Bike commuting doesn’t get better than mornings like this one. Beautiful weather and some decent strangeness to keep me amused. A squirrel decided to race me for a block. It just started bolting down the sidewalk when I passed him/her. It won. Four kids who were waiting for their bus at an intersection were all sitting with their backs to eachother playing little handheld video games. Kinda depressing. But Then I thought maybe they were all networked and were playing together, or maybe their parents had bought them all wireless devices and they decided to be geeky at the bus stop and instant message eachother. I felt better thinking that. A road crew was laying piping hot new pavement on Summit Ave, and a clueless biker decided to ride into it. He got stuck and his tires melted. The biker was trying to gracefully lean/fall/stretch to the curb without putting a foot down on the steamy pavement and finally collapsed like a raggedy-ann doll barely escaping some serious burns. Finally, I thought for about a half-mile about what my life would be like if I was a professor of physics at one of the small colleges around here. In my mind it was a pretty good life.

I’ve learned many great lesson biking this summer. One is that no matter how fast you go there is always someone who wants to go faster. My legs have remembered some muscle and I can cruise at a good clip. I pass a lot of people but there is always someone who blows right by me and my rabbit status goes right back to tortoise. Sometimes, for no real reason, I try and justify this in my mind, like, “yeah well she’s probably just starting her journey and I’m already seven miles into mine.” or, “I got this huge bag with a heavy laptop in it and he’s got nothing weighing him down but that dorky spandex biker gear”. It seems silly that I would do this but I do.

Biking also gives you time to really appreciate the fading images.