Evening Ride

I took a ride on my bike tonight, about 9:30 PM. I've had the concern, especially as I near the magic 40th year, of my health - my job does not lend itself to activity, I tend to overeat, and I have the usual run of bad stuff in my family: diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems.

My problem has been when to do it. If I do it in the morning, I feel better going to work - but I have to wake up at 0430, which is darn hard - so hard, in fact, I as often feel drained throughout the day. Evening is better - but cuts into my time after nighean gheal, nighean bhan and nighean dhonn have gone to bed to do "my stuff". And to do it in the morning is to run, which I seem to hate (bad for the knees too), while evening is biking, which at least moves me faster - and is easier on the knees.

But evenings work better- if for no other reason than I hate getting up early....

At any rate, I am fortunate enough to live somewhere where I have a multiplicity of street lights and new sidewalks, so I neither get hit nor go over sidewalk edges.

I'm glad I went. It's cool enough in the evenings to exercise. The traffic makes a dull background roar. The sky is slowly filling with stars, the sky to west slowly dimming into that brief color of palest blue green you only see at night after sunset and before sunrise.

The other thing I noticed is smells. I don't know what seems to make the dark make smells more intense for me - but they do. You fly by, your gears clicking by the houses, and scents drift in and flow by you: honey suckle, the wet smell of recent watering, flowers, perhaps a late night barbecue, cigarette smoke, car exhaust - the panorama of modern suburban life, as seen by smell.

One of my pet fears is that I should lose my sense of smell as I grow older. Hearing and sight you can affect or preserve, but for smell, there is no way I know of to protect it - like sunglasses or ear plugs. It either stays or goes, I suppose.

The power of smell is like the power of music - to hear a particular smell is take you back to a person, a place, a moment in time. For me, like music - to hear songs of a certain period - say 1979 - 1987 or even later for certain music - is to take a time machine somewhere where it seems life was simpler, maybe more enjoyable (or was I less aware and more self centered?), where the blank canvas of life stared one in the face, even as one did not realize it was there.

I'll ride again, more as I am able. The pale green sky is the most exquisitely beautiful color I know, and it's a free show, every night.

Besides, maybe one night I'll pass a radio playing and see a younger me riding on the other side of the road....