Beer and Biking

I met up this afternoon with some guys (and a few gals) from the Uber Tavern who were doing this Beer Bike Tour, visiting 11! pubs by bike; I hung for four stops and got reasonably tipsy and in a peck o’ trouble on the homefront, so a job well done, I guess, but what I was thinking about—and this isn’t a new thought at all—was that bike and beer really do go well together, especially in terms of pace.

That is, beer drinking gets you to the destination towards which it aims (let’s call that inebriation) steadily although not too quickly, just like biking, which gets you to your destination at more or less the same pace. And it’s funny; on a bike the first few miles can seem very long, just as when drinking beer, the first few sips can seem to change your perspective quite quickly; but eventually, on a bike, you just keep pedaling and eventually your destination shows up; similarly, with beer drinking, you just keep sipping and the more you drink the more sober you get.

On today’s ride, when the party of twenty or so showed up at the Collins Pub, where I was sort of waiting for them, they all seemed pretty schnockered; I had one more beer I hadn’t intended on and rode with them to the next stop on their itinerary, Hooverville, and by the time I’d consumed the pint of Rainier Ale that was being offered there, they all seemed perfectly sober and I was ready to race up to Capitol Hill to the Elysian; on the way, I had that typical experience of noticing that the more you drink the harder it is for cars to hit you; at the bar, I drank some Pilsner and headed off to the Stumbling Monk where in a unsuccessful final effort to be a responsible husband and father, I eschewed a pint and drank a can of suds.