News flash! It’s hot out! I headed out the door to ride my bike to a dentist appointment up in Hamilton last month, and my partner implored me to use the car. “It’s not safe,” she said. I was like, I have been riding my bike in hot and humid summer heat for fifteen years, I’m fine. And I was, and she was right–it was really hot out. And I was right–I could indeed ride my bike in it.

This is apparently the hottest summer the planet has ever seen, and it’s only going to get hotter. I will keep riding my bike, but I might need some new (to me) strategies, especially as I age. My go to, though, has always been to just ride in it, support my body as it acclimates and learns to tolerate the heat. Bodies really are amazing, and though I stay hot when it’s hot, it does get easier. Sort of.

I was out of town and off my bike for over a week, visiting my mom in Boise, Idaho where it was really hot, but it’s a dry heat. Still hot. When I got back home, I was a bit intimidated to get back on the bike, weirdly. It’s really hot! So I did what you have to do to get back on the bike–I got back on the bike, and I headed out to my favorite regular ride on the Herring Run trail.

It’s just like riding a bike, and it was just like riding a bike this time, too. The trick to the heat is to take it slow, which I did, taking the long way to Lakeside, over to Lake Montebello, did the full C (please open the whole circle soon!), across Harford Road and down into Herring Run, pedal pedal pedal, sun in my face, humidity a bit lower than normal, and it was so good to be back on my bike.

I have this one picture of my cat (among a zillion pictures, obvs) where she’s standing in the window sill of our first floor dining room. The window is open, screen in place, and her eyes are closed as her face reaches up toward the sun. She is beaming. As I headed back east on the trail I felt the sun on my face, held my head up toward it, and remembered that picture–I, too, was beaming.

I made my way back toward Lake Montebello where I can either go under the new bridge, or head back up the entrance I came in. Lately I have been going under the bridge and then I ride up to Harford Road, mostly so I can spend a couple blocks in that new protected bike lane, and that’s what I did on this ride. I snapped this picture looking back at the bridge and at the one thing I hate on this ride–that curb. The trail should lead to a curb cut into the parking area, but it doesn’t. I go ahead and just ride off the curb, but it irritates me every time. This is a relatively flat trail that can be used by all sorts of wheeled devices–bikes, scooters, wheelchairs–so why not make it fully accessible to us? Makes me grrr every time, that and the tunnel to nowhere a bit up the way.

I got back up my bike and headed up to Harford, and by this time the heat was really getting to me, and I was moving slowwwwwwly as I said my how-you-doin’s to the pairs of folks sitting in the shade, listening to music, some partaking in newly-legal weed on a lazy, hazy afternoon. I am so, so happy to be home. I love it here, I love my bike, I love my neighbors. Took a right on Harford, a right toward Lake Montebello, did the C again, and back the way I came, a quick stop at the grocery for dinner supplies, feeling like the luckiest duck in town.