Bike ride

Monday evening I did a short bike ride. I hurt my knee over the weekend climbing over rocks at the beach, so it was partly a test ride to see how sore it really was. Not too bad, but it's not ready for hours on the bike yet. I've got massage oils for sore muscles and bruises which seem to help.

A few trees are starting to change color. The overnight temperatures have reached lows in the fifties. Occasionally there's a smattering of dry leaves on the side of the road. Even though only a few trees out of thousands have changed color they still gave me a sense of the coming Fall (yeah, just another chance to contemplate the cycle of life).

I've been biking differently these days. Even with the sore knee, I stand up on the hills and stay in a higher gear. Sometimes it seems that just when I'm getting my stride for the season, the sun starts setting early and the days start cooling off. This time of year it will feel like a challenge to get out when it's below sixty degrees, but in the middle of winter if it gets as high as fifty I'll be thinking about dressing up and getting out for short rides.

As I bike along some guy mowing his lawn waves to me. I smile and wave back. I figure I must be putting out positive energy again.

These days when I do things I don’t seem to worry about quantity so much as quality. Things seem less hurried. My focus isn't always where it could be, but it follows where my heart wants it to go. I feel like I spent the Spring clawing my way out of a hole. I don't know how consciously I thought of it at the time. I know very early on I met people in the same situation who seemed lost. I don't know what made me fight back against that. I feel like I've covered a lot of ground, and yet I still feel like things change every week or two, it just doesn't seem as obvious to me anymore.

I read once that humans tend to overestimate what can be achieved in the long-term, and they tend to underestimate what they can achieve in the short-term. I don’t think I've ever "estimated" anything about myself or where I'm going. I guess I knew where I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t see myself two or three years down the road still trying to figure out what happened. Some things I think you can't ever figure out, and if you get hung up on them you're just spinning your wheels.

Sometimes I wonder how Robin would be doing if I'd been the one who died. Somehow I trust that she'd been doing OK. She had that toughness about her. I suppose that scenario is playing itself out in some parallel universe. In the meantime, we're here in this one and time just keeps on flowing…