Not Bad

I’m pretty sure that I have one of the best bike commutes in the world, or at least that among those better than mine, there’s some inferior trade-off, like it takes place in Southern California, or that the job it would get me to would involve working all day long in a cubicle.

Sure, sometimes I wish it were a few miles shorter, and that long more-or-less uphill from the Montlake Bridge to my back alley wears on me from time to time, and I do get pretty sick, during the winter months, of wringing out my gloves and wearing plastic gear that comes to take on an odor of cheese, but those are just minor annoyances in comparison to the overall excellence of my bike route to and from school.

Yesterday was a great case in point.

On my way out to Cascadia, not long after sunrise, I got to pedal along the Burke-Gilman trail for about 14 miles, serenaded by the morning songs of thousands of birds, at least one or two—crows and robins, at least—I can identify by name. The sun was coming up over the lake, slowly burning off the morning fog, and the air that rushed by my face as I rolled along at a pace slower than everyone including a guy even older than me on a department store mountain bike, was bracing and invigorating, so much so that I managed to stay awake all through my three-hour morning meeting.

And then, last night, after a long, but reasonably interesting day at school, it was my great pleasure, following a shared pitcher of beer at Bothell’s Main Street Alehouse, to carve my way through the night, lit by the beam of my bicycle’s headlamp, along the nearly-deserted trail, the full moon slowly rising behind splayed-out fingers of clouds above the lake.

People would pay for this pleasure, I’m sure, but I get it free, sometimes, like yesterday, twice daily.