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.