Another Morning Run

It's been three days since I last rode, or walked the treadmill for that matter. Tomorrow we leave for a few days at a condo up at Lake Minocqua, sans bicycle. So it was imperative I get out this morning, before work. August 8 is not that far off, and will arrive whether I am ready or no.

Did the short version of my basic route, Mineral Point to Am Fam Children's Hospital, a brief sojourn through Shorewood Hills (Columbia Road), along Locust Drive to the trail, and along Old Middleton to it's intersection with Old Sauk -- and Mt. Nemesis. Then Ozark Ridge, Yellowstone, and home.

Nice beginning, by the time I got the bike going the sun had come up, and traffic was still very light. Smells of flowers and greenery, sound of the birds of course. My new shorts and gloves had arrived from Bike Nashbar, and all worked accoring to promise -- the shorts are nicely padded, and I didn't realize how nice that would be -- my old Trek shorts were never well padded, and what there was had seemed to thin over the years, in the same proportion, I think, of my personal thickening. The old gloves, also Trek, are old friends, nicely darkened palms, scented with sweat and sunscreen from years of riding, but the right palm has torn open. So their time has come.

As I drew closer to Nemesis, I could almost feel a heaviness growing in my legs, as though the hill were emanating its own gravitation -- or, more appropriately, I was generating my own psychological weight. I was reminded of what I see as a basic truth -- the external world is indifferent to my thoughts about it; the hill is the hill, whether I want to climb it or not, my resolution or determination is simply irrelevant, no matter how much I convince myself that I can define my relationship to it.

Anyway, I charged up it as best I could, did end up shifting to the lowest gear, but did it probably the fastest yet.

A sidenote about Nemesis. The city is widening Old Middleton Road, tearing out a lot of old trees to do so, and, irony of irony, largely doing so to put in a bike path. A lot of neighborhood squawking, of course, Madison being the queen of the NIMBY cities -- "bike trails are great, but NOT IN MY BACKYARD, I like the trees." I agree with both sides, the road as is is beautiful, but dangerous.

In any event, it's a done deal, and when it is a done path, Nemesis will probably lose its role as dominatrix of the bike route; I'm sure the route will extend past it, and it will be a side route rather than the main one. As George Harrison sang, "All things must pass away."