I was reading somewhere about how people in some parts of the U.S. put their motorcycles or scooters away when the temperature hits 50 degrees. Good thing I don’t do that.
Last weekend was my fourth Paseo con los Muertos (”ride with the dead”), the annual rally put on by the Los Gatos Gordos SC. Paseo dos, in 2003, was my very first scooter rally, done on the ET. It was really cold that year, with high temperatures barely above freezing.
Not so this year, the weather quite mild. There were something like 30 bikes on hand for the annual tour of cemeteries and places of infamous homicide and suicide.
The event has, well, contracted over the years. Back in 2003, there was a Friday night party, a very full day of cemetery visits, and a very full Ride of the Macabre that included stops at such places as the building that once housed Seattle’s Crisis Clinic, infamous because serial killer Ted Bundy once volunteered there as a phone counselor.
This year, there was a costume party on Saturday night, and a ride on Sunday that combined cemeteries and dead peoples’ places.
But still, it was a great reason to go for a ride on this sunny fall day. I feel so sorry for all those people who don’t seem to know how to dress in layers.
We took an extended tour through the Evergreen-Waschelli cemetery in north Seattle. No, it wasn’t a mad dash, it was a respectful circumnavigation of the cemetery’s access roads, starting on the side west of Aurora, and concluding on the east side.
From there, we did a loop through the little Crown Hill Cemetery, then went to Adobe’s office complex on the Ship Canal for a talk about the Aurora Bridge’s status as Seattle’s favorite place from which to end it all.
Fort Lawton’s military cemetery was the next stop, where we viewed two unusual graves: that of a German soldier, and the unusual monument marking the grave of an Italian soldier who was lynched in a riot on the base in 1944.
Stopping for a late lunch at the Honey Hole on Capitol Hill, we lost a few participants but picked up a few more. From there it was on to the sites of the Wah Mee Massacre and Mary Pang warehouse fire in the International District, the place on Capitol Hill where the body of Mia Zapata was found, and the former residence of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, the grounds of which contained the guesthouse, since razed, where the Nirvana frontman took his life in 1994.
In spite of Seattle’s reputation for niceness, this area’s history includes many, many grisly homicides (and many, many serial killers) that could be included on a ride like this. If it were to include them all, we’d still be out riding.
However, the plan today is to wrap up the program while there’s still daylight, so we head for Lakeview Cemetery on Capitol Hill for the annual visit to the graves of Bruce Lee and his son Brandon.
Unfortunately, I forgot to bring Tootsie Rolls…
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