Spreading the Love

It was like the good old days: Derrick and Ben arguing interminably about where to go and what route to take until finally the exasperated angry hippy growls something about just fucking following him, hops on his bike, and before you know it, people uninterested in being run over by cars are getting dropped behind those with more of an appetite for running lights, but eventually, everyone more or less clumps up and then we’re climbing and climbing and then climbing a little bit more until the bluff in Discovery Park appears under a starry sky and a perfect upturned grin of a moon with the Puget Sound spread out before us like an indigo desert and people are milling about, accepting the club President’s kudos for arriving, as planned, in time for a beer before the locks close, and then, even more surprisingly, leaving in time, too, having polished off the half-rack and quarter that Specialist Sean(welcome back!) huffed up there in his pack, we’re walking across the water and then going uphill some more until at last we find ourselves at the first stop in our tour of bars that have 86’ed .83, only this time, they love us so much that the bartender shares with us her tale of another drunken bike gang that showed up a couple years ago and got drunk until 2:00 in the morning, (leaving out, I guess, the part about one of its members peeing on the bar) and really, the only reason there’s any urgency at all to leave is that the fiancé of the girl Derrick has just exchanged motorboats with shows up and besides it’s time to head downtown for white-boy hiphop, but not before, for me, anyway, a ride through the zoo smell on Aurora and then across the bridge and a new route down to Dexter and finally, after a couple songs, back uphill once more and I’m home, all aglow with bike love.