Additionally

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.

Yes

As we rode past the gate with St. Ignatius’ admonition to “Go forth and set the world on fire,” (ite, inflammate omnia in the original Latin according to the internet), doing our best to embody that very spirit on a somewhat damp evening, Ben mused aloud to me, “Will we be able to just keep getting drunk and stoned and riding bikes forever?” and while literally, that’s impossible, I think that from the standpoint of one’s own lived experience, (within the context of the “forever” that comprises one’s own life and the lives of those in one’s life), the answer is indeed a resounding “Yes!”

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.

Cool

Oh, man, we used to be so fucking cool!

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.