Authentic

Four years from now, when you peek through the bars of your prison cell in the Federal Detention Center for Dissidents and Critical Thinkers, at the smoking wreckage of a formerly-great republic, at least you’ll be able to recall a perfectly mild and dry autumn evening in the Pacific Northwest when you were once free to peacefully assemble with about a dozen unarmed men and use non-fossil fuel burning transportation to congregate at a city park around a cheery bonfire brought to life by igniting scavenged wine boxes from the parking lot of a well-stocked grocery store which still permitted the sale of organically-grown produce and alcoholic spirits, and you’ll reflect again how utterly amazing it was to have experienced such times, not just once but on several score of occasions in the preceding years, and note how it never failed to result in laughter, hijinks, and fond fellowship without even a single train passing by.

You’ll remember how at that time, before the Internal-Combustion Engine Mandates were ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court and the President-for-Life’s Storm Troops hadn’t yet started rounding up anyone who had ever read a book or contributed to Planned Parenthood, there were still many places one was allowed to ride bikes to and recall that sure, you could have taken the short and easy way to the pretty little lake that hadn’t yet been drained for the now ubiquitous municipal gas fracking rigs, but much better to hold out for that most paradigmatic of Thursday night destinations where fireplace logs and construction leftovers could join with balsa wood packaging and failed spawn to warm even the most despairing of souls just days after that final federal election in our lifetimes.

The AI-powered Tesla prison guards will, of course, soon come by to strap you back into the Behavior Modification Module for further reprogramming, but even though they’ll keep taking away your freedom, they’ll never make off with those memories of such authentic two-wheeled liberation.

 

Audible

Sometimes you don’t know where you’re going until you’re already on the way somewhere else.  

That’s what happened last night, a fitting tribute to the holiday and a too soon-to-be-departing comrade.

Mission accomplished on a short night for yours truly, not unlike this post, only wetter.

And yet, as is almost always, wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Happy Hallowe’en!

Discretion

Apparently the pandemic really is over since, as it turns out, there actually ARE some rules for acceptable public behavior, at least in the fancier parts of town.

Prior to this latest iteration, we tried to tote up all the instances at which the friendly Fire Department has invited us to move along while extinguishing whatever sort of conflagration of some size around which we’d assembled: there were those two in one night in the heady high days of Christmas tree burning, that one time atop Weathertop thanks to the one-percenters at Canlis, an occasion that I seem to recall also included some law enforcement at Anarchy Point, the one in Laurelhurst that featured only amused cops but no firefighters, and maybe one in Georgetown near the airport that was really just everyone going their separate ways before the authorities actually arrived.

So, maybe this makes seven, which is pretty good, all things considered, in almost twenty years; what good citizens we all are, after all!

Perhaps there will comes a time, and perhaps it’s right on the horizon, when Thursday night shenanigans will go extinct, but in the meantime, they still persist, albeit in reduced numbers, but not, if last night is an indication, in reduced nonsense.

I take that back: cooler heads DID prevail when it came to exercising discretion as to the location of the merry little blaze.  The initial idea to illuminate the most popular tourist destination for observing our fair city’s downtown was eschewed in favor of one just a little more feasible—and it turned out to be just that until some rich person, no doubt, decided that their old-money backyard needed to remain just their backyard rather than one for some interlopers from the flatlands.

But enough was enough, anyway, and given how friendly those big strong men with flashing lights were, and given we were down to coals, anyway, it was the perfect time to exercise discretion and disperse.

Aurora

Just because you can’t see something with the naked eye, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

And this includes not just celestial phenomena, like those caused by the interaction between electrically charged particles from the sun and Earth's magnetic field, but also intangible concepts like fellowship, adventure, and surprise, all of which are invisibly visible when cranks are cranked and two wheels turn.

The plan was to stay close to light rail, and while an initial proposal to extend the club’s “bounding box” via public transit was eventually discarded due to the prospect of too many disappointed National Football League fans, that particular desideratum was, in fact, adhered to, partly thanks to one of our fair city’s newest pieces of bicycling infrastructure curling under the vast Montlake interchange, just a hop-skip-and-a-jump (or crank-turn and pedal-spin) from the deepest of the Partial Underground’s underground stations.

And speaking of the invisible made apparent (if not visible), here’s another one: Cross-cultural exchange!  

As my father sometimes pointed out (in a probably not entirely culturally-sensitive way), “A billion Chinese couldn’t care less about this or that” (usually something I was whining about according to Dad), but as it turns out, at least forty or so Chinese students from the University of Washington DO care about the aurora borealis and are willing to walk through muddy trails and across rickety metal bridges to get somewhere hoped to be dark enough to see it.

And what’s even more surprising is how many of them were even more delighted to run across an unexpected little bonfire by the side of a lake, especially when it was stoked higher and higher through the addition of liquid plastic.

The flames were visible, but the warmth they inspired just had to be felt.

Apparently, time-lapse photography could render the greens and purple of the aurora on people’s phones, despite one’s eyes not being able to.

Sort of how bikes make possible joy that would otherwise never be seen.

Success

There are many ways to measure success: an Olympic gold medal, a McArthur Fellowship, landing a man on the moon and bringing him safely back to earth, but sometimes, it’s enough just to bring your dear friend to the top of a parking garage you’ve failed twice before to manage. 

Or earlier, simply to note the Meth-odd acting of a couple tweaked-out street performers.

Standards are surely important, but lowering one’s standards to what may reasonably be accomplished on an early fall evening in the Pacific Northwest, where the meteorological adumbrations of what’s in store start adumbrating at the beginning but then, back off considerably for the rest of the evening, is a tried-and-true strategy for satisfaction. 

We’ve got to calibrate our expectations with what can reasonably be expected.

Still, the secret places are places in part, because they are secret.

As John Stuart Mill asserted, one of the keys to happiness is not to want more from life than what life is capable of bestowing and so, if it bestows upon you the opportunity to safely surpass the historical danger spot, to do a little nose-thumbing at the big brother store, and to observe how the heteronormative economy on which society depends is still doing fine, then who wouldn’t want to celebrate it in the best way they know how.

A friendly parking garage rooftop is a civic amenity; in California, all beachfront access is public, right?  (Anyway, it should be.) The views atop those places ought to be available to all, not just us.

The most comfortable place, out of the wind, is not always the best place to be.  And radar isn’t always the final answer. Every dashboard has to be interpreted.

Wherever you are, there you go; and when you do that by bicycle, you’re never alone unless you expand the definition of you.

In which case, you and your bicycle are one.

And one still finds success on two wheels.

Adieu

My second time to the Orient Express on a Point83 ride was somewhat more successful (or maybe just successful in a different way) than the first.  

At any rate, I got out of there without having to use my credit card and I also sang and danced way more than before.  

So, all in all, a fine evening overall, and that doesn’t even include the lovely pink and purple sky witnessed from Bread War Park and the rise on the low bridge, nor the visit to the Chelan Café at an unprecedently early time, all in support of a fond far-thee-well to our gang’s prime ceramicist on his way east to seek higher education at the celebrated kiln of his choice.

There was, perhaps, a little more indoor activity than would have been expected on such a lovely late summer eve, but who cares, right?  You still got to spin south and west and east and north on mostly empty streets and there were nevertheless opportunities for outdoor imbibing; no one crashed spectacularly (nor even simply) and rendezvous were effected even without planning.

It was one of those times where not everything has to be everything; everything is still something, and something is something that’s enough.  

As always, if you keep in mind what an amazing privilege it is to have the good fortune to be even a little bit disappointed about what didn’t happen when what did happen is—compared to all the terrible, awful things happening in the world that it wasn’t—a goddamn bountiful harvest of good fortune, then how in the world could you possibly complain, even if the karaoke system audio buzzes a bit and the words don’t always show up onscreen for the audience to view.

Which is just another way of pointing out that pretty grand time was had by all, even in light of the somewhat bittersweet nature of event, given the imminent departure: Godspeed Timmy!  Make us proud!

Intro

If it were my first, rather than my 500 and somethingth Point83 ride, what would I think?  

I’d notice, at first, that it was mostly all dudes and most of them were older than I might have expected.  This one guy, for instance, was clearly pushing 70 and even the younger ones looked like their 20s were well in the rearview mirror.

There would be a shirtless guy who wore his watch on his arm, and a guy with a kind of summer mullet and tight shorts; one dude would have an electric tallbike, that would be pretty cool, and he wouldn’t seem too badly hurt when he crashed coming out of the parking garage.

That would be something new, by the way: climbing ten circular stories to the top of a downtown parking garage.  The spectacular view of Elliot Bay and the entire industrial core of Seattle, including to the north, the newly-renovated pier and Aquarium alongside the lit-up big wheel at sunset would be a first; I’d probably never had had the opportunity to share a beer with someone ten stories up outside like that, either.

And while I may have navigated Pioneer Square before, this would be the first time I’d done it in a group with such little regard for “sidewalk closed” signs and traffic lights; crossing the Jose Rizal bridge my not have been novel, although I probably never would have enjoyed such long shadows doing so and admired both stadiums lit up so brightly before.

I would never have taken the route to Jefferson Park from the Beacon Hill Red Apple through the alleyways before, and I surely wouldn’t have had the opportunity to stand around a little one-pallet fire in the park for so long; even to those more experienced than me, the cheery blaze really seemed to linger.

I probably wouldn’t have stayed to the end; Irish goodbyes always in order.

Would I come back?  

Same time next week.

Novel

Nothing is really ever the same, of course.  

The subatomic particles that make up everything—whether they exist as material objects or are just perceptions in the Universal Mind—are constantly changing, so it’s never the case that anything is ever what it once was.

So, for example, even if you’ve taken the same route out of the same place at the same time on the same two-wheeled contraption more than 500 times, each of those times is different at the fundamental level.

That said, it can sure seem like déjà vu all over again, but only if you don’t notice that even after those myriad versions of the apparently same thing, there are still aspects of the experience you’ve never experienced before.

To wit:

• Accessing the bridge over the freeway from a wide concrete bike path that previously was more famous for its incarnation as the Davemuda Triangle
• Taking a left through the urban mountain bike park leading to the “flat way” down towards the water
• Corkscrewing along university sidewalks that weren’t there when you were a student to arrive at a dead end that was
• Hair-pinning at the bottom of the viaduct bomb to emerge from the underground right into the shopping mall village
• Legally drinking British-sized glasses of beer at an official sidewalk café where historically, it’s been illegally quaffing hidden tallboys in essentially the same place
• Sausages and hotdog buns at the friendly home firepit; seeing the latter burn green for some unknown reason; the preservative, maybe?
• Riding home from said friendly home more or less sober; not even coming close to a crash

It’s not obvious why human beings should have a taste for novelty; you’d think that from an evolutionary adaptive standpoint, we’d prefer everything to be the same as much as possible, but whatever the reason; it’s abundantly clear that all you have to do is pay attention to notice the difference; maybe that’s the most novel part of all.

Little

So, we didn’t lay out 150 feet of plastic sheeting, fill the trees with glowsticks, load up an inflatable swimming pool with gallons of green goo for slippery rasslin’, and pass out fancy drinks made with Tang and Everclear to dozens of revelers well into the wee hours of morning, but, nevertheless, it was a fine evening for a bicycle ride and a swim near the traditional venue.  

And granted, the lake is full of milfoil, especially in the shallow parts, but why complain when you still can lie on your back in the water and gaze up at the cotton candy colored clouds before returning to the shore for libations and conversations with old friends and a lollipop that lasts for half an hour minimum?

Not everything has to be everything; something is still something, and when that something includes a ride en masse down what really should be the main north-south bicycle thoroughfare of our fair city, but which really only feels feasible when ridden en masse, then that something’s plenty even if it isn’t the everything that it could be (and has been in years past).

Sure, we should all aspire to greatness most, if not all, of the time, but that doesn’t mean we should always be dissatisfied with pretty-goodness; it’s important to calibrate one’s expectations and if you don’t expect too much, then you’re way more apt to be satisfied with what you get no matter what.

It would be awesome, of course, to be an Olympic athlete and win a gold medal in one’s chosen event, but man, a silver or even a bronze wouldn’t be so bad, either.  

If you were the third best gymnast or table tennis player or slalom canoeist in the world, that would be something to be very proud of, so, for heaven’s sake, a perfect summer evening out on two wheels with a lake swim to boot, even without historically-insane shenanigans is pure gold, too.

Lovely

 

A lovely evening for a bike ride.

Did you know that Mt. Rainier and the Moon are best friends?

One picture = 327 words.

Corny

Anyone who gets to ride their bike on an ideal Pacific Northwest summer evening, one so warm that even old men wear short pants, across the second largest freshwater lake in the state of Washington, on a floating bridge with a luxurious bicycle path complete with pull-outs for picture-taking and beer-drinking, to a charming city beach where daylight lasts until almost nine o’ clock and the sun sets behind a diving dock right down into the water, turning people on the horizon into perfect silhouette cutouts, anyone who gets to do that, whether on an “analogue” bicycle or one assisted by excited electrons, must have done something really spectacular in their former lifetimes to be afforded such a privilege, and they ought to be deeply grateful for their good fortune and make it a point to have every encounter with their fellow humans beings be one suffused with love, compassion, and respect, in hopes that the next time around, they will again be so lucky to enjoy such awesome and overwhelming grace.

Right?

When you think about the nearly infinite odds of merely being born, not to mention the completely unlikely occurrence of a Universe such as ours so finely-tuned for self-aware beings to even exist, and consider the countless failed attempts by creation that must have occurred for this version of reality to have come into being, and then top that off with the realization that you could have emerged from your mother’s womb in a place that’s being bombed by a foreign military air force or where drought and militia attacks make life precarious every moment, it’s enough to make you crack your heart wide open at how fucking blessed you are, no matter how many times someone cuts you off in traffic or how warm the beer is that you’re drinking for free, after all.

Right?

Then back across the water, for further friendly libations, marveling at spiders along the way.

Thanks, Universe.

Right.

Contusion

It’s a privilege to ride a bike and don’t you forget it.  

If circumstances or the gubmint or an injury ever prevent you from being able to pedal around, you’ll realize this all the more clearly and remind yourself that you ought to take every opportunity for two-wheeling, especially on a late spring evening in the Pacific Northwest on which it stays light until well after the full moon rises and the air remains as soft as the puffy clouds illuminated by the setting sun.

Having bruised your knee sufficiently badly in a stupid, careless, tip-over leaving the rooftop bar (at a pub coincidentally called The Rooftop Bar) to make bike riding today (and one hopes not too much longer) out of the question, you become hyper-aware of how lucky you are most days to be able to swing your leg over the top tube and bend from the knee with each turn of the crank, both activities that are beyond you at the moment.

It was one of those rides where the destinations emerge more or less organically, in the grand old tradition of whoever yells the loudest gets to decide.  There was some classic backtracking as we figured out where we were headed by heading there and a lovely stop for fluid intake and output at the public/private partnership park overlooking Elliot Bay.

The pub by the side of the Ship Canal Trail provided an ideal spot for recongregating and reminiscing and it would have been perfect had you not failed to pay attention to the curb by which your bike was parked and done an endo on to the left knew, which subsequently has taken on the responsibility of showing what an idiot you are by not being able to bend beyond about 80 degrees and which is also, therefore, giving you the aforementioned reminder of what a treat it is to be able to ride.

Here's hoping you’ll be enjoying that treat again soon.

Awe-ful

Ben Country 18: Barely Legal Hot Tub Train (is what I'm calling it), was perfectly awe-ful and I wouldn't have changed a thing about it, except maybe getting that one flat, which wasn't so bad, to tell the truth, given all the help I received in changing it.

That is all, until next year.

Serendipity

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, serendipity is “a word coined by Horace Walpole, who says (Let. to Mann, 28 Jan. 1754) that he had formed it upon the title of the fairy-tale ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’, the heroes of which ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.’”

Well, if you remove the “sagacity” part, that pretty much describes what many a Thursday night ride has historically involved, and it’s a pleasure to note that it’s still possible, by accident mostly, to discover things you didn’t know you were looking for, but are delighted to find along the way.

Like, for instance, who knew that what appeared to be a walkway down to the water would turn out to be an outdoor terrace filled with diners who remained, all things considered, sanguine about the arrival and quick departure of a score of bicycles in their midst?  

And haven’t you always been seeking a car-free East Marginal Way to enjoy on a sun-drenched early evening?  Isn’t that the definition of serendipity that it was there, the object of your questless quest all along?

Sometimes a stated destination is just a way to get things rolling in the right direction and it turns out that where you were really headed was where you meant to get to anyway, especially even before the sun set—with an unexpected little bike path to be found, as well!

And nobody really knew that you’d end up with a fire after all, although the quest for that was surely portended in some way by the bringing of accelerant, both literally and figuratively.

I suppose it’s not really a surprise if you expect to be surprised, but it’s nonetheless a serendipitous state of affairs to be granted that which you didn’t know you were looking for but probably had in mind right from the start.

Thanks, Universe, for another swell gift, undeserved and unsought.

Electric

“Time marches on,” they say, but it’s less of a march, I think, than a cascade.  

It rolls forward, like a wave; it undulates and somersaults; it speeds ahead and rises up; it covers what was with what is and will be; it arrives where it’s going and keeps on going, carrying you and everything else along relentlessly, inevitably, and forever.

Come to think of it, time is pretty much the same as a bike ride through the woods over twisty trails at night.  And come to think of it, that’s just what’s been happening for a long, long time on Thursday nights up the upper left hand corner of our continent.

And yet.

There’s still the never-before-assayed experience to be had, even though, in the Yelp review version of the accounting it would be pointed out that pretty much all of the places had been gotten to previously just not via those same sylvan routes nor all in the same evening.

Moreover, the combination of high bridge sunset and open-air meat market with tree-lined corridor alongside massive industrial public works project was a first to be sure, as was the final destination, thankfully arrived at via tarmac rather than wood chips.

There will come the day, to be sure, when pure legs succumb to electric assist, and even now, a hand in the small of the back impelled by happy electrons is not to be scorned, but as long as walking and pushing is allowed you can hold it off for a little bit longer in spite of the temptation to flatten the hills.

“Analogue,” (as it’s apparently referred to) still carries you forward, just like time itself, heading up, down, and all around, past apple-chunking colleagues, sun-drenched horizons, fish-netted flesh merchants, spooky-looking footpaths, quickly improvised fairy rings, and heartily-welcoming watering holes.

No need to put a motor on temporal passage, not yet anyway, it’s still getting us all where we’re going right now, just in time.

Peak

If there’s a luckier, more fortunate, more blessed human being than me out there, I’d like to see them.  Because it’s hard to believe that there could be anyone anywhere who gets to enjoy even a modicum of what I get, much less an excess.

You tell me who else is allowed to spend the day with about four dozen friends, family members, and new acquaintances on a perfect spring day for an overthought out and intentionally stupid bicycle “race” featuring traditional ascents and descents in our fair city while also taking the occasion to imbibe, hold forth, and kick back all afternoon and well into the early evening, and not only that, but also to receive about that same number of hand-written messages on beer-carton cardboard cut-outs with advice and admonitions inspired by the celebration of one’s birth, okay?

Who else, I ask you?

If reincarnation is really a thing, I must have been an awfully good person last time around to have earned an opportunity like this; I hope I’m not squandering my karmic riches by having so much fun this time around, but if so, it’s certainly worth it!

(And we did raise over $300 for Planned Parenthood and the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, so perhaps the debits to my account are slightly reduced.)

In any event, whatever the source of such good fortune, I gratefully acknowledge it in giving me the opportunity to:

• Congregate at my favorite bike shop drinking beer and whiskey while one after another familiar face appears
  
  
• Hang out in my backyard while those same familiar faces show up on bicycle to reapportion the excess canned water and write pithy messages to yours truly
  
  
• Reassemble in the courtyard of a local favorite watering hole to acknowledge the efforts of said faces (and legs) for several more hours of fun, jollity, and awe at a real-live bicycle racer who shows you how it’s done without hardly breaking a sweat.

Lucky me!

Hesher

Here’s how time is (or, at least time periods are) an illusion: If you’re doing the same things, talking about the same music, and modifying your consciousness in the same way as you did half a century ago then, for all intents and purposes, now could be then.

If you didn’t know that it was the end of the first quarter of the 21st century rather than nearly the beginning of the last quarter of the 20th, you couldn’t tell merely by observing when what was happening and who it was happening with was happening.

Sure, there would be clues: the bicycles would mostly be sturdy gravel bikes instead of scrawny ten speeds; the conversations about the music would be informed by being able to listen to it anywhere, all by yourself, piped directly into your years instead of having to be in someone’s bedroom sharing the vinyl experience together, and the consciousness-altering delivery system would be hash-infused pre-rolls purchased from a retail establishment rather than seedy ditch weed rolled in American flag papers at your high-school desk, but if you removed all those frames and simply examined the shared consciousnesses, who could tell?

And frankly, who would want to?

If we can time-travel by bicycle back to “simpler times” (that, really, weren’t all that simple what with way more street crime, lakes so polluted they caught fire, a US President resigning for complicity in a crime and its cover-up, plus bike tires that weren't nearly so flat resistant as today’s, even for those who have yet to make the conversion to tubeless), then shouldn’t we take that opportunity?

Even if it means that the “fire” is made from aluminum cans and Girl Scout water instead of driftwood and deadfall; even if it means that the ultimate expression of the irrational number is arrived at too late to do so.

Because that still means that then is now and now is then and all there ever is is.

Theme

I miss the old days when nostalgia was so much sweeter, don’t you?

In other words, we used to be so cool, didn’t we?

Remember how a Thursday night ride used to take you to the farthest reaches of county, through a hidden riparian zone or up some spookily forgotten bluff or over a decaying bridge to a place you’d never even heard of, much less ridden your bike to near midnight and well into the wee hours of the morning when the birds began chirping at the rising dawn?

Nowadays, a little wiggle in and over a familiar wooded trail and up and around to what just might be the watering hole that, in terms of elapsed time, you’ve been going to for longer than any other one in the whole darn town, is sufficient for a first act, and then, the usual back way to what’s become, more or less, the default spot in our fair city for tidy little bonfires, makes for a perfectly satisfactory Act Two in the overall production that, while it may not win an Academy Award this weekend for Best Thursday Night Ride ever, certainly gives you your money’s worth in thrills and chills, not to mention LOLs and chuckles, plus a few poignant reminiscences, as well.

And that’s fine, really, because another benefit of having done a thing for so long is that any comparisons one might be compelled to make with the past are shown to be no more relevant to present satisfaction than are tomorrow’s aspirations to yesterday’s joys; it’s all water under the bridge or sand through the hourglass or whatever other metaphor you want to use; what matters, really, or all that there is, as a matter of fact, is the moment you’re in and if you’ve gotten there by bike, and it includes fellowship and libation, then who cares if it isn’t what it was because it is what it is and that’s plenty.

Sprinkle

One of the most important dispositions to cultivate in Philosophy, (and in life), is what we usually call “epistemological humility,” or “epistemological humbleness.”

It’s the attitude which recognizes that even if you’re relatively sure of your belief or position, you could be wrong—an appetite for being shown that one is mistaken and a willingness, even hunger, to change one’s views as a result of new information or evidence.

In some ways, it’s the mindset of a scientist, who looks forward to their hypotheses being falsified, since that’s where real advancement of knowledge takes place.  

As the 18th century British Empiricist philosopher, David Hume, reminds us, we can’t ever be certain of the predictions of inductive reasoning, but we can be sure when we’re shown a counterexample that disproves the principle upon which our predictions are based.  

That’s why even the most settled scientific claims, like evolution, or plate tectonics, or even gravity, are called “theories.”  If someone comes along and finds human skeletal remains in the same fossil strata as trilobites, then, all bets are off, Mr. Darwin, and we’ve got to revise our thinking. 

Anyway, with that in mind, you make an effort to not be overly dogmatic.  Sure, you’ve got an end in mind—even if it’s one that apparently was a destination not too long ago—but that doesn’t mean you’ll only accept one way to get there.

And if the route upwards includes a double-helix shaped corkscrew to the concrete front yard of some big-city condominiums, well then, all right.

And if it also involves a beach “fire” that’s pretty much just the ignition of lighter fluid from a squeeze bottle on top of some sticks, sure, that’s fine, too.

Not every rain shower has to be a downpour (thankfully); sometimes a little sprinkle is all that’s needed.

And if the “ride” is mostly hanging out in a beloved (albeit recently visited) watering hole and making new friends, that’s plenty, as well.

Hooray

Of the four traditional elements—air, fire, earth, and water—it’s only that second one which inspires human beings to dance around and cheer.  

(Oh, I suppose there could be times when a dust devil or tornedo might give rise to happy feet for air; and maybe a waterspout or big wave could inspire frolics over water, but you know what I mean.)

Perhaps it’s because, among the four, it’s only fire that is manifested through human endeavor.

(And sure, flames can also arise without the help of homo sapiens, through lightning strikes or volcanic eruptions, but you see my point.)

In any event, it’s clear that when human beings do create fire—admittedly with lots of help from air—especially when near a grand body of water, (especially on a night when the earth beneath that water is especially apparent), and the flames from that conflagration rise to great heights, and the sparks from that blaze scurry over the ground to turn a duck pond into a celestial light show, that it’s impossible for men, women, children, and everything in between, not to cavort merrily, even if that’s only on the inside, while others can’t help vocalizing their joy, exclaiming “hooray,” “huzzah,” “yippie,” and “wow.”

Of all the holiday traditions, maybe the best is the one where you mark the end of the holiday season by setting ablaze the remnants of the holiday season.  

There’s something marvelously cathartic about witnessing dozens of artifacts, which only a few days earlier, had been the centerpiece of a family’s festivities, give themselves up to the process of oxidation, releasing heat and generating combustion products to the great amusement of all the assembled humanity.

The chilliest night of the year so far becomes almost too warm for comfort, and if that’s not a metaphor for our shared aspirations, I don’t know what is.

(Well, perhaps gilding the lily with explosives atop the coals, but there are limits, even though often exceeded.)

Tradition

Yes, of course, Christmas is an over-commercialized nightmare that has nothing to do with the original spirit of the occasion.  And, sure, Hannukah is pretty much a made-up holiday so that Jewish kids don’t feel left out during December.  And everybody knows that all of the contemporary religious festivities associated with the season are just pale reflections of the original pagan celebrations conducted by our early human ancestors.  

It’s all just a big marketing ploy by society, organized religion, and commerce to sell shit at the end of the year so that annual quotas can be met and healthy bottom-lines secured.

But it’s all okay by me if it makes possible some of the following:

• Congregating at the diviest bar in the fanciest part of town with several dozen friends and acquaintances, many you haven’t seen in a while (if not longer) to drink pitchers of beer, pile gifts on a table and make bets on the outcome of televised fights
  
  
• Rolling uphill en masse, plenty of bicycle-mounted Christmas lights blinking away, to our fair city’s largest and spookiest park
  
  
• Fanning out on two wheels through said park in search of comfort stations and selfies
  
  
• Getting lost at least three times in the woods, following different colleagues more sure than you they knew the way, but no more likely than you be to be right
  
  
• Finally making it to the sought-after sylvan glade where a cheery blaze awaits and an endless amount of combustibles is made available thanks to strong arms and sharp teeth
  
  
• Taking the easy way out by following that cargo bike
  
  
• Arriving at an old-favorite watering hole to take over the entire outdoor patio for the sharing of presence and presents for all
  
  
• Singing a song that normally aggravates but when shouted together sparks joy

So, yeah, the holidays are stupid and stressful and overhyped but when that disaster yields disasters like these, then you gotta believe that holiday miracles are real, praise be. 

Adaptive

As human beings, it’s all we’ve got going for us, really.

We lack the wings of the eagle, the speed of the cheetah, the strength of the elephant, even the uncanny resilience of a simple virus.  What we do have, though, more than any other of Earth’s creatures, is the ability to adapt.

We can build igloos in the Arctic to keep us warm; we can divert huge bodies of water in the desert for hydration and irrigation; we can cut down great swaths of forest for housing and agriculture; basically, we can adapt the entire world to our needs, so that we can be anywhere, do almost anything, and survive under conditions that would be a death knell for our stronger, faster, and more arial fellow beings.

And it all begins with changing our minds.

You can see this in practice on the last Thursday night of autumn in the Pacific Northwest, when initially, the proposed destination is just about creature comfort and slack, but then, is adapted to an indoor location northward.  

But then, it makes sense to pivot for a gander at last week’s scene of the crime, which leads to thinking a brief stop by the water is in order, which is modified to a proposal to visit a supermarket Phoenix risen from the ashes, which suggests that congregating at the nearby park shelter is the thing to do—by not that route, but that one—where at first, it seems like fire will be eschewed, until, thanks to improvisations with both liquid and solid petrochemicals, a cheery blaze is established, around which lots of different ideas for the future can be tried out, until it is time for the final adaptation of the evening, one that doesn’t even require a cover charge as it turns out.

An eagle would gone higher, a cheetah faster, an elephant stronger, a virus simpler but none would have adapted so well as a human.  

Yay, us!

Presence

https://tinyurl.com/52fmsjkk

Maybe you’re drunker than you think, but not that drunk, so  we’ve got to blame multi-tasking which is stupid anyway especially when it involves professional sports, and is impossible, as well, since we can really only think one thought at a time, right?

But then there you are, your friends’ cries of surprise and disbelief echoing in the background, as you find yourself tits over teakettle splayed out in the puddle.

Nice bike to save your stupid ass; thanks, Grant!; the Haulin’ Colin rack an unintentionally (or maybe intentionally) perfect front roll-bar, as well.

You’d been congratulating yourself all this uncommonly wet week for staying dry, employing booties and plastic and even two rain jackets simultaneously in the effort, but all is lost when you fill your bag up to the brim with leftover rainwater scooped by the fall. 

Also, it feels weird to ride without the leg strap dropped earlier in the day; you should have expected the unexpected.

Which would you rather have?  A favorite team’s loss or a broken collarbone?

Like Jack Benny said, “I’m thinking…”

But, duh.

You never know quite how you are until the next day or maybe later.  What once took six weeks could be eight or even forever, so you’ve got to be careful and all that more grateful when your lack thereof isn’t punished too harshly.

It makes you wonder what’s going to really do us in: our own stupid mistakes or the stupid mistakes of others.  Probably both, and that’s why.

There’s no use complaining about what all turns out okay in the end, but it’s still fun to talk about it, especially in the company of those who are no less pleased than you by the lack of injury while simultaneously being glad that they’re not as soaked as you are, either.

In order for a thrilling victory, you gotta have a thrilling loss; sometimes, though, you get to—go to—have both.

HIp

You appreciate people who are more awkward on two legs than they are on two wheels.

Heck, you’re one of them!

It is heartwarming, though—and flabbergastifying, as well—to see how deeply the years pile up.  

Once upon a time, half a decade was a long time; these days, three times that is just a blink of an eye, and you realize, around the subsequent fire, in that most secret and lovable of destinations, that you’ve been at this for even longer, but somehow it still seems—if not brand-new—at least novel in its own way, every time.

What’s that old saw?  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result?  

If so, then what do you call doing the same thing over and over while hoping for pretty much the same thing once more, that being flames and fellowship, saturnalia and bacchanalia, bikes and beer and bud, and eventually, a pain-free wobble home that sees all uphills flatter than usual and all downhills longer than you remember?

Thursday, maybe?

The “bicycle community” is a pretty big tent and one thing that’s kinda cool about that is the way in which a tiny little company started by a couple of those aforementioned awkward two-legged two-wheelers can make such a huge positive difference to that tent—as well as providing lots of ways to carry said tent to the great out-of-doors as desired.

You don’t have to be an avid consumer to be an avid consumer of the consumables you avidly consume and you can wish that the stuff you like would never go away, but it does, and there’s not much you can do about that other than celebrate all the joys that stuff has made possible, even as seams fray and zippers break.

Time, they say, heals all wounds, (and perhaps wounds all heels, as well), but with a bike, it just seems to happen so much quicker.

Enough

When you realize that the part where you had to carry your bike up the steps was completely avoidable had you just gone around the corner is what it’s all about at least some of the time: mistakes are learning experiences, except that quite often enough, had you been paying the right amount of attention, you wouldn’t have had to make those mistakes in the first place.

It’s a strange day, right in the middle of something that could be; so, you’ve got to appreciate the effortless effort like the Buddhists, I think, remind us of.

It’s good to be persuaded; free will is an illusion, anyway.  We are programmed to believe we are not programmed.  And that’s part of the program, too, isn’t it?

David Chalmers says that the philosophical progression is from Materialism to Dualism to Panpsychism to Idealism; that makes sense: in the end it’s all 0’s and 1’s in the mind of God, anyway, but you’ve still got to love the internal experience of seeing that almost full moon over the top of the building that used to be something else, below the hill that once was another, right?

Finally, at the end of it all is the beginning of something else. There won’t be anyone left anymore to decipher what’s left.  It will be way more like biology than anthropology for our octopus descendents.

But if they’re lucky, they will have something analogous to the bicycle.  They’ll suction cup their eight legs to a device that has the same number of pedals as their octilateral symmetry and carry on over the crumbled remains of Seattle’s oldest bicycle path, just like in those moments somewhat before midnight on a perfectly dry fall evening in our fair city just days away from the full moon with lots of leaves turning their brightest red before falling to earth within the next few days; and then you’re home and glad of it because, after all, enough.

Dumb

In retrospect, it seems like a perfect metaphor for American foreign policy, or Napoleon’s catastrophic siege of Moscow, or maybe a co-dependent relationship with someone you just can’t quit: you know that the way forward is impassible, but you just keep going, becoming deeper and more deeply mired in the literal and metaphorical swamp; your mind—and a more reasonable colleague—tells you that you’ve got to turn back, but you neither take its advice nor their example, until finally, you just have to give up, as you should have almost right from the start, and return along the terrible way you came, only this time uphill.

Thank Heavens for taller and stronger comrades who lift you and machine up out of the mire and over the fallen barriers or else you would have found yourself trapped in the dark until someone else found you, who knows how long later, your rotting corpse eaten by maggots and worms, that last warm beer still in your bottle cage, dripping ever so slowly into the earth.

So, maybe it wasn’t quite all that dire, but it sure felt like it for much of the way back, until at last, asphalt re-appeared and there were only hills to contend with, no more slippery plank bridges or blackberry branches swatting and scratching your face.

Type 2 or Type 3 fun? Maybe some of both.  

In retrospect, the steeper-than-remembered mash up the back way to the Little League fields was swell; the Joseph Conrad-style descent into the heart of darkness, though, maybe you could have done without, although the starting trails that led one astray like that were impeccable.

But, anyway, it surely pays to do the dumb thing from time to time, if only to remind yourself how easily it is to be dumb and eventually, how dumb you can be.

And, perhaps, most importantly, how lucky you are for the chance to be dumb, and grateful you are, as well.

Backtrack

Of course there are worse things than backtracking along a route you’ve travelled earlier— global climate change, child abuse, country rock, getting hit by a bus—and since, as the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, famously reminds us, you can never step into the same river twice, therefore, there really is no backtracking, (it’s always forward-tracking even if you’re revisiting the same path); it really is silly to complain about instances of the dreaded “out and back” that legendary Point83 wayfarer, the sorely-missed Joeball, himself, usually made it a point to eschew; moreover, when the route is plotted out, more or less, by another legendary wayfarer, you probably should just embrace the direction whatever it is without being grumpy, even in jest.

However.

You can’t deny that once you’ve ridden by or past somewhere that it’s even more delightful to find a different way onward, especially if the way there affords you a spectacular view of the handiwork of the simulation designers, who, once again, here in final throes of summer, are pulling out all the stops to make things so very pleasing to the eye, that you can’t help thinking they’ve gone a bit overboard once more with the lavender mountain, the perfect crescent moon, and all ferry boats on the water just for show.

A perfectly-timed timed flat gives you something to do while drinking beer and chatting at the well-lighted park structure beneath the technological marvel that spans our fair city’s industrial artery and since the time spent and intoxicants ingested mean that your mind is no longer in the same place as it was an hour or so earlier, the way back is no longer the way there after all.

Which just goes to show that no matter how many times you do the same thing, it’s never the same.  Like those indigenous faces projected on the city park leaves, a slight breath of wind, a single fallen leaf, and it’s all brand new.

Sparkle

Shirtsleeve weather all evening on the last Thursday of summer; a pleasant ride featuring a different route to Beacon Hill; a cheery little fire overlooking our fair city’s industrial core; and getting rousted out of a gathering spot for “trespassing” only once.

But, of course, the big story in town wasn’t this, but, rather, the stadium concert of Queen Bey, which filled downtown with silver sparkle aplenty (and which you could hear all the way from Jefferson Park when there wasn’t a plane overhead or an eighteen-wheeler using its compression brakes on I-5).

Wow. Words fail.

Ceaseless

This quote, pulled from the Northern Light, the 16-page in-house Christmas 1934 publication for Northern Light Insurance: “‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new.’ How better exemplified is the law of ceaseless change than in the long road traveled from cave to skyscraper?”

Yep.  

Back in 1929, when the Northern Life Tower opened its doors to the public, the new art-deco skyscraper must have seemed like the perfect exemplification of Seattle’s ceaselessly changing landscape and an ideal illustration of how far our fair city had come from the aspirations embodied in its older, slightly taller, sister, the Smith Tower, whose neoclassical design would have appeared appallingly dated in comparison to the new building’s distinctive, ziggurat exterior, clad in thirty-three shades of brick designed to effect a gradient which lightens from the bottom to the apogee of the building.

Nowadays, you get a similar feeling for the impermanence of all existence when you stand atop the never-before-assayed tight-spiral parking garage as the sun turns a few wispy clouds golden while viewing the nearly hundred year-old building and reflect upon the imminent demise of a not nearly as impressive physical structure soon to be swept aside by our condominium overlords, a rumination that does, at least, provide a plan for where to go next, which is, after all, just what you’re hoping for from the present most of the time.

You’ve got to keep moving if you’re to get anywhere, especially when there are deadlines to be met and, as it turned out, just the right balance between forward and sideways was effected to make the preferred mode of crossing over possible.

Sunset Hill Park, lovely as always, was really more about the moonrise and how the lunar corona expanded like heavenly watercolors across the sky as Earth’s satellite ballooned upwards.

And then it was off to the aforementioned doomed water(wheel)ing hole.  Still there for now, but soon to changeth, yielding place to new.

Yep.

Leisurely

The good thing about getting slower with age as a cyclist is that you get to spend more time on the bike.  

A commute that used to take ninety minutes now requires almost two hours.  That’s close to another hour in the saddle a day, which means that many more opportunities to turn the pedals and admire the natural world.

Or when out with the bike gang of Thursday night in late summer, you get to take enough time longer to arrive at the chosen destination that not only are you able to enjoy your own leisurely pace throughout, it’s also the case that the fire is already blazing by the time you get there.

It’s no doubt just a matter of time before your lack of alacrity requires the remedy of an electric motor, but that eventuality is to be postponed for as long as possible, knowing, of course, that once it’s availed of, there’s no turning back.  However, it is a good piece of advice, courtesy of the child friends’ friends, that one should reserve the motorized cycle for the onerous tasks, thereby providing less incentive to “flatten the hills,” as it’s often put.

As long as you know where the group is headed, you’re never really lost; you’re just on your way to being there.  And if this entails an interim stop at the home of departing old friends, so much the better.  You’re not in a rush if you’re not in a rush and if the journey is the destination, then you’ve always arrived.

As the dog days of August come to a close, you want to squeeze all of the last remaining nectar out of summer in every way possible.  That means you never pass up an opportunity to swim nor a chance to do the crazy old man dance around the fire.

There are probably things burned that don’t need to be burned, but if that slows down departure, why not?