Every once in a while, I see an article or blogpost about carrying stuff on your bicycle. They mention the usual things: racks, panniers, other bike bags, baskets, backpacks, trailers and such.
None of them, though, has ever mentioned anything like this:
Saturday was the last day of Daylight Savings Time. It would be the last time until Spring I could start not much before noon, take a longish ride and get home before dark. So I rode to--where else?--Connecticut.
Connecticut is just a north of my apartment. It's actually not very far "as the crow flies," but the geography and topography make it impossible to go like a crow. Why would I want to be a crow anyway? I wouldn't be able to ride my bike and, well, their diet isn't very appealing.
But I digress. Connecticut is just far enough north that the Fall foliage is a few days ahead of ours in Astoria. I figured, correctly, that it would be at or near peak.
In downtown Greenwich, I saw quite a few people out and about. The day was chilly, but it was illuminated by that perfect autumnal light.
Given how awful I felt on Thursday, I could hardly believe how wonderful I, and everything around me, felt. I pedaled into a fairly stiff wind most of the way up. The flip-side of that, of course, is that the wind blew me into the sunset.
From the Randalls Island Connector it's about another six kilometers to my apartment--just enough for me to enjoy the last flickerings of twilight. And that night I'd have an extra hour of sleep after a 140 km ride.
