The call for a river tour was a fine match for the crisp beauty of the pre-autumn sky. The tour began with a rousting of tennis watchers from the thatch and the setting of a brisk cycling pace. Carving through the 205 cement-way, rolling under screeching rail lines, dodging broken glass from makeshift encampments and alterna-teen urban celebrations, ten wheels whirring like moth wings under the expanse of stars. The anticipated chill of the riverside proved a myth, the curious opposite of unexpected warmth blowing off the joke of a radioactive river. The moon’s slow orange rise from the murky northeast was called a forest fire and an anxious sun before taking its true form of the horizon’s hazy sleepwalker. We never really got under the planes, but one satellite befuddled us all with its near path or unnatural glow. We all play pile on with pet theories, but certainly the ‘great wall” of 82nd Avenue has something to do with it. The good king had long since left his constituents behind with a fever pedal and a mind fixed on vacation sandal retrieval. The congregation reformed in Salty’s flats where the weather opposites continued in the form of a lee side chill. The return leg up the corkscrew overpass and into North PDX had us all slogging in the last pull to Tiga. The floating scents on the air speak a strange mix of laundry and grilled fish. No one takes the good king up on his errand and he is sent out on the loop alone. Those that remain burn a banana slug and waltz into Tiga like four fog banks up the front stoop. No Anderson Valley shifts our already rocky collective decision-making engine into neutral, but all is resolved in 20oz measures, 3 red and one ghost white. Long Dylan songs catch me yapping to the DJs, one of which I’ve seen before. Talk of music and continents over the brilliant pints. The good king returns with a few words for the navigator as a Subaru backs through the bus stop glass. My scrappy run can’t catch the dim plate numbers. Don’t ask for a lighter or “trigger-happy pappy” will introduce the group. Tim arrives to make us six strong and soon we relocate along the bar for the second round. I finish off ¾ of a single whiskey before pumpkin time points me and the good king home. The rest muddle on, with the EBMB and Zulu picking up the Spare, dooming them to a morning of 7-10 splits. This river tour and the Tiga pints that cap it grow classic with each loop.

Bars Visited: Tiga, Spare Room
Cycling (Mi.): MB (25), OC (25) DB(32.5), SP (32.5), SL (26.7)
Attendance: MB, SP, OC, SL, TL, DB