Gather at 4pm, depart a few minutes later. Route, distance, and destination will be determined by attendees. But the weather looks rather promising, so I’m penciling in Griffith (70km r/t). However! If this is too long/intimidating, please let me know as I”m fairly certain there will be a group going shorter.

***

Once upon a time, a certain British expat began a tradition here at the shop called the Tea Time Ride. A manic depressive SAIC art professor whose resentment for his students was surpassed only by his hatred for winter, he’d often show up in the mid-afternoon with paint-stained fingertips and reeking of absinthe. One day, in an effort to rally his spirits, I closed up shop early, and we went for a ride.

This was in early March. It was only a few degrees above freezing, and neither of us were properly dressed, but it was a rare windless afternoon and the sun was out, and the lake was placid and shimmery. He didn’t talk about his abusive father, or his drug habit, or his estranged children. He didn’t talk about his talentless privileged students, or the plonkers-as-bosses at the college. We just rode and rode, mostly in silence.

It grew dark, and we turned around, and rode home. He stopped coming by as often, but when he did - it was usually on a warmish winter afternoon, and he'd bring a big thermos of PG Tips, and serve tiny steaming cups of the stuff to anyone in the shop. And then I’d shutter the shop early and all of us, whomever happened to be around that afternoon, would head out for a ride.

A couple of years later, he took his own life, just like he said he would, on the very first day that we met. Someone put up a Facebook memorial, which he would have loathed. And the Team Time Rides stopped, and nobody talked about these things for a very long time.

Over the summer, I saw one of his sons. He was tall and gangly and with big, flappy and goofy ears, just like his father.