Getting Away, For This Moment

What have I done this week?  Woke, had breakfast, rode bike to work, taught classes, read papers, taught more classes, rode home, read lots more papers, went to bed, woke and started the cycle all over again.


At least I was able to ride to work.  Actually, I came to the conclusion that I had to.  Not to meet some training goal or to fulfill some egotistical desire; no, I had to ride, even if only to work, to keep even a pretense of sanity. And, it was the only thing that was allowing me to do my work.


You see, last week, I took the train and bus on Thursday.  The weather was cold, but not as bitter as it's been the last couple of days.  Rather, I thought I could use the transit time to get some work done.  But I was so tired that I couldn't focus.  Yet, at the same time, I was on edge:  Imagine that you can't keep your eyes open but an electrical storm is flashing inside of you.  Even if I could have concentrated my energies enough to read a few papers, I couldn't have:  Everything was crowded, so I had hardly enough physical, let alone mental, space.  


It also seems that my work load at the end of this semester has been particularly onerous.  I feel as if I never really caught up--in cycling as well is in my work; forget about my personal life!-- after losing a week to my eye infection.  


I apologize for the absence of photos or other images.  I just didn't get a chance to take any pictures.  I take that back:  My mind just hasn't been working in that direction.


But the riding has been good.  And I actually was accompanied, at least for the first two miles of my ride home last night, by one of the full-time faculty members at the second college where I teach.  She saw me pick up my helmet and one of those, "You ride, too?!," conversations ensued.


She may not be the most experienced rider.  But she's a more skilled rider than she realizes.  And, she wants to do it.  Plus, I have to admit that while she was praising the fact that I seemed "unfazed by the cold" (and you all know how good I am at seeming to be one thing or another, as I spent so much of my life at it, until a few years ago!) and that I was keeping up the kind of pace I was (which, actually, wasn't that great, but I didn't care) , I was noticing how good she looked riding her bike.  In my next life, I'd like to look as good as she does when she's riding.  Hey, I wouldn't mind it in this life!


Now, here's the one of the other things I do to keep some shred of sanity:  writing on this blog.  I needed to do this, too:  A couple of days away, and I really missed it.  Whatever its other merits, if any, this blog and my other let me do some writing that doesn't involve comments like "Society can't think anything" or that dyspeptic prose found in the academic world or the narcotic diction of education papers.


Now I'm becoming narcotic.  That's not too strange, though, given what time of year it is