The Wind Beneath My Wheels

I have been reading blogs of great social significance lately, written by people who have something to say and who say it well. This is not one of those blogs.

A well-known U.S. writer once said that while everyone talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it. (Of course, the writer is so well known that we aren’t actually sure who he was - Mark Twain or Charles Warner. This has been your literary digression for the day.)

Does complaining about the weather qualify as doing something about it?

Today was hotter and windier than yesterday, so, of course, I went out to do a longer harder ride. That makes perfect sense. Right?

Yesterday a dog threatened me verbally. I went by the same yard and saw him again. He was tied to the same chain, jumping about in exactly the same way and probably making exactly the same threats as yesterday, but he had inexplicably lost about sixty pounds, shrunken considerably and grown a lot of brand new long fur in three different colors. Most peculiar.

As I headed home, the dog was still there, but he had returned to his appearance of yesterday. I suspect there is some sort of leak in the space time continuum in that spot. Or, I may have been suffering from some sort of heat induced hallucination. Maybe there was actually no dog at all. (There may also be some other explanation, but I’m not interested in complicating matters, so I’m going to go with the space time continuum thing.)

I passed a lot of roads whose names had religious significance:

Church of God Road

Antioch Road

Big Daddy’s Road

Okay, I’m not certain that last one was intended to have religious significance, but you never know.

I followed nearly the same route as yesterday, varying it just enough to ride by the scenic dump which, curiously, has a sign on it that says, “No dumping at this site.” I'm still trying to figure that one out.

The cars were all very polite to me, swinging wide to give me plenty of space and passing me safely, but I found it interesting that , when a car whizzes past you at fifty miles an hour, you can still smell cigarette smoke coming through the open window.

Someone very politely said “Hi” to me, but I have no idea who it was, as I was pulling into a headwind at the time and didn’t really have the energy to lift my head up long enough to look around. I did manage to respond verbally. It pays to be courteous, after all.

It was baking hot out there. Even the wind was hot. By the time I got back home, I was red and sweating, possibly a little sunburned, but I was feeling good none the less. Two rides in two days. Imagine that. A little more of this and I might actually be a cyclist again.

Riding in the heat has never been my favorite thing to do. I'd much rather ride when it's 45 than when it's 95, but I'd much rather ride when it's 95 than not ride at all. Which reminds me of the time I nearly got heat stroke, but that's another post. Now I'm going to go get a shower.

See you on the road.