Nine to Five

I took a non-traditional approach to Go Means Go’s second annual Nine-to-Five All Night Bicycle Solstice Scavenger Hunt.

Instead of riding around all night, I pedaled home from the Gasworks Park send-off at sunset—9:11PM—and enlisted the family in rounding up items on the list. Then, I took a nap and set my alarm clock in order to be back at the park in time for the sunrise finish—5:11AM—where I met up with my team (Team Creepy Baby) so we could gather together our stuff and tally up our points.

Much of what I brought they already had—including some oddball items like a flattened souvenir coin and five pinto beans—but I was able to contribute a few gems like a wedding veil, a holiday-themed plate, the creepy baby doll that gave rise to our squad’s name, and a concrete block (worth 5 whole points!) that I serendipitously found the roadside on my early-morning return, so even though I didn’t hang in the whole night, I got to feel like I was part of the overall effort.

And indeed, without my additions, Team Creepy Baby wouldn’t have reached the rarified total of 316 points, an effort that landed us on the podium, in third place, just 2 above the fourth-place finisher.

I forget the name of the winning group, but suffice it to say, they smoked the field, with a score of something like 453, augmented by a truly impressive example of the hard-to-find front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: the moon landing edition from 1969.

Ryan from Go Means Go put on a class event as usual: a whole bunch of people showed up and there was plenty of delicious breakfast to go around for all the riders at the finish line.

As I rode home, I saw the opposite of such good planning: a middle-aged guy in just his underpants and full body paint, hobbling home from a different solstice event.