It was a perfect Spring afternoon: The breeze made me feel even lighter than the air around the sun-flecked leaves and flowers.
On such an afternoon, I feel as if I could ride forever. This afternoon, I felt as if I would ride forever, that I would continue yesterday’s ride—to Connecticut—and the ones I’ve taken along boulevards, through forests and among chateaux.
I didn’t wind my way along the Loire to Amboise. But I did ride to a castle, of sorts.
Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear, was begging for me to take her picture. Of course: Who or what wouldn’t look good in the light of our ride? I think she—and I—were both feeling good after I finally gave her a long-needed Spring tuneup.
We stopped at the garden in front of St. Raymond’s Church where, I’m told, a certain family with a daughter named Jennifer attended mass every Sunday.
She also attended a nearby Catholic school, since closed, before anyone outside the neighborhood knew about her.
Yes, I’m talking about J-Lo. I hear she and Ben are breaking up again. Still, things must be easier for her than they are for someone else who grew up a neighborhood over (to which I also rode today). I mean, imagine being Sonia Sotomayor and having to look at Sam, Clarence after they destroyed the very thing that made her and other women’s lives possible, even if they never had to avail themselves to what it allows. I’m no legal scholar, but I can’t help but to think that the “juice” for Title IX, passed in 1972, was supplied a few months later when a very different Supreme Court decided on Roe v. Wade.
Anyway, I wasn’t thinking about that as I rode. If anything, I was simply reveling in having a couple of hours to ride in what are probably the best conditions we experience in this part of the world—and exploring what is, for now, my part of it.
