The Road--And Season--Ahead

In cycling, any given time of year provides its own trials and pleasures.  In this part of the world, it is early in the Spring.  So far, riding has been a bit arduous but very exhilarating.  I think both have to do with how little riding I did this winter.

The ice and mounds of snow and slush are gone.  Some trees, bushes and other plants are budding now.  They fill me with hope, but do not yet distract me from the ones that are still bare, the ground that is barren from now and the buildings and other structures that bear the patina and show the wear and scars of the season we experienced so recently.  

 

So I am not surprised to see a kind of tentative energy in the steps and body language of people, some of whom I had not seen in months. I guess I ride that way, at least some of the time:  Even though the signs of a new season are around us, something in my body--and mind--still has not quite attuned to its rhythms. At least not yet.  It's almost as if I--and, perhaps, the people I see--still need to be convinced that it is indeed Spring, and we're not going back.

As long as we're moving forward, I guess it doesn't really matter whether we're pushing through mud or promenading along a path lined with cherry blossoms--or pedaling around potholes in the streets.  There is a ride, a season, ahead.

I Ride When He Lets Me Go

It's been mild, but windy, ever since I got back from Florida.  As far as I'm concerned, those are fine riding conditions, if not anything like what I encountered in the Sunshine State.

I've managed to do a bit of riding. But it hasn't been easy. Every time I try to go out, I have to get past the gatekeeper:

I mean, wouldn't you have trouble getting past that intimidating stare?

Yeah, I'm talkin' to you!

The Lives The Wind Gave Us

In previous posts, I've mentioned the Navajo creation song that begins, "It was the wind that gave them life."

It was running through my mind, again, as I pedaled into 30-35KPH gusts to the Rockaways and let the same winds blow me home.  And that chant grew even stronger, for me, when I saw the people who'd ventured outside on a chilly, windy but almost hauntingly clear day.

It didn't matter whether those people were families who lived there or were visiting--or whether they were the gnarled old men who seemed to have been deposited there by the tides and abandoned by the currents of time.  They all looked as if the wind had somehow shaped them, had somehow given them life:  the fact that they were alive and the lives they were living, whether in one of the clapboard houses or amongst the remnants of the boardwalk.   

 

The wind brushed the long fine strands and curls of childrens' hair around their faces, which made them seem even younger and dewier than they were.  That same wind turned those children's expressions and words from moments to memories for the parents and grandparents of those children.  And the wind stuttered the echo of old men shuffling through sand, across boards and concrete and asphalt broken by the very tides that returned to that very same wind.

And the wind defined my trip, my journey.  That is the life it gave me, gave them.