Puff quick and leave early for a head start on the Rumpus. Down Duke and Harold and around Powell’s Butte park. Modest houses on big lots. The air is cool and perfect. All alone on 113th. Double back to the room and take up the weights with a newbie. Bad signs in the wax as the weights just keep dropping off the end. The hopes for my resurrection fall like a poseur’s body from a lacquer plank. Not this lump of bones, the other one’s the messiah. As it turns out, there is really just one table here: the brunette. Lacquer v. Polymer is always the former. Kong arrives and my losing continues. Dub-Dub, SA, and Zulu fall in for the five man rotation. The Snipper and Kong manage to stay brunette all night, while others are forced go blond. Dub-Dub, SA, and Kong are keen, Zulu is sleepy, and I am hope-and-winless. Shuffled out, the four bikers roll west and north. Up the pedestrian bridge is like cycling on a ram’s horn. Scott waits outside as Thatchers awaits. Blockwalk. Double fries and a pitcher of Jubel. Crash test dummies? Solomon Grundy? MMM MMM MMM? That’s Bon Scott you’re talking about. By the way … Panama! Snoring Zulu in the wooden chair, drooling ’til Christmas. Color him “thatched”. Holding on until what time is it? 2 am. Southnomans roll down 76th, then woodward, then 52nd, then rural, then nearly home. The NoPo solo aims up through to Rose City. Back on Bybee, it is a fist to Bravenheart and the final block to the shower. This shower is for 0-4. All that has been is the permanent was, washed down definitive into the drain. Next week’s vision will not be blurry. Eyes like a tincture, with each drop, new levels of clarity. My new plane, a knife through the clouds. Prince Hal to King Henry. Piss Poor Punk into surgical focus. It is time to see the stakes.