Today was my first real bike ride of the year. After driving and taking the bus during most of the brutally icy winter, I’ve been bike commuting for a while again now, but two miles each way (even if they’re through the reawakening Arb) just doesn’t compare to a real ride.
Today, I had only thirty minutes to ride, so I headed out from our place, up and down a sizable hill that’s literally 90 seconds away, and then back over the hill and up a nice easy road to the edge of campus, where I took a few laps of the fun, technical trails in the Upper Arb. I cleaned the junk out of my legs from my last workout, and built up some new junk for tomorrow.
Besides the pure pleasure of riding – which is second only to skiing as a wellspring of joy – today’s ride was notable for the incredible skies. Northfield is frequently blessed by some spectacular skies, but today’s were especially amazing. While I rode, Northfield was under blue sky that was bounded on all sides by the ragged-veil clouds of distant rain. It was stunning to see: literally a ring of rain all around us, but not on us. The late-afternoon sun was doing some wonderful things to the rain, too: making it a deep purple off to the west, a paler indigo to the north and south, and a light blue to the east. For a few minutes of the ride, I was tracked by four circling turkey buzzards, as black as the jets heading in to MSP were silver.
