I tried to sit in my office and do work today, I swear. I wrote about three sentences, met with a student, wrote a recommendation letter, and had lunch with R. and chocolate with R. But then I gave in to my senioritis and the 80 degree weather and took the bike out for a ride. It was seriously windy and I couldn’t seem to find a tailwind, so my ride was a heavy pedal in low gear all afternoon. I wasn’t in any kind of hurry, so that worked for me–hill training! I headed over to Bayou St. John in search of pelicans and then over to Lake Pontchartrain to watch seabirds and listen to the water lap against the steps. I turned home to winds gusting over 20 miles an hour, so my ride up St. Bernard Avenue was a slow one, especially considering the state this submerged road finds itself in. The neighborhood was so quiet, even though it was approaching rush hour. I was only a couple blocks from City Park and the bayou, but I might as well have been on another planet. I took a right instead of a left when I hit the candy colored houses that have replaced the St. Bernard projects and found this row of blighted houses. The one at the end looks like it might be a home again, but as I tooled around these few streets, it seemed to be one of few. And then all of a sudden I was at a snoball stand. Again and again I am reminded that this city returns block by block, block by block. I continued home, making a quick stop at a drugstore for a snack and a brief stint as a watcher of other bicycles for folks without locks. I rode slowly home, through the Quarter and Central City, tired out at the end of it, feeling lucky to live in New Orleans in February.