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Blue Skies Over a Green Field Along Herring Run

A green field with leafless trees int eh background against a blue sky with a few puffy clouds and a few streaky ones.

I had time for a longer ride on Wednesday, and I couldn’t have chosen a more beautiful spring day. I did my work from home, some grading, some meetings, some this and that, and then I had a block from 12:45-2:30 with nothing in it. I slathered myself in sunscreen for the first time in a minute and left the house with bare arms for the first time in many moons. We are so close to me taking off my tights, too, and I just can’t wait. But as soon as I can do that it’ll be too hot and I’ll be complaining about that, so, there you go. My dad always said there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing, but really hot and humid is, in fact, in actuality, in truth, bad weather. For me.

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Sunset at N. Schroeder and Mulberry

A leafless tree sillhouetted against a cloudy sky, gold across the bottom as the sun sinks in the sky. And there is a major intersection with a car and streetlights.

I spent the weekend in Atlanta with the ladyfriend on a much-needed weekend getaway. We saw the Deana Lawson exhibit at the High Museum, took the bus and the metro, went to a show, took The Nephew out for lunch, got tattoos, tried sodas from all over the world, and saw a whole lot of girls in spangles and paint, in town for the Cheersport National Championships. My god, it looks so expensive to have a kid on a traveling competitive cheerleading team, and the moms look like they are simultaneously having the best and worst time of their lives. It was such a great weekend away, and we just walked and walked and walked. That city is geographically enormous.

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Tunnel to Nowhere at Herring Run Park

Looking down a tunnel under a bridge that dead ends into nothing.

The last time I trained for a century ride I was ten years younger and hadn’t been through cancer treatment. I had a different body back then. I do, though, have a very similar body to the one that trained and ran a half marathon during the COVID lockdown, though, so I know if I give us some space and time, we’ll get to peak adult onset endurance athletic form together. But that means I have to be patient, which people who know me well know is most assuredly not by strong suit. I am also a compulsive person, so if I have a plan, it is very hard for me to deviate from it. This week, though, I heard my father’s wisdom: listen to your body, not your training plan. My body requested a drop down week in mileage for my long ride instead of upping it by five miles, so on Wednesday I rode 20 miles instead of 35, and my body is thanking me for the rest, I think.

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Swytch E-Bike Conversion Kit Review

Me in a red t-shirt and capri jeans balanced on my green Surly Long Haul Trucker while talking animatedly on the phone.

This week marks my 14th anniversary with my Surly Long Haul Trucker. This is a picture of us on our first ride together (yes, New Orleans in February is sometimes warm enough to dress like that!). A friend met me for a photo shoot, and this is me, on my bike, talking on the phone to someone about how amazing my new bike is. I imagine I was talking to my dad, who was even more excited about the bike than I was. His motto was always “shop often, buy once,” and he had done a lot of shopping on my behalf. It was between this bike and the Trek 520–I don’t even remember why a touring bike was deemed necessary–and the LHT was a few hundred bucks cheaper, and dad’s good friend Tom rode it, so voila, my new bike! I ordered it from Bicycle Michael’s on Frenchman Street, paid half in cash from the six hundred dollar bills my dad sent me in the mail–always cash in the mail because as a former postal officer, he trusted the U.S. Mail like no one I have ever known.

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Waiting on the Train at St. Claude and Homer Plessy Way

A train stalled on the tracks in the dark.

Ok, so this isn’t what I saw riding my bike around today, but I’ve been in a writing funk that I’m climbing out of, so I’m going to write about some past bike rides as I get back in the habit of biking and writing about it. This picture is from a ride I took back in early November. I was in New Orleans for the American Studies Association annual conference, the first in person since my last trip in November 2019. It was so, so good to be there, to see so many old friends, to be all sweaty and hot in November. I was going for the intellectual community, the colleagues and friends, but if I’m being real, I was going there for the biking.

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Two Bikes Along the Western Maryland Rail Trail

Two bikes on grass against a backdrop of trees with leaves just turning to yellow. There are also remnants of an old stone structure in the background.

So, this is a bit of a late post, but I didn’t want to not write about the glory that is the Western Maryland Rail Trail. The ladyfriend told me to mark out an October weekend on my calendar, she was planning a little surprise getaway. She is so good at the surprise getaway. Like the time she took me to a reenactment of a Civil War era baseball game because I love baseball and Civil War history. Or the time she led me to believe we were going on a hot air balloon ride and then it turned out we were going behind the scenes at QVC. I may be the only soul on the planet who would rather go to QVC than up in a hot air balloon, but the part where she knows that is what makes her getaways so great. I am seen by her, and nothing feels better than recognition.

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Green Trees and Grass and Blue Skies Dotted with Puffy Clouds at Druid Hill Park

Picture of green trees and grass with a blue sky dotted with white clouds as the background.

School is back in session which means less time to bike around aimlessly, but also more time to multimodally commute. Both are great, but I already miss the first. That said, one of the glories of being an academic and off the tenure track is that sometimes I have a Thursday morning that is just me reading whatever I want to read, riding my bike to therapy, and then riding around Druid Hill Park afterwards. And yesterday was one of those Thursdays.

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Looking Out over the Potomac River from Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve

Blue sky dotted with puffy clouds. A green tree is on the left side, and there are floating green plants in a river.

The weather shifted this week, and it’s still too hot for my precious self, but it is so, so much better than it has been. The timing is perfect for me and my bike. The ladyfriend is out of town touring the UK for three weeks, and she put the bike rack on the car before she left, because neither of us think I can be trusted to wrench the hitch rack on our tiny little car. I’ve got some open days between now and the semester starting, and I plan to spend as many of them as I can driving my bike to ride around new places.

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Burned Flag Pole at 31st and Barclay Streets

Looking up at a blue sky and porch roof. There is an empty flag pole on the house. There is a green tree at the right of the picture.

I grabbed my bike on Wednesday morning to pedal up and around to Hampden for a much-needed session with my therapist. I got a text just as I was leaving the house from our neighbor, letting me know the fire down the block had destroyed three houses, and “Word is that it was started because someone set a rainbow flag on fire. It’s terrible.” I called my wife to let her know, got out of the alley, headed down Barclay Street to see what was going on. I ran into S.–he told me the same thing. I was in shock.

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Church Square Shopping Center at Caroline & Eager Streets

Picture at an intersection of two streetlights, a fence around a building labeled Church Square Shopping Center, and fancy Johns Hopkins Hospital buildings are rising behind it all. The sky is blue with some wispy clouds.

Thursday’s bike rides went all different directions–first to Hampden for a therapy appointment and then up to the Rotunda for some routine blood work, back home for lunch, and then down to Fells Point for some shopping and back up the hill to Mount Vernon for a drink with N. before almost beating the rain on my ride back home. When you do your errands by bike you get to ride a bike all over pretty much all day long, and oh my, I needed that.

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