Ellipsis

My evening started out swell: a lovely spring evening for a ride along the lake and then, outside the NiteLite, I got to assist a damsel in distress—this young woman, Kate, had her car blocked in by a pickup truck with only centimeters to spare, but with a little direction and some encouragement on my part, was able to inch back and forth and eventually drive off, so I was feeling very expansive by the time I got to Westlake Center for all the bikes and familiar faces, although names kept escaping me all night long.

We rode through the hobo trail from Beacon Hill to SODO with, remarkably, no mechanicals and not a single broken collarbone although we did kinda bust the balls of the somewhat suspicious-looking electrical contractors who were waiting by the end of it.

And then it was all healthy tall people and a former student at Hooverville, where I guess we blended in enough that nobody wanted to throw us out before we left and (this is where the order of things begins to trail off) went for a spin around the Ghettodrome where they did yell at us to GET OUT OF THE BOWL, although earlier, I guess it was, we woke up the guys staying on the sailing ships on Lake Union and (I’m going to believe) charmed them into letting someone stroll on deck (although I could be completely wrong about that).

Then dot, dot, dot including the Nickerson into which I didn’t go and for me, anyway, a ride back downtown for a nightcap and the opportunity, in keeping with the evening’s opening theme, to share two of my last four dollars with a “non-aggressive” panhandler.

I’m sure other stuff went on without me—as it does for all—but that’s the thing: on a bike, in the spring, here and there round and round all night, even the ellipsis gets to feel like an exclamation point.