Or it’s becoming one.
Now, I considered (as I did last Saturday) posting this in my health blog Terveys instead of this one, but I decided that, hey, this isn’t just a separate topic now: this is something that I’m integrating into my life. Not only that, but consider that my stated purpose for this blog — besides the sometimes trivial record of the workaday details of my life — is to write here about what puts the cool breeze in me. Doing what I’m doing is certainly doing that.
So back to the point: this is the second Saturday in a row I’ve taken my bike to go downtown for writing at Side Street Espresso, my favorite writing venue. Today I even managed to get all the way up the bike trail curve around the hill next to L Street without having to dismount & walk it. Huff & puff, but hey, gets my metabolism going, & I know I’ll get stronger with time.
And maybe with properly inflated tires, too. I was gonna pump some air before I left home, but the bike pump had magically dissappeared. So I called up the boy, who had spent the night at a friend’s house, & asked him about it. Yep. He’s got it in his backpack. Just in case he ran over some glass on the bike trail. I forgot to tell him what Rozz pointed out after I concluded the conversation with him: a lot of good the bike pumps gonna do him if glass rips a big hole in his bicycle tire.
But never mind. My tires are a little low, but I made it. Got some productive work done, & when Side Street closed at 3:00, I headed down to the Coastal Trail.
It was warmer today than last week, though quite a bit windy. There was an Alaska Railroad passenger train sitting down at the depot when I got down to the start of the trail, & after a couple of minutes pedaling I could hear it come up behind me, so I hopped of my bike to get some piks. Got quite a number of pics, in fact, because for the inscrutable reasons that only railroad employees know, the train later backed up past me again, kids waving at me as it passed. Presumably it went back all the way to the depot.
Then a little later, while I was sitting down just offtrail for a little picnic lunch, it came by again. And then it backed up again. Maybe it came by again later, too, but by then I’d finished my lunch & hopped back on my bike to continue my ride. Was this just some little Saturday “see what it’s like to ride the train” quickie for the tourists? Tourists, in early May, before the trees have even popped with buds? (These people in the picture to the right weren’t tourists, just other Coastal Trail fans passing by.)
Did I mention the wind? When I was eating lunch, it blew a sandwich bag away once, & the lid to my container away later on. I managed to retrieve both items before they blew off onto the mud flats, & got everything weighed down better so it wouldn’t happen again. That’s my picnic spot in the photo to the right, where the little white items that look like trash, but are really my food containers, are sitting.
A little cold on my hands as I went down the trail — or up, there are a couple of slight hills that raised my metabolism again huff puff huff puff.
Last week there was still a lot of ice on Westchester Lagoon, though it had melted away from shore; this week it was all gone. The trees are gonna pop any moment.
After I got home & wiped the sweat off my beaded brow, Rozz & I headed down to the local Lutheran church where one of her Tai Ch’i students was demonstrating the 20-movement form she’d been learning in the church’s first annual talent show. It was a lot of fun! From the little boy who sang a song to the pastor who regaled us with lumberjack tales told in Robert Service-esque poems, it was a real taste of the kinds of face-to-face communities that can still form even in this mass media age. Call it the positive side of Christianity. I was actually sad that we had to leave after intermission, because we had to get our Natural Pantry shopping in before they closed at 8:00.
From there, we went to our best friend Chris’ house so that he could try out on us the really cool game that he & his girlfriend in Utah have been inventing. I’d tell you more about it, but I’m sworn to secrecy. Suffice it to say, spending time with Chris & Rozz playing that game was a great cap-off to a great day.
Even if my cold that started up yesterday was growing steadily worse.
