Orange and red

If you ever make a map for cyclists, don't choose orange as the color for very bad roads to cycle on and red as the color for really good roads. Why? Because they look the exact frickin same!! My ride today will either be on very good roads or I am going to end up in a ditch, run off the road by a Jersey driver (always a danger, of course), or desperately trying to find a way off of a major highway.

Showering at the farm

My shower has the odd habit of tormenting me every time I decide to adjust the temperature. You see, when I try to make it hotter, the shower first gets colder for a few seconds before getting hotter, and when I try to make it colder, it decides to get hotter before cooling down. I admit I don't understand the minutae of how showers work, but I would assume adjusting the knob for hotter water would simply open wider the valve attached to the hot water pipes. Where is this cold water coming from? I've become convinced that my shower is really just plain lazy -- it doesn't like having to adjust the temperature. It relents after 15 seconds, but first splashes me with some water of an even more uncomfortable temperature. It's like a child, who, when told to be quiet, shouts "FINE!" and is then silent. What a spoiled brat my shower is.

One of those moments

You know those moments when you read something, and you marvel at how the author has put into words what you have always thought, or at least felt? It's such a satisfying feeling. "That's it", you think, "he has somehow made it concrete, something that can actually be written down." I had one of those moments yesterday while reading this little book about cycling called Need for the Bike given to me by a good friend. It goes:

"Contrary to what happens when I'm in a car and the landscape allows itself to be seen and not 'be,' on a bike I'm sitting in it.

With the bike there's an animal relation with the world: the mountains you see are there to be scaled, the valleys are for cruising down into, shadows are for hiding in and stretching out. To be in the landscape, in its heat, its rain, its wind, is to see it with different eyes; it's to impregnate oneself with it in an instinctive and profound way. The mountain rising before me isn't a mountain, it's a first grade to climb, a test, a doubt, sometimes anxiety. At the summit, it's a conquest, lightness. I've taken it and it's in me."

Today while cycling along some peaceful country roads under a blue sky, I remembered this and it hit me all over again. I was "sitting in it".

The ride after the storm

Had a terrific ride today. I was moving pretty quick, and the ride was fairly eventful. I saw a chain gang type thing (a sheriff with a bunch of big guys in orange jump suits with those trash picker-upper type devices). I'm sure they were amused to see the skinny kid in tights wiz by. I rode around a traffic circle, which was pretty fun -- felt very European. It made me start thinking about cycling through the European countryside, maybe near the Rhein, through vineyards with castles overlooking from their hilltops. It would be simply incredible.

On the drive home tonight, I saw a fox. Don't see them very often -- very shy animals -- so it was neat to catch a glimpse of one, if only for a moment.

I have discovered that one trait ubiqitously sought after by all women: confidence.