Ann Monroe screams in a village police car at the Blue Buns Wheel-a-Palooza. (Provided photo — Bob Seidenstein)

So Carnival ’24 kicked off on Friday with the Coronation giving us King Ricky and Queen Liz.

Also on Friday I read that some CIA employee got sentenced 40 years for leaking scads and oodles of classified files to WikiLeaks. And what, you ask, does that have to do with SL’s Winter Carnival’s royalty? Read on, and you’ll find out.

Lemme tell ya something: If the CIA was half as well-run as our Winter Carnival committees, that leak never would’ve happened.

When the Winter Carnival committees have secrets, they keep ’em. And when it comes to the selection of the king and queen, it’s decided in some sanctum sanctorum, by some arcane process known only to the elite doing the voting, and nary a whisper penetrates its walls. Thus when the names of the king and queen are announced at Coronation, it’s the first time anyone outside the Carnival Cabal know them.

As much as I’ve liked all the Coronation’s doings (especially the reading of the proclamation), the high point has always been the revelation of king and queen. It is what’s drawn me to the Coronation for dozens of years.

But this year, Coronation was a no-go. Instead, I found out about the royal couple via the New Divine Messenger — the internet.

So why, if I went to all the others, did I miss this one? Simple: I was home working on two things. One was the eleventh-hour details of our second Blue Buns Wheel-a-Palooza. The other was churning up enough stomach HCl to dissolve an anvil. The former, of course, was the cause of the latter: As the Blue Bun’s official Chief Fool, while I can and do delegate lots of jobs, there are still others I have to do myself. And with anything I delegate, I have to follow up on.

So there I am, sprawled out in my La-Z-Boy, cat on lap, tall glass of Maalox in hand, writing lists, checking other lists, making phone calls, and doing what I do best — worrying. And please don’t give me that soothing advice about not worrying because it accomplishes nothing. I know that and I’ve known it for years, but unfortunately, worrying is what I do best.

At about 0100, my lists and phone calls finished, along with my stomach lining, I shlepped upstairs, slipped under the covers, and fell into a deep sleep. That lasted till 0330, when I snapped awake and to full alert with the sound of my dog Jesse barfing up the kibbles he’d swallowed whole at din. By the time I’d cleaned up the mess, Jesse had gone back to bed and was lying in the arms of Morpheus, snoring softly. I, on the other hand, was wired to the eyeballs and wide awake for another hour and a half.

The next morning I woke up at the crack of 0800, fed the dogs (telling Jesse to eat slowly, dammit, while watching him inhale his entire bowl of crunchies in mere seconds), and then started my day. It consisted of more BB details and phone calls, none of which I’ll bore you with. I’ll just say I finished them all, before they finished me. So now the only thing to do was wait till Sunday for the Great Event itself.

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A great start …

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The Blue Buns starts at 1 p.m. for two good reasons. First, it conflicts with only one other Carnival event, and second, it gives me a chance to sleep late. Which is more than my cat did. For at 0800 and for reasons known only to her, she decided to try out her pounce-to-kill technique directly above my bladder. No accident ensued … but neither did any more sleep. All things equal, it was just as well, since I wouldn’t have to rush to get down to the palace (where the BB starts and ends). Beyond that, and beyond my wildest imaginings, the sun was shining brilliantly in a bright blue sky — two things none of us had seen for what seemed like forever, but was probably only the past couple of months.

Driving the sag wagon, festooned with our official Blue Buns flag, Mr. Ron Burdick pulled into my driveway at 1130, ready to haul me and my bike to the Palace. When we got there, the registration and t-shirt sale tables were already womanned by my faithful crew — Kelley Morgan, Barb Martin, Marilyn Bigelow and Patti Sauvie — forms and coin box on the table, pens in hands, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready to go. Queen Liz prowled around, lending her regal presence but no real help. After that, Kathy Dyer and Rocky Nogales arrived with the PA system and the guest announcer, none other than Carnival’s Grand Marshal Sue Dyer. Then my XO, Jack Drury, pulled in with 120 blueberry crumble cakes he’d shlepped from Lake Placid, a gift of our sponsor River Trail Beerworks.

And after that, it was just a matter of the riders showing up. And show up they did — in costumes, face paints, hats and bling galore. There were also, as expected, those hearty souls/exhibitionists who wore only bathing suits, perhaps the most glamorous among them Las Hermanas Pelletieri, reprising last year’s role as bikini babes (though both wearing fur coats before the ride).

The riders filled the Palace parking lot — a riot of noise, color and motion.

There were so many and in such wild array, I got only a flash of this one and that one. The Burpoe family were skeletons; Paul Mader was Shark #1 (there was another shark, but I didn’t know who he was). Linda Peer was The Wicked Witch of the West; Richard Brandt, in bathing suit, was riding a banana seat bike with ape hangers. The only thing they had in common was they all rocked huge grins.

Finally, just after 1, the whistle blew, Elizabeth Izzo waved the starting flag. In the lead car, with Sergeant Brown at the wheel and Officer Beebe riding shotgun (and Ann Monroe in the back seat dressed in Alcatraz Chic) the lights flashed, the siren wailed, and we were off!

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… and a great ending

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Here’s a hint for anyone who wants to run an event that consists of about a hundred lunatics of all sizes, ages, costumes and proclivities riding bicycles for two laps around a sleepy Adirondack town on a brisk mid-winter day: Read up on your Clausewitz.

So who is Clausewitz, and why should you read him? Good questions.

As for the answers: Clausewitz was a German general during the Napoleonic wars, whose theories on military strategy and science are still studied widely.

OK, that’s the who. Now hows about the why?

Clausewitz coined two phrases. One is “The fog of war,” which means once engaged in a military action, things get confused and confusing. The other is “Friction.” This is “the force that makes the apparently easy so difficult.” In plain English, once an engagement starts, all sorts of unseen factors will put your plans into the crapper. Thus, when your plans are put into action, you bloody well better be able to adjust to a situation you never expected and that’s biting you in the butt, in order to carry on successfully.

And that’s exactly what happened at the Blue Buns.

Our plan was to ride up Church Street, turn left at the light on Main Street, ride to Berkeley Square, turn left, ride to the town hall and turn left there, and then back to the Palace. Then the police car would lead one more lap and we’d be done.

It was a great plan. Unfortunately, at the Main Street light it was dashed (probably due to unclear instruction on my behalf) when Sgt. Brown kept going straight, down Church Street Extension and on to Bloomingdale Avenue.

I was about midway in the pack when I saw the Po-Po Mobile go through the light.

“But, but, but,” I sputtered.

The next thing I knew, a big gap opened in the pack as the riders going down the hill picked up far more speed than us. So by the time I and my crew got to the light, the others were at Bloomingdale Avenue, and Sgt. Brown had already turned left.

And so what happened was the riders were split up in separate groups. And those of us out of sight of the cop car were hustling, bustling, swerving and swearing our way through, around, and in and out of various vehicles, full of bug-eyed folks wondering what the hell was going on.

I was wondering what the hell was going on, myself, but at least I knew a bathing suit-clad ride was going on, as scheduled. The poor sods in the vehicles were clueless.

Eventually, we all made it back A-Ok, big smiles all around (adorned with blueberry crumble crumbs) and another successful Blue Buns to be celebrated … Though maybe not by all.

Once the bikini-clad Hermanas Pelletieri zoomed down Church Street Extension hill, they understood the wind chill index better than they ever had before. And so they both said to hell with a second lap, came back to the palace, and donned their elegant furs.

In my book, they were winners because they did the smart thing.

And I’m sure they also would’ve made Clausewitz proud.