National Nudity, Global Unity: The World Naked Bike Ride of Seattle

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Awkward? Yes. Uncomfortable? In the beginning… yes. Strange and out-of-place? Very much so. Liberating to the bones? You could not even imagine!

A sunny Saturday. The summer day beautiful. A sky expanding its wings far beyond the horizons, reaching high into a blue emptiness. People were out underneath its canopy; walking, jogging, sitting, eating, playing and biking. I was performing the latter, cycling upwards, climbing the steeps from downtown Seattle to Capitol Hill. I pedaled furiously, sweat beading in all those warming places. Huff. One. Puff. Two. Muff. Three… wait! What?

My mind slipped. It ran off giggling, disappearing into deep visualizations, projecting into the future. Huff. Puff. Muff? I was panting now as I reached the ridgeline and settled upon the flats. I turned left off Olive and cycled north up Broadway, winding into 10th before curving right on Prospect. At Volunteer Park, I dismounted and walked in an attempt to collect myself:

No muffs. Just bodies. No boobs. No butts. No twigs and berries. Just flesh. I got it. You got it. No worries. I’m cool.

As I walked through the grass, passing patterns of shadow and light beneath the park’s trees, I was psyching myself up. Calming my thoughts. Reassuring my position as a human being, but cracking open my head a little farther to shatter this evasive taboo. It was Saturday, a typical weekend with play, exploration and outdoor adventure. However, it felt different. I felt different; a unique feeling of standing at an edge of something humongous and just about to leap off. I call this cliff-diving: the jumping forward into freedom on a whole new level, into a whole new dimension, and surrendering to its weightlessness—the liberation of being you.

Like I said, Saturday, July 11th 2009. Through Volunteer Park visualizing, imagining, laughing, smiling; and then out toward Louisa Boren Park for the WNBR. You need me to spell it out? The World Naked Bike Ride in Seattle, WA.

Saturday: Day 1

Years ago, I had my first experience of public nudity. I was in a foreign land among a new culture, and like a chameleon I adapted to it. I do this well when traveling in life, and especially when traveling internationally. Then, I found myself on the island of Crete in the Grecian Mediterranean in a southern beachtown called Plakias. Out of choice, out of divine guidance, out of my liberation of self and others, I found myself on sand shortly after departing the bus, literally pitching my tent on a nude beach beside a twenty-seven year old Ukrainian woman. I was twenty-one. I just found heaven.

And for ten days I camped right beside her and all the other sun-bathing European nudists, exiting my tent in the morning hours butt-naked, standing tall and stretching my arms over my head with an expansive yawn. Then I scratched, walked down to the Libyan Sea and soaked. Afterwards, I got out, threw down my towel on the beach and lounged; sleeping, reading, writing, observing… all in the beautiful nude. This was international nudity and inside it was global liberation.

Presently, I arrived at the designated meeting spot and walked into the first of my fellow compatriots. Resting my bike under a tree, I got to work helping erect screens to protect us from absolute exposure. However, it was an odd concept, for with the breeze gusting and the endeavor we were about to take part in, there seemed to be no reason for all this. But we did it anyway, maybe to pass the time, maybe as a way of meditation to prepare ourselves, to go beyond the taboo of our bodies and into our universal nakedness. But maybe we did it as procedure, as a sort of permit-rule to allow us our freedom. Then, 11am struck. Considerably more individuals arrived. There was up to 50 of us behind the makeshift screen, obsolete in its purpose, and as the hour chimed the first shorts came off.

A national celebration: July 5th—11th, 2009. It was National Nude Recreation Week. No, I’m not joking. I’m serious. It was a reality in this diversified and diversifying world, and here I was with a bundle of other nudist Seattleites. And the time was 11am. The paints came out, the body art created. We decorated ourselves. We dyed each other. Designs. Slogans. Messages to civilization: Pedal Your Ass, Save Gas; Burn Fat, Not Oil and How About the Right to Bare Everything. It was colorful. It was hilarious. And as I gazed over our whimsy screens there was a gathering assembly.

People stood watching, staring…at us…all bare and beastly, skinny and scrawny. The sizes and shapes. The colors and shades. We were lively, indubitably. Upon the hill, behind bushes and in the shades of trees at the modest little Louisa Boren Park people photographed as we performed our pre-ride ritual. A couple photographers held massive telephoto lenses as if we were spread upon a football field. But at the most we were a mere fifteen yards away and the pubic shots they must have taken would’ve been detailed to a single follicle. As I continued wrapping blue bands of paint round each leg and arm, I began to truly settle into this experience.

Each act of cliff-diving is a phase in life when you’re about to ascend to a newer dimension, a higher vibration of you and your inner expression, whether it be public nudity, job opportunities, daring risks, sexual experiences, life-altering decisions, etc. At this moment, all feeling dissipates. It’s as if you’ve literally reached a void, an emptiness that is free to BE. The doors are open. You are at your evolutionary peak. Now, time to continue evolving and choose to jump through.
Each time I’ve arrived at such confluences, I’ve never looked back. You can’t. You can’t think. You can’t feel. You go for it, believing that your whole life has guided you to this present moment. It’s empowering. It’s trusting. It’s a wild ride. I’m leaping through this portal.

So was my experience back on the nude beach of Plakias when, for the first time publicly, I stripped off all my clothes; and this was the experience at 11am on July 11th, 2009 as I revealed every ounce of me to the city of Seattle. I cliff-dove. We all did. And then we painted, created, designed and laughed. With 50 naked people moving around in a small space, there was lots of “checking out”. We looked at one another. We got close and highlighted each other’s backsides and other hard-to-reach places. Then, our conglomeration of colorful skin and vibrant flesh tore down the screens and packed up. It was time to go for a ride.

Approximately seven miles through the sunny weekend streets of Seattle, and through our path round Capitol Hill, descending into downtown and out towards Seattle Center, I have never been more aware of how many people carry digital cameras. It was shocking. Everyone whipped out their pocket size thingies and started shooting, unloading megapixels on us as if we were Jenna Jamison look-a-likes. What a revolution and what a subject to shoot: a wild pack of cyclists lazily pedaling through the city on busy summer Saturday. But best of all were the smiles.

Emerging like a shy fox, unsure of its security, doubtful about its exposure, a smile would burst into life off an otherwise reclusive face. The fox pouncing on the shrew. It was in its element, beaming and frolicking, excavating that inner cache of energy it stored due to stress, due to daily habits and customs, due to a hidden taboo of nakedness. But the World Naked Bike Ride of ’09 was there to let it out of its box, and so the smiles danced.

“World Naked Bike Ride coming through!” Todd, our organizer and leader, turned left off 1st Avenue and bounced along the cobbled street. Wow, there was some jiggling! Butt cheeks vibrating on the saddle. Boobs free and swingin’. The other parts hangin’ in there. We were turning into Pike Place Market. Our school of fish looked at one another. “Here we go!”

As we rode onward, all music stopped and all sales came to a halt. The streets were packed. Those cameras on us like limelight. And mouths agape, smiles soaring, laughs drifting like notes.

“It’s a great day to be naked!” I shouted.

“All bodies are beautiful!” Emily cried.

“Smile, it’s time to get nude!” exclaimed Kelly.

And thus we traversed to Seattle Center.

Now, picture in the cinema of your mind, a family park on a sunny summer afternoon: There is a huge fountain in the center of the lawn, and I mean massive, and water is crazily spewing forth from its holes. Kids are running around under the water, screaming, frolicking, joyous in the cool refreshing splash contrasting the warmth of the sun. It’s their playground out in public and their parents watch and smile. Damn, it’s good to be a kid!

Then, like out of a circus, a horde of painted cyclists ride up and descend upon the playground. One second they are cycling and the next they’re sprinting for the waterfalls; screaming like mental patients on the loose, frolicking like puppies, joyous as themselves and totally butt-naked. It’s a nightmare from the Stephen King's classic It with naked clowns taking over, giggling freakishly. Instantly, children scatter and flock back to the arms of their mothers.

End of the ride. We reached Seattle Center, unscathed, unscarred, without any battles between asphalt and police. And for twenty minutes we washed ourselves amidst an assembly of 400+ individuals staring, gawking, laughing, pointing and familiarizing themselves with our body parts.

I emerged from the fountain still adorning my paints. I walked up the slope of the fountains and sat on the edge. I watched. I laughed. I smiled and joined the ranks of the thousands of other persons we brought happiness to. This was our purpose. This was our freedom, a National Liberation of humanity: to laugh, smile and play as who we are, celebrating every ounce of our being.

To be continued...>>

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Comments

[miguel]

qué se siente estar en una WNBR?