we were welcomed by a reasonably impressive Roman candle display which may or may not have been for us, but sure seemed like it.

I raced in the preliminary December race and pulled a total Rosie Ruiz. Dropping back from the pack, I circled around behind the grandstand to the trail and hid, until I could just see the racers approaching.

Then, I hopped on my bike, and panting furiously, sprinted the last 50 yards or so of the course, arriving to amazement and cheers.

It was all I could do release the dream and come clean, but it sure was fun while it lasted.

The thing is, I probably could have pulled it off, and then even “beaten” two-time champ, Padraig, in the main event.

Lost

My favorite part of that unexpectedly early evening last night was splitting off from the taco bus and riding around on streets in Mount Baker, most of which I know not quite like the back of my hand, but which I’ve been on plenty of times before, yet which looked—under the influence of a perfectly dry and cool fall night—delightfully unfamiliar, so much so that it took me way longer than expected to circle around from El Asadero, north by magnificent-looking Franklin High, then east, I guess, up the hill which it occurred to me must be what the neighborhood takes its name from before finally wending my merry way through streets of nice houses to downhill and the Rainier Safeway where I bought batteries for my tired light, then pedaled back to meet up with the ride just as it was leaving the food stop.

But I also liked pacing along Lake Washington Boulevard even though a trio of cars found it necessary to flash their high beams at us in what I couldn’t tell whether was a friendly gesture to light our way or an angry message that we should get the hell out of the road—at least until at the first opportunity which presented itself, each one roared by, which seemed sort of silly given that, if they were driving anywhere near the posted speed of 25, couldn’t have earned them more than five miles an hour, and maybe even less, given how we were (at least it seemed to me) flying.

And I was riding the Tournesol, which I haven’t been taking out the much of late, so that even final goodbye hill up Madrona Boulevard unspooled strangely gentle, and so unfamiliar that I failed to recognize my own street the first time past it and had to circle around the block to return to a place I see every day but which rarely ever get to be so sweetly lost in.

Hobo

While we were meeting up for the .83 ride at Westlake Center last night, there was this guy in full Cletus garb—dirty white overalls, no shirt—raging around the fountain flapping his arms, and those of us who saw him remarked that he seemed to be setting the bar for crazed hobo behavior pretty high, but predictably, before the evening was out. that sort of thing would seem pretty tame by comparison to any number of the antics of those assembled to ride, and ride we did, reasonably far south, way past Georgetown, to a brand-new little corner of the universe overlooking the Duwamish, dubbed, IIRC, the “Hidden Hobo Fire Pit” (or HHFP), where much booze was drunk—(and a good portion spit, in flaming blasts into and over the fire)—several pies were eaten, and at least one used condom was scooped up with a stick, waved around threateningly, and then dropped into the flames where, thankfully, it disappeared, never to be seen again.

And although, at first blush, the place seemed hardly a destination nightspot, its charms, once the fire was burning and the bourbon and tequila started flowing, were revealed: with the fast-running Duwamish all silvery in the background and only so much space to maneuver in on the hillside, plus a sweet little bench for the most inebriated to sit on, the HHFP has to be the coziest of all the places we’ve been to around town for burning shit outside at night.

One of my favorite moments was when, as we were gearing up to leave, Miles went all Stinky Pete/Walter Brennan/Walter Huston and called those who were dawdling something like “goddamn douchebag motherfuckers” (now I remember: douchecock sonzabitches! which, in hobo-speak has got to be a term of endearment, but I also liked, at the end of the night, discovering a new taco truck, El Trompo Loco, next to the nightclub El Gallo D’Oro, whose veggie tacos are the new favorite of this douchecock sonzabitch bike hobo, anyway.

Predictable

photo by joeball

Life is full of surprises, which is why the predictable can be such a comfort.

Even before I arrived at the Little Red Hen, after watching the all-but-scripted Vice-Presidential debate, and following a route from school could practically do in my sleep, I knew that the night would include more drinking than pedaling, somebody starting up “Livin’ on a Prayer" while riding and others joining in on the chorus , at least one instance where wrestlers would be pulled apart from each other, and eventually, a fire that at some point would get jumped over and/or into.

And events did not disappoint.

Were I, like Spealunker Sean, only in town for a brief period before heading out for who-knows-what-might-happen, nothing would make me feel better than to see how the wheels and cranks keep turning with some regularity and that the Thursday night checklist gets checked off, including, but not limited to: pretty much taking over some divey tavern with beer-swilling cyclists, arriving en masse at some mini-mart to load up on PBR cans, inviting some random stranger—this one, who of all things, played the saw—to join us in our revels, and as another long-time-no-see familiar face, the speedy Jillita points out, some banked-upon opportunity for Henry to be down to his skivvies before the night is out.

Much is made, of course, of novelty and indeed, the new and different is to be cultivated as we grow, but, still, there’s something to be said for knowing more or less how things will transpire, the unspooling of events like pages in a flip book animation which, when recalled with a few gaps the next morning, nevertheless has scenes one has seen and enjoyed before.

Which isn’t to say that all of it was old hat: for instance, I’d never witnessed anybody in .83 slow-dance to Patsy Cline before and I can never recall a Thursday night in early October being so warm and dry, ever.

Assclowns

When an evening of bicycle riding includes an interlude where somebody agrees to launch not just one, but two—(consecutively, not simultaneously) bottle rockets from his ass and it’s still not the most memorable part of the night, you have to chalk it up as a bona fide disaster (in the old sense of the word, the one that refers to the alignment of the stars, which must have been exerting a truly strange attraction on us all to result in such an odd and calamitous collection of events).

Or maybe the shortbread space cookie I had before leaving home had something to do with it.

In any case, more than once I got to feel like Walter Brennan meets Mr. Magoo as I stood slightly apart from my cycling comrades both dismayed and elated at the behaviors that swam before my eyes, which included surreal karaoke singing, random tossing of things that gosh darn it you kids, you better stop throwing, so help me, don’t make me come over there, fisticuffs, which I completely missed, thank god, the wearing of orange rubber fishing overalls, and a surprising amount of bicycle riding when you tallied it all up in the end.

And it was one of those times when, in some ways, the best part turned out to be the long solo route home, where the combination of sensory stimulations over the course of the night came together to make for an especially delightful ride, the front of my front wheel eating up the pavement slowly but surely all the way across town.

We had set out for Nickelsville, the homeless encampment near Georgtown, to bear witness to the authorities evicting the residents, but never made it past Goldies on Airport Way, which turned out to be just fine since the threatened removal didn’t take place although it did seem that, at some points, our butts were this close to being kicked out from where we were, too.

Fries

Is this a great fucking country or what?

Where else could some three dozen idiots ride bikes from a downtown meet-up, where already park rangers were on to them and their open containers, to an inner-ring suburban shopping mall for a takover of a “family” restaurant in order to stage a French (call that “freedom”) fried potato-eating contest that would result in some among their number regurgitating publicly, and then to top off the evening, pedal furiously down shuttered freeway express lanes only to be stopped, upon exiting to city streets, by a phalanx of law enforcement vehicles, some State Patrol, some Seattle’s Finest, and still manage to walk (or more accurately, ride) away from arrest, imprisonment, and even water-boarding?

Fuck you Osama Bin Laden, the terrorists have not won, not so long as such adventures remain in the realm of possibility, although thankfully for people’s intestines and police records they only come once a year.

The second annual .83 9/11 Never Forget (How Fat You Really Are) Bike Ride and Freedom Fry Eating Contest went off last night in fine form, which is more than can be said this morning of the competitors’ distended bellies.

And while, as has been noted, one might interpret the event as disrespectful of the tragic events that marked the date back in 2001, a more accurate reading—and I would argue more consistent with the true spirit of the night—would see such inspired stupidity as a celebration of the liberties upon which the American Dream is founded.

Moreover, I would bet that if only we might have gotten those misguided fanatics away from flight school back in 2000 and onto bicycles, they never would have carried out their fateful mission, but instead, would have been right there with us, singing “God Bless America” and gorging on deep-fried starch, feeling nothing but pride (and maybe a bit of dyspepsia) to be in the land of the fry, home of the brave.

Pilot

In the land of the sightless, the four-eyed man, the one eating shortbread space cookies, is—not king, but can at least unlock his bike, untangle its spokes from the other bike’s SPDs and make it home, wet, but none too worse for wear, all told.

The band we went to see was called Blind Pilot; the theme on this rainy late-summer Tuesday was blind drunk.

Problem—or make that opportunity—was: there were at least 45 minutes between the time we arrived at the High Dive in Fremont to meet up with the band, (whose claim to fame, apart from their musicianship, is that some of them—the bass player with his custom trailer for sure, the guitarist, and I think either the banjo and dulcimer-strumming female vocalist or the drummer or both—tour via bicycle), and when they were to start playing.

Meanwhile, by this time, our little August monsoon was in full swing and so the reasonable course of action seemed to hit the nearby Nickerson Street Saloon for their five dollar “dirty birds,” a shot of Wild Turkey with a PBR chaser.

I myself did not indulge, (already being adequately taken care of by the aforementioned baked goods) but I marveled at the alacrity with which my colleagues, Derek and Ben, went through a trio each.

And so, it was a swift half-mile ride back across the bridge to the venue, and another two-drink wait for the band to go on

I’d say it was worth it, Blind Pilot, led by their really quite good singer/guitarist, Israel, sounding to my ears very reminiscent of fellow-Portlanders, The Decemberists, winning over the crowd and casting a musical spell that kept drunken hijinks to a minimum during their set.

I left soon after they finished playing and so, in all likelihood, missed the inevitable storm a’ brewin; instead, I took on the steady deluge outside, which fortunately, was warm enough so the ride home while sodden, was fine.

Whirlwind

A couple years ago, I rode my bike from Seattle to San Francisco. I was thinking I was all gnarly until, about halfway down the Oregon coast, this Danish kid, cycling in Birkenstocks on a mountain bike with knobby tires, caught up with me and, while riding together, I learned he was on his way from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska—where he’d started in the 24-hour a day sunlight of high summer—to Tierra del Feugo—where he expected to arrive some months hence.

That’s where it became clear to me that there’s always someone harder core than you; and that’s how I felt last night when the second crew of riders showed up at our Green Mountain camp on the Kitsap Peninsula in the pitch darkness, having blindly scaled the two-mile rocky and washed-out logging road that I’d been thinking I was all bad-ass for successfully navigating earlier in the daylight.

It was a whirlwind adventure, though, just the thing to usher in today’s fireworks.

First, fourteen of us were on the ferry boat to Bremerton; then, the sweaty ride west and generally up towards Wildcat Lake; then, we bounced along and occasionally walked and pushed for two miles past clearcuts made lovely with wildflowers; space cookies were eaten and then there was fire and food and beer and lies and laughter and eventually, sheer amazement when the second wave of sixteen or so arrived out of the darkness —including Kat on an Xtracycle and wide-eyed Alex, who had showed up at Westlake Center just expecting a typical Thursday night ride but who came along, anyway.

I stayed up as late as I could to bask in their awesome before finally succumbing to those same molecules that knocked out practically all the cookie eaters like bowling pins falling down although not too early to have it already be dawn and just about time to get up, bomb downhill to the ferry and be home in time for family breakfast.

Whirlwind.

Adorable

According to the OED, the word “adorable” stems from “ador” + “able,” meaning “worthy of worship;” which is exactly what I was thinking as I watched the crew of miscreants pedal down First ahead of me while passing the safety stick among the usual suspects and admiring Brandon’s spinning cranks—and that just for starters.

Because there was plenty more to fall to one’s knees and shout “hosanna” over before the night was out, including, but not limited to:

• Single-filing through the womb bridge on the Longfellow trail to eventually emerge on a different kind of urban path, Marshall's sidewalk in Westood Village, with nary a broken collarbone in sight.

• Corn on the cob slathered in mayonnaise with grated cheese, cayenne pepper, hot sauce and lime—on a stick! “Get that corn into my face!” Nacho Libre!

• Fire in the shelter at Lincoln Park, stoked so mightily with Dane’s Xtracycle-carried store-bought plastic-wrapped wood bundles that marshmallow toasters had to crouch to the side.

• The long, flat way around Alki, which always seems shorter the later you ride it, especially when there’s that fingernail sliver of moon to admire on the way.

• And, shit! I almost forgot: pitchers, I think, at the O&T, and catching up with lazybones Derrick, I think.

• Some sort of clown race through Belltown failing to find open beer merchants but then a regroup outside an apartment building in lower Queen Anne that yielded many cans and a bottle of Malibu coconut rum.

• Feeling like “this must be Portland” (in a good way) as we rode into a deserted South Lake Union park, right on the water and then, chilled by the offshore breeze, busting out a game of tag to get warm which worked so well it enabled the hearty to carry on until dawn began breaking over Lake Union and those fucking birds started singing and riders split up, heading home after another adorable evening on bikes.

Nice

Here’s a reasonable criterion of success in bicycle-combined mood adjustment: you’re outside in a humorously lovely Hobbit-land of a city park, so charming even angry 9-toed hippies admit they love the place; the waxing gibbous moon bathes the lawn in silver through fingers of pine while a couple dozen cyclists tell lies to each other between slugs of beer; you take a fancy hot dog bun from its bag, slather it in squeeze-bottle mayonnaise, yellow mustard, and ketchup, then crunch up some Harvest Cheddar potato chips on top as substitute for one of the meaty-meat sausages sizzling over the nearby grill’s charcoal-bag flame, but then here’s the thing:

It tastes fucking awesome!

You scarf it up, making that “num-num” sound, sharing just one bite with a friend, who himself, even without having imbibed your own particular combination of flavor enhancers earlier in the evening, has to admit it’s not bad.

If all’s not right with the world at that point, it never will be.

It was almost too nice on last night’s .83 ride, the kind of perfect weather with the dangerous potential of spoiling folks so that they never again want to ride bikes in the far more typical gloom and wet of Seattle, so fortunately, there was Derrick, on his Stinky McStinkster Huffalicious Stinkbike perfuming the air all around as he loudly escorted us on our path—except when we were ON paths—from downtown, through Interlachen, the back way around Husky stadium to University Village for supplies, then up to Ravenna and the aforementioned sylvan glade, before eschewing the Knarr in favor of the College Inn Pub where the Evil Mike and I had one beer each, just the thing to prepare for mashing up the hill to Louisa Boren Park and one final safety meeting of the night, admiring the view across Lake Washington to the east, on this, a night of cycling almost too nice to be believed, much less lived.

Stinky

Derrick drove his Stinky McStinkster Huffalicious moped thing and what was most striking, aside from just how fucking loud and stinky it was, was how when he disappeared off onto some other route, it took me a while to realize that I wasn’t hearing or smelling it, that the buzzing in my ears and itching in my nose had gone and only the relative silence of gears clicking and chains turning remained.

But it’s an adorable toy and I even enjoyed skitching a ride along Alki after beers at the Beveridge Place Pub where it was old home week for a pitcher or two with the crew from ABR and Aaron and Joby in the same room without hardly an epithet hurled or past action begrudged—just another expression of the evening’s open-arm policy of welcoming all, even the motorized.

We had climbed the super steep but not too long “Snake Hill” to Langston’s home among the forest of new condos on High Point and then bombed down to Fauntleroy and I was marveling how what had begun, on my commute home from Bothell, as a cold and rainy winter night, eventually turned into a lovely spring evening. And apart from misplacing my wallet and then having the adreline rush of being sure it was gone followed by the sighing relief of finding it again something like three times in a row, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

I took it very slowly from West Seattle to Magnolia for Ben and karaoke at the Boxcar, but not so much that I didn’t catch up twice, once during plastic cheese nachos at the Seven-Eleven and once as the folding bike’s tire was attended to just east of the bridge. No nine-toed angry hippies were drunk enough to sing and me neither, so ultimately it was over the Ballard bridge behind the Huffalicious all the way to Fremont where it ran outta gas and I headed home in blessed silence.

FHR2008

This guy wearing black polyester spandex tights and a brightly colored neon top rode past me and Mimi and said something like, “The good thing about those pirate flags is that you can easily grab onto them,” and I retorted, “Yeah, man, hang on and I’ll pull you up the next hill,” after which what I thought about was awkward moments between human beings who dress differently, but mostly what struck me about today was how different Bainbridge Island looked on a sunny day in February, one example of which, right off, at the beginning of our ride around the island, was how you could see downtown Seattle, and then, how rather than being a mysterious tour of some sort of windswept spit of land on the edge of the continent, it was more like a spring ramble through rolling hills, but mostly downhill when you tallied it all up, even at most points during the ride.

And I was all smug at the start of the race when Kalin’s tandem broke a shifter cable, thinking “Hah! I just tuned our baby up, spending an hour and a half the other day on a 5 minute job,” but the Universe had the last laugh as we snapped ours with 3 hills to go.

To tell the truth, though, I was glad to have an excuse to walk the last few rollers and even Mimi, who otherwise wouldn’t have let me, could see the sense of it, especially since not a single racer passed us while we pushed the bike, enabling us to finish respectably and more importantly, while there was still plenty of chili left and plus, right about when the winning group of riders, led, not surprisingly by Stanglor, had just returned from a beer run.

Hooray for Derek for organizing another reason to live through February and oh my god my heart when his mom called him “darling” as we carried trash to his truck.

Sweet

I generally think that something is better than nothing.

Like, if it’s Valentine’s Day, giving your loved one something commonplace, like a bottle of wine, is better than ignoring the occasion altogether. Or if you really should be grading papers instead of puttering about with self-absorbed essays, then at least downloading one of the pieces of student work to your computer is to be commended. (There, that’s done.)

Or a few miles with your bike gang to a nearby tavern and just a couple beers instead of the usual long slog and alcohol poisoning is enough, at least, to tide you over until next time.

And in the process, because the moments are fewer, you get to savor the memorable ones just a little more.

Stopping for freshly-frosted cupcakes in a driveway/parking lot off of Westlake was not to be missed, especially when the Jamieson’s whiskey came out, prompting visiting Irish rider Joe to break his pledge not to drink anymore.

And I always love riding on the deck of Fremont Bridge, something I only do in groups; pedaling next to the Pugsley and feeling the subsonic bass hum of its tires on the metal grating was especially fine.

We congregated at Mike’s Chili in Ballard, where FHR organizer, Derek Ito, could work his strangely effective brand of salesmanship on the owner in the attempt to acquire free food for the race. And lots of uncomfortable laughter from being bombarded with the Tourette’s-y vocal stylings of the inimitable J while downing a couple pints in my defense, then, as I was leaving, falling prey to the oldest trick in the joint: above the bar is a hand-lettered sign that reads: “YCJCYADFTJ.” “What’s that mean?” I asked the waitress. “Your curiosity just cost you a dollar for the jukebox,” was her reply.

I ponied up, happily enough; after all, I had already gotten my money’s worth: the menu says clearly that the price of “Abuse” is “free.”

Waffle II

I like a ride where you just show up on your bike and you’re invited.

Everyone brings something—at least an appetite—and shares in the end.

My tradition (two years running) for the Waffle Ride is to take the bus to Bellevue from an evening in Bothell and then pedal through that unfamiliar yet nightmarish downtown across the magical intersection where cars can’t go straight and suddenly, you’re cruising through wooded suburbs to the lake.

I got a tiny bit lost, as is also my pattern in the suburbs (and, for that matter, the city), but eventually found my way from the QFC to the park, where—a good deal earlier than I expected—many were already set up and serving waffles; thus, my sense of urgency as I dished out ice cubes to plastic glasses and filled them 1/3rd to the rim with vodka, then almost to the rim with orange juice, floated Galliano on top, before finally dropping in a marischino cherry, yum.

I had read in the Times that the Harvey Wallbanger was making a comeback, so I got the fixings, and lo, Jen and I were completely underwhelmed with a batch the other night, but this evening they worked very well: with the juice and the proprietary formula, each one tasted almost healthy; I could imagine why it may have been the surfer beverage of choice for a while.

A fancy drink also contributes to the festivity of the event; I know that after the several rounds it took me to get (or taste as) the mixture just right, I sure was more animated.

Although I wiggled, too, because I was freezing. A dry evening, but as we stood near that crest on Mercer Island, the wind whistled through my bones.

Even fortified by 70s cocktails and geometric cake, I needed to get home, and a reasonably frightening windy crossing of I-90 was the very Galliano afloat my own fancy drink of an evening with .83.

Family

I like hanging around people who are related; when you’re in a situation where you have no choice but to stick with someone, your personality really comes out.

It’s all about family.

Derek apologized in advance for bringing the South with him but he’s blameless—on that score, anyway. If there’s anyone he should apologize to it’s the South themselves; but on the on other hand, they were so game he ought to have charged admission.

I know I would have paid to see it.

But didn’t have to!

And that’s another thing about bike riding: cheap thrills.

The rain that started falling a bit harder at Westlake Center was free. And no cost for the real winter storm we rode through to the Aboretum. And the only price of admission for the thrilling ramble through park trails and passageways to a secluded shelter was my headlamp when Sketchy's hijinks led to a little crash but no fall.

Ah, family.

My own family is visiting Minneapolis, so it was nice to have a dose of real family on tonight’s ride, sisters and husbands to remind us how to do that with each other.

And I think we did pretty well: Idaho Spud confections and gin all around!

That’s family.

The way back to Lake Washington Boulevard was way more an adventure than the way there; I felt a little lost but knew I’d be okay when Pete starting singing out “There’s a hole in the bucket” because in that moment, I heard family coming from all directions.

Which is why, of course, I bailed on joining for the next part of the evening at the CIP. When you can choose your family, you have that option.

Nothing, though, is nicer than seeing folks who have no choice to be together also be happy to be with one another: I’m never more satisfied being in a bike gang than when it feels like family that wants to be.

Signs

It started pouring down rain just after halfway on my ride home yesterday and I began to think that the message was to not go out on the Thursday night ride; I even got a flat tire at 6:15 at the bottom of MLK and Madison, a good half hour walk home or 10 minutes at least to change the tire in the dark plus another 15 minutes uphill, meaning I’d never make it to Westlake Center in time; but as it turned out, I think, what the Universe was trying to tell me was not to take the trailer on the Saluki, because no sooner did I pull the panniers off the bike, undo the brake straddle cable, and pull out a spare tube, did a bus pull up and the driver even waited to establish eye contact with me before he didn’t pull away but rather, let me load my rig on first and then make a second trip to the curb to retrieve my bags and then, too boot, didn’t balk when I told him that my wallet with my U-Pass was in my handlebar bag; no sooner did all that transpire that there I was, home safely with plenty of time to wonder about what it all meant before drying out and deciding that since the rain had all but stopped and since the clothes that I needed—my gloves and gaitor—were dried out, it made sense to at least ride down to the meet-up and see if anyone else would show, and at first, it seemed like me, Sketchy, and Rogelio were going to be it, but before you knew it, many of the usual suspects appeared and some 16 or so, including Lee with the trailer set out to Ballard and only got separated once before sustenance at the Lock and Keel, wood with the fubar in Freelard, and fire at Gasworks Park, all of which apparently communicated the Universe’s message: “Ride.”

Champions

I came mighty close to breaking my rule that if you can’t unlock your bike you can’t ride it and I failed according to the principle that if you’re unable to fix it, you aren’t allowed to pedal, but thanks to the ministrations of Evil Mike—twice!—I managed to keep my chain on long enough to make it home with just one spill on the black ice, but that was the only hiccup in an otherwise perfect night of cycling-related hijinks centered around the Greenlake Race of Champions, the annual end-of-season challenge bringing together most of the winners of the monthly competition held each Critical Mass Friday at midnight on the path around the big Ravenna pond.

It was a fine turnout of drinking, drunk, and sober cyclists on a clear and chilly December evening for the big race, which was won in stirring fashion by green bike jersey Patrick, whose alleged gastrointestinal difficulties did not prevent him from prevailing in the final sprint, edging out (IIRC) Andrew, resplendent in shiny black skinsuit with pink highlights, rocket scientist Denny Trimble, Captain America Matt, whose whole family, including his Dad showed up to represent, DJ Strokey in there somewhere, and Trevor Trike for fourth despite leading for most of the contest.

And woe be it to naysayers like yours truly, Henry didn’t get totally smoked either, acquitting himself as admirably in the saddle as he is known to on the karaoke stage, take that.

Much mingling and destination planning followed the competition, but no trackstand or ghost bike events as near-freezing temperatures inspired the assembled to head towards warm bars; I played the drunken holiday reveler with a group at the Nickerson, then bombed over to the CIP to finish people’s half empty glasses, before the traditional hangover-busting sprint up Interlaken and then to bed with just the aforementioned knee-skinning spill on the final turn to put the star on top of this Christmas tree of cycling joy.

Riding

The thing I like best about bike riding is bike riding.

Sure, getting all liquored up and being obnoxious (but charming) is fun, and sitting around some pitchers of beer ragging on people who aren’t there has its charms, and who doesn’t enjoy scarfing down food purchased from the inside of a truck or seeing how loud and annoying you can be in a karaoke bar before they toss you out?

But my favorite part of most bike rides, with .83 or whomever, is the part where I’m on my bike, turning the cranks, leaning into turns, bombing down hills, riding no-handed on straightaways.

Last night, on the way back from the Pacific Rim Brewery in White Center, Joeball Andre led half a dozen of us on a cyclocross jaunt through the grounds of South Seattle Community College, on gravel paths, through closed gates, up and down landscaped berms, around circular sidewalks in a mini-bike Greenlake Race; that’s what I liked best—the whole BMX bike chase scene in the movie E.T. feeling thing. These are the moments this old man is clearly chasing as he rides around on two wheels: the chance to be 12 years old again; that River Phoenix in “Stand By Me” kind of freedom and adventure, no parents around, anything’s possible.

And self-sufficiency: while there was the usual grousing and moaning about one thing or another, it was one of those rides where no one had to be babysat; even verge-of-an-alcoholic-blackout Derek Ito managed to take care of himself, his drivetrain clattering angrily between two gears as his gyroscoping wheels kept him miraculously upright when his own legs might not have been able to.

I got my first .83 ride flat, too, a snakebite in the front, probably caused, in part, by the weight of the vaporizer and 12-volt battery in my handlebar bag; field-testing of the system was a failure, anyway; it’s way too fiddly; nix on whatever detracts from the ride.