The Alliance is Dead. Long Live the Alliance.

I got depressed this morning.

Not my typical, fuck this bull shit I’m climbing back into bed with my bottle of bourbon kind of depressed, but rather a realization that things have changed once again and there are people, places, things that I miss and even sitting in my all-t00-familiar office chair pecking at a keyboard like a tend to do, I feel nostalgic, home sick, missing things.

The impetus for said depression was a review of those links sitting on the right side of your screen. Yup, the ones that I picked that I thought that you would enjoy. Ones that often allied with the Alliance or were part of it or a motivation for it. I thought it might be time to take a look at those links, to see what was still there, still kicking underneath the current that we find ourselves drowning in. Life is what they called it.

I can’t remember the last time I rode with Sir Prattipus or had the opportunity to call Shelby Brother Meinkey. I caught up with Super D a few months back for a Zen Zaturday. It was the first ride we’d had together in ages and we haven’t pedaled together since. I see ProZac almost every day. Last time we rode together? Not sure. That goes for all the other peeps that I work with as well, Joey, Baby Face, Lil Piddy, Spenny, PJ. Life needs to get the fuck out of the way.

As my lamenting grew and the thoughts of the imminent demise of the Alliance seemed a thing that had already happened, I had to go to work.

Which was probably a good thing because it got me out of my head and into motion and I do my best thinking while in motion. The first thing I thought was if I’m depressed because I haven’t been riding with people, I should invite them to go for a ride. This resulted in a late notice for some church services. The call did not go unheeded and it seemed that a nice group would be along for some pedaling.

As the day progressed, the beautiful blue skies slowly faded into grey and about the time I got off work the wind started ripping. Then the rain started. KB and I were ready to throw in the towel. Bro and Sis Meinkey threw it in and invited us to join them for dinner and about 10 seconds before that happening, the CasaZenMobile rolled up in front of the house.

It was still sprinkling as we started to gear up for the ride. Kenny claimed that everything would be fine and he was right. As we pedaled north toward the Chuckwala Trailhead, the clouds cleared, the sun shown thrown and god, once again proved that he loves Mooseknucklers. Not only did the weather clear, but the rain cleared the trail for us and we had Paradise pretty much to ourselves.

The church service reaffirmed to me that no, the demise of the Alliance hasn’t happened, nor do I see it happening any time in the future. Instead, I learned that, like most things, riding will fix it. It’s time to push the things we call life out of the way and get back to pedaling.

The whole point of the Alliance is to foment a community that likes to ride bikes, all types of bikes in all types of conditions and then have some brews afterwards. Which is exactly what we did, and what we plan on doing a long time into the future.

Long live the Alliance!