i’m confused. i look at the world around me and feel like i have seen and know more but i understand less. i look back at the world i used to inhabit and how it at least seemed to be a world i could comprehend, a world with terms that i knew and could rely upon. but now i wake up again and realize that perhaps my understanding was simply falsehood, indeed perhaps i have never known anything and that is the only thing i have been learning.

i have always suspected i am underqualified for this task, the job of simply being. i take it as cold comfort that literally billions have been faced with a similar responsibility and all have acheived it to some level or another. still, i look at the world and wonder if it is simply madness to try to engage with it. wouldn’t i just be happier watching my tv shows and buying my video games and drinking my beer and not wondering what is going on. why are the people around me who they are and why do i even do the things i do, believe the things i believe? am i an unreasonable person trying to make sense of a world of nonsense, or the opposite?

i am overwhelmed by the world. a man has thirty thousand days in his life, give or take a few thousand. as i complete my 9,591st day i cannot help but wonder, what does tomorrow hold – will i make of it something useful or will i squander it? all i know is that i will wake up and each of my actions throughout the day will determine that.

do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. sufficient for a day is it’s own evil. – matthew 6:34

another thing i’ve been up to lately and probably the reason i didn’t do so well in the bike race was that fine women of ruby had an oktoberfest party and in our spirit of mutual party assistance invited me up. they decided to dress up as bavarian barmaids, and when i saw that i just had to go get my liter steins.

of course, once i had the steins there i couldn’t very well let them be used solely for decoration. turns out a one liter stein holds about three bottles of widmer hefeweizen. i ended up having two over the course of the evening. it was just too impressive!

it was a good party!

so once again i’ve gone out and busted my ass all over the city on my fixed gear with a hundred of my closest friends. this time, the perfect afternoon weather ushered in the r.e.load baggage cops & robbers race.

i met up with some representatives of the .83 posse over at our semi-official u-district hangout, the college inn pub. about ten of us rolled from there up to the reload hq on capitol hill to register for the race. while we registered the crowd of cyclists grew and grew until it took up the entire sidewalk and stretched out into the lanes of traffic. at registration we coughed up our $5 and were given a spoke card and a costume – hamburgular facewear for the robbers and little badges and moustaches for the cops. we picked up our manifests and set about trying to plot the best route and figure out where everything was. eventually the lovely race administrators gave us the go signal and we hauled off in a huge mass for our first destinations. the coppers and robbers were separated at the start but quickly came back together.

with me i had henry and scotty as my fellow robbers, and we quickly hooked up with officer p.diddy as well.

1. 301 east broadway. the first checkpoint was a “bank heist” at the wamu on broadway. rachel was out front throwing bags of loot as riders came through. the race was off to an auspicious start as the well-known capitol hill bike pds were out trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and meanwhile folks dressed as cops were riding past them and running lights.
2. volunteer park shootout. the second checkpoint we went for was a time-limited one that was only available until 6pm. so we raced up to the volunteer park water tower for a ’shootout’ between the cops and robbers. we were segregated into small groups, and cheap waterguns and some water balloons were provided for us to drench one another. i got greg good. we handed over our waterguns to officer sherman, the best damn cop on the force, collected our stamp and moved on.

   the manifest had one ’secret’ checkpoint and the only way to find out the location was to go back to the basement under reload and get a sharpie tattoo. unfortunately alot of people had the same thought and the line was ridiculously long. so we wisely decided to head out elsewhere and catch the local checkpoints.

3. 922 pike. with that in mind we headed down three blocks to the comet and picked up a murderer’s name for our manifest.
4. 6th & pine. we got mardi gras jewelry from a couple of rich dames blingin’ outside tiffany & co.
5. post alley. the next checkpoint was just through downtown – the ’scary’ alley. we locked up our bikes at pike market and hoofed it down post alley down where we were accosted by “drunk bums” who demanded quarters but signed our manifests anyhow.
6. speakeasy in the international district. we couldn’t find the checkpoint in the international district at maynard alley, supposedly south of 7th and off king. the alley we found, but only a bunch of fellow racers. somebody said the answer to the question of how many were killed was ‘13′, we said hey good enough, wrote it down and continued on. unfortunately scotty had previous engagement so he broke off at this point to head home.
7. freeway park. i’d never been there before, and it was huge. we split up and paul was the lucky one to find the murder date scrawled in chalk near the bathrooms.
8. re-load bags tattoo parlor. with all the checkpoint locations we knew to be close, it was time once again to return to re-load for a tattoo. there was still a line but we were tired, and somewhat excited to see justin behind us in line as he was the .83 favorite to win. i got a cop-killer tear and was given the location of the secret checkpoint. paul got tired of waiting and headed home at this point.
9. 730 east 10th. unfortunately, henry and i didn’t know where the hell this ‘mob hideout’ actually was, so we headed north on 10th and watched the numbers ascend. so we whipped around and headed south to seattle university on 10th until we realized we were going the completely wrong way. a full u-turn again and we went back north until we found the mob hideout. a quick game of double-bilnd blackjack later and we were on our way to the police headquarters to be booked.
10. police hq: 1617 yale. yeah, so we should have come here earlier but we had no idea where it was until we’d talked with enough folks. i’d thought it was near rei, but turns out yale has a tiny little dead-end part near the bauhaus. we were frisked and lined up against the wall, got mugshots taken and manifests fingerprinted before being sent on our merry way once more.
11. 2021 4th ave. a quick bomb down boren and denny sent us into downtown where we swung by the last checkpoint, collected the info and rushed to the end.
12. jewelbox theatre. we arrived triumphantly but in something like 25th place. the bar was already packed with checkpoint folks and spirits were high as we recounted our adventures and ate and drank. i watched them hand out prizes for a while and then returned home exhausted from three hours of racing.

you too can view our ridiculous route. three hours and only fourteen miles in all but i tell you i am as sore and as tired as when i rode around the lake last week.