This guy's body paint would have to be, by far, the most spectacular I saw out of the huge contingent of nude cyclists that kicked off the annual Fremont Solstice Parade yesterday. Now, to be fair, in all likelihood there were plenty of others just as good, or even better; this just happens to be the best I saw -- Shobhit and I walked past the guy near the Lake Union waters at GasWorks Park, where the parade makes its route end. The contingent features over 700 participants, after all -- that's likely more than the participants of the rest of the parade contingents put together -- and I took fewer than 100 pictures of them.

But, hey -- I did still get a photo album of 98 shots for the day to post to Flickr, and plenty of other great body paint -- and great bodies -- can be viewed there.

Shobhit and I drove to Wallingford, parked the car about five blocks north of GasWorks Park, then walked down to the park and then a ways up the street on the parade route until we found a spot on a corner on 34th Street from which to watch the oncoming cyclists. The nude cyclists are truly all Shobhit cares about; he never wants to see the rest of the parade at all, whereas I like all of it.

And yesterday, I talked as though we had had to skip last year for our anniversary trip to Yellowstone National Park, but that we had gotten in our stupid fight the year before because Shobhit got all pissy about my not wanting to pose for a picture with a couple of the naked guys at GasWorks Park. Well, turns out, that actually happened in 2015 -- the last time we were able to make it to this event. I had forgotten that our anniversary got in the way of attendance in 2017 as well, for our trip to Vancuover that year; and in 2016, before Shobhit moved back from L.A., it was my nephew Christian's weekend visit that year -- only the second such visit Christian ever got to have -- preempted my attendance.

So, for four years between 2012 and 2015, I went every year, the first three of those by myself. Prior to that, I had gone in 2006 and in 2008, and those times Shobhit was with me (and also Barbara, in 2008). But, this time it had been four years since I last managed to go.

It was worth it, if a little chilly; it was overcast all day yesterday, though luckily never rainy, and never higher than the mid-sixties, which I think caused a little bit of "shrinkage." Shobhit had to leave to go to work, which was just as well for my getting just a few shots of the rest of the parade, which moved at a fucking glacial pace and so it was easiest for me to just to walk against the parade along its route until I reached its end. I walked a bit around the festival in Fremont, then across the Fremont Bridge where I caught a shuttle bus downtown.

[posted 12:16 pm]