Ride # 12: The Sun Gauze Days

February 8, 2014, around 12:30

Let's get the details over with quickly. Saturday. Sunny. Warming by the half hour. I rush into Wheel Works in Belmont and have them put on a new chain. Those guys are great. Big shout out to Scott. On the way to rt.2, stop at the Craft Beer Cellar in Belmont center for Belgian-style ales in the big bottles. Then drive home with urgency, passing slow Saturday drivers and trying not to let them annoy me. There's a ride to be had! New gloves! A new chain! The second ride on my new rear tire! And it's February - there's a foot of snow on the ground. Allez!

That's the stage.

Still Sunny At the Start

Road pedal imaginings. An imitation Harry Crosby diary entry, Shadows of the Sun.

The Sun Gauze Days

And the pattern has been that the Sun shines in the morning and in the early afternoon the Sun Gauze rolls in from the west. The high, flat, gray-white cottony enmeshing of the Sun; the thickness of atmospheric pillow. And I have set out with High hope for a fine ride and the roads are dry but streaked with salt and narrow and the inevitability of cars accompanies me. I am in stride. I am accompanied by the Sun. And I am warm and dry and my mind is comforted by the rhythm of the wheels and my thighs are strong and I have reason to believe that I am capable of bicycling excess.

This is how one must approach the Cosmos, with humble intentions, with delicate balance, with certainty of the Sun. The train rolls into Terrapin Station and off it goes again. And half way through the ride (which hovered around the freezing mark) I began to think of the Belgian ale and I began to think of the herb-crusted pork loin and the garlicy-spinach, and I thought of Popeye and Olive Oil and the Great Meditational Herb of Plenty and I took solace from these thoughts and pushed my thighs and calves and shoulders on to greater effort and the road obliged and unspooled before me sometimes damp sometimes sand-strewn sometimes pot-holed and frost-heaved but always Onward just as I remain on a trajectory to the Sun.

Ride Stats: 34 miles (54k), 14.2 mph, 2 hours 25 mi-newt-os.

Wildlife Notes: In Shirley, just passed the President Building, I take a right onto Catacunemaug RD and shortly thereafter ride alongside a wide slow-moving creek tucked into the base of a sheltering ridge line. For whatever reason, that spot's prevailing micro-climate ensures open water for the hundreds of mallard ducks that have gathered there. They are a prodigious sight. A short while later I hear squawks overhead and look up in time to see another six ducks coming in to join the gathering. A Colloquy of Ducks.

Elsewhere, robins. It seems that they've all chosen to over winter here. On every ride I see them by the flocks. Today, for example, one flock I saw had congregated in two cheery trees on a suburban front yard. On the white snow in a concentric ring around each tree lay the detritus of their cherry foraging, the stems and pits and little broken branches, a scattered Zen-like rim of discard.

No road kill espied.

Addendum

Lemonstar - Lunenberg - Shirley - Groton - Ayer - Devens - Shirley - Lunenberg - Lemonstar

Riding from Groton toward Ayer, the road descends alongside wide open pasture, the view across which runs away to the west and unveils Mount Wachusett on the horizon. This is the view from the farthest point of this ride's wide circle.

Mount Wachusett  from 30 Miles Away
Not Going There Today

Shad Rides

OM AH HUM

~ With the gratitude of Niceness and the honor of Moment. Inity in a dichotomous world. ~