Tonight’s ride took me down the hill, around the Inner Harbor, and up again to enjoy some wine and gossip with A. and K. For the first time in awhile I had my bike shoes on, and it was such a treat to sling my leg over the top tube and clip in and be really attached to the thing. We flew down the street, a song in my head and a hard gear so I could pedal on the downhill. I was going about as fast as I go, and I had a few of those flashes where I remember I’m teetering on two wheels, in the street, with cars. How do I stay balanced? I figured trying to actually figure it out would cause me to fall over, so I shook it out of my head and trusted the whole thing to be just like riding a bicycle. And then I was dodging pedestrians on the bike/ped path and avoiding my fellow cyclists as we went through that driveway since the path is still blocked off for that thing they’re building across Light Street. I took my left at the Maryland Science Center and a right at the park. Riding through Federal Hill was a trip through fields of lab coats and yoga pants and leashed dogs, and I thought about what that giant brick-block Science Center was first built for, and whom it was keeping out; things change, but in the everyday it can seem like it was always like this, but it doesn’t have to be like this. I took this picture on the ride home, the Shot Tower Metro Station. I pass this station all the time, and the one at Pennsylvania and North, and probably other ones, but I rarely notice them because, well, I don’t use the metro because I ride a bike. A. and K. were even shocked to learn Baltimore has this thing called a “subway” and that it’s not the light rail. There must be people whose lives are partially organized around this transit system, and their days are different from mine, though I’m guessing all of us think the way we get where we’re going is the way to get where we’re going, even if sometimes we hate the way be have to get there. The rest of the ride was easy breezy, and the surprisingly cool evening a treat. I meant to stop on the way home for groceries, but I heard tell of a belated birthday present waiting in a certain Charles Village vestibule, so I pedaled as fast as I could so I could get to the unwrapping and got my groceries a bit later, on foot, another perfectly reasonable way to travel above ground, but oh, it was good to get some bicycling in today.