32 Reasons Why Bicycling is Better than Sex
And #33: Sex can’t take you across a floating bridge to a beach in the fancy part of town and then all the way around the always larger-than-expected island to a roadhouse bar and then back across that same bridge to another bar that wasn’t quite as ambitious a destination as originally intended but still represents a pretty solid tally of miles and smiles on a perfect late summer evening in the Pacific Northwest.
That is all.
I mean, I’ve been doing so since I was a teenager, more than a decade before my interlocutor was even conceived; and if he manages to still be enjoying the enhanced “toke and spoke” when reaching my current age, it’s almost certain I will have re-merged by atoms with the cosmos by then, and if the youngest in attendance—our new friend, Armando—is still doing so when he’s as old as me, it will be the year 2069, meaning that two-wheel shenanigans will have a direct lineage of more than 100 years; again, not “forever” literally, but certainly, close enough for jazz.
Forever is a long time, to be sure, but one can experience it in a mere instant, when that moment has the timeless quality of pure presence, like when you’re descending darkened paths with only your headlight to guide you and there’s no future, no past, only the now of two-wheeled joy connecting you, in that timeless moment, to the teenager, young man, middle-aged person, and old codger who ought to know better—all those selves merging into one.
If that’s not forever, what is?
As the Buddha reminds us, it’s all impermanent; everything arises and passes away; in the meantime, though, as long as you keep pedaling, the ride goes on and on, forever, right here and now.
We used to gather a hundred or more of our closest friends and relations in a public park, roll out half a football field length of plastic, wet it with a garden hose, and spend the evening drinking grain-alcohol based party drinks and throwing ourselves down that slippery pathway, pine cones and tree roots be damned!
And we’d grapple in a kiddie swimming pool filled with goo while sporting glowstick jewelry until the cops made us fold up our party and take it to a crowded bar halfway across town where we’d sing karaoke until last call.
We thought nothing of riding all the way down south on one of Seattle’s longest streets to another town just to drink a beer in a pub that’s no longer there.
We would happily cross a floating bridge and head farther and farther east to end up at a real-live bicycle velodrome where we shotgunned beers and raced around until well after midnight.
We’d congregate on bicycles by the dozens and pedal to a fancy city park and cook mountains of waffles al fresco using the publicly-supplied electricity to do so.
We’d carry loads of Christmas trees on bicycles to the edge of the Puget Sound and light them on fire in a conflagration so large that the fire department would be called to extinguish it—and then we’d ride to another park and do it again with the leftovers.
We’d assemble five score or more of us, all dressed in white with red sashes, to gambol in a sylvan glade with people dressed as bulls and matadors.
We’d take a ferry boat and scale a mountain on two-wheelers to eat mushrooms and dance around a fire on a Thursday evening and still be back in time Friday morning for breakfast.
Now, we just ride to a parking garage for sunset viewing and a lake for moonrise swimming.
But that’s cool.
And maybe the path itself isn’t meant for speed; you’ve still got to snake around a bit and watch for pedestrians and electric scooters, but it sure beats taking your life into your hands as cars and trucks zoom by you on Alaskan Way underneath a crumbling viaduct.
And maybe it is fairly easy (especially when under the influence of cannabis flower, bubble hash, and sunshine) to miss the slight wiggle to stay on the trail past the ferry building, but who knew there was another pristine bicycle path to the east of the freeway that eventually reconnects farther south just where you need it to.
And maybe the first “Jack” in the traditional “Two Jack Parks” route isn’t all that spectacular of a venue, but when the sun is starting to set and so lays a flaming sheet of gold atop the surface of the Duwamish you can’t help but be a little awestruck at your good fortune to have been able to arrive their on two wheels via such a pleasant pathway.
And maybe the visit to the second of the Two Jacks isn’t unprecedented—in fact, it may be one of the MOST precedented spots—but the view of our fair city from the platform suspended above the Superfund site still never fails to amaze; lots more high-rises and a lit-up Ferris wheel that wasn’t there the first time some twenty years ago; what will it look like in another two decades?
So maybe some Thursday night on two wheels in 2045 we’ll find out.
I’ve come to this conclusion based on the observation that the last four times (at least) that the miscreant bicycle gang has been visited by representatives of the Seattle Fire Department, lights flashing and sirens—if not blaring, at least sounding—it’s been because some rich people somewhere have called in the alert.
Whether it’s old money in Queen Anne, slightly newer, but still longstanding bucks in the Denny Blaine neighborhood, mid-century modern cash around Laurelhurst, or more nouveau riches phoning it in from Seattle’s fanciest dining establishment, it’s always the wealthy and entitled who, clutching their pearls, pick up the phone, and ring the tocsin to summon the hook and ladder crew to come out and investigate where the flames are coming from.
In this most recent case, it was a simple box fire that had burned up the box it came in, so I guess that make sense, but at least no one was naked (for very long) in the place where nakedness seems to be the real source of pearl clutching (and phone picking up) of late.
In spite of the alarm, none of it was particularly alarming; the firefighters themselves, were pretty sanguine about the whole thing and yours truly, under the influence of plenty of edible influence found the proceedings entirely delightful, right down to the just-stepped-off-the-pages-of-the-firefighter-calendar fireman who responded first to the call.
Plus, who wasn’t basking in the glow of seeing a fallen comrade restored to vertical, plenty to warm one’s heart even without the extra-judicial flames.
Thanks to the aforementioned influential influences, I kept getting separated from the group on the ride over, but with the beacons alit, I was confident about reuniting; if rich people can confidently tell where we are, so can I.
So, thanks to whatever series of past events have ended up with these events, and remind me never to forget how lucky we are and how fragile is the human body.
Hundreds of such spins, but never before has a tiger in a shopping cart blown past me; see how you never know?
One can pay homage to those who are fortunately still with us even when they are not. Taking the steep way and the going forth and setting the world on fire through the woods, while classic, is not to be discounted for that; some things are classic because they are.
Notice how easily arise internal complaints about the lack of cycling infrastructure, but then when you’re finally on it, the only shortcomings are user error.
Finding the place that is always a little farther away than you remember requires remembering to remember, but there it is, just as remembered.
Can a single lovely evening make up for a whole week of turmoil?
Perhaps it’s not a balance like that; after all, the total amount of loveliness experienced and paid attention to in those few hours surely outweighs all the rest of the days put together and makes you wonder all over again why, in this world with so much ugliness, are we showered with such shimmering beauty, and not only that, but it happens by bicycle, as well.
But one could say the same thing about the rides themselves and while, occasionally, you hear rumblings about the demise of Thursday night shenanigans, here they come again, complete with stoney pedaling, convenience store nachos, illicit firepits, and the prospect of the authorities arriving rather than just roaring by, flashing lights and sirens ablaze.
I started this practice in part as a way of letting the world know that I had survived the ride home, often quite inebriated, from some far corner of our fair city to the central area in which I reside.
I imagined that it could be an open question for some as to whether Professor Dave arrived home safe and sound, and so, in somewhat of the same fashion as I always (except on those very few occasions when the Bolivian Marching Powder has been marching) send a midnight text home to confirm my salubrity (if not sobriety), I took to penning (well, keyboarding, to be precise), these little 327-word post-mortems as a kind of message in a bottle that I wasn’t lying in a ditch somewhere or squashed flat by an 18-wheeler somewhere within Seattle’s vast industrial core.
I could stop, I really could, but then how could I so easily reference events from the past, like that mock funeral for a now long-lost friend, may he rest in peace, or that other time, on the occasion of the bachelor party of his “sister,” perhaps my favorite of all these hundreds of postings, because of what it didn’t say, not what it did.
Point83 has been a reliable muse for me all these years, encompassing, at one time or another, all nine of the classical Goddesses, although it’s probably the one responsible for comedy, Thalia, who predominates.
Still laughing after so many years, aren’t we all?
The mind is a strange beast; what goes in doesn’t always come back out; but the good news there is that if you don’t remember something, then doing it once more is like doing it for the first time all over again.
I suppose that’s the promise of advanced senility: every day is brand new; you can do the same thing repeatedly and never get bored.
Which is pretty much the program for Thursday night rides; now entering into my 20th different year of doing this, it still can be fresh; while I’m sure the route to Georgetown is one that I’ve taken before, it remains nevertheless remarkable not to have to take the bridge over the tracks—as far as I can recall, anyway.
Who knows what the new year will bring; perhaps a two-wheeled spin around the industrial heart of our fair city is a way of avoiding the inevitable; or maybe things will proceed pretty much as they always have, and I suppose that as long as you can keep on doing what you’ve been doing then there’s really not that much to complain or worry about, especially when the rain holds off until long after you’re home abed and the annoying sound emanating from your rear wheel that you thankfully diagnosed and treated never returned, making you fall in love with your bike all over again—the theme of the evening once more.
At this point, what’s behind is way more than what lies ahead, but that doesn’t weigh you down; it just creates a solid foundation for ascent. We are our histories, but we’re also our futures; where we’ve come from points the way to where we’re going.
Will there be beer in heaven? Will there be bikes? No one can say for certain, but surely it’s heavenly that they’re here now.
