Emulsion

On the way to the meet-up, when I ran across him near the downtown library, Shaddup Joe opined that some people aren’t really happy unless they’re miserable.

And that seems right.

In fact, it was perfectly well illustrated during the route from Westlake, through the woods and over numerous rivers in parking lots and at intersections, to Wizard Staff Park, in a downpour loud enough to simulate the sound of public fountains as water poured off the roof of park shelters and in rivulets down one’s neck and cuffs on a night the weather gods seemed determined to make amends for the unseasonably dry autumn we’ve had so far.

Drowned rats never had it so good.

(But when Fancy Fred announces that he has a plan for exploring dark and twisty roads that few of us have ever been on before, bike riders come out—unless they’re sissies [who, it turns out, according to graffiti I keep seeing all over town, rule!]—even if the deluge begins right at the allotted rendezvous moment, an eventuality that I, at least, attribute to that long-haired sorcerer pulling out all the stops to make things interesting for those who arrived.)

The more puzzling question is whether it’s possible that some folks aren’t miserable unless they’re happy; that one seems less intuitively likely.

However, I can imagine this converse combination, too, and did, as we wound through the Cowen Park corkscrew.  Joyfully splashing along over tree roots and fallen branches, I couldn’t help but feel sad for anyone missing out on the fun and while it might be pushing it to say that was misery, the additional fact that you could be loving the company lends credence to the claim.

Joeball and I talked about riding gingerly on newly-soaked streets when the oil rises and cars doe-see-doe at summery speeds; ultimately, my own sodden route was neither particularly long nor fast, but ultimately, it was as miserably happy as could be.

Weakling

Sometimes, all you’re really up for on a bike ride is the bike ride.

Thanks, in part, to the demise, in the last second of the fourth quarter, of your favorite football team, and no doubt, to a week of work that involved more hand-holding and back-patting of colleagues and students than you’re used to after the recent months of relative leisure, the undeniable appeals of alcohol and fraternity fail to fully appeal.

You wander the bar a bit, impressed that, contrary to history, the assembled have yet to be 86’ed, and then decide it’s time to pedal home.

The route back’s not nearly so amusing as the route there; it doesn’t even involve a walk across the much-loved Ballard Locks, a place where miscreants and scofflaws turn into surprisingly good citizens, merely wondering aloud what constitutes cycling while still doing pretty much exactly what the signs say one must.

Moreover, you realize that even though you’ve left the ride, it still remains with you: every time you see a bike lamp blinking towards you, there’s that little frisson of hope you feel whenever there’s that chance of running across cyclists you know.

Occasionally, you even consider turning back, but the road unfolds too quickly and before you know it, you’re climbing past Convention Centers and hipster bars and then over the topmost top of the last big hill.

There are still stars visible, a phenomenon the weather prognosticators tell us will be in short supply soon, so you dawdle over the vista before plummeting down towards your final destination.

The last few blocks fly by and then you’re putting the rig away and locking it up.  You stand in your backyard while, noticing it’s the earliest you’ve done so on a Thursday in over a month—not bad for an old guy and thus, you can turn in and drop off soothed by the knowledge that there are others still out there, pedaling the night away.

Routing

There’s a difference between being on A ride and on THE ride, but it seems to me that if you arrive at the place where the cycling miscreants have assembled, then you’re AT it, at least, if not ON it completely, especially if your route there was longer than the one taken by the masses and even more so if previous to your arrival, you’d been hanging out with friends from work enjoying the same sort of free-flowing libations that characterized the earlier part of the evening for the others.

In other words, if the head start they got wasn’t really a head start at all, then, by the time you catch up, it’s fair to say that it’s no longer a matter of catching up at all, but rather, of reminding yourself that as long as it’s a Thursday night and you’re out on two wheels, then you’re pretty much already there, even if you haven’t arrived yet.

I took a route from Kenmore to Crown Hill I wouldn’t have assayed had it been earlier in the day when more cars were out, and, as it was, the shortest distance between two points turned out to be a pretty straight line even if that included a climb up a couple long hills and at least one descent I had to do over when my short-term memory for places was even shorter than usual.

In any case, arriving at the water-wheeling watering hole, I was quickly enveloped in the full-throated conviviality of the assembled, so much so that I was able to stay awake long enough to have the sleepiest ride home I’ve had in a long time, one of those ones where you choose the scariest, least efficient route possible, across high bridges and along busy streets just to make sure you can keep your eyes open until your house finally pulls up in front of you just as if you’d been on the ride all along.

Wizardry

The power of human norming systems is awe-inspiring; peer pressure, even when many of those “peers” are from another whole generation of history, can make a person do almost anything.

Imagine: you arrive at a public park featuring one of the finest panoramas of our fair city in town, on a warm and dry fall evening with the almost full harvest moon shining brightly above, and, at first, you can’t possibly see why anyone would duct tape beer cans together and affix them to their hand to make progressively taller “wizard staffs” to quaff from and do battle with, but after a couple of cold ones yourself and having also imbibed the strange mixture of dystopian fantasy tale and frat party bacchanalia engendered by the activity itself, you can’t possibly imagine why anyone would not join in the sport.

It’s likely that P.J. Diddy ended up with the longest and perhaps widest tower in the end, although the Angry Hippy, boasting that nobody in the world is less competitive than he, had the early lead in the clubhouse.

Later, there was ample opportunity to feel like a kid again, even for those who still are and that old douchecock sonzabitch Miles was right about only getting one chance to go down the slide for the first time, so you might as well go head first and upside-down.

Eventually, though, the hive mind coalesces on departure and pretty soon, just as you’d hoped, you’re following a line of blinkies down the Hipster Highway, an experience that can’t help but evoke a bit of nostalgia for jungles that once were but which also reminds you that there’s no time like the present, especially on nights like this.

There was magic in the air: how else could you get from Airport Way to Chinatown with eyes closed?

And then, another whole world in the mirror, a land where wizards dance and unicorns, thanks to their peers, are never kept down.

Soundtrack

When the face-melting volume of tehJobies bicycle-mounted disco first kicks in, it quickly becomes the ride’s soundtrack, the music behind the scene, even one as strangely juxtaposed as thirty Caucasians on bikes rolling through the city’s industrial wasteland to the throbbing beat of the Geto Boys’ “Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta.”

But eventually, the pulsating vibrations so wrap you up the separation between soundtrack and scene is so flattened that it becomes one thing: you pedal to the beat but it pedals you, as well, and in spite of the fact that what’s playing might be Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero,” it’s hard to tell where the music starts and individual personal identity begins.

So, when the tunes are turned off for a maintenance break as you congregate on a concrete platform over the river at the city’s heart, it takes a few moments to find yourself and you feel, at first, like Presidential candidate Ross Perot’s running mate, Admiral Stockdale, who, I learned last night, infamously opened his remarks at a televised Vice-Presidential debate by asking, “Who am I?  Why am I here?”

But soon enough, you’ve got your land legs back and you’re learning about the history of the shipping container and wondering aloud whether there might be other values to be stressed than just efficiency in the world of maritime trade.

Then however, the freshly-repaired sound system roars back to life and even the most recalcitrant of dancers can hardly help stepping out despite the fact that a fly on the wall glancing at those getting low might wonder briefly whether he’d landed at a park in Seattle or bar in San Francisco.

Fortunately, though, the beer runs out and the ride stumbles to the favorite watering hole of visiting groomsmen where Reverend Derrickito can find his new calling as a pitcher-swilling preacher for whom the word “God” is music—since every time it’s uttered, he takes another swig.

Conflagration

You didn’t have to be stoned to appreciate how beautiful the sunset was as the ride stretched out in a long line along Elliot Avenue en route to the Ballard Bridge, but I’m sure it helped.

The pinks and purples of the dying light made a masterpiece of the background to our speedy convoy, a loveliness engine that propelled an arrival at the traditional provisions stop whose backwards-spinning sign’s clock read merely “8:15” as we rolled up, surely a record even taking into account Derrick’s car wash pit stop.

Dump no liquid!  Drains to bay! 

(Which is sorta what we did in order to find ourselves overlooking the Sound on an evening that while it wasn’t officially the final Thursday of summer was probably the last time this year we’ll enjoy the season’s weather—so it was appropriate that such heat was generated by the fire, whose endless supply of wood continued to be augmented by one larger tree trunk after another, even as the stock of beer struggled to keep pace.)

We were joined by intrepid members and guests of our Dead Baby colleagues including DB Terry himself who later treated us to a rousing rendition of Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive” with custom lyrics for all those with even a little fondness for riding steel horses through the city at night.

I got to yell at some trains and use much larger humans as baffles to regulate the heat of the flames, so what more is there, really; some things never get old in spite of the inexorable advance of the calendar and a school year now just spinning on the rim.

We can never quite know what the future will hold; so bigger fires, louder songs, and longer rides make plenty of sense in some strange way.

You could pedal all the way across the country like visitors from a foreign land, but still, snaking through those woods to the coast, you’d be home.

Glorious

The word “glorious” comes from the Latin gloriosus, meaning  (among other things) renowned, famous, boastful, and full of pride, all of which are terms that could be used to describe aspects of the ride, which—with only a couple of wrong turns—found its way to the charming waterside park I’d scouted out earlier in the day. 

It was Fancy Fred, I think, who described the descent down the fresh asphalt through the woods to Lake Washington as glorious and my fellow aqua-phile Jimmy, I believe, who used the term to refer to the experience of paddling about in the water, which—at this late date in the summer—remains slightly warmer than the night air as we eke out the last few swims of the season.

But there’s another meaning of “glorious,”— an archaic usage that is even more appropriate.  Back in the day, people used the word as a synonym for “blissfully drunk.”

So at it turns out, many were glorious on such a glorious evening. 

Glory be.

I’ll never be the wayfarer that Joeball is, nor an organizer like tehJobies, but I’m glorious (in the non-archaic sense) to note that I did manage to navigate the pack, with only a couple hiccups, to a place that few, if any, had been to before on a Thursday night.  And if my preferred route out of the park wasn’t the one most people took, so be it. 

The quartet that did meander my way were treated to a loping ride on the moonlit ridge and views of Seattle’s downtown industrial core that were, in a word, glorious.

As the days get shorter and the nights cooler, one can’t help but feel a little melancholy at the passing of summer; so it’s heartwarming to stockpile memories of such evenings as sustenance for the dark months ahead. 

Of course, as the night wore on, there fewer and fewer recollection to be had; I’m certain, though, they were glorious.

Alps

As we rode along Eliot Bay, Fancy Fred regaled me with tales of cycling legend Jobst Brandt, who, as the internet attests to, used to cycle through the European Alps every summer, routinely burning up his rims and tires as he braked on the long descents, thereby giving rise, of necessity, to the development of his expertise as a wheel-builder, which just goes to show that destruction is sometimes (if not always) a required precursor to creation; from the ashes, phoenix-like, will rise something new, or at least the conditions for innovation to flourish.

Still, it’s hard to imagine that much will come from the smoldering palettes being sprayed down by an amused-looking firefighter in Fremont as I returned from Ballard after having departed from the ride remnants some thirty minutes earlier, although perhaps there’s a story that might emerge under the right conditions and in the proper time.

In any case, the main thing I thought in thinking about Jobst’s adventures is that while they’d be amazing, I’m sure, a person might just as well satisfy their appetite for stunning scenery while biking by touring the Puget Sound in summer, or even more specifically, just by pedaling around Seattle on an August evening when the sky is smudged with scattered clouds and the setting sun imparts a tinge of pink to their heavenly edges.

Later, on the dock with beer can chinking where I rode numerous extended figure-eights to keep warm, the quarter moon appeared in all its half-moon shaped glory, an apt metaphor, I’d say, for how words inevitably fail to capture the way things really are when you’re there out in it.

A cover charge inevitably split the group up, but no texts were needed to regroup: you just rode in the last direction people were headed and stopped at the closest bar. 

So maybe it wasn’t a summer tour of the Alps , there was still beauty there and tales to be told.

Jump

I sort of regret not riding the bmx bike off the ramp into the lake, but I’m certain that I’d regret a broken neck had I done it and failed even more, so I’ll be content with the memory of having been there and observed those flying wheels and bodies, enjoying the vicarious thrill of momentary weightlessness before two-wheeled splashdown on a perfect summer night for doing so.

P.J. Diddy celebrated his 35th birthday by turning 15 all over again and taking the sort of chances that as a teenager don’t even seem like chances but at a certain age strike me, (at least after a couple beers and in the twilight on a bike with no brakes), as falling just outside the boundary of acceptable risk—an assessment which I realize marks me squarely as over-the-hill, but that’s okay, discretion, as they say, being the better part of valor in some cases.

Besides, it’s not as if the evening needed improving on from my standpoint anyway: shirtsleeve riding all night and a long swim during which I had a fish-eye view of the riders as they went air and then water born, some getting rad, others holding on for dear life, all, in any case, to be commended for their courage and/or mocked for their recklessness accordingly.

The birthday boy himself managed to see stars on at least two of his jumps, one of which inspired Wonder Woman to leap into the lake after him in case rescue efforts were necessary, but fortunately, some precautions had been taken; the lifejacket did its job and no one sank to the bottom like a stone.

See?  As we live longer, we do learn some things—like how to live longer, for instance. 

And if that means going at it more gently, it doesn’t mean we’re not still seeking thrills same as ever, it just means we’re finding them more easily: like right there in front of our eyes.

Pinned

At the end of the evening (for me), I was standing at the bar watching, from the corner of my eye, the oddly-compelling Olympic track cycling team time trial and reflecting on the noble human aspiration to work together in order to create something beyond the abilities of a single person while continually striving for ever-higher levels of performance, but, of course, it wasn’t the onscreen cyclists who had inspired my ruminations, but rather, the activities and actors associated with yet another of tehJobies’ (annual) pre-Dead Baby Downhill Drunken Slip-n-Slide Dance Party extravaganzas.

The idea of “outdoing oneself” is fascinating because it suggests that we have at least two selves, one of whom surpasses another; I might conjecture, however, that in this latest incarnation of the Thursday night ride that precedes the self-styled “Greatest Party Known to Humankind” that the neon mastermind behind things must have had many more than just a pair of identities in order to pull it all together and, even more impressively, convince others to play along.

Tom Sawyer, after all, only had to persuade a couple kids to paint a fence; tehJobies, by contrast, induced several score of (putative) adults to consume cocktails made with grain alcohol, strip down to their skivvies or bathing suits, adorn themselves with glowing plastic, and then proceed to not only hurl themselves downhill over a wet plastic tarp in the dark, but even more impressively, to climb into a kiddie pool filled with a gelatinous goo and wrestle one another to the cheers and catcalls of a rabid crowd.

I myself refrained from most of the shenanigans, believing that, when the cops showed up, it would be easier to explain things if I weren’t topless in a bathing suit, enjoying instead the efffervescent “Pink Elephants on Parade” visuals made possible by bikes and people wearing glowsticks; wonder of wonders, though, the authorities never did appear.

Perhaps next year, though, when selves are inevitably outdone once more.

Hear

If I were riding down the Burke-Gilman trail (or Westlake Boulevard for that matter), and I came wheel to wheel with a line of forty or so cyclists carrying beer and other provisions pedaling to the beat of a throbbingly loud bicycle-mounted sound system who invited me to come with them for a swim in Lake Washington on what may have been the warmest evening of the year so far, I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t turn around and follow without hesitation.

When I mentioned this to tehSchkott, he pointed out that there’s your difference right there: I’d U-turn for fun because I’m the sort of person who does that; all those spandexed teeth-gritting riders we tried unsuccessfully to entice didn’t because they’re not.

Of course, this is circular reasoning, but that doesn’t make the conclusion false even if the argument’s fallacious—which is, I think, a decent metaphor for the evening’s experience: it’s undeniably true that the water is fine, the beer refreshing, and the music festive, even if the manner in which those outcomes were derived is questionable.

The waxing quarter moon formed a perfect ear in the sky as if our planet’s satellite were listening in, making me suspect that Luna, too, would have turned her celestial chariot around to follow the music even if that sometimes meant pedaling dangerously close to the sounds of Katy Perry or yet another playing of Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler.”

Pasty torsos held a meeting in the water while less hardy souls mingled on land as dusk settled and Springsteen crooned; eventually the ride stumbled west to a patio near a different, but still connected body of water—which is, now that I think of it, another reasonably appropriate metaphor for the bike gang experience: the names and particulars are different but the flow is all one, so really, even if you don’t turn around, you’re still part of the same vastness whether you embrace it or not.

Noble

This is how excited I was: on my way to catch up with this year’s Running of the Bulls ride, every time I saw a group of people wearing white tops, I slammed on my brakes, thinking that I had found the assembled masses, a tactic that probably only added ten or fifteen seconds to my route, seeing how fast I was pedaling to get there.

Arriving, then, at South Lake Union less than an hour en retard (quite a feat, if I do say so myself given that I started out for my destination 1500 miles and half a day away, in Santa Fe, NM), I was rewarded with the sight of more than four score cyclists in the customary garb along with a handful of people who weren’t actually bulls but were nevertheless dressed in manner that suggested male cattle, prompting me to immediately take the ceremonial plunge into the water, my first such foray into the drink on this year’s summer riding calendar.

Traditions happen almost by accident as like minds agree to reinvent an occasion occasionally; at the current rate of growth, sociologists in the future may be confounded as to whether Pamplona or Seattle came first.

Who’s copying whom?

Or is it, like the invention of the internal combustion engine, one of those developments that emerges concurrently around the globe, a hundredth monkey phenomenon, the human hive-mind giving rise to a spontaneous expression of our species’ collective unconsciousness?

Or maybe it was just the ideal summer evening, purple clouds filtering golden sunbeams over the park, white clothes stained burgundy through pink complementing the celestial hues perfectly.

Bottle rockets hardly needed launching to augment the festivities, but they were, of course, to the surprise of no one and the chagrin of just a few.

And then, the plastered pelaton was off again, red sashes trailing, and while minor crashes lay ahead, the noble tradition was once more secured, bull taken by its horns.

Flux

One of the main lessons, as I understand it, to be taken from Vedic scriptures is the impermanence of all things.  The Buddhists talk about this, too, and, for that matter, modern science tells us the same thing: even our sun will eventually burn up and out, consuming the earth and destroying whatever remnants of human culture and history might still possibly remain—by itself an extremely unlikely prospect some several billion years from now.

Like the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus said, “All is flux, nothing stands still.”  Reality is constantly emerging, oozing into and out of being; moreover, it’s all just illusion; there is only one unified All; we are merely whitecaps on the vast ocean of Being; in time, we fall back into the One that is Brahman that is Atman that is neither and both.

That said, however, it sure is fun to act as if we are individual monads travelling through space as we pedal about town, not quite sure at first where we’re heading, but relatively confident that as long as you can keep the bike in front of your in sight, you’ll eventually arrive at some place where drinks can be drunk, eats can be eaten, and stones can be skipped in a lake that, this year, at least, turns out to be too cold for anyone, even the putative birthday boy, to swim in.

Summer’s coming slowly this year, but the chill won’t last (nor, of course, will the warmth once it arrives), which only goes to illustrate the point from above: all of this is ephemeral, so we might as well enjoy it as much as we can, even if that means there’s not a perfect outdoor fire nor is the bar something new and different.

Because, after all, even the same thing isn’t ever the same; like Heraclitus said, you can step in that river over and over, all you want, but you’ll never step in it again.

Inflation

You can have your pick of metaphors for .83: how about shuttered liquor stores and fresh booze aisles in the supermarket?  Or maybe an indoor firepit whose main power is to melt the ice in your drink?  Or something like bikes being carried down three flights of steps and then ridden straight up cliff-like hills?

But the one I think does a particularly fine job of capturing the spirit of the thing is how, in order to locate the hole in your tube, you’ve got to pump the shit out of it until it looks like some sort of hilarious donut hula hoop and that’s when you find what you’re looking for.

After all, many is the time the ride doesn’t really get started until things have been pumped up beyond all recognition so to speak and even though last night’s shenanigans never, (for me, at least), attained that transcendent level of overinflation, they were, in a word, sufficiently expanded that I could feel the telling whisper of air that lets you know the mystery’s been solved and you’ll be able to patch things up for another turn of the wheel in days to come.

Plus, as we stood en masse overlooking our fair city from the eastern slopes of Magnolia, there was that toddler ginger on his two-wheeler roaring dangerously around the cliff edges of the park again and again as if auditioning for admission to the drunken bike gang circa 2032 or so.

Alternately, I imagined that the little freckle-faced dude was actually our lord and master, the exalted reborn lama, showing us the way it’s done—albeit in a bodily form unrecognizable to normal perceptions.

But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?  Getting to see what you usually don’t see, even if it requires you to go beyond the usual modes of observation.

And if that means you’ve got to risk the blowout in your face that deafens you, so be it, metaphorically speaking.

Rendevous

I knew I had to be close to catching up to the ride when I was forced to pedal up and back through a switchbacked handicapped-accessible ramp into the deserted park.  And when I crossed not one, but two darkened baseball fields and descended into the lightless bowl of trees, I was confident that if I called out “Brother! Brother!” in the classic Wreyford-style, I would hear the echoing calls of one familiar voice or another, which indeed was the case, as the Angry Hippy welcomed me into the fold of several dozen intrepid miscreants arrayed about in the north (suburban) woods.

There’s something especially satisfying about heading out solo later in the evening to rendezvous with the bike gang, especially if they’re in the out of doors, and even moreso if you’ve already been out for a solid pre-funk of a sushi dinner with your loving family: it’s an embarrassment of riches, frankly, but thanks to liberal applications of sake over the meal, you’re not embarrassed at all.

On occasions like this, it takes but a moment to feel re-integrated into the fold; before you know it, you’re telling lies with the best of them and blowing on the fire to coax it into a blaze cheerful enough to inspire a moment’s panic from some of the assembled when a car rolls by (a feeling  not long-lasting enough to discourage the taking of questionably-legal routes on the way home, but I digress.)

And so, even though my night among the ridership was, all things considered, fairly brief, it clearly had all the elements necessary for complete enjoyment: bicycles, bushwhacking, and beer, and a brief stop at a bar that will forever have a special place in my heart for its bringing together of disparate elements in my own life.

Which I guess is part of the ongoing appeal of nights out on two wheels: when you eventually catch up to the ride, you find yourself, too.

Tug

The thing about life is that no matter how long you’ve been living it, there’s always something you’ve never lived through before.

Like the vision of a vertical rainbow column, as fat as your thumb on the horizon, rising straight up to the taffy-pulled clouds, or the long patio of a new old bar which turns out instead to just be the sidewalk.

Sublime and ridiculous merge where heaven and earth come together, so that even those on the lam from themselves can’t help but be entertained by the route, familiar though it be.

One goes on the lookout for the past and finds instead, the present, suspended above a Superfund with the city’s best tableau in the background.  Where else in the world does the amazing appear so commonplace?  No wonder you better guard the jewels; who can pay heed to safety where such scenery abounds?

Moreover, snaking through Mother Earth’s womb never fails to delight; trail all the memories you can, the wonder keg still gets tapped; familiarity may breed contempt with families and food; on bikes, though, the old never ages.

In dog racing, the greyhounds despair of catching that mechanical rabbit, no matter how often they run, but run they still do, seemingly content with the chase—and after all, isn’t that plenty?

It’s not how far the ride goes but how far it takes you and sometimes that’s all the way back to where it began; I’m sure there may have been earlier events but none with such impact, so we’ll call it the first.

All I know is that life’s too short to be filled with so much; there must be an alternate universe where doppelgangers rack up miles in our memories for all these scenarios to unfold over and over again in new ways. 

Perhaps it’s happening between the superstrings of reality like water molecules dividing the sunset into separate distinct hues.

Or maybe it’s just another spinning of wheels.

Sprung

The Angry Hippy pointed out what was obvious: on no other ride had we ever stayed on the same street for so long and so far.

Granted, besides Rainier Boulevard, it’s hard to imagine any other roadway that could afford us such unbroken mileage—(Aurora, maybe?)—but still, it was pretty impressive to stay in the same lane for more than ten miles, continually scanning storefronts for that elusive watering hole south of Seward Park until, before you knew it—or maybe more like 10 minutes after you noticed—there we were all the way out of Seattle, in a place whose scale is better suited to airplanes than bikes and eventually, drinking beer in a pub that, had it been even a mile or two farther on, might have been the cause of real mutiny, or at least, a heckuva lot more grumbling.

As it was, though, the adventure unfolded into one of those nights where the bulk of the outside portion is on two wheels around the city (rather than on two feet around a fire) and included some fine off-road action as we entered the magic riparian wormhole that somehow connects downtown Renton with north Tukwila.

You know the evening is a success when your tires are covered in mud the next morning but you still have your wallet and keys and all the gear you stashed in your bag but didn’t need given how lovely the weather stayed from start to finish.

Tradition, such as it is, has sometimes had it that there’s a preview of the birthday bike race route the Thursday before the event, but this was much better, especially since it afforded riders the opportunity to pass by 55th Avenue South, one of the few 55-themed roads in Seattle that Saturday’s course will miss.

Which just goes to show how the unexpected is so often superior to the planned-for; even mile after mile on the same road, you’re still surprised.

Illuminate

The highly-unlikely was reported in the newspaper to be slightly possible: they said there was a chance, albeit a slim one, that the aurora borealis would be visible in the late night skies over Seattle.

And while we never did see the Northern Lights, we were treated to an equally stunning visual display: the full moon reflecting so brightly off Lake Washington that a quicksilver fog seemed to hover over the water

Which just goes to show that it’s what you don’t expect that typically exceeds expectations.

Or to put it in more specific terms: just when you think you’ve seen it all on Thursday nights you haven’t.

Like all of sudden in a place you’ve been several times before, there’s a bona-fide skate park with dudes who can “shred” the half-pipe and an African-American youth who slyly mouths “White Power” (although at least one person heard “Bike Power”) when thirty Cacausians on bikes suddenly appear.

At the same time, some things never get old; no matter how many times you get to bomb non-stop downhill for such an hilariously long time it still feels brand-new.

Which isn’t to say there weren’t any unprecedented events; in addition to the moonlight sonata, I’d never seen anyone join the ride by leaving their backpack behind—although I am pretty sure that I’ve witnessed other bailouts than the Angry Hippy’s based on lost articles of clothing before.

And for once, it wasn’t Joeball with his face in the nascent fire blowing on twigs.

Or get this: we actually had more wood than we needed and no one broke a toe or melted their shoes spreading out the leftover coals.

My route out of the park to the final watering hole is one I’ve taken dozens of times. Never before, though, has it afforded me the chance to arrive at the bar concurrently with much faster riders who went the other way.

So let the sun flare and the moon shine.

Works

When I was in India this time last year, one of my teachers, Professor Narasimham, of the Anatha Research Institute, said that yoga is a “technology for liberation.”

The idea is that the practice is purely practical; you can set aside all the woo-woo stuff (at least as a justification) and simply observe that if you undertake the process—following all the “Eight Limbs” of the discipline—you will, over time come to experience God or bliss or Samadhi or whatever it is you want to call that sense of union with the All that we’re consistently seeking whether we realize it or not.

It’s the same idea captured in the famous quote by Ashtanga yoga’s founding guru, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois: “99 percent practice, 1 percent theory.”

Or, as he also put it: “Do your practice, all is coming.”

Same with drunken bike gang shenanigans.

If you assemble the elements: a bunch of people who get a kick out of pedaling two-wheelers around city streets at night, including the return of well-loved and sorely missed Brothers, Scientists, and Loudmouths, (mixed in with the usual Curmudgeons, Functioning Alcoholics, and Sentimental Cynics), add an outdoor fire, stir together with freely-flowing alcohol and other such illuminating molecules, and do so on a night for which even the waxing moon sports a charming grin, you will eventually achieve that sublime state of fretless abandon for which human beings are hard-wired to zealously embrace.

It’s overkill, of course, when the smell of teen spirit is also in the mix and you get to stand above not one, but two freight trains racing beneath your howls and bellows of wild animal humanity, but that’s just how the process works: you put the nitroglycerine and gunpowder together and shake, just like Alfred Nobel learned us how to do.

There’s yet to be one of his prizes for cycling; there is one, though, a Nobel for Chemistry; couldn’t they award it for synthesizing magic?

Merit

This year’s official .83 spoke card, deftly executed by the Drainman Ian and selected unanimously by Derrick in a “vote” that would have done your average Central American Banana Republic President-for-Life proud, features Boy Scout-style merit badges depicting activities associated with shenanigans familiar to anyone who’s been out on a Thursday night ride, including red-light running, beer-drinking, tent-camping, first-aid, swimming, photography, and more.

And while there were no aquatic activities and—to the best of my knowledge—nobody put down a bedroll on the abandoned road at which we conflagrated, most of the other badges could have been earned last night on what turned out to be a model for the old-fashioned theme-less nighttime outdoor two-wheeled adventure for which this group of cycling miscreants has long been passing out cards—or just passing out, as the case may be.

Back when I was a wee lad in the decade known (to someone, I’m sure) as the “Naughty Oughtties” the rule for getting issued a spoke card was three rides and a race, and I’ll never forget how my trembling hands clutched at the precious laminated square with the arcane message “FTBC” after midnight at Greenlake some two or three months into my tenure as a bike gang newbie.

How special I felt! How I’d arrived, I thought, only to discover, in subsequent years, that what I thought was a destination was but a starting point for untold hours in the saddle, around the fire, on the bar stool, and occasionally flat on my back looking up at the stars or raindrops such as the case may be.

But it never gets old—even as I do—as here, into yet another (seventh?) spoke card there’s still new fires to ride to and even though I can’t count the number of instances I’ve witnessed Derrick’s trick of firecrackers in the coals, this was the first time I ever saw Joeball go all Chuck Norris on him for it.

Repeatable

The theme, if there was one, in honor of the day—Groundhog—and the classic film it inspired, (arguably, the greatest cinematic achievement ever, and certainly, Bill Murray’s finest hour) was doing the same thing over and over until you get it right.

And, as Joeball pointed out earlier in the day, the bike gang is pretty much like the movie: people, places, and events recur again and again, slightly differently, but essentially similar. You can almost predict what’s going to unfold, but then there’s a twist.

The Angry Hippie has a flat, for instance, but repairs it with nary an Anglo-Saxon epithet and unkibbitzed at by the typical peanut gallery.

Or we wend our way, as usual, to (a newly-refurbished!) Hop In grocery, but through fancy neighborhoods on steep surface streets never once taken before.

Or, there’s a route through the woods to what I’m pretty sure was my first Point83 swimming hole half a decade ago, but this time, no one goes in the water and the University Police never even show up to shoo us away.

There’s a scene in Groundhog Day where Phil Conners laments the day he’s been condemned to repeat: “I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank piña coladas. At sunset, we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day,” he says, “Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over.”

And although the dozens of Thursday night bike rides I’ve taken part in over the years have never once (thankfully) featured any of Phil’s sea otter hijinks, I don’t lament for a moment the continual sense of déjà vu all over again.

In Nietzsche’s writings we encounter the idea of eternal recurrence: Ask yourself what life would you live if you had to live this life over and over again for all eternity?

I don’t know the answer, but I’m sure there’d be ride bikes on Thursdays.

Waffling

The season’s been shuffled around this year, with winter coming late (and so far, hardly at all), so it’s no surprise, really, that February appeared in January—as evidenced last night by the full flowering (or, make that “flouring”) of the annual .83 Waffle Ride some four weeks before it usually rears its square-patterned head.

But that’s mere testament to the turn-on-a-dime flexibility of the drunken bike gang, able, in just a moment’s (well, two days’) notice turn a proposed Christmas tree conflagration event into one where the fires (such as they were) occurred on griddles rather than sand, and the objects of carbon release happened to be something edible as opposed to adornable.

In short, it was all about fire in the sky morphing into fire in the belly, and I for one, endorse such transformations even if they run counter to tradition, untraditional as it may be.

Hard-core miscreants may scoff at the idea of shit-canning an activity whose legal standing is already questionable just because John Law says “don’t do it,” but if it means that there can be two hall-pass worthy events in back-to-back weeks, I’m all for it.

Besides, think of how what another week of drying will do for the combustability of all those evergreen bombs currently stashed in people’s back yards and alleys.

tehJobies once again worked his electrical magic, breaking the park’s circuit only once in powering up half a dozen waffle irons, including the beloved Hello Kitty model, and Wreyford Senior got his week’s upper-body workout battering the batter into submission, the result of which was enough griddle cakes for all with plenty left over for flinging and burning as usual.

And, of course, Derrick managed to so effectively antique the trail home that riding behind (at least until the I-90 bridge) was like pedaling through a snowstorm, so, all in all, another successful evening of bike-fueled shenanigans, and to boot, now an open spot on Feburary’s calendar.

Home

Ironically, on my first Thursday night out in a many a moon (well, probably only about one and a half to be precise), the ride went so close to my house that had I been there, I probably could have pedaled out, stood around the fire, and been back in my living room reading Edith Wharton before even my dog would have noticed.

As it was, however, I got to enjoy the full menu of delights on the evening’s agenda, including hot buttered rums, warm peppermint patties (the liquid version), tunnel screaming, Pioneer Square bar-shopping which resulted—on a successful search to locate a “historical” watering hole—in having our very own subterranean clubhouse christened beneath Seattle’s oldest drinking establishment, and then, a short, but bracing spin to what’s become, more or less, the “go-to” spot for belting out tunes, although, admittedly, I only lasted a beer’s worth before heading home right about pumpkin hour.

Motormouth Matt provided the warm libations in honor of the day Seattle’s first municipal ordinance (against drunkenness and disorderly conduct) went into effect and so it seemed particularly appropriate that most of the evening was spent breaking those constraints, but what I noticed was that in spite of this, no matter where we went, it was all about spreading the love, from some random neighbor walking his dog just about to run home, grab his bike and join in, to the bartender at our underground hideaway who was all but ready to give us keys to the joint for next time we came back.

“There’s no place like home for the holidays” goes the old Perry Como classic and though uncontentiously true, it therefore comes down to what qualifies as home. Family comes first, natch, but then there’s the extended-play version which includes all those undiscovered and rediscovered routes through our fair city that routinely involve fire and fellowship and lead through history and hijinks to home’s traditionally preferred location, the heart.

Holitacular

One of the standard proofs for God’s existence is the so-called “Fine Tuning Design Argument,” which begins by observing the innumerable universal constants that had to be just right for our Universe to come into existence and ultimately support life, and concludes that the likelihood of this happening is just too infinitesimal to have happened without a designer—namely God, who therefore, exists.

As it turns out, people make a similar argument when, at the finish of a bicycle “poker run” in celebration of the winter holidays, you show up with a hand featuring all eights which—even though they weren’t wild as would have befitted the event’s .83 sponsorship—was immediately judged as too perfect to have resulted from mere chance.

“That’s a cheater hand,” is how the Angry Hippy put it, which, of course, raises the question of what actually constitutes cheating among a group of miscreants for whom rules are anathema.

And although I’ll admit that I did do some persuading of the good people handing out cards at the checkpoints, I don’t think the mere implausibility of my perfect deal is alone evidence that it couldn’t have arisen naturally.

After all, even a royal flush is not nearly so unlikely as what went down overall: a rain-free December evening in Seattle, complete with often-visible full moon; several dozen drunken fools on bicycles scattering blindly through a public park at night without a single broken collarbone; feats of strength including not one, but two, skinny dippers in the freezing Puget Sound; an hilarious holiday bacchanalia with prizes for many and gifts for all; live music by the Summer Babes, gratis; all this organized and made possible with no motive other than good, clean, and sometimes embarrassing fun by nonsense-makers of the highest order, for just four bucks a head.

You want to talk unlikely? That anyone, anywhere should be lucky enough to do shit like Holitacular 2011.

And even more improbable? Six years running.

Blink

I had explained to Joeball why I was seriously entertaining the notion that inanimate objects occasionally pop out of existence and then back in again: right before Westlake, I stopped at the ATM to withdraw beer money, but my wallet was nowhere to be found.

I dug through my bags at least three times and had just resigned myself to the fact that I must have dropped the fucking thing back at the coffeeshop in Eastlake.

So, I’m reaching for my phone to try and call them, when I’ll be damned if the billfold doesn’t present itself under my fingers right where I’d searched repeatedly with a fine-toothed comb only moments before.

No surprise, then, that it was he who pointed out that the phenomenon reoccurred later in the evening: when Submariner Matthew managed to achieve what Lee Williams rightly describes as an “escheresque chain suck” while navigating the roller coaster paths through Discovery Park’s woods behind the Angry Hippy’s fearless lead.

Clearly, there was no way that loop-de-loop around crank arm and chainring could have happened had some part of his drive train not exited this temporal realm and then reappeared back on the bike with its atoms inverted slightly.

And while I still think that had we flipped his rig and taken a longer look at the contorted metal we might have figured out how to untangle it, you had to love the opportunity to stand around outside in the woods on a full moon night and kibbitz Fancy Fred while he performed open heart surgery with all-in-one tools to get our nautical comrade seaworthy again.

Insert seaman joke here!

It’s probably crazy, of course, to think reality isn’t continuous, and that wallets and chains perform these feats of inter-dimensional travel, but I don’t know.

Consider the macro version of the same phenomenon: teleportation of several dozen bike riders to a lunar-lit paradise and back in under two hours.

How else you gonna explain it?

Native

Charlie don’t surf.

Papa don’t preach.

And Joeball don’t do no out-and-backs.

Instead, he pulls from his seemingly bottomless quiver of tricks yet another never-seen option and escorts you through the riparian forest wormhole where mountains are scaled with no climbing at all.

Just another night on two wheels tracing ancient land routes that would have taken old Chief Sealth a week of vision-questing to complete but which, simply by following blinkies, balancing atop marshes, and ignoring every rule on the sign except the one about Jeeps, you can navigate in just a few starry hours on an evening so ideally suited to the task it sows laughter even without any vegan whipcream.

It’s always confused me how a perfect lunar half-circle is called the quarter moon but it nevertheless made all the sense in the world to be bathed in its milky glow as the flames circled closer and charmed for a moment while sparks rose and all those indigenous shamans from way back when chilled alongside.

Ponder alternate realities just inches away. You can slide over to visit then pull the scrim back on return but what’s most amazing of all is the mundane: human-powered adventures fueled by open flame, familiar voices curling like smoke on night air, and trails that interface between land and river; man, if that don’t tickle the grease monkey within, it’s time to pedal harder.

Getting lost is most fun when you can also lose yourself, and that only happens when it's all relax and rely; and though I admit I couldn’t picture the hill-free loop beforehand, I wasn’t really all that surprised as it unspooled.

After all, we’ve been down this road before—a totally different one, of course, but another which no way doubles-back upon itself neither.

It’s like an inhale, then exhale, and there you are, back in a bar eating peanuts almost like the amazing is ordinary which, amazingly, it is—all the way 'round.

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.