Wow

photo by altercator

Everyone was so excited by the music, they accidentally left the music behind.

TehJobies got catastrophically dropped on the way out even though his wheels were the source of all the commotion driving the congregation along.

Which just goes to show that a bigger part of everything is mainly the idea of it—although the actuality can be that much more flabbergasting when you stand slightly to the side and overview the panorama of it.

We inhabit the universe inside our heads, which is one reason why being out on two wheels doors of a spring evening so soft and fluffy that it could have been an etching of a watercolor or vice versa becomes so apt a reminder that on nights like this it’s almost impossible to believe what you see.

Still, you can tell that you’re catching up to the music bike by the beatific look on the faces of trail-walkers passing by, and so even though a few broke rule number one by following Derrick, there was never any question that reunion would be achieved.

Romance was certainly in the air as I think it was Monica who noted and Stephen who observed and pretty soon all the loneliness and quiet of the way out was forgotten and there arose more good old-fashioned SOC and PDC shimmying than anyone deserves to go along with everything else that plastered a smile to one’s mug.

I chalk it up to all the pollen in the air or something, the birds and the bees, and flowers and trees; we’re just animals, after all, albeit ones with a striking ability to convert alcohol molecules to conga lines at dusk.

One must have done something really good in a past life to enjoy something like this in this one; perhaps many of us were similar heroes bringing tunes and intoxicants to our own little kin groups or high courts; if ever left behind, we’re definitely all caught up now.

Benign

photo by Shahan

Human beings do all sorts of strange things: write poetry, build skyscrapers, come together in fifty-thousand seat arenas to watch men in tights throw themselves at one another in pursuit of a pig bladder, but pretty much all such endeavors pale in the weirdness department to the phenomenon of thirty or so putative adults riding bicycles some sixty-plus miles on rural highways and deserted logging roads just so they can stand under blue tarps in a downpour at a closed campground in order to drink heavily and, in some cases, consume psychedelic mushrooms, before rising at dawn, more or less, to pedal back home in near deluge conditions just for the sheer ridiculousness of it because, after all, why the hell not?

It was miraculous how the Olympic Rain Shadow kept casting its dry umbrage over things whole way out; as long as the ride kept moving, you never had to don your rain gear at all.  Returning, by contrast, was a different story: only the prospect of getting home to a warm shower made it possible to put up with the drenching spray from tractor-trailers and SUVs on the shrinking glass-strewn highway shoulder.

Crossing the Hood River Bridge on Saturday was spectacular; Sunday, however, not so much.  Day 1 was like a postcard for God’s handiwork; Day 2, you were praying to whatever deity suits your fancy to not be blown sideways into a motorhome.

But I wouldn’t have changed a thing—except maybe that part where I overdosed “Fat”(neé “Skinny”) Rob by letting him eat 7/8ths of the whole cookie.

Huddled together in the steady drizzle around our campfire, it occurred to me that, given the weather conditions and what we’d been through on the roads and trails all day, I ought to be miserable, but pretty much the exact opposite was the case: I couldn’t stop smiling and whooping and in every direction I looked, I saw humans just as strangely delighted as me.

Mayday

photo by Ajat

All those cops on horseback and in riot gear were no doubt, to paraphrase the words of former Chicago mayor, Richard Daley, “not there to create disorder, but to preserve disorder” and, from all accounts, they did a fine job, with scarcely a broken window reported, but had they followed several score bicycles from the downtown retail core of our fair city to its favored beachfront on this International Workers’ Day, they’d have been able to witness all the mayhem they could handle as the perfect combination of record-breaking warm temperatures and overflowing liberty, fraternity, and equality gave rise to some serious maypole-dancing that couldn’t possibly be legal given how deliriously delightful it was in all its many forms

Perfect trines formed in the sky between the moon, Jupiter, and a handful of lucky stars, depth charges of beer in the fire exploded not once, but twice, and sedate computer and engineering professionals morphed into pagan minotaurs, all of this well before the waxing crescent had even set in the western horizon.

Human beings everywhere acted human and while I felt a little bad for the quiet couple who had cuddled up under a blanket to share a romantic evening only to be descended upon by a scene from Fellini, it wasn’t a night for apologies, but rather, for embracing the sheer exuberance of it all no matter what you’d expected in the beginning.

I wonder what adaptive advantage the ability to perceive beauty has provided for us; did our hunter-gatherer ancestors who could stand out on the savannah and experience aesthetic awe at the colors and shapes around them do a better job of passing down their DNA than their less appreciative brethren?

Or perhaps it’s just an anomaly, and atavism like the appendix, there, but not really doing anything; if so, I take it as a miraculous gift, one Marx himself would endorse, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Upgrade

photo by Joeball

Being unable to hear yourself think is not such a bad thing when, as a result, you're able to experience everything in its pure state as the alternative.

Devout adepts since time immemorial have immersed themselves in meditative and reflective practices to still the fluctuations of the mind and turn off the internal chatter; that same desired outcome can be achieved almost instantaneously by eating a cannabis cookie and riding your bike behind tehJobies’ latest incarnation of the music bike, this one fitted out with two rocket-booster shaped speakers delivering an even more face-meltingly loud volume for your cycling and dancing pleasure, despite the initial tune of the night being a perennial front-runner in the ongoing contest for most annoying pop hit of all time.

Still, it’s hilarious to see people come running from all directions and stop in their tracks to point and cheer when the parade of bikes and beats rolls by.  My face hurt from smiling after a mere two or three blocks to go along with the flayed fabric of my eardrums as I experienced something akin to Pure Being or maybe just another Thursday night out on two wheels.

Spring was at its vernal best; the stiff southwest breeze following record-breaking rain had cleared out the skies and it remained warm enough all evening for light wool, especially around the cheery fire at Seward started by the chain-smoking Ito on a bed of firecrackers which happily hoist him by his own petard in its lighting.

The Angry Hippy asked around at Westlake for something to get him started on his drunk for the evening; I’m not sure his request was met then, but by the time, several hours later, he was observed sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk outside karaoketown, one could assume, and not just by the coffin nail, that mission was accomplished.

My peak moment was slightly earlier, pouring from the park to Jello Biafra’s incomparably dulcet tones: Point83 Uber Alles, indeed.

Resurrected

Neither DNF nor DFL; that’s the baseline. 

Then, my metric has long been to take my age and minus the place I come in from it; highest number wins.

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” is how I remember Patti Smith putting it.

Resurrection Seven; it’s on the road to being long enough to be its own cult. 

Someday in the future, people will describe Easter as the day after the race and while some moldy old scholar will attempt to review which came first, it will all be chickens before eggs and vice-versa, those oivoid spheres being the ones in which manifests come.

You could tell which ones had directions in them, but only after you’d already picked it up and undone the tape, so it worked just as well to grab randomly, an admonition that’s probably not too far off.

Nor is the one that says just ride them in order, and it might not have been such a bad idea to do so, although I thought my route, surprisingly, wasn’t so bad. 

I got the gluttony over first with a shot of chocolate sauce in Nora’s Woods. 

Then, it was up and over to the Gum Wall where a tourist was even worse than me at using my camera phone; proving that pride goeth before a fall, especially on such an enthusiastically spring day.

I did envy in Queen Anne, although there wasn’t a thing I wished I had that I hadn’t. 

Thanks to the sage advice of Tall Bryan I next got wrathful at Golden Gardens, destroying the shit out of a joint before heading up and over the hill straight up to 85th and a more or less straight shot to sloth in Ravenna, albeit with a five-minute dumbhead penalty for turning the wrong way.

Lust at the Bridge to Nowhere meant holding hands with a damp teddy.

And then: Gasworks; greedily burning wood and drinking around a fire. 

Praise Jesus.

Backwards

Surprisingly, there’s always something you haven’t yet seen, like a blinking cursor that’s always been there, although staying closer to the water in order to ride boats of a spring night on which the sky was three different versions of wonderful (and those were only the ones remarked at and remembered) before ending up at a pond and a bridge in an impressively dangerous public space without a single trash can as befitting something that isn’t a park, but rather a facility, where self-lighting charcoal plays the role of a fire, is plenty, especially when you take into account that not even a hint of rain was dropped and shirtsleeves and a vest were sufficient all evening long; that’s what you ask for, and the fact that it was the most familiar of routes run backwards and under quite different mental conditions than those underway at 8:30 in the morning only makes it that much more satisfying.

Enough really can be enough when you’re given opportunities like this to notice it’s all too much, just like this, less than usual but still more than expected and certainly deserved.

Balance

photo by joeball

“It’s a world of abundance,” is how the New-Agers in the nineteen-eighties used to put it as a way of making the somewhat Pollyana-ish, but generally veridical point that the Universe is an awfully big place and usually will provide if only you’re willing to not cling too tightly to what you don’t have and allow nature to grant you all you really need and most of what you really want, as well.

It’s easy enough to become fixated on what’s lacking in our lives—lottery wins, free parking, admirable world leaders—and fail to notice all the treasures we do possess, although drinking beer outside on a vast wooden pier at the foot of a post-modern city overlooking a shimmering bay with shafts of sunlight piercing fluffy clouds like an advertisement for God’s existence tends to make one grateful right from the start of the evening.

All it takes is willingness to put people over principle, an admonition that probably won’t earn me much cred as a tough negotiator but will, I think, allow for a more whole-hearted embrace of options by those faced with another embarrassment of riches in too short a span of time.

That’s the thing you love about a fire pit as opposed to a fire place; the latter forces one to privilege a single perspective; the former, however, enables a full circle of possibilities and conversations.

On the vernal equinox, day and night effect a truce; they recognize that neither exists without the other and that both are merely two side of the same eternal Oneness, where there is no time nor space but all is nameless, changeless, perfection.

Stars seem to rise among the heavens in a single night—but that’s just because we’re spinning; they march across the sky from season to season but only through our movement; on nights like this, the world keeps turning beneath our tires; we simply need to pedal on for dear delicious life.

Trails

photo by joeball

The contemporary philosopher, Cornel West, says of the human condition that we are “featherless two-legged language-aware creatures born between urine and feces who will one day be culinary delicacies for terrestrial worms.”

So there’s that.

But we’re also rollicking two-wheeled fire-imbued rascals pedaling between sewer and waste dump who sometimes opt for the refulgent embrace of supernatural dreams.

Unironically.

We congregate on bricks and rattle past gum walls before rolling over water to tarry by pillars and eventually slither through an enormous yoni-shaped entrance to dirt, mud, and gravel again and again and again and again.

And again and again and again.

It was the first crepuscular start of the year on a day whose dawn broke so resplendently that even rare early-risers got to be awestruck by the heavenly conflagration.

 “Agape” comes in parallel forms: mouth wide open or unconditional love and there were both as we baffled one another by the single-walled fire or looked out over the water by continent’s edge.

I count myself lucky when I get be lost for so long and then suddenly appear at the familiar location; this magic has happened before while trailing behind Joeball but it never fails to delight.

And when you can bomb downhill without have to climb back up afterwards, well, that’s too good to be true.

And yet, so true to be good.

Our merry little blaze walked closer to us all night with a little help from Fancy Fred; the tide fell ever lower until right when we left; all that space between fire and water remained filled with conversation and laughter as the featherless bipeds cavorted with abandon.

And then it was time for a wind-aided gallop towards Chantilly lace and a pretty face and a pony tail hanging down.

A wiggle in the walk and giggle in the talk make the world go ‘round—so much so that you ride west in a circle before east on your usual spin home.

Highlights

The German philosopher, Schopenhauer, is supposed to have said that the best thing would be to never have been born and you can see his point: life is suffering and all that so think of the heaps of misery you’d have avoided had you never come to be.

But, on the other hand, consider everything you’d have missed out on. 

Take, for instance, a single night on a late winter’s evening in one tiny corner of one small edge of noplace remarkable.

Remember a handful of moments in this single occasion you’d never experienced had you forever remained unbirthed.  Like:

•    Cop chat and youth group confusing even before anything began
•    Perfuming alleyways and cheering for book nerds up the hill
•    Enticing strangers to join
•    Arriving, via the second-best route, at destination number one
•    Being overwhelmed by choices but eventually settling on something
•    Bombing Madison
•    Snaking through the Arboretum, doing 180’s in search of the perfect pagoda
•    Noticing light pollution and, for the most part, being glad of it
•    Turning the way you don’t expect upon exiting, eventually enjoying the preferred water route to a place you’d never imagined

And that was just for starters.

Pretty soon, it was all drummers and fire dancers and people falling in love all over themselves. 

Firecrackers were included much to the initial consternation of those for who such sounds are overly reminiscent but by the time the SOC Pussies were feeling their oats and PDC was making a dual appearance in Technicolor, I’m pretty sure no one had any complaints other than to wonder why every day besides Thursday isn’t like this.

Sometimes, it’s more about unity than distance; you see how far you can get with as many as possible.  If that means staying along the shoreline and being flabbergasted by the view, then yes.

Granted, the never existing version of you never struggles up superfluous hills but when you figure in the downhills, you will have to agree life’s worth it.

Metaphysical

Which event is the event? 

How can you tell whether what you are doing is the thing being done or the commentary upon it?

When does the alternative become the norm?

Here’s one thing I know: that was a nice ride through the woods. 

It’s fun not to have to worry too much about how to get where you’re going; Disneyland with seatbelts for grownups; that’s how comfortable it feels at this point.

I remembered a minor shortcut at the beginning and then, the general shape of things: you can be pretty confident that whenever you go down, you’re going to have to go up again.

A somewhat smaller crowd than usual of late and not a single unicycle in sight.  I missed the opportunity to climb for whiskey, but, at least, I didn’t drop my bike on the ferry and have two months of wrist recovery like last year.

Why do we do these things?

A hamster, of course, will spin the wheel; we’re apparently willing to explore the same dynamic by circumnavigating an island; I’ve no complaints about this; it’s just amusing to see how picturesque is our favored contraption, in spite of the fact that many of those bedecked in fluorescents seemed overly eager to be done with the whole thing.

Having experiences cannot possibly be about having had them, although, increasingly, it seems like there’s some of that.

Here I am, after all, reminiscing, when the whole day is still warm.

Somehow, I managed to miss one last trail; instead, I caught a boat, but if the result of that is a heightened likelihood of a slightly simpler future, then so be it.

It’s important, I think, to sometimes ride no-handed; this will remind you how easily one balances when conditions are right.

Never underestimate, though, how magical and marvelous is such an opportunity, 

And note how this time it’s pulled  off with a minimum of effort pretty much by accident on purpose.

Up

How do beliefs and outcomes work together?  Ever notice the way anticipation plays with what ends up?

I don’t know how not to be committed to the idea that this is the best of all possible worlds, though I couldn’t possibly believe that, could I?

Yet, there you are with waffle irons perfectly matched to people’s attitudes in times when not enough is too much rather than the converse.

Here’s some of what I think I know: the rain never came but often seemed possible, yet becalmed.

So many new folks: at least three.

And, I still think, might have happened: a tailwind in both directions.

Could this be the Ninth Annual Waffle Ride?  What else have you done for so long?

I kept being unsurprised by people’s ages: we’ve done this since childhood.  And some, like Derrick, for several of them.

No one climbed the rafters, but there were enough attention spans to make possible two separate theaters, both of which complemented another.

A warming fire was constructed vertically and many, if not most, had an opportunity to enjoy.

When you stepped out from under the shelter and its soothing fog of waffle vapor,  there was Orion’s Belt: you’d be happy with a single star, but there they are, all three of them, dotting the heavens.

The possible and actual are in continual dialogue.  There’s what you think it’s going to be and what it is, which is determined, in part, by what you think it’s going to be.

And then, it’s something different than either of those, but no less expected or unexpected.

Ground-level fireworks in the tunnel made for especially voracious vocalizations on the way out there; heading west was all about drinking it in; I let the corridor sing me.

Although among the last to leave our home away from home across the water, I’ll bet I was among the first to sleep; my more than sufficient capacity for fun, more than fulfilled.

Imperfection

Hills, yes.

But don’t forget bombing down the endless wooded corridor as payback for breaking one of the cardinal rules: Never follow Ben up a mountain.

And remember that many other guidelines were questioned as well, including the admonition not to ride down steps in the woods.

But at least there was general agreement over one of my own standard pieces of advice, which is to have a drink at the bar if you come to the bar, even if, in this case, there were two of them simultaneously.

The Angry Hippy and I talked about nothing for a while and pondered the instability of it, which is, after all, something, I suppose.

Plus, the Backyard Barbecue was in fine form, sucking flames into its flue on a full moon’s winter night that felt more like April than Valentine’s eve.

And I’m pretty sure someone puked, even before the serious drinking began.

So, you see, it is all hearts and flowers (or steak and blowjobs) when it comes to a Thursday night out on two wheels and is, as Dada might attest to, way harder to pull yourself away from it even when you just show up at Westlake to do a blessing of the bikes; before you know it, you’re tumbling down muddy forest pathways and demonstrating a range of emotions all the way from pensive to thoughtful with everything in-between.

BtAH explained to me that another answer to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing at all?” is that nothing would be static and so, if I understood correctly, couldn’t therefore exist in time—which implies, of course, some sort of change.  Nevertheless, there are those magic moments, recurring for all eternity, like Derrick’s repeating of the same joke about a pipe over and over.

I agree: if it’s funny once, it’s even funnier four or five times.

Unchanging perfection, like nothing, cannot possibly exist; the perfectly imperfect, though, happens all the time.

Wonder

You might be surprised to see how long you can go with still being surprised.

Even when you start out on the most familiar of routes, there’s still room for wonder.

The fix may be in, as Brother Botorff suggests, but that doesn’t mean you won’t experience the unexpected, even if it turns out to have been scripted beforehand. 

One thing’s for sure: you can always trust the wayfaring skills of G.S. Barnes, who will take you through many places you’ve been before but in several new, unexpected, and far less hilly ways.  Sure, you’re likely to end up with muddy shoes and scratchy fenders, but it’s worth it to discover unimagined pathways to delightful destinations.

No less a familiar than Derrickito himself got to feel momentarily all turned around and lost, which is just what happened to his skepticism about following that father of two in the non-bike-specific coat.

I learned that the legendary firepit exists after all, at a far higher elevation than I had imagined and that, as a matter of fact, it actually is a firepit and not merely some rich person’s backyard.

The Big Dipper was out, cinched tight by Orion’s Belt over the field of dreams, but hardly anyone noticed given the ineluctable warmth of our civically-approved conflagration.  It’s really quite amazing how much wood you can get for $3.99 and a QFC card when you’re able to convince others to carry it and how handy a package of kindling figures into the equation when you only have so many Boy Scouts on hand to set things alight.

Birthdays abounded along with kudos for parents who preferred to get busy in the spring and as we all cast our imaginations back across the decades it became more and more apparent that consciousness might just have to be a natural feature of matter in the universe.

It probably wouldn’t answer everything, but it might explain how riding bikes can surprise you so.

Inferno

Photo by Joshua Trujillo, SeattlePI.com

tehJobies wondered what, with a fire suit and four handles of Everclear, could possibly go wrong, and the answer, it turns out is nothing, apparently, as yet another bicycle-powered post-Christmas War On Christmas (Trees) bonfire and drinking party went off without a hitch (besides the ones on bike trailers) and, as far as I know, not a single third-degree burn, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Fancy Fred and a few others were missing some eyebrows in the morning.

The prospect of seeing several score dry evergreens combust to illuminate the night sky really brings ‘em out; lots of old familiar but rarely seen faces showed up at Westlake for the only-slightly-faster-than-Critical-Mass speed parade to Golden Gardens with a stop at the Peddlar Brewery to strap trees on bikes, in backpacks, and atop at least one pickup truck.

Riders were greeted at the beach by incognito Elves who delighted one and all with grownup hot chocolates garnished with baby marshmallows floating in 190-proof goodness.

Everclear’s effect, appropriately enough, is not unlike the way a month-old Christmas tree bursts into flame: suddenly, you’re all aglow and the formerly sedate are now laughing and lying, screaming at trains, and occasionally semi-disrobing.

Think of all the memories embodied in those flaming firs: sparkly-giftwrapped presents under their lowest branches, stars and angels atop their highest reach.  Then, in an instant, the transformation to sparks and cinders takes place and a brand-new recollection is burnished on the brain and in the heart.

If I come back as a Doug or Noble in Chubby and Tubby’s lot some December, this is how I want to go, that’s for sure.

You can almost get used to the sight of thirty-foot high flames and so, come to feel jaded when, afterwards, all that’s left is a crackling fire that warms dozens for hours. 

But then you remember that just because the spectacular has become commonplace, doesn’t mean the commonplace isn’t spectacular.

On fire, in fact.

Sparse

The Scientific Method—the ability of human beings to explain phenomena via a process of observation, hypothesis, testing, and analysis—is arguably the means by which all of human technology, broadly construed, exists.  We certainly wouldn’t have computers or bikes or beer were it not for this powerful means of applying human reason to human problems.

We might still, though, have acquaintances who program those computers or ride those bikes or drink that beer, and no doubt they would be the ones doing empirical testing of the proposed propositions and so, it should come as no surprise to learn that everyone’s an engineer when there’s a chance to discover whether you really can put out a hearty fire with wet driftwood.

By the time the flaming mastodon head is ignited by Duraflame logs and firestarter, anyway, it’s been proven that, under certain conditions, even in a gale, as long as you’re inside a park shelter, the fire will inexorably dry the soggy branches and add them to the conflagration.

One could quibble over the size of the test sample, but like a ride of less than a dozen, it still counts as statistically significant.

Sound experimental design would have us creating opportunities to see our hypotheses disconfirmed, and so, if upon arriving, one presumes it might be more fun to bail on the evening, it becomes incumbent to search for a counterexample and just start pedaling.

And then, when riding out the storm in the perfect park shelter to do so, amply provisioned and with endless supplies, it turns out, of combustible fuel, one ought to be perfectly delighted to be proven wrong, since after all, in doing so, new knowledge is generated.

I hypothesized the downpour was over when I left the park not needing a coat; twenty minutes later, though, there was plenty of data to contradict this view; I was perfectly happy to be proven wrong, but happier still I had my rain pants.

Fugit

photo by joeball

We are reminded by the perennial philosophies that all is ephemeral.

The wisdom traditions underlying Hinduism and Buddhism, for instance, tell us that all of nature—what the sages of the sacred texts known as the Vedas refer to as prakriti—is constantly in transition.  The Universe itself passes into existence in this form and then out again, before reforming once more, endlessly repeating for all eternity. 

What we take to be our self, say the Buddhists, is nothing more than a continually changing set of experiences; there is no essential, unchanging core to be found; our consciousness is a stream with no deep pool as its source we might say.

One finds this view in Western philosophy, too, going all the way back to the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, who famously contends that all is flux; that we can never step into the same river twice; there is no “there” there that’s always there.

Still, this is little consolation in the real world when an old familiar watering hole and gathering place shuffles off its mortal coil so to speak. 

Sure, nothing lasts forever (except embarrassing pictures and posts on the internetz), but it is a little sad to note the immanent demise of a comfortable go-to spot which—although far from perfect—has sufficed as a place to congregate, toss back a few, and gather sustenance for the late-night ride home.

Of course, it’s important to keep things in perspective, which is why riding once more (for only the second time this year by my count) to an abandoned road above our fair city’s industrial sanitation heart in order to raise a conflagration from freely available combustibles is recommended. 

No doubt the day will come when there’s nothing but aluminum cans and cardboard to ignite, but for now, at least, we can be made warm by what’s at hand.

It’s literally a figurative way of seeing it; the metaphor of fire is actually what it is.

Christastrophe

Our capitalist culture goes into overdrive during the holiday season trying to convince us that happiness is to be found through consumption; we’re told by our televisions, newspapers, and internets that we’d better go out and buy the newest and flashiest gizmo or gem if we have any hope of finding something akin to bliss in our lives.

But, of course, it’s much simpler than that.

All you really need to have all the joy you’ll ever need is just a bike, some booze, and a fire.

And, I should add: several dozen acquaintances, including long-lost and far-flung heroes still recovering from jet-lag and/or nuptials, mixing together at a thoroughly over-planned checkpoint-style bicycle race inviting participants to kiss one another, imbibe thoroughly disgusting holiday-themed libations, and puff away at cannabis or nicotine all while meandering through actual old-growth forest paths within shouting distance of the illuminated downtown of a major metropolitan area.

That’s all you need, but also, for good measure, grown men roped together by a stretched innertube pedaling away from each other on children’s bikes until one or both are yanked backwards—that never gets old, no matter how many times you laugh out loud at it.

And, I suppose, it doesn’t hurt to include a lovely two-wheeled spin on car-free paths on a late fall night warm and dry enough for just a little wool flannel.

Or, in addition: a clubhouse after-party with singing and dancing and toys and gifts—some of which are quite desirable and even fairly valuable—for everyone.

That’s all it takes, really, to have a shit-eating grin on your face for something like eight hours in a row; you don’t need to go to the mall on Black Friday or max out your credit cards to be overwhelmed with the holiday spirit; you just need the Christmas miracle that is simultaneously a disaster of the very best sort, a gift that keeps on giving no matter what it takes.

Backyard

When you discover that your favorite drunken bike gang has biked to and is now standing around a fire drinking at the only outdoor firepit with its very own chimney less than a mile from your home, resistance is futile. 

Even though you’ve just finished your last teaching day of the quarter—or, perhaps because you have—and even though you’ve just gotten home after the first holiday party of the season—or perhaps because you have—there’s really no question of remaining warm and dry inside your own four walls: you bundle back up, hop on your bike and essentially roll downhill all the way to where a couple dozen of your two-wheeled acquaintances have congregated to enjoy the spirit of the season—that spirit being, of course, brown liquor mixed into store-bought eggnog for all to enjoy.

It’s lovely to be welcomed by the assembled and to enjoy the toasty glow of the cheery blaze in the outdoor fireplace; voices rise every higher as the flames are stoked from below and above; somewhat surprisingly, none of the nearby homeowners comes out with a dog to investigate; perhaps it is an early Christmas miracle after all.

Eventually, though, even the charms of the great outdoors begin to pale (either that, or the beer starts to run out) and the assembled wend their way through wooded paths that, to my way of thinking, are plenty exotic enough at this time of night and in this state of mind even if they don’t require a full-on shredding of the gnar.

And before you know it, there you are, having avoided the obvious turn-off to your own abode and by taking a route as familiar as they come, at one of the more typical last stops of the evening, where several nights are capped to songs sung by melodious strangers and exuberant acquaintances.

Of course, all this could have been avoided if only the assembled had assembled farther away.

Sugarplum

photo by joeball

Even though I’m a half-century past the age when I actually believed in Santa Claus, I still felt like a kid on Christmas morning when Jolly Old St. Nick hoisted me into his arms as if I was nothing more than a piece of holiday wrapping paper and I lay suspended in and surrounded by the sheer joyfulness and naughty glamor that is Seattle’s very own Sugarplum Elves.

Who needs hot cocoa on a cold winter’s night when there’s bike riding, booze, and multi-part harmony to keep you warm?

There weren’t a lot of miles, but there sure were lots of smiles as we pedaled from a festive Westlake Center to an art opening at a bike shop in Pioneer Square and then just a tad farther south to a magical indoor Santa’s workshop complete with a video fireplace and holiday grog all around.

And Elves! 

Singing Sugarplum Elves!

You couldn’t have wiped the grin off my face with even the Grinch’s hairy backside.

It’s easy to forget, in our modern high-tech world of instant messaging and auto-tune, that there is really nothing more entertaining than a chorus of human voices, especially when those voices emanate from the most adorable of sources, all dressed up on red and green finery and performing so close that you can, after several heartwarming libations, find yourself “singing” and “dancing” right alongside them.

"Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites and says yes;” so wrote the philosopher William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience, and I’m sure he would have appreciated the divine nature of last evening’s entertainments, augmented, as they were by coffee-flavored Jello shots among other taste treats.

Faces aglow from a short ride in the bracing night air, we tumbled into the all-enveloping warmth, and then, eventually back out into a far less chilly evening.

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ting-tingling, too.  Come on, it's lovely weather for a bike ride together with you.

Hearth

Never before have I visited two bike riders’ homes on a single night out, although perhaps the second stop, at Joe’s apartment, only counts for half since I just partly recall being there.

Bob Ross onscreen, though, seemed like a reasonable cap to the evening, lovely as it was with nary a happy little cloud in sight.

There was a modicum of pedaling beforehand, washed down with lots of beer and other eye-openers and although no one stood around a fire (at least on my watch) there was plenty of warmth of both the metaphorical and literal kind to spare on what might have been the coldest night of the year so far.

My Joeball-endorsed hardware store gloves performed admirably, however, so I got to avoid the traditional cold hands component of the warm heart duo; in fact, as the night went on, the weather seemed less and less of issue; happily, in any case, I did make it home with all my accouterments intact.

The problem with internet jukeboxes, like the one at our newest watering hole, is that they offer too many choices.  Sure, it sucks to be limited to Dave Matthews and Toby Keith like at the first joint we rolled into, but when you can choose from everything from Abba to ZZ Top with fIREHOSE and Jethro Tull thrown in for good measure, it’s hard to decide.

That’s why it’s often a relief to simply follow the blinkies in front of you and give yourself over to whatever happens to show up.  If this involves invading someone’s condominium—at their invitation—to raid the liquor cabinet and test the weight limits of their rooftop deck area, so be it.

And if later in the night, it means you circle around someone else’s apartment yelling their name before shamelessly invading the premises, then that’s fine, too.

You don’t always have to make choices; sometimes what happens is the ride chooses you:

Whee!  Whee! Whee!

All the way home.

Dirt

One measure of a good night out on two wheels is how often you go off-road.

I count four: 1) Interlachen, with its impromptu tuneless bike-straddle no dance party and one beer or bowl mechanical, 2) Sweeny’s detour bulge to the Marsh Island barge, where we got to look at the moon and its reflection over the undulating waters upon which Husky Stadium balances, 3) the magic corkscrew through the Ravenna ravine to Cowen Park where at least one more libation was allotted, and 4) just a bit of turf on the turf over the actual lower-case reservoir where people bounced themselves silly before heading over to the actual upper-case Reservoir.

And a clear mark of an excellent November evening in the Pacific Northwest is how much of it you can spend outdoors without getting drenched so if you count your commute, and the ride home afterwards, that’s nearly six hours, dusk until midnight, with only half a beer inside, crisp and dry the whole time.

I admit I was unsettled at first by the prospect of following Joe, but it turned out my perfectly reasonable fear was, at least in this instance, mostly unfounded.

Sure, it seemed like there was a bit more standing around, backing up, and on-the-fly wayfaring than one might be accustomed to, but most was in a place you didn’t mind being and usually with people sharing one thing or another, so as long as we remembered, as Brother Botorff and I reminded ourselves, that whenever someone grinds your gears, it’s you doing the grinding, all was well.

I realized, afterward, that I’ve never been on a ride before with nary one of the typical ringleaders, so it just goes to show that a set is not just the members of it, but rather, it must be the routes and practices passed down somehow by accident.

Or maybe it’s just that you notice, next morning, that your tires are coated with mud.

Costumed

photo by Andrew Squirrel

Suppose you are compelled by adult responsibilities to be up an atom the next morning for “Disaster Preparedness Training;” couldn’t you just submit your Thursday night Halloween bike ride experience to earn the required certification or whatever?

After all, it’s got to count as being pretty much ready for anything the Universe throws at you to pedal alongside Ronald McFondle, Gumby Damnit, and sexy Dorothy from Oz while singing the only scary song you can remember to the catcalls and cheers of costumed revelers all around your fair city’s central waterway on All Hallow’s Eve, right?

We’re not in Kansas, anymore, Toto, that’s for sure, and, besides, who’d want to be when the alternative is a warm end to what certainly will go down as the driest October on record (or, in memory, at least) and an outdoor stop at a park that’s usually just for flowers and toddlers, not grown-ups in Flintstone’s outfits, sombreros, and high-concept dress-ups supposedly referencing online memes and inside jokes.

Kids love the spectacle, we know that, but everywhere the peculiar pelaton pedals people point and wave; merriment abounds, especially on the inside and most of all when wigs are traded and oldsters dance like hermit prospectors shooing varmints offa their grubstake.

And if being ready for emergencies is the theme, then how can it not count to have survived the sight of Shaddup Joe’s chest merkin bulging from the tiny devil outfit; surely this prepares even the most timorous out there for ducking and covering when the proverbial shit hits the fan.

There was even a legitimately spooky ride through the darkened forest and while I did see a gladiator crash on the marble raceway, there was battle armor for protection, so no harm done.

Eventually, two wheels turned into many cups in the old man bar turned post-graduate masquerade for the special occasion; having survived that, is a course on what to do when the big one hits still required?

Apotheosis

photo by joeball

According to the St. Anselm’s so-called “Ontological Argument,” God’s existence is proven since, as “that which nothing greater can be conceived,” He necessarily exists, point being that if He didn’t, then He wouldn’t be the greatest conceivable thing (lacking the property of existence).

The seminal objection comes from the monk, Gaunilo, who argues that ironically, the Ontological Argument is too powerful.  By the same logic, says Gaunilo, we could prove the existence of the greatest conceivable island, but this is absurd, and so, by a reductio, Anselm’s proof fails.

Contemporary philosopher of religion, Alvin Plantinga, responds on behalf of Anselm and contends that Gaunilo’s analogy is faulty; while “the greatest conceivable thing” is a coherent concept, the “greatest conceivable island” is not; the former is an infinite Being; the latter is something finite to which attributes can be added infinitely; the concept, therefore, is self-contradictory; thus Gaunilo’s objection fails and Anselm’s proof carries the day.

I’m not so sure, though.  Consider a different finite something with the property of being unsurpassable, “the greatest conceivable .83 ride,” for example, “the .83 ride such that no greater ride could be conceived of.”

It would feature an unseasonably dry evening, a fair amount of miles on mostly car-less roads; an endless amount of surprisingly decent marijuana passed out freely by a non-partaking Derrick Ito; not one, but two outdoor drinking spots, the second of which at a fondly-remembered hidden hobo firepit with a conflagration hot enough to give rise to several SOC Pussies; a double-EntAndre in the tree overhead; so much beer that even the Angry Hippy felt compelled to turn unopened leftovers into coal-fired depth-charges; a couple mechanicals, but no broken bones; more than enough trash-scavenged dick pics; whiskey at a favored watering hole for a nightcap; and, to top it off, Daniel Featherhead navigating the whole goddamned trip on his home-built tall bike.

It doesn’t get better; it can’t get better, and yet, remarkably, dear Gaunilo, it exists.

Shiny

The Harvest Moon, I’m told by the internet, is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox, but you didn’t even need a wireless connection to glean the extra-special luminosity of the evening’s celestial orb; all you had to do was admire the Mini-Me shadow puppets it cast on the sand as the fire burned to glowing coals and the conversations rose like bona-fide fireworks bursting into patterned roses overhead.

photo by joeball

Brother Botorff directed my attention to the western skyline where the fog nestled around the distant landmass like a scarf and I couldn’t help seeing Jay Gatsby’s green light blinking across the water.

My own perspective kept being drawn to our nearest celestial satellite and even though I showed up after water bottles and growlers had already been filled with and emptied of the homegrown cordial, it was all I could do to walk a straight line under its highlighting aura.

If you ever find yourself forgetting how unusual is this weekly confluence, just ask: when was the last time you stood around a bonfire that you got to by being outside the whole time; and if that’s not enough: free beer, friendly faces, and what meteorologists call an “Omega block” to keep things dryer than any Northwesterner in October has a right to even dream of.

As I pedaled in, a couple of early-exits passed by; I wondered whether I’d be too late to enjoy the mass conflagration; not to worry: from a quarter mile away whoops and hollers became audible; soon enough, bicycles everywhere, and sand in one’s shoes come morning.

A couple times I found myself in conversations that involved reminiscences, and one common theme was how long this has been happening; eight years, more or less, to my way of experience, but somehow, it keeps surprising.

The moon, after all, has been doing its thing every month for over four and a half billion years and that still has yet to get old.

Beer

photo by joeball

The important thing is that nobody wiped out on the wet grating of the Ballard Bridge as we headed to the brewery for Brewmaster Dave’s birthday bacchanalia.

Bear with me chillens: it doesn’t matter how much of a bad-ass biker you are, even how fat your tires may be; honest to God, stay off those damn bridge-gratings in the rain.  I never want to see another flapping forehead on any of you, even Joe, who probably still wouldn’t shut up if his eyebrows were dangling over his mouth.

It was one of those nights where cycling played second fiddle to quaffing, and why not?  After all, it’s rare you get to pedal to Peddlar on the occasion of your friendly local beer maker’s birthday and choose from among an array of tasty beverages served up by cheerful, smiling folks in a room into which you can wheel your bike from the drizzle and pile it on top of those ridden by old acquaintance to trap them into staying by the weight of your rig.

And why leave when not only are their plenty of grownups to lie to, but also, you have the unprecedented opportunity to make goo-goo eyes to an actual real-live second generation Angry Hippy, who—at three months—seems to have inherited little of his father’s legendary inclination, but rather, was remarkably sanguine about the whole proceedings, even when Derrick held him in his arms.

Eventually though, the promise of even better (well, freer, anyway) beer drew the hearty from the pub and out along a trail that usually seems more familiar, but which, eventually, led to the zip-lined park where more tales were spun and dyspepsia was cultivated by intrepid souls like Fancy Fred who twirled on the merry-go-round.

I left in time to miss further weirdness that may or may not have involved flaming pizza boxes; my bike brought me safely home by midnight, avoiding one more wet bridge-grating on the way.

Chase

(This space intentionally left blank.)

Zone

photo by joeball

“Wherever you go, there you are,” say the Buddhists (or was that George Carlin?); “You’re never lost as long as you have nowhere to go,” was how some wag around the fire put it.

And why would you have any other destination in mind, anyway, when everything a person could need is right at hand: all the beer you can drink, so many marijuana cigarettes you have to smoke two at a time, a toasty fire whose banked-up coals warm your slowly-spinning body from bottom to top, conversations in every direction to dip into and sometimes nervously back away from, all presented way out in the apparent middle of nowhere under a sky filled with shy constellations peaking out between painterly clouds and not a raindrop in sight.

Of course, at some level, we’re all lost, always, all the time, wandering through a meaningless accidental Universe absurdly in search of some sort of meaning, but if it is possible to find oneself, it’s more than likely to happen in circumstances such as these: in a place that feels familiar but new, wondering how you got there and relying on the kindness of well-known strangers to lead you away, needing nothing else for the time being other than what’s in arm’s reach.

A riparian zone is defined as the area of interface between land and a river or stream; perhaps it’s in such buffers where the secrets of existence are to be found: the moving patch where rubber meets the road (or gravel); the white-hot point at which fire clings to wood; those fleeting moments when words ignite laughter; or an evening whose limbs stretch out in both directions, transitioning smoothly from summer to winter, a perfect autumn instant balanced between the billions of colors behind and the infinite grey-scale ahead.

And even though, I’ve seen it before, I still believe in wormholes and magic carpets; how else can we get so lost and still find ourselves home?

Dicks

photo by joeball

Many will bemoan the loss of tradition, complaining about the way, for instance, that the true spirit of Christmas—or Superbowl Sunday—has been forsaken; and while it’s important to venerate that which has brought us here, it’s also vital to respond to the world as it is.

We live, as the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti reminds us, in a universe of thought, and it’s easy enough to take those thoughts as the only way the universe can be and so it’s good, I think, to allow the past to influence the present without being utterly beholden to the way things went before.

We can come to appreciate, therefore, how Santa eventually usurps Jesus (at least for the time being) or over time, how fries become burgers while the commemoration of freedom remains intact.

Think of what our human brethren around the world might give for the opportunity to pedal to even one such bountiful purveyor of local delicacies; but four? 

I marveled at the way bicycles braved routes built mainly for cars and nearly fainted when our friend Mr. Double-Truck was somehow avoided by dozens of tiny two-wheelers in Wallingford.

One of the characteristic human dilemmas is to rectify the map with the territory, the plan and the present, our expectations and reality; how we do so depends upon principle.

Democracy may be, as Churchill put it, the worst form of government except for all other forms that have been tried, but that doesn’t mean it works in situations where nobody really knows what he or she wants in isolation.

That’s when it’s sometimes better to simply stipulate, based on a standard of inclusion, what comes next.   (Even if an Angry Hippy is literally begging for an alternative.)

Because, after all, it’s much easier—in keeping with the Descartes’ well-known admonition—to change ourselves rather than the world at-large.

And in the end, if you get to swim one last time in this summer’s lake, you do.

Forecast

photo by joeball

There are lots of good reasons to miss a ride—illnesses, wedding anniversaries, band practices—but in my experience, the weather is almost always a poor excuse.

Which means that deciding to stay home based on merely the forecast of inclement conditions is surely a road to regret.  Moreover, it’s remorse of the worst kind: the type that emanates from something you didn’t do rather than something you did. 

After all, it’s one thing to feel bad the morning after for carrying on the Nutpunch Park tradition of nutsacking a relative stranger in the balls, but it’s another experience altogether to be kicking yourself (in the nuts, no doubt) for missing the opportunity to be there enjoying lightning strikes and bulletballs just because you looked at colored maps on the internet earlier in the day.

Apparently, pretty much everyone knows that the bark of the Douglas Fir tree is resistant to fire, but it seems there are some folks who forget that human beings are not made of sugar and while—as any Angry Hippy will attest—rust may never sleep, it moves slowly enough that even a sustained drenching is unlikely to result in the immediate destruction of a steel bike much less one constructed of aluminum or carbon fiber.

Elsewhere, thunderbolts skipped off the helmets of motorcyclists, but on the favored platform suspended above the Superfund site not a single one of Zeus’ throws hit its mark, which I realize has nothing to do with rubber-soled shoes but I like to believe so, anyway.

And should you think you’ve seen it all, here’s a surprise: a locked gate and the unprecedented teamwork of two-wheelers, including burly touring rigs, being passed over barbed-wire fences, so no one, not even drunken nutpunchers are left behind.

Sure, the final spin home is drenching, but at this point, you’re feeling very little pain (and only a modicum of regret, just as you might have predicted had predictions been predicted.

Dive

photo by joeball

It’s as corny as a Celine Dion song sung by a unicorn on a rainbow, but it’s true: sometimes it’s not about where you go, but how you get there.

Greenlake is as mundane a destination as there is, but when you arrive via a spin around the Ghettodrome, a climb over Queen Anne, and a thrilling descent which takes you across the Aurora Bridge in the so-called “bus lane,” it’s as special as anyone could hope for and at least as unusual as nachos in the park, an experience that in more than half a century on the planet, I’ve never ever experienced before.

Advice is, almost by definition, trite, but I offer it to myself on these occasions and am reminded never to pass up a chance to swim when it presents itself.

Forty eight hours before, you’re floating on your back under a full moon in the Caribbean Sea, but paddling about in a city park pond is equally glorious in its own way since, among other things, it doesn’t require twelve hours of travel time in aluminum containers but rather, is reached simply by snaking through one’s hometown astride a steel two-wheeler.  It may not be a glowing turquoise paradise, but all the elements are there for a live to be lived as fully as possible, hackneyed and pedestrian as that sentiment surely is.

But, of course, it’s not all old hat: pretty soon you’re arriving by bike at a splendid old local watering hole you don’t ever recall drinking at before, and it’s even got a self-styled “deck” in the back where Soccer moms strategize about how to get their kids to school and ballet lessons before being descended upon by a dozen or so beer drinkers who laugh loudly enough to drown out their conversation and earn the friendly ire of the joke-telling bartender who runs the joint.

And then you’re riding home, one more destination whose journey is that, too.

Leap

photo by joeball

The important thing is that no one broke a neck—not their own, nor anyone else’s.

Few things, I expect, would put a damper in one’s evening more effectively than having to see your friend or acquaintance hauled from a lake, limp and bleeding, and reduced to eating through a straw in a wheelchair for the rest of his or her life.

Fortunately, (and perhaps somewhat surprisingly), there was none of that, in spite of the slipperiness of the dock, the wonkiness of the ramp, and the intoxicated enthusiasm of riders as they hurtled towards the water on a brakeless BMX bike that wobbled and fishtailed on the plastic wood walkway.

My heart was in my mouth more than once as I could envision wheels sliding sideways and heads hitting corners, but instead of worst fears being realized, it was all good fun until someone loses an eye—and since no one did, “Woo-hoo!  Spring Break!” (To quote the departing Dr. Tittlefitz, who, if I recall correctly, didn’t cycle off the ramp, but who is pretty much doing the same thing in his life as he leaps headlong into the Midwest, Godspeed, sweet prince.)

Presumably, mad math skills could compute trajectories of flying two-wheelers, but even the most innumerate among us can calculate that bikes, beer, (a few) costumes, sun, swimsuits, and peer pressure will add up to times that might require something more like 3-D IMAX to really capture on film.

We may all be living the best action-adventure buddy-comedy neo-noir musical extravaganza ever and it’s in surround sound smell-o-vision, too.   No one knows how it’s going to end, but it seems like a scene where the hero rides his trusty steel horse off into the sunset ought to be in there somewhere.

Flames shot out of the top of the chimney at Gasworks and the shelter smoldered but didn’t ignite.

That’s some Oscar-winning performance, the role of a lifetime, no dry eyes in the house.

Grapple

photo by joeball

All I ask is that I never get inured to this nonsense, that I never fail to be utterly gobsmacked by the over-the-top inanity of it all, and that I’m always giddy and gleeful a the gleeful giddiness glowing before me in rainbow Technicolor when Everclear is mixed, slides are slipped, and vegan Jell-O in a kiddie pool provides the perfect venue for what turns out to be some pretty serious rasslin’ when bike nerds in bathing suits go at it for real.

If you ever catch me yawning, rolling my eyes, or making comparisons to previous events when this crazy shit is going down, I respectfully ask for a kick in the pants or possibly a nutpunch just so I never forget that it’s unforgettable every time—even if many of the participants will have trouble remembering the details afterwards.

Any of it would be more than enough which is why all of it can almost seem insufficient, but only for an instant until you recall that nowhere else in the Universe is this commonplace or expected, much less unprecedented and unbelievable.

Those kids on skateboards flying down Second Avenue among the disco bike horde had their peak moment and that was only 2 minutes into things.

People come out of many a woodwork to witness for themselves that such hijinks exist, but it’s those sights you can’t unsee—like naked bowling balls hurtling down the plastic-coated lawn or headlocked hillbillies thrashing like alligators in chunky green goo—that are hardest to believe your eyes over.

Seattle has a long tradition of Seafair shenanigans, and I like to think such escapades as these fall squarely into that exalted history; we may not be pirates “kidnapping” beauty queens from local diners, but surely future archeologists unearthing plastic bits and bike grease will have to conclude that the local customs were certainly uncustomary, in spite of the fact that you can almost, over time, become accustomed to them.

Classic

photo by joeball

Hopes fulfilled.   Expectations exceeded.  Sunset and moonrise.

And, I swear, a tailwind in both directions.

All you have to do is stick with it, keep pedaling, and yet another outdoor venue appears, complete with its very own celestial moment, whether that’s  our favorite local star lapping up the lazy waters of the hometown lake as it sinks behind the nearest ridge of our fair city or the dirty toe of a moon sliding sideways across the western horizon like a bouncing ball in the cartoon musicals.

You won’t find any of this in the palm of your hand, but it’s right there for the grabbing on your bike.

This one was a summer classic from the start: Second Avenue en masse; grandeur over the city bridge; shadow cyclists animating beside you on all the fences.

There was tunnel-yelling at the top and bottom of your lungs, too.

I laughed aloud at the absurd beauty of the Lake Washington crossing: that frog-like sound the cars’ wheels make an accompaniment to water-skeeters on two wheels. 

Try to capture THAT on your device; you have to make a photograph with your heart instead and even that’s just a snapshot of the comprehensive 3-D Surround-Sound reality.

The Island’s marble raceway over and over; how many corkscrews can a corkscrew screw if a corkscrew can screw screws?

Perfect timing for the endo-less beach arrival: sunlight gilding the waters for plenty of time to get wet and pruny while emulating otters.

Some aerobics, then provisions, then another beach, this one complete with a folksinger, are you kidding me?

Consensus achieved and the lights twinkled and blinked westward, still in shirtsleeves after eleven.

You can cite the particulars of what becomes a classic most: miles ridden, beaches taken, strokes swum, beers consumed, jokes told, lies believed, overhead orbs admired, but it still fails to tell the whole story. 

For that, you need to be there embodied, dripping and squirming, like a newborn, born anew.

Bullish

Photo by joeball

“Nothing lasts forever” the Queen song tells us, but it seems to me that there are some memories at least, that must be—for all intents and purposes—everlasting and eternal.

I know, for instance, that the image of nearly three score cyclists, resplendent in dress whites with red sashes and bandanas, clustering into a candy-cane colored peleton while ascending from the evening’s starting point will abide in collective unconscious forever.

And I’m sure that the mental snapshot of the same dozens of riders mingling by the water in two main groups, one wetter, one dryer, (but both pretty well soaked in the fruit of the vine) will never fade.

And doubtless, the sight of men with horns on their heads charging and grappling on the grass in the soft light of a high summer evening is burned into the brain for all time, try as one might to make it go away somehow, some way, some day.

Anticipation becomes actuality at last as we don our once-a-year outfits to honor an untraditional tradition that’s become traditional itself. 

Untraditionally, though, the route, after corkscrewing through parts of town perfect for bystanders to point and cheer, went east to a more pastoral setting than usual, but one better-suited than in years past to bottle-rocketing and sangria-showering.

I got to swim and dive from the dock that says “No Swimming No Diving” for the first time all summer and was rewarded by water warmer than air.

I got to yell at the top of my lungs for as long as I wanted and earned a morning voice like Harvey Fierstein for the fun.

I got to go overboard on the wine-sloshing and feel remorse for my behavior upon arising.

Fleeting moments certainly; so Queen’s right: they won’t last forever (unlike the wine stains on our whites).

But the memories?  They, on the other hand, will remain etched in our minds forever—try as we might, with some, to forget.

Blast

Photo by joeball

The huge fog banks hugging Eagle Harbor, from which Lee Williams surmised pirate ships would be emerging to board our Bainbridge Island-bound Washington State Ferry vessel, had nothing on the massive smoke screen that crept in on something much bigger than little cat’s feet—namely several hundred dollars of Chinese-made military-grade ordnance manufactured to commemorate the birth of the American Republic—to the parking area of the Suquamish reservation at Agate Pass on the Olympic Peninsula as sweaty bicycle riders launched explosives skywards, earthwards, and sometimes even eyewards for probably as long as the battle of Lexington itself may have lasted if not the subsequent skirmish at Concord, as well.

In spite of the fact that the putative organizer of the event “yes, but no’ed” at the 11th hour, the small troop of almost non-duplicated named cyclists (two Matthews) managed to not only leave Westlake Center in time for beer at the pier, but also, thanks to the Nuclear version of the aforementioned double-Matts, get a little bit of trail-riding in on the way to the Native American fireworks stand.

A small contingent even braved the interior of the Clearwater Casino Resort to enjoy what the bartender called “pounders” of beer in the Beach Rock Lounge where Ladies’ Night apparently means that the DJ is female since no other patrons of any gender seemed to be attendance at the time.

But perhaps the loveliest aspect of the whole experience is how the miscreants offered at least a respectful gesture of effort to clean up after themselves by organizing the spent explosives into a trash bag (at least those not launched into the woods and nearby highways) before pedaling away to the cheers of gratitude from fireworks purveyors who seemed not a bit disturbed by the carnage they’d just witnessed.

A fast spin to the boat and then, back on the mainland, nightcaps without singing for once capped the evening.

Still, plenty of fireworks all around, yo-yo-yo-yo, pop-pop!

Capacitor

A capacitor, if I understood tehJobies explanation, as he pointed it out to me in the technological bowels of the space-age music bike, is a device that holds a charge so as to deliver power instantaneously when the overall energy needs of the system call for it, in order (and here I’m probably paraphrasing) to ensure that the requisite highs, lows, and overall output is maintained at the desired face-melting levels for as long as necessary.

.83 metaphor much?

The capacities of your average summer solstice Thursday night bike ride are never exceeded, not, anyway, when you get to circle a soaking Ghettodrome while the bike-mounted sound system drowns out the fountain’s philharmonics and you’re having to calibrate your distance from the sonic cycle’s subwoofer so that you’re not blown off your saddle by decibels alone.

Sometimes the purr of your chain and the squish of your tires in the wet is enough; other times, it’s great to have a soundtrack, especially when the drizzle turns to a downpour and passing busses fill shoes with gallons of rainwater.

Fortunately, there are places for nights like this in our town and our very own homeless Prometheus to bring the fire to life; too bad references get confused and he goes all Icarus on things; moral of the story: you fly too high and get sticky-fingered around people’s bikes and a neon-colored solar flare will burn you outta town fast as any capacitor delivering its charge.

You don’t get your liver eaten by eagles for all eternity, then, but you do miss what happens when fizzy drinks and roaring flames combine with sonic booms to send shirts and knickers flying and what had been simple sausage fest somehow morphs into a real banquet on the dance floor.

Miraculously, Jobydrinks do make you better-looking and more intelligent; same for everyone else, too; that’s that capacitor  again, delivering just the burst you need when you need it, and even when you don’t.

Solitaire

Cycling is essentially a solitary endeavor, so it’s perfect when, after a while in the saddle, you get to arrive at an outdoor location crawling with several score others who have also pedaled their own two-wheelers to get there.

And it’s made even better (if better than perfect is possible) when there’s more beer than will be drunk, enough wood to eventually shoot flames through the fireplace chimney, and such a long-fading summer sunset that a waxing crescent moon grins on the horizon throughout.

Because plans change and neither my phone nor its operator are smart, I ended up riding farther north along Elliot Bay than necessary, but because this afforded such abiding views of sailboat flocks gliding upon rainbows, I realized that I wasn’t really in a hurry after all.

And when, turning around, the clouds became M.C. Escher geese and giant teddy bear heads, there was no doubt in my mind that what was out there to be observed mattered more than alacrity.

Besides, you’re never behind schedule on a bike; as long as you’re riding, you’ve already arrived.

The long way around Alki to high school hijinks parklands is almost too short when the Olympics cast shadows on the underside of heaven; in spite of missing camaraderie, I sort of liked I had only myself to look out for and could pay less attention to the road before me than the drama above. 

A decided lack of “YOLO” at the beach for this time of year, I thought, but that was more than made up for by those who realized that everything they could possibly want at the moment was spread out right there before them.

Granted, in another week, we’ll have a whole extra minute or two of daytime, but it’s hard to understand why anyone with lighting would pass up a chance to savor every lumen possible.

I understand the impetus to ride, though, solitary perhaps, but never alone with your bike.

Flare

Half a loaf is better than none, and a little bit of a lot is still a lot.

Even if you’re slightly off-tempo all evening, you can still enjoy the music and lyrics, especially if the opening chorus is a welcoming cry able to turn a week’s worth of frowns upside-down.

So what if you miss the sunset; there’s still the illuminated grins of two-wheeled stumblebums as they trickle from the beach in waves.

Who cares if you’re not in time to see the proverbial green flash; you still get to follow a flare that floats down like a parachuting inspiration for much longer than can reasonably be expected.

And why worry if there’s only time for one beer at the de facto clubhouse; when you put it all in perspective, it’s plenty.

For starters, anyway.

If you can’t unlock your bike you’re not allowed to ride it home; however, when you find yourself in that place where you can’t even find it, you know that, like this, even halfway is far enough.