Two rides, two ways

 

Saturday was a chore day, and I spent most of the day working inside and out.  I hoped to get a ride in that afternoon, if I got the lawn mowed on time.  The great thing about an electric, battery-powered mower is that it doesn't emit many greenhouse gases; the downside is that if you don't plug it in after a mowing, it probably won't have enough juice to do much.  And, son of a gun, I'd forgotten to plug it in.  After a couple hours the power meter barely rose above halfway, so it was obvious Saturday mowing was out.  What to do, what to do.

 

So I decided to take Rocinante out in the broad daylight that remained after dinner.  With nothing special in mind, I more or less let him have his head.  I found myself at the start of the Cooper bike trail off Old Sauk road, a trail I had taken once and had consigned to the useless, which I recalled as a short and inconsequential  little thing, but R wanted to go that way, so we did. It was the road taken, and that made all the difference.  We found a gently turning, mostly downhill, ride through tall old-growth trees, scented by wildflowers and someone else's new-mown grasses, robins hopping and flitting along, shafts of sunlight and rafts of shade, tranquility in the city.  I emerged onto a quiet narrow road that linked several older houses on very, very large and wooded lawns.  Ever and gently downhill, and I came out on Old Middleton Road, the winding, somewhat hilly main drag for the area.  To the right the trail led to the base of Mt. Nemesis, to the left . . . . R decided to turn left, and so we went up and over a bridge, past Kettle Pond, until we turned on Capital Road and came to its intersection with University Avenue. 



 

 

FOLLOWING  ROCINANTE'S  LEAD

 

 We sat at the light for quite awhile, until I realized it was one that would not change unless a car came along or I dragged R over to the side and pushed the button.  Unless I became one of those arrogant cyclists who flout the law.   As I pondered, a pair of cyclists came up, waited a minute or two and took off across the road; I followed, feeling there was safety in numbers when it came to scofflaws.  I followed a new bike trail out west, then down a long hill to Lake View Park, my old fishing grounds.

 

Not having the luxury of enough time to circumnavigate Lake Mendota's 28-mile circumference, we decided to work our way through Middleton and home. For a few minutes I found myself in the middle of the University Avenue at it's busiest time, and found that those drivers cared little about bicyclists; that's part of the paradox of Madison, either all gung-ho bikes or get out of the way, bikes. But soon enough I escaped that, and did something I'd always wanted to do there.  I biked down Hubbard Avenue, a wide and quiet residential street, framed by huge trees and big old houses, the kind that farmers used to retire to, back in the days when they could afford to do such things.  I wanted to do this because long years ago, while perusing a book on cycling across America, the author had a black-and-white photo of a street just like this, and I wanted to be that guy.   At least for a moment.  And I was. Check another thing off the bucket list.

 

If Saturday was a ride of solitude, just me and R, Sunday was the absolute opposite.  For the first time I went down to the "Ride the Drive" event, wherein downtown is reserved for bicyclists for several hours, and booths set up by various organizations.  One, the Wisconsin Bicycle Federation or somesuch, had poster that read, "Last year Nebraska had more cycling miles than Wisconsin."

 

 

2013 RIDE THE DRIVE (SANS ME), ON AN

OBVIOUSLY MUCH COOLER DAY

 

As though that were something to be ashamed of; and I told them so, that if they knew the other two of the tree amigos, it would not be unexpected -- or easily rectified.  The rest of the time I flowed with the crowd, people in funny costumes, hard-ass riders, kids on trailers and their own little bikes, tandems, all moving slowly along through intersections guarded by attentive police, some with their own bikes.  When I got onto some of the main roads I found it very hard to keep from sticking to the shoulder or bike lane, and from looking over my shoulder when I did venture out.

 

The day had opened with spotty showers, but matured into a hot and sunny morning, so much so that when I stopped for a few moments, for water or conversation, sweat dripped down my face, into my eyes and onto my glasses, which took away a bit from the fun; fortunately I knew the directions home, so being blurry-eyed made little difference.   R and I cut through the cemetery on the way home, and I stopped near the giant Baker memorial I see every day when I drive past.  Obviously none of my family -- except in the broad Biblical sense -- but I wanted to see it up close; old, old tombstones in front of the family marker, lichen-covered to the point of being illegible, the newest I saw being in the 1930s, the oldest in the mid-19th century.  I'm not the maudlin type, but I am aware of my mortality, and of the fact that I am nearer the end than the beginning, so I felt a bit as though I were communing with them.  But R got restless, and I got back on, finding my legs beginning to stiffen.  Dark clouds rolled in again, and a block and a half from home a massive boom of thunder shook the sky and big drops of rain began pelting us, the kind of rain you can hear coming, a sort of hard rustle.  It was nice indeed to roll into the garage and settle into the days routine.  Which included mowing later in the day, when the hot sun had returned and burnt off the rain.