Instead, here in Woo City, the sun has appeared for the first time in five days, the day a blue sky'd gem of windy clarity. Low 50s. Bancroft Tower blesses my first ride since last Saturday's ill-fated (flat tyre) escapades in the blustery 'hood.
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| Saturday, April 12, 2015 |
The cycling gods look after today's innocent meandering, 25+ miles on busy roads, on reservoir roads, up steep neighborhood roads, through city intersections, "but for the sky there are no fences facing," or, paraphrasing the Master, "but for the cars there are no threats I'm facing." Just me and the Specialized Crux Elite with a new rear tire and the desire to spin.
Spin spin spin, the great meditation. The circle. The spoke'd wheel of ramble. Mind centered, eyes gulping in as much as possible while still minding the road, spirit humming along life's tenuous line of Forward.
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| Harvard St, Woo City |
Remarkable to find myself alive in this moment, to have the good fortune of spending a few hours on a bicycle pedaling through old New England landscapes, along Kerouacian red-brick city streets. Gulp in the Niceness! Live amazed. Wonder has a way of stimulating the metabolism.
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| Morgan Park on Indian Lake |
No regrets for the missed Rasputitsa. The road goes ever on and on, as a hobbit says. It's only going to get warmer and nicer as spring blooms and summer approaches. Though sunny and clear today, there was still a nip in the air, a nipple tweak of chill, especially with the occasional windy salvo whipping up sand and leaf debris. But the snow is almost gone in the forests now and that surely indicates the onset of warmer days ahead.
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| Dubstoevsky and the Fountain of Youth |
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| Still ice on the reservoir |
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| New England style |
Summary: Saturday, April 12, 2015. Two hour ride, 25+ miles, 1900'+ elevation. Sunny and windy.
The Fountain of Youth! Salvadubsky, the Surrealist of Woo-City cyclisme! Your studies of sundried New England streets are ethereal, translucent, unreal, in a word: surreal. Merci beaucoup. I am grateful to learn that you are not going to enter the torture chamber up in Vermont. Evidence that you remain eminently sane despite all that absinthe. No way could you get me out on it. Good to have a goal in August. Will keep you in the saddle, plotting your next aesthetic assault I hope. How about a screenplay: Bancroft meets Rimbaud in a Boston bordello? Rimbaud sketches a structure on a napkin - the Tower! Bancroft finds it in his pocket the next day back in Wocester and slips it into his papers where it is discovered years later and mistaken to be the work of Bancroft himself!?! I would try to work the Dead into this narrative at some point, some sort of dialogue between Jerry Garcia and a fan beneath the arch late after the Dead's one and only concert at Holy Criss Cross - it didn't get out of hand, it's just that the Dean of Students, Fr O'Brien SJ was seen weaving and waving among a group of flower children at the lip of the stage during a Garcia solo. Won't get fooled again says the Order's nuncio back in Rome. And the moon is rising full over WPI. I will call again soon to ... SCROD
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