Gotta Ride
Sometimes, it’s just so beautiful outside that you have what seems like a moral obligation to ride.
To whom that obligation is owed is unclear—yourself? Mother Nature? The Burke-Gilman trail?—but one feels a powerful normative “oomph” to get out there and ride, even if you’re not initially inclined to.
Like last night, a Tuesday—a day on which, these days, I usually ride about a quarter of the way home after my evening class then, tired and worn out after a long day of opening minds and negotiating bureaucracies, catch the bus the rest of the way—a brilliant full moon shone over Lake Washington so brightly only three stars (and I’m pretty sure at least two of those were planets) were visible in the strikingly clear December sky, and the loveliness of it all, coupled with the knowledge that such ideal weather for riding is going to be at a premium for the next five months or so, compelled me, against my initial desires, to do so.
In short, I’d have been a fool to pass up the opportunity and so, (although I’m a fool for all sorts of other reasons) I had no choice but to keep pedaling.
And indeed I was rewarded by a never-before-seen (by me) sight of back-lit low clouds crawling over Medina like some sort of blobby ghost, a vision so strange and other-wordly, I stared at it for miles and miles without ever really being able to resolve it or make sense of what I was seeing—which allowed me to believe, for at least a while, that I was witnessing some sort of alien invasion or at least once-in-a-lifetime meteorological anomaly.
Good times.
Or today, even though it’s colder than it’s been all season and my feet are already freezing before I’ve even gone out, I clearly owe it to the bright but brittle sunshine trying so hard to warm things up to get on the bike.
To whom that obligation is owed is unclear—yourself? Mother Nature? The Burke-Gilman trail?—but one feels a powerful normative “oomph” to get out there and ride, even if you’re not initially inclined to.
Like last night, a Tuesday—a day on which, these days, I usually ride about a quarter of the way home after my evening class then, tired and worn out after a long day of opening minds and negotiating bureaucracies, catch the bus the rest of the way—a brilliant full moon shone over Lake Washington so brightly only three stars (and I’m pretty sure at least two of those were planets) were visible in the strikingly clear December sky, and the loveliness of it all, coupled with the knowledge that such ideal weather for riding is going to be at a premium for the next five months or so, compelled me, against my initial desires, to do so.
In short, I’d have been a fool to pass up the opportunity and so, (although I’m a fool for all sorts of other reasons) I had no choice but to keep pedaling.
And indeed I was rewarded by a never-before-seen (by me) sight of back-lit low clouds crawling over Medina like some sort of blobby ghost, a vision so strange and other-wordly, I stared at it for miles and miles without ever really being able to resolve it or make sense of what I was seeing—which allowed me to believe, for at least a while, that I was witnessing some sort of alien invasion or at least once-in-a-lifetime meteorological anomaly.
Good times.
Or today, even though it’s colder than it’s been all season and my feet are already freezing before I’ve even gone out, I clearly owe it to the bright but brittle sunshine trying so hard to warm things up to get on the bike.
posted by Professor Dave at 8:35 AM
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