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.

Norms

I spent the weekend in San Francisco: all day Friday in meetings at Berrett-Koehler Publishers about the imminent 3rd edition of Repacking Your Bags; daytime Saturday bopping round the Mission District, drinking coffee and admiring humanity and its varied forms; Saturday night carousing with friends and their families; and Sunday morning doing yoga and riding the BART train to the airport.

As usual when I visit the City (by the Bay), I experienced, along with shin plints from walking a lot more than normal and on much harder surfaces than usual, a serious case of hipster overdose; I saw, among other things, a thirty-something guy with the requisite ironic facial hair, arm sleeve tattoos, and multiple lip piercings, carrying his newborn on his chest in the Baby Bjorn. Shades of Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover; he even looked like he was still wasted from the night before as he waited in line at the grooviest of the groovy coffee places for his morning latte.

I also got to admire numerous bicycles, which seem more and more numerous each time I visit. I saw lots and lots of brakeless fixies, including spying more than one helmetless rider talking on his cellphone, thereby scoring the trifecta on my Darwin Awards observation bingo card.

But there was also an increasing number of city bikes, I guess you’d call them: some new, some vintage frames with wider tires, fenders, upright handlebars, geared or single-speed, lots with Brooks saddles, many with front baskets, bikes that people ride in everyday clothes, to get around.

Two things struck me about the local customs, though. First, I saw a much smaller percentage of riders than here in Seattle wearing helmets. Maybe it’s fashion, maybe it’s the kind of riding people do, but brain buckets are less common.

And stranger still: I saw lots of people carrying their U-locks draped over their handlebars. The rattling alone would drive me nuts, but maybe helmetless I wouldn’t care.

Teatime

Maybe it’s all the Edith Wharton and Henry James I’ve been reading (even though they’re both Americans), or perhaps it’s the latent influence of last year’s trip to India (now a year ago!) but, of late, I’ve been enjoying a cup of tea in the afternoon—at teatime, more or less, if truth be told (and why shouldn’t it; this is hardly a thing about which to dissemble.)

Not to worry: I haven’t given up coffee (and, indeed, the idea of starting my day with boiling watre poured over leaves instead of grounds makes me shiver just to consider it) but I am willing to admit that I’ve come to appreciate the charm of a nice cuppa, especially if it’s accompanied by a book and a nap on the couch.

And fear not: I’m not at all inclined to start making pots of tea, or using loose leaves, or, heaven forfend, to start drinking Japanese green tea from ceramic bowls while wearing a kimono.

Nope, it’s Earl Grey in a bag, left to steep for no particular specified amount of time, and then augmented with Half and Half (or milk) and plenty of sugar. Basically, I’m drinking a hot, fatty Red Bull made from plants instead of plastic or petroleum or whatever it is that stuff is fabricated from.

I suppose this could be construed as another one of those changes coming with age; historically, if I wanted a little early evening lift, I’d have just brewed another pot of coffee, but the couple times I’ve done that of late, I’ve found myself lying abed at two or three in the morning over-planning the upcoming day.

So, here I am, having my afternoon tea, enjoying it even in the absence of sweet little cakes and cucumber sandwiches with their crusts cut off.

But maybe that’s what comes next. Who knows? Maybe I’ll find myself branching out to Chai, or Darjeeling or English Breakfast, or even Lapsang Souchong.

Normal

Barring a freak storm (like the Flipper Boy and the Bearded Woman falling from the sky) the world starts again tomorrow and although it’s going to cut into my afternoon nap time, I’m ready to be back in the classroom opening impressionable as opposed to climbing the walls of my living room popping the tops off wine bottles.

It’s not like the unexpected week off wasn’t a treat, but it did make me realize that in order to really relish one’s freedom, a person has got to be prepared for it. Too much liberty, especially when it’s unplanned ends up making a fellow feel more unemployed than unencumbered and contributes to something more like anomie than enjoyment.

But maybe this is more a matter of being bored than it is being conscientious; it’s not exactly like weather and road conditions have lent themselves to a serious of thrilling outdoor adventures over the last five days. I have, of course, gotten into a good dose of family time and Edith Wharton’s The Reef has carried me through a number of relatively down hours, but even if the new day means I’ve got to rise before down in order to get a full primary series practice in, I’ll take it.

Now, no doubt I’d feel differently had the Steelers still been in the Superbowl hunt; I’m sure I could have designed the last fortnight around this morning’s AFC Championship game. As it was, however, watching was merely an intellectual exercise as opposed to a full-on emotional roller coaster.

I’m glad I’m not a Baltimore Ravens fan, in any case; had I been when their kicker, Billy Cundiff, muffed an easy cheap-shot that would have sent the contest into overtime, I’d had to have starting drinking so heavily and with such reckless abandon in order to drown my sorrows that I’m sure I would have needed another couple of snow days--if not another whole snow week--to recover.

Forecast

The weather people have been falling all over themselves for the past few days trying to predict how much snow is going to fall in the 24 hours or so after they make their predictions.

Pretty much all of those prophecies have turned out to be more or less mistaken and most of the plans that have been made based on those forecasts have under or overestimated the impact of the weather on events, adding to a kind of mini-hysteria that could probably have been avoided by simply making decisions by looking out the window or taking a walk around the block.

Now, I realize that predicting winter weather, especially in this part of the Pacific Northwest, is remarkably tricky and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I regularly check the National Weather Service website and celebrity meteorologist Cliff Mass’ blog.

But seriously, to rely too heavily on claims about the future based on analyzing the present is, as 18th century British Empiricist, David Hume, reminds us, to use fallacious and even circular reasoning. We conclude that the future will behave as the past has because the future has always behaved like the past, but if we establish uniformity of nature by relying on the uniformity of nature, that’s cheating.

So, even if the weather data suggests that what’s going to happen is predictable, just because it has been predictable is no reason to conclude that it will be predictable again.

That said, I can’t complain overly that the Seattle Public Schools have again cancelled classes for tomorrow; this means that the evening around the homestead can unfold more slowly and gently than it would otherwise. Or, at least that’s how it’s worked in the past.

The forecasters tell us that the winter storm will be over by tomorrow afternoon, but then again, that’s what they said yesterday. This time, though, school closures don’t depend on what they’re saying, so I guess I’ll believe it.

Enough

If a sure sign of being an old fogey is hoping that you don’t get another snow day (and, no doubt, it is) then I guess I qualify.

Even though I’ve enjoyed this extended Martin Luther King Day holiday, I’m feeling like I’d like to get back in the classroom at some point this week, even it’s a somewhat treacherous journey out to Bothell tomorrow.

But, we shall see.

I had a pleasant ride around the neighborhood this afternoon; on the side streets, where everything is all packed down, pedaling is no problem. Turning through intersections, where snow is piled up and chunky is a bit of an adventure, but with my two and a half-inch wide fatty tires with the air let out to about 25psi, I can stay upright through pretty much all of it.

Once I made it out of my alleyway, it was all pretty smooth sailing. Or cycling, that is.

We just got a phone message that Seattle Public Schools are closed tomorrow; these kids today are lucky they don’t have to get up early and press their ears to the radio in hopes of hearing that classes are cancelled, like we did back in the day. I remember having to sit through Barbara Streisand singing “People” at like 7:30AM in order to hear the good news.

Also, like plenty of other old fogies, I can easily go off on how low the bar is set these days for closing things down. Back when I was a wee lad, and had to tromp five miles through the drifts, uphill both ways, in sub-zero temperatures, we’d only get the day off if snow blocked the second-story windows of Kerr School.

So, I suppose it’s no great wonder that I’m more or less hoping I’m required back at Cascadia tomorrow; there’s philosophy to do, folks, and as long as our brains aren’t completely frozen, we ought to take the opportunity to do so now.

Privilege

What with today’s scary-forecast induced snow day, I got an extra Sunday this week, albeit one without any football games to linger over.

So I availed myself of the opportunity to perform my usual beginning-of-the-week shopping expedition, including enjoying a couple cups of coffee and a dill scone at the coffeeshop, although instead of reading the New York Times as is my typical wont, I finished up Carson McCullers’ lovely The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and am now inspired to read or re-read everything else she ever wrote.

I’ve tried to see this relatively free day as a special gift and really appreciate the privilege it’s afforded me to do an extra-long yoga practice, linger over my morning coffee, sit on the couch and read fiction, noodle with my entry for this year’s Filmed by Bike Festival, spend some time perusing my latest book on Indian Philosophy, ride my bike downtown to the Army-Navy store for a new pair of gloves, pay a few bills, and best of all, not have to get up at 4:30 in the morning for my 8:45 AM class.

I could get used to this four-day weekend thing and if the predictions for Snowpocalypse come true, it’s likely it may morph into five days before the roads in Bothell are clear enough for students to arrive on campus in sufficient numbers to hold classes.

We shall see.

Jen and I were talking the other day about the epistemological status of future claims. Suppose, for instance, I say, “I know that school will be cancelled tomorrow.” Strictly speaking, that can’t, at this point, be a true statement; it will only become so if indeed campus is shut down.

And yet, it seems reasonable to say that if it becomes true, then it was true at the moment I uttered it.

Frankly, it’s a puzzle, and at this point, I’ll see it as one that’s a privilege to be able to puzzle over.

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.

Over

Three days later, I’m no longer mourning the Steelers’ stunning overtime loss to the Denver Broncos at the hands of the despicably holier-than-thou Tim Tebow in Sunday’s NFL Wild Card game.

In fact, looking back on it now, I scoff at why anyone would care at all about the outcome of a mass-produced “sporting event” featuring overpaid specimens of testosterone-poisoned human beings running around in spandex for a couple hours chasing an inflated pigskin up and down a field made of plastic.

With some distance on the thing, I sure don’t.

But damn, right afterwards, it sure felt like a punch in the gut.

Of course, it was all my fault.

Although I did pick up all the dog-poo in the backyard, I never took out the vacuum cleaner, preferring instead to tidy up the rugs and hardwood using my brand-new carpet cleaner. Lacking the use of electricity, it apparently doesn’t produce the same salubrious effect upon the gridiron play of the Black n’ Gold; now I know.

And even though I did lay out my dearly-departed mom and dad’s rings atop their watches on the Terrible Towel (in the second half, mind you, thereby precipitating Pittsburgh’s furious comeback from two touchdowns behind), I made a critical error at the start of overtime, when I stepped away momentarily from the game to grab one final wee dram of rye whiskey to calm the shattered nerves. Returning to the television screen, I was just in time to see Demaryius Thomas streaking for the end zone, much to my disbelief and horror.

Now, Cousin Seth tells me that championship teams will overcome missteps like mine and I wish I could fully buy that. Unfortunately, I can’t shake the feeling that if only I had waited to turn my attention away from the game that the outcome would have been different—or at least not so stunningly quick and agonizingly terrible.

Not that I care about it or anything, anyway.

Dark

I recall one summer morning in Pittsburgh, circa 1972; I had a dentist appointment at 10:30AM and so had to be up and out several hours earlier than I usually rose at that time of year. It seemed weird to me that the world was still carrying on every day in my absence. What were all these people doing up and about? Did this really happen every day? And if so, why?

I’m having a similar sort of experience this quarter as I show up at the bus stop around 7:15 in order to get to my 8:45 class; it’s still pitch dark at that time but these streets are full of fully-dressed human beings hurrying about on their ways to somewhere. I find it hard to believe that this has been happening on a daily basis all these many months or that it continues when I’m not around, sleeping peacefully, or more typically, lying in savasana at the end of my yoga practice.

I realize that this is a kind of solipicism, but, as a solipcist, why should I be bothered? After all, if that’s the case, anything I might be bothered by is just a product of my own mind, so I might as well ignore it.

On the other hand, suppose that the external world really does exist; that would do a better job of explaining why all those people from Tacoma get off the train just at the moment my bus arrives and clamor aboard, taking up all the good seats.

It’s not that I mind the early morning; as my daughter Mimi pointed out to me, a quarter to nine isn’t really all the early for your average school kid; she’s in class every day at 8:00 after all.

Still, I remain unconvinced that all the activity I observe during those AM hours is actually real; it seems equally possible that it’s some sort of dumbshow those stops when I’m asleep.

Resolutions

Probably the best New Year’s resolution is to resolve to make no resolutions. That way, you paint yourself into a paradoxical corner from which escape is only possible by sitting in a corner reading Wittgenstein in the original German.

But since, as we know, the world is all that is the case, and because that case, in my case, is a basket case, I can’t help myself from considering at least a few things I might do this year to improve upon my performance in 2011, at the very least in hopes of earning the kind of bonus that my friends in the one percent are used to receiving at year’s end.

So, for starters, I hereby resolve to eat healthier in the next twelve months. What this will entail is not entirely clear, but I do think it precludes indulging in my penchant for sprinkling my breakfast cereal with botulism and ebola, oh well.

In a similar spirit, I guess I’ll also resolve to drink less coffee; I pair this, of course, with a resolution to sleep more and smoke more crack. Or not.

I also resolve to exercise at least three times a week; the one starting the third Sunday in June should work fine.

I hereby resolve to be kinder and more compassionate to my fellow human beings—fucking assholes though they be.

I’m going to ride my bike more this year than I did last; I guess that’s more of a prediction than a resolution, though.

I also resolve to lose five pounds—at the current exchange rate, that comes out to about seven dollars and seventy-five cents. Hopefully, it’s not cheating to lose it at playing craps.

I resolve not to care so much when the Steelers; it should be no problem as long as they win the Superbowl.

Finally, I resolve above all, to be a much better person; so, for Halloween this year, I’m going to go as Mother Teresa.

Better

I generally contend that 1987 was my favorite year:

I got married, came this close to publishing my first novel, wrote most of an unpublished second, spent seven months living in Paris and the south of France with my blushing bride, and basically got to live out most of the dreams I had about life at that time.

I usually consider 1997 a close second:

I became a father, bought a house, finished my Master’s Degree in Philosophy, co-wrote a second self-help book with my friend and co-author Richard Leider, started doing yoga pretty seriously, and basically took the important foundational steps to becoming the version of an adult that I am today.

I’m putting 2011 right up there, though:

I travelled to India to study yoga for two and a half months, wrote a soon-to-be-published book on doing Philosophy with young pre-college students, co-rewrote the third edition of Repacking Your Bags, the book Richard Leider and I wrote that has sold something like 300,000 copies worldwide, survived the 13th year of my daughter’s life, rode my bike at least 7000 miles, sold five Haulin’ Colin trailers, managed to bend myself into Marichasna D with almost daily regularity and in general, got to do everything I wanted most of the time.

Lots of people claim—and many with ample justification—that things are getting worse in the world year after year. That may be—and certainly is from an environmental standpoint, for instance—but in my little life, at least, the possibility of improvement still exists.

It’s unlikely I’ll ever have a year to top ’87 and I can’t see ’97 falling out of second place, but if these past 365 days are any gauge, it’s not impossible that there will be other times upon which I can look back as fondly as I do these.

Here I am, getting nostalgic for the present; how odd. I can see shedding tears for auld lang syne, but new?

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.

Content

I’ve got everything a guy could want in life: a loving family, a good job, a lovely little house in the best neighborhood in town; and I get to ride my bike pretty much every day.

The only thing that’s missing—and not always, mind you—is a bit more of the unexpected. Not that I’m asking for it, but I do find myself kind of at a loss when someone asks me “What’s new?”

As it turns out, not much.

I’m happy with that for the most part; quite honestly, like anyone who’s being honest with himself, I fear change. Give me pretty much the same thing day after day and that’s fine. For example, I’ve eaten basically the same breakfast for the last three months and am not bothered a bit by it.

Still, this does make it difficult when I’m scanning about for something to write about; I used to have no problem writing about anything—or even nothing—but these days, I feel like if I’ve got no news to report, then why report at all?

I’ve missed my main source of content, the weekly .83 ride, for more than a month now. Time flies during this time of the year, what with the quarter ending the holidays now in full swing, but it’s hard to believe it’s been so long.

Fortunately, my commute from school has given me some opportunities to simulate the experience, albeit all by my lonesome—which makes the reporting of shenanigans highly unlikely.

Last night, even though I didn’t join in the two-wheeled holiday festivities, I did manage to pedal to a nearby watering hole where I drank a couple drinks, eyed the hipsters, and enjoyed a brief, but slightly tipsy ride back to my house.

Not much to write home about, but then again, not much to complain about either. Besides, now that’s school’s out for winter break, who knows what’s in store: mystery, adventure, Santa Claus.

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.

Reality

Reality is overrated. Really.

On the other hand, this may be a meaningless claim given that it’s not at all clear what reality is.

Let’s stipulate that when we use the term “reality,” we’re talking about our everyday experience of the world, unmediated by any consciousness-altering substances or experiences.

But, of course, that begs the question (in the appropriate sense of the term, circular reasoning), because now we’re left wondering what such substances and experiences might be.

Does coffee count? Sugar? How about an hour and a half of yoga practice? Or what about if I get less than my usual eight hours or so of sleep a night? It seems like it’s going to be very difficult to establish what qualifies as “everyday experience.”

Suppose, then, we take some average as the baseline. Call “reality” something like “the everyday experience I have of the everyday mostly every day.” Fair enough.

In that case, then, yes, “reality” is indeed overrated. Granted, it is when one gets most of one’s productive work completed; it also provides a foundation for identifying what doesn’t qualify as reality, but I do think there’s still much to be said for stepping outside it on a fairly regular basis, at the very least for the opportunity to look in on it and see what’s going on from a different perspective.

Let it be understood that I’m not advocating any sort of questionable or illicit behavior here; I’m simply suggesting that what counts as “real” isn’t the only place to spend one’s time.

Naturally, there are innumerable ways to step outside the commonplace; it’s incumbent upon each of us to decide for him or herself how to do so. An extra cup of coffee in the morning, maybe; perhaps two spoons full of sugar instead of the usual single serving; who knows?

I’m going to try pedaling extra fast on my next bike ride home. Commonplace, no way. Unreal? I guess we’ll find out.

Justdoit

Three times during the last few weeks I’ve been semi right-hooked by cars and twice, at least, parked vehicles have pulled out in front of me as I’m passing them.

But this being Seattle, where everybody’s “Seattle Nice,” they’ve each stopped in the middle of their dumbfuckery and gone all apologetic, as if the fact that their three thousand pound vehicle sitting there in front of me making me have to slam on the brakes is somehow to be overlooked and I can magically continue on even though my path forward is blocked their door panels and fenders.

So I say to them: “Thanks, but no thanks.”

If you’re gonna run me off the road, just go ahead and do it already; don’t pretend that stopping halfway through your cluelessness makes it any less clueless.

I mean, I’ve already prevented myself from slamming into you; you might as well continue your turn and get the hell out of my way sooner rather than later.

Sure, I appreciate that you’ve recognized that you fucked up, but wouldn’t it have been better not to have done so in the first place? Now that you’re sitting there blocking my way, what’s the point? I’m sure you’re a lovable human being in your own way; maybe you’re just a douche behind the wheel of a car.

Like the other day, I’m rolling down Jackson Street and this Ford Bronco zips around me just in time to cut right immediately into a parking lot. I’m all like “what the fuck?” but manage to panic stop before I crash into him. But instead of completing the turn, the guy stops and gives me the “oops” look through his passenger side window. I grimace back at him and then have to swing wide around him, dangerously into the other lane’s traffic to continue on my way.

“No kindness ever goes unpunished” said Oscar Wilde; corollary for these drivers: “Your kindness is ever not punishing.”

Football

This being Thanksgiving, I’m doing my patriotic duty as an American male by watching me some football on the big-screen TV in high-definition.

As silly as the sport it, it’s nevertheless relatively relaxing—primarily because the Steelers aren’t playing—to watch large men in tights run around and into each other for the enjoyment of fans in the stands and catching the game on the tube.

I do have to say, though, that there are a couple of things about the sport I just find terribly annoying, namely above all, fucking pass interference and holding penalties. It seems to me that the refs could call either of them on just about every single play, and so it’s relatively arbitrary when they do.

To my way of thinking, they ought to let defensive backs do whatever they want to receivers when the ball is in the air; tackle the guy, poke him in the eye, punch his nuts—that would make catching a pass something meaningful rather than the sissified nonsense it is right now.

Similarly, the league should allow linemen to use whatever means they want—tripping, punching, nut-punching—to keep defensive backs away from their quarterback, and it would likely even out whatever advantage would accrue to the defense for being allowed to smash receivers.

As a general rule, officials have way too much effect on the game; I say let the players play, even if it means—well, especially if it means—that there is increased mayhem and violence on the field.

Naturally, I don’t really want to see players getting hurt—except, of course, Tom Brady—but isn’t the game suppose to be all about which team is more physical?

Back in the days of the Steel Curtain in Pittsburgh, they used to let linebackers wear casts on their forearms to crack the heads of their opponents; that’s the kind of play that I miss; how about going back to leather helmets for everyone?

Droplets

Even the steadiest downpour has some nuance.

On my ride today from Bothell to the U-District, which easily qualifies as my wettest ride of the season, the rain never stopped, but it did seem to let up from time to time.

But that could have been just during the climbs, when I hit fewer raindrops by going slower. Come to think of it, all of the times when it seemed the rain was falling hardest were times I was heading downhill.

So, I dunno

What I am sure of though, is that it really wasn’t so bad, at least when I was all geared up with plastic pants and shoe covers.

In fact, I got more soaked, after I’d taken my gear off to enjoy a cup of coffee in my old graduate school favorite, Parnassus coffee shop, riding from the Art Building (in whose basement Parnassus resides) to Savery Hall (where my afternoon class takes place)—a distance of maybe 200 yards—than I did in the 14 or so miles from Cascadia to the UW.

My only real complaint is that it wasn’t 10 degrees colder so all this would be snow; we’d probably have three feet on the ground now and the Thanksgiving break would already have started.

I guess I could also lodge my standard objection to wet gloves, too; although I planned ahead for a change and brought an extra pair, so I didn’t have to don the soaking ones after my UW class for the ride home.

So, all in all, a reasonably comfortable pedal through what some wags are calling the “Rainpocalypse.” Of course, I’ll be sick of the wet soon enough if it keeps up; at this point, though, I’m still finding it sort of amusing given our fairly dry November so far.

In my mind, December’s when it gets really shitty; sideways rain, days that get dark by 3:30; and worst of all, gloves that smell of cheese.

Missed

One of the standard “problems” in philosophy is the so-called “problem of personal identity.” Essentially, it’s the “what makes me ‘me?’” question, and is particularly puzzling when we wonder about identity over time.

The nub of the issue is that because we change so much from year to year, it’s hard to see how one can conclude we remain the same person all of our lives. After all, I’m nothing like the infant I was more than half a century ago, so why should I claim that that baby with his bottle and me with mine are identical. After all, from the standpoint of our physical, mental, or even biological properties we’re not.

There are, of course, “solutions” to the problem. We can talk about bodily continuity, or a kind of connected chain of memories, or, if we want to go all dualist, we might propose that it’s the singularity of soul that defines me consistently.

Frankly, I’m most sympathetic to the so-called “illusion theory,” which says that the “self” doesn’t really exist. All we are is an ongoing collection of mental states and physical attributes; just like Oakland, California without its “there” there, here I am without any “me” here.

But then that means that all “I” am is what I think and do at any moment. The strange implication of this, if I understand it, is that if I don’t do the things I do then I’m no longer who I am anymore.

If I skip a day of my yoga practice, as I more than halfway did yesterday then apparently, I’m no longer a student of Ashtanga.

If I stop writing 327 word essays and posting them to the internetz, then I can’t say that I’m still a “blogger” (not that I’d have any interest in so defining myself.)

On the other hand, if I miss the weekly Point83 ride, I’m still a cycling miscreant: it was just once and not because of weather.

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.

Missing

I have a Burke-Gilman Trail-shaped hole in my heart.

It’s not the whole thing; just the part from 25th and Blakely through Lake Forest Park, the part I nowadays skip by riding up from Montlake through Lake City and down the 522 to 175th and Bothell Way.

It’s not so bad on the ride out to school from home; time-wise, it doesn’t really take me any longer than staying on the trail did. Pedaling past all the car dealerships in Lake City isn’t as pleasant as cruising by Lake Washington to be sure, but I don’t mind it too much since it’s generally still light out when I’m doing so.

It’s the coming home that sort of sucks, especially the grind up Lake City Way from the Lake Forest Park Shopping Center. That’s where I all too often yield to the temptation to wait for the bus downtown, even on nights when it’s not raining and an extra ten or twelve miles of riding would be a good way to pass an hour or so.

It’s been this way since summer, when construction crews began work on the trail; the signs say they’re going to be done December 15; from the looks of things, it may be sooner than that.

Paving is completed from Log Boom Park in Kenmore at least as far as 175th. You get to ride on new asphalt for about 20 feet before the detour begins. This has only served to whet my appetite for the rest of the newly-restored route.

I’ve often thought, over the past nine years of riding the trail four or five days a week, that were it not for its existence, I probably wouldn’t be so consistent of a bike commuter from Seattle to Bothell. These past five months of detour have done nothing to dissuade me; I think I can hold out, though, for another month or so, and my cycling heart to be whole once more.

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.

Tools

Here’s another thing I like about riding my bike everywhere: free stuff for my shop!

Yesterday, I picked up a perfectly good pair of Vice-Grips that were just lying in the street, nowhere near the pickup truck they probably fell out of. Not only are they a useful addition to the stock of tools in my workbench, they also go really well with the screwdriver I scored last week as I pedaled home from school.

This isn’t all that an uncommon phenomenon, either. I’ll bet that I find some sort of useful (or broken) something or other at least every other week. It ranges from a simple box wrench one day to, on another occasion, a cordless electric drill, complete in a box with the charger and everything. (Admittedly, it turned out to be busted—I think from being run over by a passing car—but still, a pretty good find; someone at Goodwill, where I eventually took it, surely made out well with it.)

Of course, I haven’t bought a bungee cord in years; I rarely go more than a week or two without finding one abandoned by the side of the road. Now, you might think that those that have sprung themselves from whatever they were holding onto might not be so desirable, but none of those I’ve garnered have given me any trouble; they certainly work just fine on my bike trailer.

I suppose I might do a better job of trying to return the loot that I come across to its rightful owners and, in my defense, I have, from time to time, placed whatever item has presented itself to me on the hood the nearest automobile, although admittedly, when it comes to box-cutters (of which I’ve found three or four) that strikes me as courting danger, at least indirectly.

It’s safer for me to take these things home, just like the dime of devil's lettuce I found near the park last week.