Like most folks who ride bikes all the time, sometimes I’m riding for transportation–I’m just trying to get somewhere. Like last night, when I was just trying to get home and it was late and I was tired and I needed a snack. I still stopped and snapped a picture of a weird stripe of blue paint on a building, but mostly I was just riding home. Today, though, I spent in my very favorite way, just riding slowly around the city, getting myself lost and found again. I met up with S. in the afternoon, and our first stop was the 7th Ward Neighborhood Center to check out her garden. You know it’s summertime when the lettuces are bolting and the tomato plants are getting their first blooms. I rubbed a couple leaves together for that most wonderful smell. What is it about tomato plants that is so instantly so very calming? I snapped this picture of a tiny flower while S. got the hose to spray all the little guys down, including the secret surprise plant hidden under those collards (I’ll never tell). That flower? It’s going to become a tomato someday soon. Man, plants are magic. We hopped back on our bikes for a leisurely pedal through the 9th Ward, Gentilly, through the UNO campus, along Lake Pontchartrain, and back through City Park. I dropped S. off at her house, extracting promises that she get that chain fixed, and continued my ride home, a quick stop to say hi to M. and D. on the Bayou, and then for dinner with myself and my book, home for a shower, and then back down to the Treme for the premier of Treme. Nope, summer Sundays by bike just don’t get better than that.