When I left home on Friday afternoon for a weekend retreat in beautiful Raymond, Mississippi, it was literally freezing. Imagine my surprise returning to bright sunshine and warm temps–it feels like springtime up in here! I was exhausted from the long weekend, but it was a most excellent exhaustion from time spent with a truly remarkable group of students, faculty, and staff. But I was absolutely missing my bicycle by the end of it. I excitedly hopped on the bike to head to campus for a full day of teaching. It was hard to get off the bike in front of Gibson Hall–I wanted to just keep riding, but refusing to cheat The Children of their education, I dismounted and spent the whole day teaching. And it was great. I really do have the most wonderful job in the whole entire world, and lucky me, I had a couple hours of sunshine left in the day to spend pedaling around on my bike. I did a loop around the park seemingly along with the rest of Uptown New Orleans and then rode up to the Fly where the rest of Uptown was playing frisbee or enjoying a picnic with actual picnic baskets and bottles of wine (right, right, it’s Valentine’s Day). I stopped to take this photo of a barge making its way along the sleek Mississippi River, low enough to expose a sizable beach (ignore the trash on said beach for added beauty), the sky just starting to pink, just a little bit. It’s good to be home and back on the bike.