Bike Riding
The thing I like best about bike riding is bike riding.
Sure, getting all liquored up and being obnoxious (but charming) is fun, and sitting around some pitchers of beer ragging on people who aren’t there has its charms, and who doesn’t enjoy scarfing down food purchased from the inside of a truck or seeing how loud and annoying you can be in a karaoke bar before they toss you out?
But my favorite part of most bike rides, with .83 or whomever, is the part where I’m on my bike, turning the cranks, leaning into turns, bombing down hills, riding no-handed on straightaways.
Last night, on the way back from the Pacific Rim Brewery in White Center, Joeball Andre led half a dozen of us on a cyclocross jaunt through the grounds of South Seattle Community College, on gravel paths, through closed gates, up and down landscaped berms, around circular sidewalks in a mini-bike Greenlake Race; that’s what I liked best—the whole BMX bike chase scene in the movie E.T. feeling thing. These are the moments this old man is clearly chasing as he rides around on two wheels: the chance to be 12 years old again; that River Phoenix in “Stand By Me” kind of freedom and adventure, no parents around, anything’s possible.
And self-sufficiency: while there was the usual grousing and moaning about one thing or another, it was one of those rides where no one had to be babysat; even verge-of-an-alcoholic-blackout Derek Ito managed to take care of himself, his drivetrain clattering angrily between two gears as his gyroscoping wheels kept him miraculously upright when his own legs might not have been able to.
I got my first .83 ride flat, too, a snakebite in the front, probably caused, in part, by the weight of the vaporizer and 12-volt battery in my handlebar bag; field-testing of the system was a failure, anyway; it’s way too fiddly; nix on whatever detracts from the ride.
Sure, getting all liquored up and being obnoxious (but charming) is fun, and sitting around some pitchers of beer ragging on people who aren’t there has its charms, and who doesn’t enjoy scarfing down food purchased from the inside of a truck or seeing how loud and annoying you can be in a karaoke bar before they toss you out?
But my favorite part of most bike rides, with .83 or whomever, is the part where I’m on my bike, turning the cranks, leaning into turns, bombing down hills, riding no-handed on straightaways.
Last night, on the way back from the Pacific Rim Brewery in White Center, Joeball Andre led half a dozen of us on a cyclocross jaunt through the grounds of South Seattle Community College, on gravel paths, through closed gates, up and down landscaped berms, around circular sidewalks in a mini-bike Greenlake Race; that’s what I liked best—the whole BMX bike chase scene in the movie E.T. feeling thing. These are the moments this old man is clearly chasing as he rides around on two wheels: the chance to be 12 years old again; that River Phoenix in “Stand By Me” kind of freedom and adventure, no parents around, anything’s possible.
And self-sufficiency: while there was the usual grousing and moaning about one thing or another, it was one of those rides where no one had to be babysat; even verge-of-an-alcoholic-blackout Derek Ito managed to take care of himself, his drivetrain clattering angrily between two gears as his gyroscoping wheels kept him miraculously upright when his own legs might not have been able to.
I got my first .83 ride flat, too, a snakebite in the front, probably caused, in part, by the weight of the vaporizer and 12-volt battery in my handlebar bag; field-testing of the system was a failure, anyway; it’s way too fiddly; nix on whatever detracts from the ride.
posted by Professor Dave at 10:19 AM
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