Subdued

I’ve heard tell that fish don’t know that they’re in water, and whether that claim is true or not (I kind of doubt it; I’m sure they know when they’re NOT in water, but anyway…) the message is a good one: we obviously come to take for granted that which is all around and pay much less heed to the commonplace, even if—when you stop to reflect—that regular, more or less everyday state of affair is, in the grand scheme of things, pretty fucking remarkable.

Take last night’s bike ride, for instance. Please.

We didn’t cover that many miles; the shenanigans, such as they were, tended towards the tame; nobody really showed up as a problem; and the outside fire around which we stood never really got higher than anyone’s head.

I even saw a lot of yawning going on and heard vague references to recovering from last weekend’s Ben Country Five and pacing oneself for the now ongoing Seattle Beer Week.

Still, upon reflection, isn’t it just over-the-top incredible to live in a place and time where such marvelous mundanities are possible as riding the back way down cobblestones through Pike Market to the water, or congregating under the West Seattle Bridge to load up on faggots left by the Wood Fairy, or arriving at the beach just as the sun slips beneath the horizon although many moments of twilight remain to be savored, or fucking A: getting to be outside, on the edge of the continent more or less, of a warm, soft spring night, having arrived under your own power, with plenty of beer to drink and, in my case, a basket of hand-cut French fries right from the fryer, how about that for the quotidian?

For me, too, it had been a while since I’d pedaled to the sands of Alki, and never so early in the evening, and come to think of it, a fire is pretty unusual.

Every time.

Eyes

Eyes Right

At the QFC in Belfair, where the ride stopped on purpose for provisions, members of the local Lion’s Club were collecting donations for “White Cane Day,” and when I gave the guy five bucks for his cause, he handed me a little plastic cane with a tag on it that said “Sight Conservation Day,” and it made me think how I’ll always want to conserve in my mind’s eye all the amazing sights I got to witness during the 24 hours or so of the fifth annual bicycle-camping clusterfuck in celebration of the Angry Hippy’s birthday, Ben Country.

Here are few of the images burned into my brain forever:

• The rainbow arch over the road in the deserted woods near Purdy Creek that accurately showed us which of the three possible directions to take, obviously.
• The charming peace shrine not far from the Robin Hood Cottages with all manner of icons, including Elvis, Mickey Mouse, and Jim Beam, too.
• Our campground, accessible only to bikes, nestled alongside the Skokomish River, its car-free roads paved in moss and pine needles, its sky overhead brilliant with endless stars and even the Milky Way.
• The guest of honor, in red seersucker jacket and a fucking ascot, but still as fearsome to foolishness (except his own) as ever.
• Faces encircling the fire, laughing, lying, and bragging, none leaving except momentarily, for the magic dutch-ovened peach napalm feeding frenzy.
• Back-from-the-dead Derrick pouring liquor into people’s mouths and spitting flames into the fire from his own.
• The little triangle of sky I examined through the vestibule of my tent as I fell asleep to the ongoing nonsense, voices rising and falling as if people were riding a roller coaster, which—if you conserve the sights—it’s easy to see that that’s exactly what it was for everyone who got to have their eyes opened wide in the Country of Ben one more year in a row.

Ellipsis

My evening started out swell: a lovely spring evening for a ride along the lake and then, outside the NiteLite, I got to assist a damsel in distress—this young woman, Kate, had her car blocked in by a pickup truck with only centimeters to spare, but with a little direction and some encouragement on my part, was able to inch back and forth and eventually drive off, so I was feeling very expansive by the time I got to Westlake Center for all the bikes and familiar faces, although names kept escaping me all night long.

We rode through the hobo trail from Beacon Hill to SODO with, remarkably, no mechanicals and not a single broken collarbone although we did kinda bust the balls of the somewhat suspicious-looking electrical contractors who were waiting by the end of it.

And then it was all healthy tall people and a former student at Hooverville, where I guess we blended in enough that nobody wanted to throw us out before we left and (this is where the order of things begins to trail off) went for a spin around the Ghettodrome where they did yell at us to GET OUT OF THE BOWL, although earlier, I guess it was, we woke up the guys staying on the sailing ships on Lake Union and (I’m going to believe) charmed them into letting someone stroll on deck (although I could be completely wrong about that).

Then dot, dot, dot including the Nickerson into which I didn’t go and for me, anyway, a ride back downtown for a nightcap and the opportunity, in keeping with the evening’s opening theme, to share two of my last four dollars with a “non-aggressive” panhandler.

I’m sure other stuff went on without me—as it does for all—but that’s the thing: on a bike, in the spring, here and there round and round all night, even the ellipsis gets to feel like an exclamation point.

Losser

When I was in philosophy grad school, one of my fellow eggheads, in response to a lousy grade on a paper or an embarrassing presentation in a seminar or something, announced to us all, “I am a total loser, L-O-S-S-E-R!”, thereby coining the term, “Losser,” which became the rallying cry description for all of us as we repeatedly failed in all the myriad and humiliating ways that not only philosophy grad students, but probably human beings the world over fail again and again in our personal, professional, and avocational lives.

Losser!

That’s what I am for bailing so early in last night’s bike ride, no more than an hour and a half into it, when it was practically still light out and hardly anyone—with the notable exception of one bloodied latecomer—was even fucked up yet. But the accumulated activities of the week past combined with aggravating concerns about responsibilities yet to be dispatched along with some real longing for home and hearth ultimately compelled me to bid an early adieu, thereby causing me to miss what turned out, I hear, to be some classic shenanigans and conflagration well into the wee hours of the morn’.

As it was, though, I did get to enjoy a spectacular commute home from Bothell under a soft blue sky and clouds so fluffy you could all but hear the opening strains of the “Simpsons” music when you looked up at it, and there were robins, and chickadees, and warblers of some type trilling in response to my squeaky chain all the way.

I thought about all sorts of things I want to do in my environmental ethics class and then wondered a lot about whether God—however you might define Him—would ever get tired about being worshipped. Wouldn’t He have the Groucho Marx-type intuition where He wouldn’t want to be God to anyone to whom He was a god?

It’s like being a loser to losers: a losser!

Infiltrator

There was a tax-day Tea-Party rally at Westlake Center last night, concurrent with the bike gang meet-up; I talked to three attendees.

First, was a guy in a suit holding a sign that said something like “Fifty State Health Care Market” whose faith in the free-market system led him to conclude that even services like medical care are best provided by some idealized notion of capitalism (which wouldn’t be possible with the solution he was advocating).

Next, I approached a fellow on stilts wearing a plastic red, white, and blue Uncle Sam costume that I can’t imagine didn’t come from China whose stated message (to me, anyway) was “I love America.”

Best, though, were these three kids, a boy about 10 and his two little sisters, 7 and 9 or so, who were holding a picture of Obama and big sign reading “Infiltrator.” It was cute how the big brother couldn’t really pronounce the word and his siblings didn’t know what it meant. I tried to get a picture of him pointing his own sign at me, with an arrow and the words “Agent Provacateur” on it, but I got distracted when their dad asked me if I was “for God” or not, before answering his own question with the observation, “Well, if you’re from Seattle, I guess not.”

I came away thinking that the Teabaggers are all just lonely people looking desperately for something to belong to and that made me love the Bikebaggers all that much more: we didn’t have to feel helpless and angry; instead, we rode bikes, played kickball and drank beer, and then, under a long twilight sky with Venus glowing brightly alongside a brand-new sliver of moon, pedaled through forest paths so close to elephants you could inhale their warm earthy scent, until we arrived at a patio with fire, that had pretty much all anyone needed, except those government-provided services anyone who pays taxes should be happy to pay for.

Question

Can an evening be memorable if you can’t remember it?

There are some parts I recall reasonably well, notably herculean efforts to start a fire in the windswept barbecue grill with pages from the Jesus pamphlet (no harm intended!) and then later, interviewing the karaoke-jay at the Boxcar and I even have some images of the Nickerson spread out before me like biofilm on my brain matter, but a lot of the specifics sort of pale in comparison to the generalized delightfulness of the afternoon that became the first daylight meet-up for me of the season and perhaps a precursor of what’s in store during the months ahead, even though it’s clear, from this morning’s perspective, that a person oughtta pace himself especially when drinks with strawberries attached are being handed around.

The advertised theme was “Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash,” a phrase I only knew from the Pogues’ album title, but which I now have learned was Winston Churchill’s quote about the British naval tradition, and while nobody wore a sailor suit, I guess all three were more or less on display in one form or another.

Still, I couldn’t tell if the direct route through the alleys and wrong-way one ways straight to the wrong side of Fremont counted as the second or the third, even though there was no question about where the first came into the picture, even if it was mixed with juice and vodka and spiced with vanilla, I think.

In any case, the fancy drinks put everyone in a festive mood eventually—at least as memory serves—and the wind acted as a gentle reminder that walls are a pretty great invention, so despite the fact (or perhaps because of it) that it was the sort of night when a route from Magnolia to Magnolia went the long way around, it was also the kind you’ll certainly never forget, (no matter how hard you try) if only you could remember.

Wellington

When I said, fairly hilariously, I might add, that Lake City would remain my “Beef Wellington,” of course I meant my “Waterloo,” but really, this wasn’t quite accurate either because that term is synonymous with defeat, and even though I failed in my ongoing attempt to see the ride arrive that the Rimrock Steakhouse, I still count the evening as a rousing success: there was plenty of riding on dirt and gravel, booze was drunk outside (in a fucking gale, practically), and we overtook a watering hole that’s skeezy enough, I’m sure, to be listed in the Anthropologist’s big book of dives.

So, rather, I will continue to view the so-called “Lake Shitty” as my Moby Dick, or were I the Angry Hippy, as my Richmond Beach, always out there, beckoning with its charms, or lack thereof, an aspiration to be embraced someday, somehow, another fucking thing for my goddamn bucket list.

I can see it, though: of a summer night, after a swim at Matthews Beach, the sun still not quite completely set as we pedal in the warm crepuscular glow, arriving almost before you know it, a far cry from the death march it would have been last night, even though it was obvious that as long as we kept heading north, things wouldn’t be too bad.

The prospect of return, however, was too daunting and the promise of the magic corkscrew ride through Cowen Park too alluring and thus it was the Knarr, appearing unwashed, like Josephine taking Napoleon’s alleged advice, “Ne te lave pas, je reviens” to welcome us home, or a reasonable approximation thereof.

It turns out that 53 is a pretty big number; less than half that many ounces of tequila were consumed, but I don’t count that as a failure, either, because it means more than half that many are left, which seems to me the apt metaphor for “failure;” it’s simply success that has yet come to pass.

Vibrators

At the pre-funk, somebody—I think it was stoner Adam (no, not that one, the other one!)—mentioned he didn’t think he’d ever seen me on a Tuesday night ride. I explained that the occasion was spring break and recalled that I’m pretty sure the last time I made the early-week meet-up was, as a matter of fact, this very same week last year.

In any case, it was a beautiful evening for a ride and I was surprised so few came out, especially after I expressed the hope that folks would assist me in gathering up a few additional prizes for the Prime Time Trial, thanks to the generous offer of free vibrators from The Love Zone “adult” boutique in Ballard, although it seemed to me more like Crown Hill.

Megan, the clerk at the store, who unlike every other porno shop employee I’ve ever seen wasn’t a creepy meth-head guy wasn’t phased at all by the arrival of half a dozen bike riders clutching coupons for the free giveaway, although she did decline to let me use the restroom, saying that “due to the nature of our business, we can’t allow people access,” which, upon reflection, made perfect sense, especially when you noticed the large display for a featured lubricant product called “Jack Jelly.”

Eww, although naturally, I had to buy a sample to throw in the prize pile for Saturday.

Afterwards, we rode to the Golden City bar where the drinks were stiff and a guy sort of tried to pick a fight with Bill because he didn’t order a lemon wedge to go with his hefeweisen.

And then it was on to the area north of the dog park at Golden Gardens where Alec was setting up his homemade hammock to sleep suspended outside. I thought it might make the vibrator more desirable as a prize if word got out that it spent the night with him, but ultimately, thought better of it.

Gold

I first realized the Olympics theme when Lee pointed out, as we were descending the steep drop and then immediately ascending in the bowl-shaped alleyway behind Eastlake, that this could be the half-pipe event. (Actually, that’s not quite true: somebody earlier had said that handing over a lit joint while bike-riding away from Westlake counted as a 400-relay passing the baton kind of moment, although that's Summer Games.)

But that’s when I really got into the Olympic spirit, and after that, for the rest of the evening, I couldn’t help noticing the connections everywhere.

Rolling down the switchbacks on Lake Washington Boulevard to the water was like the bobsled run. Getting into a good rhythm farther on down the road reminded me of cross-country skiing. Mixing up Genessee and McLellan and overshooting the more direct route south was my nod to Bode or Lindsey crossing their tips and missing a gate in the giant slalom. Even the back-to-back mechanical stops were able to be construed as our very own version of the biathalon. Or maybe curling.

Joeball had the podium taken care of: bronze monkey cocktails, in a park whose central sculpture filled in for the Olympic flame, then a quick stop by the Silver Cloud Inn, before finishing the night at Goldies.

Clever, huh?

I insisted we augment the runner-up medal by doing shots of silver tequila at the bar; fortunately, nobody proposed we follow that up by pounding Goldshlager.

But the peak Olympic moment for me was when a dozen or so of us lined up for a two-lap relay footrace on the tight path around the Martin Luther King Memorial Park fountain. “On your mark, get set, go!” and a gaggle of Apollo Ohnos were tearing around the short-track, speedskating on bike shoe cleats and jostling for position. And while I didn’t medal, I did, at least, end up vertical and managed, by tapping in my much faster partner, Chase, to not get lapped.

Talk about golden.

Love

It was like the good old days: Derrick and Ben arguing interminably about where to go and what route to take until finally the exasperated angry hippy growls something about just fucking following him, hops on his bike, and before you know it, people uninterested in being run over by cars are getting dropped behind those with more of an appetite for running lights, but eventually, everyone more or less clumps up and then we’re climbing and climbing and then climbing a little bit more until the bluff in Discovery Park appears under a starry sky and a perfect upturned grin of a moon with the Puget Sound spread out before us like an indigo desert and people are milling about, accepting the club President’s kudos for arriving, as planned, in time for a beer before the locks close, and then, even more surprisingly, leaving in time, too, having polished off the half-rack and quarter that Specialist Sean(welcome back!) huffed up there in his pack, we’re walking across the water and then going uphill some more until at last we find ourselves at the first stop in our tour of bars that have 86’ed .83, only this time, they love us so much that the bartender shares with us her tale of another drunken bike gang that showed up a couple years ago and got drunk until 2:00 in the morning, (leaving out, I guess, the part about one of its members peeing on the bar) and really, the only reason there’s any urgency at all to leave is that the fiancé of the girl Derrick has just exchanged motorboats with shows up and besides it’s time to head downtown for white-boy hiphop, but not before, for me, anyway, a ride through the zoo smell on Aurora and then across the bridge and a new route down to Dexter and finally, after a couple songs, back uphill once more and I’m home, all aglow with bike love.

Lived

I sure was glad tehschkott broke his wrist (apparently) the second time the Karate Monkey ate shit on the slick train tracks on Harbor Island, because the first time it happened, he easily could have had his head smashed like a soggy melon by an 18-wheeler.

It wasn’t even really that close, but all the elements were there: the bike skittering sideways toward the back wheels of the semi-trailer, his helmetless noggin heading straight for the massive tires, the driver of the huge rig completely oblivious to the drama unfolding right behind his cab; I could envision it perfectly and was very glad it only happened in my mind’s eye and not the real ones behind my glasses.

That would really have made me feel bad about pushing to ride around my favorite man-made island in all the Duwamish waterway. As it was, the place was accursed enough, causing, in addition to at least two spills, two flat tires, one a spectacular tube rupturing, again precipitated by those infernal tracks.

Still, we did manage to find ourselves at one point atop a parking garage, admiring a spectacular view of downtown I’ve never seen before, so for me, at least, given that the flat Gods chose not to single me out for punishment, and, more importantly, that I didn’t have to be traumatized by the sight (and the sound, which really would have been unforgettable) of a human head being flattened by the back wheels of a petroleum tanker, I count the evening as a genuine success.

There was enough rain to keep the crowd down to just bike nerds, though not enough to really be miserable and although we were unable to lure either Joeball or Henry to the Skylark or Nine Pound Hammer respectively, “Uncle” Ito did show up at the first place all well-groomed and sober in the Jetta—which frankly, if you wanna know the truth, was a sight even scarier than tehsckott’s first tumble.

WR5

I thought I stayed pretty late; (it was after midnight when I got home and my clothes smelled reassuringly of breakfast), but apparently, I missed the real shenanigans where people got doused with batter and thrown out of bars; even so, it was a night as full of hilarity as stomachs were full of waffles and as trash cans are of empty containers this morning at that odd little corner of the universe where electricity flows all year long for, as teh Jobies pointed out, “recreational purposes,” an end admirably pursued on this, the Fifth Annual .83 Waffle (The Empire Strikes Back) Ride, the current version, a bit earlier in February than in years previous, but still so hungrily anticipated that no one could possibly have held off another week, even in spite of the nationwide Eggo shortage.

I managed to catch onto the ride just as the line of—I’ll say about 60—bikes laden with fixin’s, toppings, and intoxicants—began pouring through the I-90 tunnel, riders screaming echoes east to west and then there was that heartwarming sight of taillights dotting the entire length of the bridge before all of a sudden a picnic shelter fully lit up from inside and an eight-pack of waffle irons steaming and a pitcher of Manhattans pouring and pork strips frying and some sort of scary-looking sausages spinning slowly on an even scarier mini hot-dog circus cart.

And eventually, of course, people were hanging upside-down from the rafters and spitting bourbon at the fire and a Frisbee-shaped waffle was turning to mush in the rain and then, just as miraculously as things appeared, they eventually were packed up and, although I bet the maintenance workers are scratching their heads this morning over what went down last night, I’m sure the imprint on my memory is more than ours upon the park, though less than the iron upon the batter making those sweet squares that you fill and fill you.

Ka-Boom

Apparently, this was the theme of the theme of the night.

I missed the human version, but I was there when we all got to experience a moment that we all got to experience simultaneously.

Somebody—teh Jobies, I think—threw the Heineken mini-keg onto the fire.

The irony, of course, is that it took all night to get the fucking flames hot enough to boil water, what with the wood that was wet and the part about nobody being able to leave it alone long enough to really catch, but anyway, by then, the tipi-shaped conflagration was putting out enough heat to make it worthwhile to stand by.

And that’s why it’s so amazing that nobody got decapitated or at least had an eye put out.

The moment was kind of hilarious, actually: all of a sudden, ka-boom! And I mean it! We were all drowned out. Nobody wasn’t called to attention.

Loud.

And then, in the following seconds as people regained their hearing and composure, there was nothing but laughter, both the ha-ha and “I can’t believe I’m still in one piece” kinds.

I showed up late and left early, but still got to have that burst; all set to make it to Westlake on time, I was called away unexpectedly to responsibilities I’m responsible for, which wasn’t so bad, all things considered. At least I didn’t have to have some software fixed before 5:30 in the morning.

The exploded projectile was found a good fifteen yards down the hill and looked like a giant spinach can opened by Popeye’s mighty grip; later, its power was mocked, as at least one person wore it like a hat that looked like the hairdo of Kid n’ Play, but when it was first discovered how far the thing had gone, I know that I, at least, was thankful I hadn’t been clobbered by something that just came out of nowhere before I could see it.

Same as everyone.

Backwards

My impressions of the evening are like a deck of cards that I can shuffle through backwards, in the vein of one of those plotless movies like “Memento,” in which the director compensates for the paucity of the storyline by running things from finish to start, so a “mystery” unfolds where there wouldn't be should you have rolled things in the normal direction.

So, there I am locking up my bike at home and coming inside, but before that, I’m sure I had a pleasant ride back from 9 Million in Unmarked Bills where we’d gone after the abortive attempt to reanimate the most traditional of fire pit choices, albeit, apparently, too early in the evening.

But all that was missing from that trifecta of emergency services was an ambulance; both the police and the fire department managed to show up, the former even pulling off the requisite “good cop/bad cop” schtick—admittedly sorta half-heartedly once they realized we weren’t going to push back too hard and were even willing to engage in a clean-up of our mess while they watched; the firefighters, by contrast, were all business, dumping two huge buckets of water on the tiny conflagration we’d only just gotten going, boo-hoo.

Before that I’m sure there was the Nickerson Tavern, filled up, by the time we were ready to depart, pretty much entirely by cyclists—no wonder there was such a hurry to leave.

A lovely evening for a ride: lost in conversation with the Major, Esquire, along the waterfront and then, surprisingly, east towards Fremont rather than straight to the Boxcar.

The preceding shuffle has me seeing and smelling the fabric dumpster experience; I keep thinking we must have been there longer than we were, although apparently, the whole thing lasted but a moment.

Then, look: here’s Westlake Center, can that be all? And how, I still wonder, did things manage to arrive at the end with no one arrested or even fined?

Theater

Tickets to “The Lion King” on Broadway are like 300 bucks for an orchestra seat and you’re not nearly as close to the performers as I got to be to the star of the show last night; I mean you’re never in nut-punching range of the actors on stage, are you?

So, it was money well-spent to see Derrick in such rare (but not unusual) form; you’d have thought it was all over after we realized the bar at the airport Holiday Inn isn’t that glowing orb on top, but when 10 shots of Maker’s appeared, it was obvious things were just beginning and when he rode away straight into the parking lot gate, you knew your entertainment dollar was going to go a long way.

And although it kinda burns my mind’s eye to recall it, I can still see the upright dog pile on the dance floor at the joint I will refer to fondly now as The Trud where the bartender, at least, so loved us that she raced outside for photos as we were leaving.

It sure makes the ride to the airport a lot shorter when you take the train out there and International Boulevard isn’t nearly as steep if you only ride it downhill, so we were on Fourth Avenue and at the Orient Express before anyone could even sober up which meant that whatever promises were made were unlikely to be kept, although there’s no question that the costs on all sides were higher than expected.

Still, it was money well-spent and if you think of it as a kind of local disaster relief, maybe even justified, even if we never go back there—as if they’d ever let us.

I finished up with a nightcap at Waid’s where I commiserated with my friend, the owner, about his family and loved ones in Haiti; his night was dealing with a real catastrophe; mine, a traveling roadshow of what that’s like.

Fuego

It was a night of firsts:

• First time I ever had a guy in a car heckle me on my bike as he drove by with the exclamation, “Smells nice!”

• First time I ever affixed the top of a noble fir to my trailer flag and first time I ever carried more than one—make it three!—Christmas trees in the Haulin’ Colin trailer, (and I probably could have done one more if I’d have had more bungees).

• First time I’ve ever seen a parade of trees on bikes stretched out before me for hundreds of yards, pointy tops swaying, branches fluttering, and trunks, on at least one occasion, sounding a bass drum on a car mirror extending too far into the road.

• First time I ever got to see in person the conflagration that ensues when the dried remnants of the holiday season are piled together and set aflame and first time, from what I hear, that Lee refrained from restraining the pyromaniacal impulses of the Jobies so that it all went hotter and higher than ever before.

• First time the kid ever got to toss a dry pine onto an outdoor fire and stand back as the flames shot up into the air, igniting a showering plume of sparks to descend like ochre snowflakes against the backdrop of charcoal sky.

• First time I ever got to mingle not only with the bike gang but the family, too—and later fellow teachers—on a Thursday night mayhem; such abundance is rare.

• First time I’ve ever had anybody ask for my autograph on a photo of me—something I could sort of get used to, although I’d draw the line at carrying my own Sharpies.

And a night of nonsense of which I’m quite familiar but just never tire of:

• Douchecock sonzabitches pedaling like mad, drinking too much, wreaking havoc (to themselves, mostly), burning brighter and brighter, on fire.

Christpocalypse

photo by joeball

It sure was nice of God to do His immaculate conceiving in springtime so that His human form son would be born in winter, thereby assuring that 2109 years later, in the darkest days of December, we’d all have reason to celebrate, and the end result would be another fine Christmas disaster, complete with muddy nighttime bike racing, hot toddies, and baby powder right in the face, blinding you, but making everyone smell so clean and fresh that you’d want to wrap the whole evening up in a warm blanket and cuddle all the way through the holidays if it weren’t for the fact that there were still two or three more thrilling and dangerous events to survive before settling in for gift-giving and soul-baring and all this before eight o’ clock on Saturday night.

All I want for Christmas is the video recording implant, so I can play back on the insides of my eyelids a few of the visions dancing like sugarplum fairies in my head: the snaking line of red taillights bouncing through the sex trails at Volunteer Park; the meandering but quickly accelerating descent through Interlachen and down to the soggy Montlake playfield; bikes slipping sideways in the muddy soup of the oval track while I took fourth place by cutting across the grass.

I’d like to review the tapes of the gift exchange, too, so I could see how I lost the Ahearn flask and holder and ended up with some sort of weird kitchen or bar contraption that will, I promise, find its way back into the mix for someone else’s comfort and joy next year.

Minor catastrophe, success: we didn’t exactly get kicked out of the bar, but we were asked to leave so cleaner people in uglier sweaters could have their room, which frankly, was a gift, since it resulted in one more bike ride, to a place beyond disaster, where the stars always line up and twinkle catastrophically.

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.