Last Day of Life in Seattle

Dammitall, I wasn't planning on starting this blag until I started my bike trip, but my last celebratory day in Seattle was so wonderfully filled with music and bicycle-filled shenanigans, I couldn't not at least include some pictures.

The day started off with marching in the Seattle Pride Parade with Rainbow City Marching Band. The social context of this could not have been better, Michael Jackson having died just a few days before; we've been playing an epic version of Thriller all season, and the crowds went positively ape-shit when they heard us coming. We even had a dance routine worked out in the middle of the song.

From there it was off to the Wild Rose, where Yellow Hat Band was playing for the sex toys drag race that Hazard Factory was hosting. They were running about an hour behind schedule, so we headed over to Cal Anderson park for an impromptu set in the sun. We took off our shoes and played in the middle of the wading pool near the fountain, and were soon joined by a gaggle of gyrating, splash-dancing onlookers, who, I am so proud to say, unabashedly broke through their Seattle-freeze exteriors to shake their booties with reckless abandon.

After the Wild Rose show (meh), I rode home with some friends to confront Ye Olde Minstrel Cycle, what will surely be proven to be the most genius contraption ever built in the history of contraptions, and ultimately, the whole point of this post. The Minstrel Cycle, commissioned by my roommate Webster, was built by our friend Colin (www.haulincolin.com). He took a 1962 Jeep chassis and hooked up eight bicycles to it to turn it into a pedal-powered parade float of mayhem. (It made its first public appearance earlier in the day as the Madison Market Co-op entry in Pride.) It is controlled with a steering wheel by a driver standing on a giant platform overlooking the pedalers, and has an equally giant lever of a brake (of admittedly dubious stopping power) located at the helm.

Nine of us piled on (including an innocent bystander who jumped on as we set out) and took a tour of the neighborhood, in a glorious cacophony of grinding gears, bicycle bells, laughter and shouts.

Colin, well done, sir. My yellow hat goes off to you. I haven't had such fun since going human bowling with a giant gerbil ball and a stack of 60-gallon oil drums.