My rides today took me to work for a faculty meeting and then down to the Treme for my standing Thursday night date with friends. I rode slowly up Baronne on my way home, needing some extra time, letting the bike do that thing it does so well–concentrate my attention outside of myself. Sometimes that’s just what I need, that shift in focus. It was almost 1:00 in the morning, so the city was quiet and the streets dark (except for a couple blocks in the French Quarter, where drunken tourists stumbled around, inexplicably clad in St. Patrick’s Day gear). I love riding around the city at night, especially when it’s still humid, but just a little bit cool. I stopped to snap this picture of refrigerated trucks lined up at Brown’s Dairy at Baronne and Erato. Most of Central City and the Lower Garden District is asleep on a weeknight at this time, but not Brown’s. The trucks are humming and there’s action going on in the dairy across the street. I wave at the security guards every time I ride by–and I go this way a lot–but I don’t think they notice. But I notice them. They don’t know it, but they and these noisy trucks keep watch over me almost every night.