Shimmer

Winnie the Pooh observed at Westlake that every time there’s a chance to wear a costume, I show up in a dress.

True enough, but you can’t really expect a person to pass on the opportunity to sport of glittery frock and pedal round town especially when it includes a stint standing in a bar, pretending to be the Princess of a Seven Game World Series while raising a glass and cheering for what turned out to be one the greatest games ever in the history of the Fall Classic.

And speaking of fall classics, it was good to see dear old Ronald McFondle turn up for his annual Halloween shenanigans, which this year, in addition to the requisite bottle rockets and other small ordnance, also featured an abortive attempt to raise an outdoor conflagration ex nihilo from a scavenged wire spool and some broken apart palettes.

Downtown Seattle shimmered across the water like its namesake Emerald City as we sparkled in reflection on the Gasworks Park slab before a short spin to what turned out to be the final three innings of that marvelous game.

As long as baseball’s being played, summer’s not over and only a crusty old toad like Nolan Ryan himself could possibly bemoan those two, count ‘em two, down-to-their-last-strike comebacks by the Redbirds of St. Louie in the bottoms of the ninth and tenth.

Beer, baseball, bikes: even in a tutu, I’m still a guy, so it was the total sportsgasm experience, topped by a bomb through the woods to a bar I thought we’d drunk at before, but may not be back to for a while after the chilly send-off I got from the cook who vowed to remember my face should I ever return wanting food, not that I imagine he’d recognize me without the long blonde locks and twinkly hoop skirt.

But who knows? It’s only a year until next Halloween’s ride and I already know what I’m wearing.

Regular

I’m interested in the difference, if there is one, between reliable and predictable, or, let’s say, between dependable and boring.

In both cases, the former term is an admirable quality, the latter, a trait we generally try to eschew. I’m perfectly happy being a reliable husband, father, and teacher; I get a little nervous when my wife, daughter, or students can predict beforehand what I’m going to do around the house or in the classroom.

Similarly, it’s comforting to know that there are certain qualities and experiences one can generally depend upon come a cool and dry Thursday evening in October, but at the same time be able to rest assured that those familiar shenanigans will—in spite of their familiarity (and perhaps, even to some extent, because of it)—rarely, if ever, be in the least bit boring.

Besides, I’d never seen a moon quite like the one that hovered over our hobo peleton as we wound around a newly-paved trail on top of Beacon Hill: the mist had softened and shaded the lunar satellite’s edges such that the normally two-dimensional disk in the sky looked instead like a silver sphere nestled in the downy heavens.

Nor do I recall the bomb from up there to our provision stop being so hilariously extended; two or three times I thought it had ended only to have the road dive deeper down into the welcoming woods.

And of course, fire is fire, but being fire, always burns anew, especially when fueled by palettes carried three miles by single arms on two-wheelers.

Joeball and I had pondered a bar in the middle of things to which we’d never been or at least, not in a while, but rolling out from the park, an inexorable gravity drew us all back to a familiar ID haunt and yet, even that was full of surprise: I, for one, had never before caroused in circles to an Angry Hippy version of Piano Man.

Blip

When, upon calling tehSchkott for coordinates some two hours or so after the ride had begun and he told me where it had landed, I reckoned how long it would take me to get there and asked where the assembled would likely be in an hour, he said: “Right here. It’s one of those kind of nights.”

And indeed it still was when I pedaled up sixty or so minutes later, greeted with the most heartwarming wet-eyed and slurry salutations a fellow could be welcomed with.

And though I had a lot of catching up to do, having missed the grain alcohol cocktails tehJobies had treated folks to unrelated to Chief Science Officer Forsetti’s birthday, I immediately felt the heady contact high that inevitably flows into one’s consciousness when engulfed by familiar characters in familiar states of intoxication, revelry, and bicycle-induced endorphin release.

In this life, you’ve got to have a crew, otherwise you’re sunk, and even when quotidian responsibilities mean you’re only able to show up briefly, it’s worth it, just for the visuals and audio: songs were sung; solos became duets; trios morphed into choirs; and dance parties flared up like Zippo sprayed on the campfire.

Huge messy bike piles outside a public house remain one of my favorite things in all the world. Sometimes when I’m out pedaling around on another night of the week, I’ll see an array of two-wheelers locked near a bar and my heart will all but skip a beat, trained as I am to see such a sight as evidence that, at last, I’ve arrived.

As I was locking my rig last night to a jumbled heap of others I recognized from following their tail lights on many a night past, an apparently very well-lubricated (euw, no, I mean “drunken”) Daryl went into a sweet rant about how Professor Dave always locates the gang no matter where it is.

But it’s easy: you just ride around until you’re found.

Lit

Oddly enough, the first autumn visit to the very same park this year was way more summery than the last time we went, right by the season’s solstice.

But that’s weather in the Pacific Northwest, where the only thing you can count on is not being able to count on it, which is why you take every opportunity possible to squeeze the very last juice from a surprisingly mild September evening and pedal to the favored seaside location as fast as your little legs can carry you.

World-record time was made to the traditional provision stop, a destination that typically doesn’t show up until at least an hour later in the course of events. Still, at this point in the year, it was already dark by our arrival around the fire pit where even non-stop kibitzing from the peanut gallery wasn’t enough to put a damper on Joeball’s flame-coaxing skills, although before the cheery blaze sprung to life some wags were calling for the cashiering of his Single-Match Club merit badge.

It was one of those nights where that question frequently asked by folks on the street as our hobo peleton rolls by—“What’s this for?”—was simply self-evident: bike-riding, beer-drinking, standing around an outdoor conflagration bullshitting and then screaming at the top of your lungs when a train roars by and the usual suspect launches a beer bottle to doink or crash atop the freight cars.

Isn’t that all the answer anyone needs?

Themes, of course, are delightful and surely on the horizon as the costume and holiday seasons beckon, but there’s also much to be said for simply kickin’ the old skool essentials, including dark paths through the woods and that most elemental of shared human experiences around a common hearth.

It never gets old (in contrast to yours truly) but then why should it? This worked just fine for our hunter-gatherer ancestors ten thousand years ago, no surprise the it's still warming human hearts today.

Equinox

Most of us, I’ll warrant, spend a good deal of our lives engineering out the ambiguity and uncertainty, so it’s comforting, in a way, to give it over occasionally, and just—as they say—STFU and ride.

One is able, then, to take a certain delight in the unraveling of the mystery as it spools beneath two wheels: “Aha! Tonight we go south.” And then, “East! It’s been a while.” Until, “I’ll be damned. Up and up north.”

But finally, it doesn’t matter, and trees fly by as you simply follow blinkies over the serpentine ribbon burrowing through our fair city’s arboreal core.

Autumn officially arrived last night, although, as Lee Williams pointed out to me, this is a celestial, not meteorological marker, indeed attested to by the warm coverlet of humidity that lay softly upon riders all along the lake and up through the woods.

And while that wet blanket, as he put it, did seem to impart a certain mellowness to the evening’s proceedings, it wasn’t as if it really reduced the level of joviality and shenanigans, especially after Specialist Sean made it rain pitchers of beer and shots of whiskey at the watering hole.

But then again, such manna from heaven was the theme as lo and behold, upon a word, did trays of hackin’ Heather’s victuals appear at the lake: spaghetti, chicken, and bread pudding that made the eyes of shirtless men roll back in their heads as they daintily shoved softball-sized portions into open mouths on tiny plastic forks with pinkies upraised.

Beers were launched towards torsos in the water, of course, as surely as random bottle rockets set skyward in Wizard Staff Park were earlier.

Surprisingly, the authorities steered clear (at least on my watch), perhaps they too, subject to the mollifying effects of the evening’s atmosphere.

Really, I have no idea, which is just how I like it come fall.

Sometimes, all one need know is how not knowing nourishes.

Trails

There’s a delicate balance between tradition and novelty, but when it’s achieved, something remarkable occurs: a kind of timelessness ensues, in which past and future have no meaning and the present stretches out endlessly, an eternal now where all that ever was and will be merge as one.

Or maybe that’s just the space cookies talking.

In any case, last evening’s version of our annual memorial to the tragic events of 9/11/2001, “The Point 83 Never Forget How Fat You Really Are (I Forgot for a Little While) But Then I Remembered! Freedom Fry Eating Contest,” really did find that sweet spot between history and tomorrow with the perfect combination of old skool nonsense preceded by trails so new they have yet to be opened.

And the result was yet another occasion on which the very shamefulness of the event makes one proud to be an American.

Or at least kinda sick to your stomach.

But, of course, not nearly so ill as the “winner,” Shaddup Joe (who paid 8-1 on the nose) must be feeling this morning after downing 12, count ‘em 12, 16-ounce cups of deep-fried spuds, making “history,” I guess, in the process.

Because you see, forgetting is actually a kind of remembering, for in doing so, one recalls a time before the memory was formed—in our case, perhaps, an era of innocence before the terrorists attacked.

Thus, some healing takes place, incrementally, in passing.

All the balm I really needed, though, was to pedal en mass over a freshly-paved path along a former jungle with our fair city spreading out in all its industrial glory below and then relax a bit along the waterfront where locals jigged (jug?) squids from the dock.

These are the moments that connect us to what was and impel us towards what will be.

Or to paraphrase the timeless words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, “We beat on, bikes against the current, born on ceaselessly into the past.”

Heaven

There’s got to be some religious sect somewhere that believes that this right here is the afterlife.

But if there isn’t, I’m starting one, because I don’t know how else to explain an evening like last night, which certainly seemed to embody many, if not most of the qualities I’d be looking for in a place to settle down for all eternity.

I mean who wouldn’t want to go through that tunnel of white light and end up on a bicycle, enveloped in a contingent of your fellow two-wheelers as you pedaled to the nicest beach in town, where you could then lie on your back in the water and gaze up at the celestial sphere with a nearly-full moon rising behind the evergreens?

That would be enough of a paradise for me, but then when you add to that an hilarious and probably unnecessary climb straight up some of the steepest of the steep to find yourself atop an Olympus you then get to bomb right down, well, what else can one conclude other than that this is some kind of divine reward for whatever has gone before or some such thing?

Besides, when we arrived at the trail we were seeking, there was a moment when we almost didn’t take it, so I’m thinking it just had to be supernatural guidance that convinced us to ride the twisty route after all—and it certainly looked like something out of God’s own home movies the way the blinkies ascended the tortuous path to the summit.

And then, the bar was filled with angels!

Of course, maybe in Elysium the car wash won’t stop even if the cyclists don’t align their wheels on the rollers just so, but then, not getting totally soaked is probably a sign from above, as well.

Not that the fire wasn’t a gift from the gods, too.

And I’ll be damned if we didn’t make last call at the final stop.

Heavenly.

Retrospect

At the bar, after a lovely hour or so cavorting in a park perched high atop West Seattle’s south end, and following that thrilling downhill during which, for me, at least, all the green lights were made, the Angry Hippy and I were talking about Aristotle, specifically, the part in the Nichomachean Ethics where he wonders whether a person can be made unhappy after he is dead.

Consider a scenario in which a man dies having provided well for his family and leaving a fine reputation as a scholar and citizen; in short, having lived what we would judge to be a happy life. Then, however, through a series of misfortunes and happenstance, his legacy is completely lost; his heirs suffer deeply and his once-proud reputation is utterly tarnished; he comes to be seen as a charlatan and a fraud; in other words, the life that earlier seemed happy turns out to be something completely false and empty.

The question is: would we still say the man lived a happy life?

Aristotle’s conjecture is that we wouldn’t.

Happiness, for him, is a state that needs to persevere over time; his famous quote in that regard is: “One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.”

It is with confidence, therefore, that I can assert how happy indeed is the Thursday night bike ride; half a decade of delightful adventures have rolled for me under its ever-turning two wheels.

Last night, I got to appear, a bit late, at yet another location in our fair city to which I’d never been, and come upon several dozen cyclist-shaped bodies back-lit against the Seattle skyline. Shades of E.T. being pedaled before the harvest moon.

Such events, each one unique, add up. No brief time of happiness; rather, a multitude.

How can this not, then, be a happy life?

Indeed, one to die for.

Metaphysics

At some point in my travels, I found myself pondering the metaphysical question: “What constitutes the ride?” Is it the people? The meet-up spot? The attitude one has while pedaling? And how do you know if you’re really on the ride or not?

Suppose it breaks into two more or less evenly-sized groups: which is the authentic original, and which is just another gang of drunken cyclists out on a Thursday night?

No matter, really, since for much of the evening, the issue didn’t arise; it was obvious what made things what they were: a warm August night, several dozen human beings riding two-wheelers much to the chagrin of neckless fellows in BMWs rushing to get nowhere fast, and an outdoor destination where beer was set on picnic tables and steadily consumed.

In my ongoing effort to never pass up an opportunity to swim outdoors (because really, you just never know when—or if—you might have another chance), I paddled around a bit in the yucky shallows feeling as if the abundant ferns might tangle themselves around my legs and draw me down, but even that was lovely as, at water level, myriad moths circled around my head like stardust and birdies from a cartoon bell-ringing.

And then it was off to the long-coveted white whale for which, in my enthusiasm to finally land Moby Dick, I may have pushed too hard, thereby severing the golden cord connecting us all, although it seems to me that since the birthday boy came north, the necessary condition, at least, for identity was met by the half which followed.

And while the reality fell far short of the dream, the back deck was surprisingly charming, and karaoke Kansas rocked, if I do say so myself.

Express lane aspirations aspired to were not—sadly, but sensibly-ever met, but my solitary surface spin home was nevertheless a sparkling delight and still, I believe, authentically part of the ongoing ride.

Aquatic

After fifty-four and a quarter years on this planet, the last five and change riding bikes with the drinking club with a cycling problem, opportunities still present themselves for experiences I’ve never in my life had before.

Sad but true: in the five-plus decades since my birth, I’d never, before last night, swum in two different lakes on the same day.

Sure, I’ve been in two different bodies of water: the ocean and the hotel pool, the hot tub and the cool plunge, and I’ve cavorted in the Seattle Center fountain a few hours before taking a hot bath, but this was the very first time I’d ever ridden my bike to one outdoor body of water—South Lake Union—donned my trunks, jumped in and paddled around, then, after fortifying with silver tequila from the impractical shot glasses dubbed by Henry, “the horn of infidelity” ridden en masse to another large pond—Greenlake’s Greenlake—once again put on my (now cold and clammy) swimsuit, and, for a second time in less than ninety minutes, floated around in smooth and silky H20.

The all-but full moon was a gleaming dime on the glassy-smooth surface of the water, which was warmer than the air, but once more, upon exiting from the wet, I was fortified by distilled cactus juice and thus eager to pedal to the next stop on this themeless, old-skool tour, a pleasant spin, marred only by a scary-sounding, but ultimately uneventful crash of a fellow rider, who might have been, like me, imbibing freely, but who hadn’t, unlike yours truly, availed herself of the sobering powers of summertime lake water.

At this point, rather than staying indoors to sing, I rode off, intent upon trying for lake number three; I didn’t achieve my goal of Lake Washington, but I did manage to drag my fingers through the Cal Anderson reservoir on my ride home.

Not quite three lakes in three hours, but certainly a first.

Everything

The way I reckon it, all that was missing from the full tasting menu was roller-skating, but since he didn’t actually create that, but only took us there, I think it’s safe to say that all the popular faves of tehJobies were on display last evening: the bicycle-mounted mobile disco (even louder this time around) the waffles (though pre-packaged, surprisingly sweet and tasty), the stiff drinks stirred with unusual mixers (short on ice but long on liquor), the Slip N’ Slide (wider and faster than ever), the Christmas tree burning (just one, but packed with explosives), the glowsticks (to excess, but that’s the point), and, ultimately, the general merriment and shenanigans on a lovely summer evening in Seattle at its best, all dolled up for SeaFair and still basking in the contrail glow of Blue Angel dust from the afternoon’s air show.

Let those images of back-lit bodies, smiles like headlights, skittering off blow-up rafts into jumbled collections of arms and legs—and all this nonsense carried there on two wheels—settle in to your memory banks so you can retrieve them as you sit on the porch of the retirement home in your dotage; the pictures will put a secret smile on your old wrinkled face, and those whippersnapper grandkids of yours won’t believe a word of it: “It’s just too good to be true,” they’ll say, “You’re remembering a beer commercial or something; nothing like that ever really happened.”

But you’ll know; you were there and witnessed it with your own bloodshot eyes, which just goes to show that while planning may indeed be over-rated, there’s much to be said for preparation; if one sources and assembles the proper accoutrements and lays them before a willing and grateful public, joyfulness will ensue.

We’ve seen it happen time and again.

The best-selling record album of all time is the Eagles: Their Greatest Hits, 1971-1975; good for them; as for me, I’m groovin’ to tehJobies compilation, 2008-2011.

Memorable

tehJobies younger and handsomer doppleganger brother and I were talking about what makes a ride memorable and I think we concluded that there aren’t any set criteria.

Sure, a theme can help, even one cobbled together more or less on the spot in response to the postponement of another, and seeing a bunch of familiar faces mixed in with a healthy contingent of fucking noobs usually contributes, as does going to a place we’ve never been, especially one with a stunning view of downtown Seattle cradled among its vast industrial wastelands, but it’s not as if there’s an algorithm or recipe for what makes a Thursday night out on two wheels difficult to forget.

Which isn’t to say that the concept is merely tautological; that is, just because the experience sticks in your head isn’t enough to make it memorable and indeed, being unable to recall details is often a component of unforgettable times.

Nor do I believe that it’s purely subjective; there are well-established markers for the memorable—outdoor drinking, long-lingering summer evenings, a full moon eventually so bright it casts shadows—and I think a person could be mistaken about what’s memorable, especially if he or she were overly impressionable or, more likely, had less of an appetite for the sorts of imbibing that makes it hard for me, at least, to remember the particulars of what went down.

That said, it’s certain that the First, and Perhaps Only, Pointe Quatre-Vingt Trois Occasionally Annual Bastille Day Ride is one for the memory annals; I’m sure I will never forget (no matter how hard I try) the baguettes and bicycles, the panoramic belle vue of our fair city, and finally, back on mon velo for a spin to the semi-authentic French bistro and a couple more bottles of wine to cap the night.

Bogart and Bacall as Rick and Elsa in Casablanca will always have Paris, sure; this bike gang, I guess, Ella Baily.

Sedate

I (dimly) remember my first .83 rides, now close to half a decade ago. Such adventure! So many new places in town to visit on a bike! What a stunning display of alcohol-fueled hijinks!

These days, though, (at least if last night was any indication) things sometimes tend to be a bit calmer: sure, there are strange and wonderful routes taken to secret bike-accessible locations; of course there is quaffing of alcoholic beverages outside; and naturally, one even gets to experience an unexpected visit from a police officer, although her opening gambit question, “Have any of you heard anyone yelling?” cast no aspersions on our august assembly.

But the overall mood (again, arguably committing the fallacy of hasty generalization by basing this assessment primarily on last evening) seems to be slightly less manic and fraught with danger; heck, you might even be moved to bring your mom on the ride! And not have her die!

Of course, it could just be that after all this time, my tolerance level for the experience of bicycle shenanigans is higher and that, at this point, I need to mainline the nonsense to feel the same rush.

After all, we did cruise crazily through Myrtle Edwards Park as a dreamy sun began to set over an Eliot Bay packed with an unprecedented number of sailboats; and there was bridge-crossing in crosswinds after many a libation al fresco; and we eventually wended our way northwards to a long-favored bar that I’m usually arriving at just as the ride is being eighty-sixed, so one can hardly argue that nothing exciting at all went down.

Maybe I’m just nostalgic for the days when bottle-rockets were launched from buttcracks, or bikes were carried miles upwards through the woods, or when grown men sported children-sized skeleton costumes and cavorted wildly in the playgrounds of public schools; no doubt, though, such inspired stupidity still lies ahead; surely it’s to be found just the next bike ride away.

Dual

Not duel. Dual.

There was so much luminosity on the night of the almost longest day of the year that we needed two fires to contain it.

And each had its own undeniable charms: you could choose the indoor club with its closeness and café society or the out-of-doors, with all its windswept “Wuthering Heights” wildness.

But you had to accept the downside of your choice, too: claustrophobia and smoke inhalation under shelter or spitting rain just steady enough to make you feel like a Russian peasant standing out in it.

I found myself going back and forth and often splitting the difference, seeking Aristotle’s golden mean between the two, beneath the trees, where I could view both cheery conflagrations in relative comfort under the branches while still enjoying fresh air and the feeling of freedom that comes from standing by a huge body of water near the edge of a continent.

You could see how societies develop their own mythologies and how positions become ossified simply out of habit, so while I admired those who were loyal to their own flames all evening, I also acted the emissary, inviting the easterners to visit the west and vice-versa, with some success.

It was an evening on which accidental traditions were considered, but rejected in favor of old favorites and what I found most remarkable early on was how remarkable a stream of several dozen bicycles on the road appeared to so many people. Tourists leapt from pastry shops to snap cellphone pictures of what one loudmouth termed “The Bikealists!” At least three different not-quite-right folks shook their fists at us, including a toothless hag who shouted, “I hate you motherfuckers!” And a pitbull lathered itself into a frenzy barking as we pedaled by.

And wonder of wonders: no broken collarbones (as far as I know) leaving the park, although admittedly, I wasn’t the last to depart, and both fires were still slightly aglow when I headed out.

Innertube

If you’re ironic about your irony, does that make you sincere?

That’s what I kept wondering as the parade of cyclists wended its way along the Lake Union waterfront to the face-meltingly loud beat of tehJobies bicycle-mounted sound system, especially at the intentionally unintentionally hilarious moment when Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” poured forth from the speakers making me, at least, unable not to put the experience in quotes but also unable not to put that in quotes, too, so that somehow they cancelled each other out, leaving only authenticity, sincerity, and quite frankly, schmaltz.

And I came to the conclusion that there are some times that you just can’t help being delighted in spite of yourself, with no filter whatsoever, like when the birthday boy squeezes into an innertube and dons a snorkel for what seemed certain to be a hypothermia-inducing dip in the lake, but which instead turned out to merely be sobering enough swim that the odds-on favorite in my book to be passed out in a wife-taxi before dark was actually the responsible adult when it came to getting his date home on two wheels.

But I guess that’s the wisdom which comes with age, even though from my perspective, celebrating one’s 33rd birthday puts you only about halfway through adolescence, a sentiment I would have to say that the Roman candle and bottle-rocketing brandishing Mr. Ito seems to share in deed, if not word.

Our somewhat chilly summer still abides, but that was more than made up for by the softness of the sky and the magic lantern show afforded by the rising nearly-full moon, which, masked by clouds during its ascent, revealed community-theater special effect rectangles of yellow light on the horizon, much to the delight of all who turned their heads to look.

Eventually, there was spooky pedaling along the trail and a regroup at the local Viking-themed dive bar; I headed home, sated with fun, no quotation marks required.

Stages

If you take it in stages and don’t let on much about it beforehand, you can get people to ride their bikes pretty far for a drink at a bar on a Thursday evening, at least that’s how it worked last night, when we arrived in Renton via Beacon Hill to Rainier Beach almost before it got dark and certainly prior to many people realizing what they were in for in terms of distance and adventure.

In fact, the only real drama on the way there was the last block, winding around the one-way streets in the strange Twilight Zone time-warp 1950s stage set that is Seattle’s southern neighbor, when all of a sudden, on the previously deserted three-lane roadway, there were cars coming right at us, a phenomenon so unexpected that it took longer than it should have to convince riders that it was we, not they, who were going the wrong way down a one-way street.

Fortunately, however, the pub pulled up just in the nick of time and a pleasant hour or so was spent quaffing from a surprisingly large selection of beers while fielding amazed questions from a whole slew of patrons way more impressed with the facts of our two-wheeled journey than they should have been, an (over)reaction that no one, especially those few who wife-taxied it home, felt inclined to disabuse them of.

For the bulk of the pack who stuck it out, though, Joeball’s promised flat-ride back to Seattle was well worth the price of admission, including, among other things, a portage over the railroad tracks, many bridges to cross, and a long and fragrant spin along that elemental magic at our fair city’s heart, the Duwamish.

I was only good for a couple sips of beer at the final stop in South Park, before taking the western route home with a handful of riders pointed in a similar direction, still many miles to go, but in stages, no problem.

Familiar

The ride didn’t go anywhere I’ve never been last night, nor was it “moderately all right, maybe average at best” in any significant way, but even so, there’s always something unprecedented when one is out on two wheels with one’s familiars on a Thursday night, this one being the last such evening in May, although you couldn’t obviously tell it from the weather.

For instance, although we’ve often stopped at the Hop In grocery for beer and skittles, I can’t remember ever getting there with a bomb down 24th Avenue, especially one fast enough for even pokey old me to break the speed limit by a good six miles an hour as duly noted by the radar sign halfway down the hill.

And I’m sure we’ve never been greeted, as we made the left into the grocery store parking lot, by some crazy homeless person shouting “Fuck You Niggers! You Fucking Faggots! Learn to Drive!” at the top of his leather lungs like a dog wildly barking at passing cars.

Moreover, even though there have been four or five times I’ve stood around drinking beer with fellow cyclists, keeping an eye out for nutria in the UW Nature Preserve on Lake Washington behind Husky stadium, I’ve never before enjoyed witnessing there a brief, but spirited, game of “Chicken on the Log” one that surprisingly, didn’t even result in the Angry Hippy rupturing himself as he lifted his rider up on his shoulders.

And, sure, we’ve ridden through the woods up the ravine to Cowen Park, but this is the first time it was still light enough to see where I was going, although I was still surprised by how magically the park appears at the top of the corkscrew.

Finally, who hasn’t before finished off and evening with a quick spin to the surrealistic playground that is the Baronoff bar? But I, for one, have never seen so many jello shots consumed and which such sheer abandon.

Rapture

If Family Radio President Harold Camping is right and doomsday comes this weekend, at least I’ll have had the longest and prettiest bike ride of the year before the shit hits the fan.

Last night, I pedaled from the north end of Lake Washington in Bothell to near its southern tip below Seward Park then west across town to Magnolia before heading back east to my home, a loop that, if you include my ride out to school in the afternoon almost certainly managed to be as many miles as years I’ve lived, a feat that grows more impressive and less likely with each passing day.

But it was so lovely that I hardly wanted to stop and didn’t really get to given that by the time I’d found the never-before-visited beach, thanks, in no small part to Andre’s light show, the ride was already gathering up discarded cans and departing.

So, I tagged along up the hill to a spot in the road where we waited so long for the Angry Hippy that, for a while, I thought people were asking “Where’s Ben?” metaphorically.

But then, it was a comforting train of cyclists all the way north on the Rainier, making the often harrowing ride into the reasonable bike route it oughta be.

tehJobies was persistent enough to convince a portion of the assembled that Magnolia was just around the corner from Chinatown and although it involved surviving a flock of seagulls so large and loud it almost seemed a sign of the impending apocalypse, I was glad since it meant that not only would I get to keep riding but I’d also have the long way home to look forward to.

The waning almost-full moon was a menacing god head as I came over the hill after midnight; if the end is nigh, so be it; I’m sure I won’t be raptured on Saturday, but so what?

A night like this I’m already in heaven.

Completeness

I was trying to articulate one of the conceptions of happiness that the philosopher Robert Nozick describes, “those particular moments you thought and felt, blissfully, that there was nothing else you wanted, your life was good,” when Christine marched in, gazing at the setting sun off Alki (which moments before had treated viewers to the never-before-seen sight of two identical flattened disks of burning magenta, one on the horizon and one, just below, on the water) and with arms upraised, announced “This is fantastic!” thereby nailing Nozick’s point way better than I could ever have.

And even though she stepped in some dogshit as she did so, nothing, really, could undermine such complete two-wheeled joy last night, not even the crazy lady in a minivan who accused Lee of assault for brushing her car when she angrily tried to drive through us while we gently—and legally—took up the whole goddamn rode for an entire quarter mile to get through the construction zone before crossing—in the bike lane—the low-level West Seattle Bridge.

Not even the dude in the pickup who got all bent out of shape because he apparently had to take his foot of the gas for two seconds to let a bike pass in front of him, but who clearly wasn’t mad enough to cross the street to take on three dozen cyclists, one of whom claimed to have a family that would kill him should he get tough.

Not even the cop who pulled up and seemed all ready to get serious with us for being slow to extinguish our little beach fire and because, apparently, he’d gotten a report that a gang of bikers was on the high-level bridge, riding through traffic and beating on cars.

But I think he must have been feeling it, too, though, that sense of completeness, because all it took was one respectful question, and whatever desire he had to make a fuss disappeared completely.

Stunning

It’s a reliable indicator that a party has achieved escape velocity when girls start dancing on the table, so on that score, last night’s ride qualifies as an unqualified success in the festivities department.

But I thought it was already spectacular much earlier—even as we poured forth from Westlake Center under a blue-smudged sky to the throbbing beat of tehJobies bicycle-mounted discotheque, playing at least one of the songs that’s emerged as a group anthem, Lil Wayne’s poignant apostrophe to his friends and acquaintances, “Get Low,” which inspired numerous wobbles and wiggles in time to the beat as riders cruised down Second Avenue.

And Seattle itself was so stunning in its juxtaposition of natural beauty and industrial wasteland that a person couldn’t stop smiling down strangely deserted major thoroughfares to a secluded park by your favorite Superfund site river, a spot which I wouldn’t be surprised to learn was once a meeting place for indigenous peoples in the area when they were looking for a location to hold an evening’s revelries.

Revelry was evident to no small degree as dozens of south-of-the-border-themed mixed drinks were mixed and consumed in near assembly-line fashion to commemorate the holiday that doesn’t actually celebrate Mexican Independence, a detail no one, least of all those responsible for the music seemed to mind a bit. The upshot of which, in addition to the aforementioned table-dancing, was also a good deal of wrasslin’ around on the ground, gooseshit be damned, which apparently resulted in, if not a broken nose, at least one which could only be staunched with a tampon, an application that surprisingly, Proctor and Gamble’s corporate marketing department has yet to expand into.

Eventually, the two-wheeled party rolled farther south to a well-loved bar near a much-missed bridge; at this point, I headed home, but not before one last adventure accidentally crossing the alternate span on the metal car deck, like the night itself, a little scary, but above all stunning.

Organ

As a matter of fact, one might actually aspire to being miles from home, well after midnight, deep in one’s cups, with only a bicycle for transportation. And while it took the entire night to get there, eventually the goal was met and I achieved my hoped-for post-last call two-wheeled ramble home on what turned out to be an exceptionally clear and cool early spring evening in the Pacific Northwest.

I caught up with the a ride a couple hours into it as it rolled up 19th Avenue from the Bridge to Nowhere (which, according to Andre is now, once again, somewhere, albeit a glass-strewn one) and thanks to a family sushi dinner pre-funk that included two giant orders of sake, was more or less in the same place psychologically as the riders who had started their evening’s booze n’ cruise earlier than me.

We headed to the inevitable ride-suck that is Capitol Hill to spend a couple of amusing (although essentially bike-free) hours at Organ Karaoke, an event made almost palatable by Fancy Fred and Lee’s rendition of the “it” song of he moment and by the generous shots poured by the tragically hip bartender.

Still, I was glad to be out of there at last and on the way to outdoor imbibing, even though a detour for nightcaps at some drinking establishment whose details escape me now meant that I at least, never did arrive at have no recollection whatsoever of Gasworks Park—nor, if truth be told did anyone else, if I recall correctly (not that there’s any reason whatsoever to suppose that in fact, I do.)
although, apparently, it must have happened because, as is required, there ARE pics.

Nevertheless, in the end, I got to enjoy most of what one looks for on a Thursday night ride: conviviality, shenanigans, and eventually, a sufficient number of miles out riding one’s bike—despite the fact some of the last ones are sort of lost in the kind of mist one occasionally is apt to experience internally even on such a cloudless night.

Floating

Andre advised us to be prepared to drink in an outdoor place at which we’d never drank before, to ride on roads never ridden before, and to drink in a bar never previously sat at; I’m pretty sure all three of those were accomplished in one form or another, even without taking into account Heraclitus’ famous reminder that the same river can never be stepped in twice, given that all is flow and flux, so that even if, technically, I had had a drink in that same park shelter on Alki before, it’s still not the same drink nor, really, the same shelter either, even though, thankfully, the bike gang itself remains consistent, at least in its success in taking you to fresh locations via new routes for imbibing and carousing well into the night.

We ended up, midway, at what I was expecting to be a bar on a boat, but which turned out instead to be a boat in a bar, and which, thanks to the reasonably confused state into which I’d gotten myself as a result of various quaffables and eatibles, really did seem like an indoor home upon the water. The light through the rear windows of our “ship” was perfect, like moonlight dancing upon the Caribbean as we floated gently at anchor drinking rum and playing dice made from the bones of our enemies before our morning raid on the English armada.

It was all I could do to simply stay abreast of the proceedings as I sat near the “prow” as conversations swirled around. Soon enough, though, there was talk of completing a “boat to boat” run that would put us crosstown at another nautically themed establishment.

Eventually, we went fast downhill (if not necessarily downhill fast) and crossed a bridge or two before splintering into friendly factions; I had an hour or so to myself on the final leg, floating over the spring night to my home port once more.

Freeze

On the ride from my house to the pre-funk, my fingers froze, but after the appropriate ingestion of various anti-freezes, I wasn’t cold at all even though this last Thursday night of 2010 was as clear and frigid an evening as Seattle has seen all year.

Still, it seemed like a good idea to head for a place with an outdoor firepit as we pedaled away from Westlake Center and, although progress tended to be a bit less aggressive than when someone’s pre-planned a theme or in cases where Angry Hippies or Drunken Derricks are leading the way, the assembled were eventually treated to a ride on the road across the Aurora Bridge where a Subaru station wagon zoomed passed us, honking steadily and inspiring a great deal of conjecture as to whether it was a friendly horn-blowing or, in what would seem contrary to the stereotype of such cars’ drivers, one sounded in anger.

And it was both body and heart warming to still be able, after all these years, to cross a pedestrian bridge I’ve never been over and then, with great alacrity, already be atop Phinney Ridge and alternately standing around the bar’s outdoor flames and sitting inside the joint to admire the sights within.

Pretty soon the call to head west to Ballard and see Goddamn Bob Hall at Snoose Junction arose and so then, there we were consuming pizza and drinking beer as, on TV, the UW Huskies unexpectedly prevailed in their Holiday Bowl matchup against Nebraska much to the boredom and/or delight of those still in attendance.

It seemed like only a handful of the hardiest souls were left to then cycle eastward along the ship canal to the most time-honored of outdoor warm-up spots; I, however, was intent on one more indoor fire and so departed for the venerable CIP where I warmed my gloves on the flames and drank a nightcap before setting off home, warm as toast.

Disaster

“Disaster planning” usually refers to efforts taken to avoid calamity; by contrast, preparations made for last nights .83 Christmas Disaster—the Xmas Xtreme Xlocross Xplosion—were mainly undertaken to ensure that catastrophes ensued, and even if it hadn’t been the rainiest night of the year, there’s no doubt that cataclysms were guaranteed, what with something actually resembling a cyclocross course actually mapped out by the Angry Hippy and all kinds of booze poured forth (much into himself) by Derrick, who thanks to the efforts of tehJobies and others wasn’t even the biggest problem around for all of the night.

I had but one goal for this year’s Xmas party and that was to get rid of the elaborate shot-pouring contraption I “won” last year, and since I succeeded at that during the gift exchange, everything else was gravy, including managing not to fly over my handlebars heading down rocky paths in pitch-dark woods and also winning this year’s .83 people’s Teen choice award for Best Professor, woo-hoo!

When Lee and I arrived at the whisky checkpoint, Derrick claimed that the evening’s deluge had driven all the hobos in the woods under cover of the freeway and so our proposed meet-up beneath I-5 had been cancelled for lack of space; I took this to mean I should head to the bar, but when I got there, the place was deserted so I doubled back, but couldn’t tell, as I approached those blinking lights beneath the highway columns if I was happening upon inebriated cyclists or homeless drunks—and even after joining in the festivities I still wasn’t sure.

In any case, I was glad I found whoever it was because I’d have hated to have missed Joeball’s tractor pull and the associated outdoor shenanigans and the eventual return back to the bar, where I made out much better this year with a Buck knife as my present and sang “We Are Family,” because, at Christmastime, anyway, we sorta are

Oopsie

Accidents are accidents because they’re accidents; that’s why the concept of “preventable accidents” seems to me like an oxymoron: if they were preventable, they wouldn’t be accidents, right?

Consequently, my little accident as I left the Lake Forest Park Bar and Grill after a few post-vocational libations with my fellow instructors couldn’t not have happened. There’s no way I could have failed to accidentally drop my front wheel off the sidewalk into the parking lot and have it get stuck between the curb and the concrete parking space bumper, thus vaulting me over my handlebars and face first into the tarmac where I took a nice bite out of the asphalt (and it an equally swell one out of me) giving me a fat lip and bending the left bullhorn upon which I landed inward at an angle parallel to how the right randonneur bar bends out.

Just as inevitably, though, it was no accident at all that I soon found myself at another outdoor calamity, this one at the Backyard Barbecue firepit that Joeball and I accidentally on purpose came upon the summer before last and at which—almost a year to the day ago—a gaggle of not-so-accidental cyclists previously staged a similar rendezvous.

This time, tehJobies brought along the mobile bicycle dance party machine instead of showing up in a car with Chinese food; still, there was no less festivity and perhaps surprisingly, no more complaints from nearby rich folks. (But as was pointed out to me, there’s no reason to assume that just because somebody lives in a mansion overlooking Lake Washington, he or she doesn’t appreciate overhearing joyful nonsense emanating from a nearby public park.)

You could almost feel the earth spinning (as no doubt many did their rooms later that evening); I wandered about the periphery and talked with Tiddlefitz about whether math can quantify hope.

I’m not sure I ever got an answer, although perhaps, accidentally, it all added up.

Locomotion

It was a night I thought would get crazy sooner and probably did later but in the middle, it all stayed as upright as the Imapakt Sidehack of tall Fred: careening around, contents almost spilled out and there were moments when the brakes weren’t quite up to the task, but even with Derrick passing around and pounding the soon-to-be-banned caffeinated malt beverage, nobody ate shit or even got punched by guys in trucks who cracked dumb jokes about our supposed search for the Tour de France, and which also, no doubt, was partly a function, at least for those who eschewed the carbonated poison, of how low the ratio of miles to alcohol consumed was during that aforementioned center phase.

Those motivational posters say “The journey is its own destination;” for me, it was a matter of the destination being its own journey: as soon as we got to where we’d been heading all evening and had gotten the fire lit, the heavens opened up, sending those who were staying to seek cover and flame beneath the shelter and compelling me, at that point, to call it a night—although a good chunk of wet miles still lay before my rain-spattered and streetlight-kaleidoscoping spectacles.

I’m glad I didn’t indulge in the themed beverage; the ride home was exotic enough with lakes around clogged storm drains and a bike lane more like a river channel than a pathway, but I do appreciate any drink that gets a score of cyclists riding up Aurora Boulevard on a dark and stormy night and inspires several of their number to stock up on dozens of fast food tacos for sharing and throwing at one another.

And you’ve got to admire a product that even works indirectly; although but a single sip of its saccharine nastiness passed through my lips, I can’t quite recall our route to Shoreline; that’s it, I guess: while beginnings and endings fall up, the middle just wobbles.

Costume

The evening immediately got better once Axl Rose changed into Winnie-the-Pooh.

Not that it had been all that bad so far, cavorting with the Cookie Monster and some sort of dragon/alligator/dinosaur thing with a healthy appetite for Pabst Blue Ribbon and even though it seemed like a relatively sparse crowd on such pleasant night, all things considered, for costuming up and pedaling off, Cookie Monster himself said it best when he described the assembled as a “lean, mean, problem-causing machine,” and it certainly seemed like that at the first two places we tumbled into, initially, a joint pretty much empty except for a drunk guy who wanted nothing better than to repeatedly toast his whisky glass into the balled-up paper tits of my own Sixties-folksinger-from-London’s-Carnaby-Street drag (call me “Donna, Donna Linda”) outfit and then next, what someone referred to as a “handbag party” at store that apparently sells boiled wool and polar fleece outfits to outdoorsy people who like to drive cars to spots at which they can don expensive gear and recreate until Sunday night when they motor back to the Eastside, but at which we were pretty much immediately asked to leave from unless, as the owner told me, we were prepared to buy some stuff, not, though she added to sound crass about it—as if “crass” might be an attitude that would bother someone who then spent the next half hour outside her store stealing sips from other people’s beers and cracking up as the Dinosaur sucked helium from pilfered balloons and flirted with bypassing coeds in a high-pitched pigeon Spanish while Pooh stayed in good humor at least until his supply of suds ran low.

Then it was back uphill to more or less where we’d come downhill from where Donna Linda arrived first, drank alone somewhat abashedly until others arrived, and then headed off, flower print dress waving in the wind, singing “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” all the way home.

Baffles

Most of the places in Seattle that I would never have been to I’ve been to on Thursday night rides and I’m pretty sure that every time I’ve been politely asked by the authorities to pack it up and get out of here have been, too; but even though I apparently missed the second of the two times out of three places that happened last night, it was still more than plenty all around as tehJobies overachieved as usual (which, I guess would just make it achieving) what with the two-wheeled mobile disco party, many scary cocktails, and a set-up under the freeway that for the life of me looked like something right out of a music video beer commercial in its post-apocalyptic splendor.

You could stand on a metal ledge around a freeway column and gaze right at the subterranean cathedral of vaulted concrete or eyes front at cars barreling southward mere feet away or, by sliding down gravel, descend into a bunker where, word has it, raves once took place and it was easy to see—and hear (that is, not hear)—why.

And if that weren’t enough, the shadows cast by moving bodies made for an hilariously apt allegory of the cave scene; I imagined being, like Plato’s famous prisoners, bound by the neck so I could see nothing but those pale imitations of reality before me, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t, at least for a while—as it was for those sorry souls—enough of a glimpse of the ways things really are to satisfy.

In the story Socrates tells Glaucon, of course, one certain fellow is released from his chains to ascend from the cave into the light; he’s blinded at first by the intensity of it all, but eventually acclimates to see even the pure form of the Good. Funny how back in the day, those ancient Greeks did it all on foot; these days it happens by bike.

High

It’s a shame that one of the finest western-facing views of the Duwamish is reserved mainly for cars; I’d never known until last night that the ten! story parking garage at First and Marion offered such a spectacular vista, but even so, I’ll bet hardly anyone goes all the way to the top like we did just to enjoy the scenery, and that even fewer do it on two wheels, corkscrewing upwards to the summit and then, after drinking in the sight of West Seattle backlit by the amber glow of the newly-set sun, rolling down, like aggies and catseyes in a marble-raceway track.

By contrast, it’s delightful that a park on the other side of the water, suspended above a Superfund site by cables so thick that even Sketchy can’t shake them hard enough to inspire authentic concern on the part of airborne revelers, offers such a picture-postcard panorama of our fair city (and, I came to learn, the vast array of containers supporting society’s insatiable appetite for consumption), it too, however, best accessible by bike—especially on a September evening so lovely that even beer-free mechanical stops hardly made the natives restless at all.

No nuts were punched, as far as I know, at Nutpunch Park, although the head puncher himself did appear later at the bar where one could thump his cast by way of remembrance; I sat in an Airstream trailer and dreamed big with Reverend Phil himself until it was time to admire the animated Hamm’s Beer sign one last time before heading towards home, accompanied by not just one, but two Wreyfords on ultimate and, I think penultimate, Thursdays, respectively.

Pedaling along, I heard a tick-ticking-ticking noise from my fender and pulled over to find a nasty packing stable protruding from my flatting back tire; even that repair, made more interesting by my weakened state, didn’t rankle; why be down on 10 minutes more of air on so elevated a night?

Blink

Of an evening featuring last looks at people I may never see again—or at least, not for a while—I got to examine a place I’ve never spied before on a Thursday night ride and enjoy one last glimpse of summer in spite of fall having arrived half a day earlier, as we rambled south to the beach with Beach in its name and then discovered a short, sweet trail through the woods past the park with Beer in its handle, before following the power line trail up the side of the ridge and finally bombing down the freeway adjacent off-ramp to arrive at last at the practically natural environment for the faces I’ll have to hold in my mind’s eye from now on—for some months anyway, if not for all time.

Usually, I’m already too disoriented by 7:30 at Westlake Center to provide leadership or direction, but a long-running meeting at school meant I arrived with my faculties more or less intact so I got to feel first like the Angry Hippy with the contrarian suggestion—really, more of a demand—for the route, then like Lee Williams himself (sans bag) as I uncharacteristically headed the pack to our supply stop, and even channeled a bit of Joeball in offering up an unfamiliar destination complete with water and wooded pathway, (albeit no fire).

It was all birthdays and bon voyages at the sing-along and even though I shoulda known better than to assay a number I’ve triumphed with before, others performed soundtracks so infectious that feet couldn’t stop moving, a much-preferred outcome from a bourbon and beer consumption perspective anyway.

Eventually, it was time to say goodbye and I think, in my haste to climb towards home rather than pedal for a nightcap, I never ended up giving my regards to any of the incipient emigrants, which I’m glad about, actually, since now I can deny that they’ve ever gone until we meet again.

Hoot

My fondest memory of the Buckaroo Tavern was on my maiden voyage to the Greenlake Midnight Race; after an evening bar-hopping following Critical Mass, me and Happy Stick Person showed up about 11:00 or so to kill some time before the witching hour competition.

There were about half a dozen regulars in the bar, and they weren’t particularly friendly; still nobody really bothered us more seriously than giving sidelong looks and snickering because I pronounced—in my relative newness at the time to Pacific Northwest drinking—my beer choice “Ra-NEER” rather than the preferred “RAIN-ear;” mainly, it was a quiet, surly watering hole, the sort of joint that Nick the bartender in Frank Capra’s classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” describes as serving “hard drinks for men who want to get drunk fast, and we don't need any characters around to give the joint "atmosphere;” so last night, as we arrived there after a bit of up and down from Westlake Center, through Queen Anne, it was pretty strange to see the place packed with hoards of fresh-faced and healthy-looking youngsters, who probably heard—via the Twitternetz or whatever—that it was closing for good one night hence.

I toasted the place with a final drink, and then got the hell outta there, riding through the heavy mist to the Pacific Inn Pub, where, after another beer and some fries, the reminder of the ride showed up for far more efficient alcohol consumption than had been possible at the previous, overcrowded spot.

So, even though vast miles were not pedaled, and in spite of the fact that you can’t go home again (if your home is a dive bar on its penultimate night), we still enjoyed some old skool pleasures, like circumnavigating the GhettoDrome, climbing through the rich part of the rich part of town, and enjoying the view from the east tip of Queen Anne, under the watchful eye of a real-live Barred Owl; what a hoot!

Spew

Fortunately, America is still a country ruled by law, so when disagreements arise, we can refer to founding documents; consequently, even though just about everyone thought that little Nick still had one more round of fries to go to catch n00b Chris B., the Angry Hippy’s official scorecard told another tale.

And, so, with just a single fry into his 15th basket, the slow and steady dark horse came from behind to claim the title of Lord of the Fries in this year’s 4th Annual Never Forget (How Fat You Really Are) Point83 Freedom Fries Eating Contest honoring not only those brave Americans who lost their lives in the tragic events of September 11, 2001, but also the true spirit of this great country: excess, stupidity, and the enduring bond of camaraderie that comes only from embracing the absurdity of the human condition while seeing just who among your circle can consume the greatest amount of fried potatoes, many of which have been flavored with hot sauce, tequila, and even—in a nod to our allies around the globe—wasabi mixed with pica de gallo.

Moreover, lest anyone think for a moment that the results remained inconclusive, they need only refer to the Herculean amount of mashed tubers the winner regurgitated after accepting his prize; consider that the tie-breaker, and the ruling on the field stands.

Disgusting, no doubt, and yet, I felt no disgust, only awe at the resolve of the resolute competitors, notably Archivist Jeni, who creamed the competition in the Distaff Division and very nearly won it all in the most valiant attempt among all competitors to ascertain the personal limits of consumption; Ryan H. who attracted lots of smart money in support of bettering last year’s third-place finish, and Hipster>) Tall Fred, who finally surrendered, his face etched with pain, after 13 baskets.

Nick paid 14 to 1 on the nose and took home the Golden Potato trophy; in this America, though, everyone’s a winner.

Familiar

I do the same exact yoga practice every day, eat the identical breakfast each morning, and haven’t really changed my haircut in twenty years, so it’s kind of odd I’d recoil even a little bit from the possibility of cycling over paths I’ve been on before to a location I’ve gone to within the last 12 months, but that’s how I was—for a second, at first—as the ride lumbered forth from Westlake heading generally westward under pastel skies, smudged pink, then fuchsia, in the slowly gathering dusk.

Because after all, there’s something so comforting about well-trodden paths and re-experienced experiences: Kyleen crashing, Sketchy drinking, Ben getting another flat and grouching around as the peanut gallery kibitzes his roadside repair skills; when I’m on my deathbed looking back upon my life, I’m sure all the times I’ve seen these happen will blend a single fond memory encompassing every one.

And, of course, I should talk: nor was this the first (and probably not the last, either) time yours truly ate the whole cookie and spent far too much of the evening wandering about, alternately finding, then losing, then finding again his bicycle, even though it remained in the same spot all along.

Besides, there are nuances which make every instant, even of the same thing, unique: for example, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that old chestnut of leaving the full beer can in the fire to explode have the can explode twice, and as far as I know, this could be the first time mass departure from Carkeek didn’t result in at least one major mechanical or memorable road rash.

The pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus famously claimed “You can’t step into the same river twice,” reminding us that the universe and everything in it is in a constant state of flux: all is change, and even if we’ve been there before, it’s totally different every time.

Except the crashing, drinking, and grouching; that’s just the same.

Funereal

The word “morbid” comes from the Latin word “morbus” meaning “diseased” and someone could argue that the idea to stage a pre-emptive funeral ride for a couple of brothers with a morbid fascination for getting hit by cars is clearly the product of a diseased imagination, but if so, you have to appreciate the irony a death-themed occasion giving rise to such a life-affirming experience, one to be fondly remembered for all this lifetime and perhaps even beyond the beyond.

My heart swelled with pride to see two Haulin’ Colin trailers transformed into bicycle hearses and my eyes went wide in awe to witness not only the cycling prowess of tehSchott and Tall Fred in pulling their human cargo but also the intestinal fortitude of Wreyfords Junior and Senior who consented to be pulled in makeshift coffins all the way crosstown like corpses—albeit ones who could eat and drink on the way.

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain’s hero gets to attend his own funeral and hear all the townspeople waxing rhapsodic about his life and how badly he’ll be missed now that he’s drowned; last night our fraternal heroes got to enjoy that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity themselves as—not an entire town, but at least two or three drunken sots—sang their praises, accompanied by Seattle’s own best impression of a New Orleans funeral band.

I burned in effigy the custom mini coffin that the darling daughter fashioned from duct tape and cardboard for me in hopes of exorcising the demons that keep making cars run into the Brothers W. and apparently it’s worked so far as—unlike on so many past Friday mornings—the internetz yield no reports of Wreyford crashes (although admittedly, they did ride home in cars.)

Statistically speaking, yours truly, with more than two decades on the boys, is likely to beat them both to the grave; now when it’s my turn for real, I want a wake just like theirs.

Combination

It’s right up there with this as winner of most annoying song in history, but it sure inspires an excellent bike ride, as the Combination Pizza Hit and Taco Bell drew us way across the lake and through a maze of suburban neighborhoods, before appearing, in all its shiny plastic glory miles and miles away from our start—but still less than half of the way we would eventually ride on a summer night so soft and lovely on planet Earth that rocks were falling from the heavens in hopes of joining the fun.

I only saw one meteor streak across the sky, but I guess that was enough given all the other stellar delights I got to enjoy, including a forest trail ride on what I assume was—strangely juxtaposed—a campus of the evil computer software empire.

And besides, how could a person want anything more when he gets to hang out and drink beer in the middle of the night at a huge concrete bowl devoted specifically to bicycle racing and even has the opportunity to savor the combination thrill of victory and agony of defeat when both wagering on and participating in two-wheeled suds-fueled competitions himself?

Destinations are commonly shouted out as the bike gang leaves a place—“The Knarr! Goldies! Harborview!” but I never before remember one called for (and reached!) something like 18 miles and more than an hour away, and yet I arrived at the College Inn Pub just as last call was announced from within as I locked up outside and even in time for a nightcap, another combination of luck and good timing on an evening of such unusual alliances.

Just think of all the world’s dynamic duos: Batman and Robin, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, King Kong vs. Godzilla, even Combination fucking Pizza Hut and Taco Bell; worthy candidates all, but in my book, pale when compared to the best pairing of all: you and your bike.

Slide

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that combining fifty or so bicycle-riding troublemakers with five handles of whiskey, enough gallons of lemonade to disguise its taste, a city park that just happens to have an outdoor water spigot hookup, a fully-functional Wham-O Slip N Slide Double Rider, and a box full of handheld multi-colored laser pens is going to result in an unforgettable evening of hilarity and nonsense, but it does, I think, require some kind of twisted genius to come up with the idea in the first place.

And then, you’ve got to be committed enough to the cause that you’re willing to haul all the shit out there in your bike basket and panniers, including a fifty foot length of garden hose, but in the end, it’s got to be all worthwhile when you see heat after heat of sodden revelers throw themselves down the plastic raceway in an effort to snag the winning flag, with amazingly, not a single broken neck nor dislocated shoulder.

All most of us had to do, thanks again to tehJobies annual largesse on the eve of the Dead Baby Downhill, was just show up and ride (and drink, of course), and although I regret slightly not partaking of the slipping and sliding myself, I’m glad there were plenty of others more willing to risk life and limb in the pursuit of pleasure than me to provide so many lolz.

My favorite image of the night was a shirtless, back-lit Miles spraying racers with the garden hose as they streamed down the track; he could have been a bronze statue in the Bizarro-world version of the Trevi fountain in Rome; then somebody else (maybe Kevin?) took over and the way he held it was, by contrast, all Manneken Pis.

Still, each was perfect in its own way, which is pretty much my assessment of the evening overall, as well; distinctive brilliance is required for such manifest stupidity.

Wagon

“Suck it, commuter!” someone yelled with that hearty sense of abandon that only comes from riding in a pack of bicycles that includes a bike trailer-mounted Conestoga wagon, the realization of one of those ideas that comes to a person on a solo bike tour, and which pays dividends as a keg hauler on the Oregon trail, or in this case, something akin to that classic adventure, missing, thankfully, dead oxen, but including, in exchange, fireworks, missiles at the moon, and countless opportunities for hunting game other than bison and probably even some likelihood of dying from dysentery, although no one, thankfully, succumbed, at least during my portion of the ride.

I broke two of my time-honored rules; first, declining to swim in the lake when the opportunity presented itself (due to the chill wind blowing off the water), and second, riding my bike even though I was unable to unlock it (tired old eyes leaving the Knarr prevented me from lining up the combination numbers just right; I remain in debt to my more youthful companion who was able to do so for me), but still everything turned out all right in spite of not making it to either the outdoor big screen presentation of the Tour de France nor the end-of-the-evening festivities with fire celebrating the completion of the long and lonesome trail.

My spoke card tombstone reads “Here lies Professor Dave, died of trampled by oxen” which, as it turns out, seems pretty accurate for how I felt this morning, although thanks to the healing powers of caffeine and sugar, I’m ready now another expedition, especially if it were to include the puffy pink sunset of last night’s adventure.

I drank my beer from a giant-sized can of Rainier, which made me seem like a midget when holding it, but when refilled from the covered wagon, I felt as tall and strong as those pioneers must have when they arrived successfully in Oregon City.

Wholesome

You can have your Las Vegas penthouse suite with piles of cocaine and hoards of strippers giving free lap dances to anything with a pulse, or your exclusive downtown New York City nightclub packed with free-flowing champagne, caviar, and supermodels, or even your more traditional forms of amusement, like sitting around the great table after the hunt, savaging huge drumsticks of meat, throwing the bones to the dogs, and playing slap n’ tickle with the serving wenches; but for me, when it comes to good, clean fun, nothing beats riding bikes with a bunch of familiar faces to the local lake on a clear summer night, quaffing quaffables and munching pretzel rods, then swimming around in the surprisingly warm water while the sun slowly sets over the city and you bask in the glow that emanates not only from the exterior world but also from the interior experience that lasts so long you can still feel it the next morning just by sitting still and letting the images wash back through your mind’s eye.

Bungie-jumping, Formula One racing, hang-gliding from the Golden Gate Bridge: they’re all great to be sure, but in my experience—as with the aforementioned celebratory thrills—all pale in comparison to floating on your back in the water, paddling forward to the rocky shore for another swig on your beer, while folks stand around waist-deep in the wet sharing stories and telling lies and eventually have to have chicken fights complete with costume-chicken head; and while I’m sure Brad and Angelina, not to mention Barack and Michelle, would really have liked to see me at their party on Air Force One, frankly, there was no place on earth I’d have rather been; and I’m sure that had they had the opportunity to pedal and swim around like I did last night, they’d have understood why I had to turn down their invitation.

That fun is fun to be sure, but nothing like this.

Bull

There’s a puzzle in the field of philosophy of mind about the metaphysics of physical sensations; the thought experiment that illustrates it is to imagine what’s referred to as a “super Stoic,” someone who claims to be feeling something—intense physical pain, for example—but who doesn’t show any outward signs of it; the question then is whether we can really say that the person is having a bona fide sensation.

Conversely, we might also wonder whether exhibiting the relevant behaviors means that the person is feeling the feeling—and that’s what it was for me, at first, in this year’s edition of the Running of the Bulls, the now traditional dress-up clusterfuck bike ride and generalized shenanigans sometime in mid-July.

Visually, it was stunning: Westlake Center taken over with about fifty idiots in white pants and shirts with red sashes along with a handful of bulls, including Mr. Leggohead.

“What is this?” asked all the pedestrians as we rode by, ululating and singing. But how do you answer when you have no idea yourself? “Running of the bulls!” someone would shout back matter-of-factly.

But what amazed me most was how the fun just gets inside you after you act like it for a while and by the time I was reminded never to pass up an opportunity to jump in the lake on a hot night there was no doubting either the internal reality nor outward expression of this bliss. The endless sunset alone would have been worth the price of admission.

Even the frat-boy bar hell had moments of pure poetry, in particular, the most lugubriously delicious exhibition of mechanical bull-riding you’ve ever seen and street-dancing, within and al fresco.

And then, because the bulls were still running, the prey kept on riding, for singing and French fries where all you had to do was just open your eyes and look around and you’d know for certain that fun was being felt inside and out.

Solstice

“You don’t know what I’ve been through!” barked the angry meathead outside the Bull Pen Bar and Grill in Seatac and I had to admit I didn’t.

But clearly it had something to do with why he was getting so worked up about the bike pile, which, truth be told, we were in the process of disassembling anyway. And maybe it was the arrival of the cops, but somehow, we got out of there without anybody getting punched in the face, an outcome that was probably too much to hope for given how the night unfolded, what with mechanicals galore, bike routes chained closed, and hibachis eventually ejecting their grills beneath moving cars that just kept going despite all the sparks.

The so-called “problem of other minds” reminds us that nobody really knows what anybody’s been through, but at least we were in it together for as long as the near-solstice light lasted, and even after we broke into groups, there were still enough perspectives to be a problem, apparently.

And yet they all happened under the same spectacular nearly-full moon on this same insignificant dust mote in a sunbeam we inhabit together and the mere fact that strangers can get surprisingly exercised over more or less that same thing proves that maybe our experiences aren’t so different after all.

I do know this: if that guy had been through what I’d been through—a ride on which even the long uphill doesn’t seem nearly so long when it’s still light out and where the descent through the woods on the unopened bike trail goes on forever, and which includes an opportunity to stand beside the Puget Sound on the longest Thursday of the year drinking beer and eating Cheez-Its—he wouldn’t have been nearly so pissed-off.

In the end, what are we but our experiences—what we’ve been through, known or not—anyway? And to paraphrase that old saying, with experiences like this, who needs enemies?

Perfect

The private security guard announced upon arrival, “There’s no partying in this park.” (PAUSE) “Without me!”

That’s when it became patently obvious that while the gray-haired dude is a reasonable first-line of defense against the authorities, the smiling blonde girl celebrating her birthday out-of-doors does a far superior job of melting any official chilliness.

Case in point: our new best friend, Romeo, subsequently hung out all through the piñata bashing, politely leaving lit his roof-mounted searchlights so we could see the ultimate destruction of the strangely familiar-looking paper maché homunculus that much better.

And even when the real-live city of Seattle cop showed up quietly a bit later, all he did was wonder aloud about the luminescent drops of glowstick juice before simply counseling that we depart without his being called back, a suggestion perfectly in tune with the natural order of things as they unfolded on the last Thursday of this year’s cool and cloudy spring.

The ride clattered forward by fits and starts right from the beginning, but only because it seemed like the whole world was celebrating the occasion; the birthday girls wore balloons which were soon dispersed and eventually popped, just like the kickball ball, but no one really seemed to mind especially after Specialist Sean’s single-malt went passing around; even the sun didn’t want to set, but remained aglow in the west all through the festivities.

Julia Goolia stood on the wall above a crowd and announced over and over how much she loves the bike gang and really, who doesn’t?

Joeball told a story about coming across a ball of snakes in the woods; he kept looking at the coiling sphere but couldn’t figure out what it was; that’s kind of how it was for me standing back and watching the evening’s proceedings: so much intertwining, it’s all one thing, but when you get closer, it wriggles apart just like that, the one become many—joyful expressions of the perfect whole.

Roots

Any long-standing organization or enterprise is going to experience what they call “mission creep.”

You know, there’s where the entity’s original mission, vision, and/or values get off track somehow. Like when Coca-Cola went all whacky with New Coke or how the Obama administration is getting all bogged down putting out fires while the core message of hope and change falls by the wayside, or it’s how a drinking club with a cycling problem can find itself turning into a group that camps and roller skates and even milks goats or whatever you do with farm animals beside eat or avoid them altogether.

So, it’s good to see that when the elements return to their elemental state that pretty soon, the rest of the world follows suit and the old ways re-emerge, as naturally and organically ever, in spite of how contemporary practices may have veered from an original starting point by slow, incremental degrees.

Case in point: a characteristically rainy evening in Seattle’s June led to a short ride (although longer than the legendary eponymous .83 miles) but then a goodly amount of libating under cover by Fremont’s troll—a local landmark I’ve mostly managed to overlook in my decade and a half here—although by the looks of it last evening tourist groups of fresh-faced students can’t seem to get enough of it.

Continuing rain was then met with another traditional response: an even shorter ride and an even longer period of drinking.

And then finally, even though the deluge had turned into little more than mist, the ensuing pedaling was hardly more than a short spin to another watering hole, this one, a longtime favorite that apparently, is soon to no longer be.

Thus, we see the sort of recommitment to basic values so vital to the ongoing existence of deeply-cherished institutions; in the end, it’s heartwarming to observe that really, the only mission creeps to worry about are those with beers in our hands.

Enoughness

The environmentalist, Bill McKibben, wrote this essay called “Enoughness” in which he expounds upon the value of not desiring more than you already have. It’s especially the case, he says, when it comes to the experience of nature: generally, he maintains, when we’re out in the wild, we don’t look around and say, “I wish those flowers were more beautiful or that the sky was grander or that the vastness all around were more awesome.” Usually, when it comes to the way we look at the world, enough is enough—in contrast to how we tend to think about consumer goods, where it’s all about bigger, faster, more, more, more.

I think McKibben is mostly right on (although I myself have found myself sometimes wishing that Mother Nature would make minor improvements, anyway: no mosquitoes, for instance), and I also think the experience of “enoughness” becomes more common as we get a little bit older—or, in my case, a lot older.

So, for instance, yesterday evening, it turned out to pretty much be all I needed to have a lovely, leisurely and slightly inebriated bike ride back from Cascadia to downtown and then a glass of beer with some of the usual suspects on a Thursday night. I didn’t really have to engage in the full shenanigans and debauchery that were available to be enjoyed by all who wanted a bit more and so, in relatively short measure, found myself pedaling home and while I did consider stopping off somewhere for a nightcap, ultimately came to the conclusion that I’d sampled all I really needed of the proffered festivities, and called it a night.

Besides, there’s only so much of the Shirts-Off Crew a fellow can take; while nature, as McKibben says, provides us with a sense of “enoughness,” there are other things (of which we shall not speak) that by their very existence, provide us—me anyway—with an immediate feeling of way too much.

Waiting

The way I learned Samuel Beckett’s classic, “Waiting for Godot,” Vladimir and Estragon aren’t hanging around for God; they’re there for some something that is only the thing being waited for because that’s what they’re waiting for, but if it were, it wouldn’t be; it’s paradoxical, oxymoronic, and above all, absurd; that’s the human condition: we live in a meaningless universe but must do so meaningfully.

Or to frame the question another way: if you’re dropped from your own ride, is it still your ride? Or only if people are drinking the booze you brought in a park that’s really more like just a rest stop beside an industrial motorway?

I myself had just a few conflicting thoughts about the juxtapositions; it was interesting, for instance, how quickly we got to our midway point destination and how fast cranberry drinks emerged once all the components were located and people started shinnying up poles; but it was funny, by contrast, how long we dawdled there, compelled eventually, only by the rain, and the arrival, just in time to leave, of whom we’d been waiting for all along, although it seemed to keep slipping people’s minds—mine, anyway.

The promise of song got things moving and lo and behold, by the time I got there French fries were already being passed around the room.

I was powerfully reminded how Goldies is always, and in my experience, only, awesome when it’s packed with idiots you know; the music wasn’t really in me so I focused on the suds instead, raising my tankard especially in honor of the late, great Ronnie James Dio to his signature “Holy Diver.”

A steady, but light spring rain offers only slight incentive to bail; however, after somebody’s pedal opens up a 12-stitch gash on someone else’s calf, it becomes apparent that absurdity is only absurd until somebody loses an eye, and since, paradoxically, mine were wide shut, I waited no longer to no longer wait.

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.