July 21, 2003

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  So you go over to Fremont and what we did was ride our bikes up the Burke-Gilman to the place just below the Fremont drawbridge. There's a stairway you can take right from the foot of the bridge, to up on the deck. Just a few flights. No big deal.
  
  So you go up there and sort of look around. It's best at night, because the view is much nicer, and it's easier to not be seen by the bridge attendant, up in his little tower. Thing is, not much traffic goes under the bridge at night, especially since the locks close at 9pm, so you're more likely to do it during the day.
  
  So anyway you go about midway out the drawbridge part, and you stand there and smoke a cigarette or something, and you make sure you're on the far side from the attendant tower, and you just slowly blend into a shadow somewhere. It helps to wear black if it's night time.
  
  The goal here is to be unnoticed by the attendant. Near the time when a big boat is coming through, but not just before, because then the guy's looking for people like you who are still on the deck. If you do it too soon, you'll be noticed by passing traffic, and just your luck some cop will drive across the bridge, and then you're toast.
  
  So through guile and luck, you end up leaning against one of the vertical beams on the drawbridge. You want your back to be toward the nearest landfall, OK? Or you'll have a landfall of your own. And you want to be facing away from the attendant in his little tower, or you'll be discovered as soon as the bridge opens up.
  
  And then you have to hold on tight! If you're truly badass, you could just try and hang on, but the supports aren't all that big when the bridge is jerking around up in mid-air. But if you're smart, you could get some climbing gear or something and tie yourself on.
  
  But when you hear the clanging bell, and you see that traffic barrier fall, you know, you just know. You know you're breaking the law, and you could die. And that big ass machine just glides right up to vertical, 90 full degrees, and you're watching the landscape fall away in front of you. The whole place is shifting around, and you kind of lose your footing, becaue gravity isn't down anymore, it's backward.
  
  Your hands dig into the metal, and you feel like you're gonna die from exhaustion. And you look sideways, and the whole world is sideways. You look up and see Ballard, and you look down and see Interbay. You want to scream, you want to hoot and holler, but if you do, you'll be discovered.
  
  And that's the real shame, too. The excitement and the thrill of it is something you can't let out, because it would give the whole game away. And how much of fukkin' American consumerism is like that? Some guy wants to sell you the life-experience equivalent of junk mail, and you're supposed to yell and scream and make a joyful fukkin' noise, but you do something real, and scary, and joyous, and if you tell anybody they'll come and drag you away in handcuffs.
  
  But anyway, we rode the thing up and down. We did it one at a time so if one of us got noticed, only one of us would end up in jail. And afterward we rode our bikes to Gasworks park and sat on top of the big hill with the weird sundial on it, and got stoned. And we kept tilting our heads and trying to remember what it was like to be on top of that huge machine.

  • 3:06 am
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