My weekend of yoga teacher training, combined with an impromptu flooding of the house, narrowed my riding this past weekend down to jaunts on my town bike.
The Saturday morning commute up over Beaucatcher Mountain was a great way to start my day. The low morning sun was burning off the mountain mist as I climbed up. Once at the top I swallowed the air in great gulps , grabbing a bigger ring for the descent down to College Street. Maybe it was better that I wasn’t trapping myself at the house with the ceilings drooping down, soaked insulation laying around, fretting over wet walls and tools.
The water pressure valve on the house broke, giving me 150 PSI, rather than 75. I enjoyed great showers and filling my glass up in two seconds for a couple of weeks. By then the pressure built so high that the hot water heater began spraying out, filling the space between the floor and the ceiling below. My 81-year-old father helped me tear down the ceilings and haul trash to the dump as the plumber got me through my emergency.
Now, speeding through the curves made me smile, and in town the sun was shining bright. I was blessed with non-existent traffic and was almost to school when my water bottle flew out of my bag. My hot coffee cup was still neatly packed without a drop, which made me smile again.
Meditation and restorative yoga may have made me emotionally crazy at first, but I think it was the best thing that I could do for my spirit. It calmed me down, forced me to breathe, and by lunch I was psyched to be back on my bike for a bit – even though the lock snapped back into my face as I opened it. I cruised through the art show, watched tourists bumble around lost and trying to look like hippies in their tie-dye t-shirts and squeaky white tennis shoes. I had lunch with friends I haven’t seen lately, kissed a cute boy, and ate a candy bar as I weaved my way back to school.
I stayed on my bike until 1:30 a.m., stopping for breaks to eat a bean torta with a pale ale at the LAB, open-air comedy on Wall Street, and beers and dancing at the Jack of the Wood with girlfriends. It was that high-gravity beer that caused me to believe I could Parkour in my cowgirl boots up the stone wall to the street above. I was just one reach away from the rail when the pipe I was hanging on began to sway, causing me to lose a foothold and slide back down, scraping my arms up on the way. Sooo we went around the block.
It was this ride back up Beaucatcher Mountain on evil and steep Hazzard Street that the throbbing in my bleeding arms was so great I conjured up an oasis. One block into the steep grade I heard voices from a nearby porch offering me bourbon.
Three of us girls looked a little tired at class the next morning, all of us with a slight odor, mine touched with a twinge of blood and sweat.
I love my bike.
