MetaFilter

What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

Love is the coin of the realm in the land of the lost.
-- Joe Frank

~~~~~


Peace is Joy at rest.
Joy is Peace on the move.
-- dtb

~~~~~


It would be convenient if one could redesign the past, change a few things here and there, like certain acts of outrageous stupidity, but if one could do that, the past would always be in motion. It would never settle down finally to days of solid marble.
-- Richard Brautigan


~~~~~


So Sunday April 17 (2016 -- my, how time flies) was my 50th consecutive day of riding 10.2 miles on my mountain bike. Which is certainly a lot nicer than your mountain bike is. Plus I'd be willing to bet fifty bucks it's bigger -- it was the biggest production bike made that year. It's a big honkin' bike. But anyways.

No real reason that I'm doing this, this ride the trail every day thing, other than 51 days ago I said "I'm going to ride the entire trail around Town Lake for 30 days in a row." And I did so. And then come 30 days in, I didn't really have any reason to stop, and I had and do have any number of reasons to continue. So, I have continued.

It's been great. *Is* great.

~~~~~

It's been raining here in ATX these past four days or five; today when I set out it was in a good rain, a nice soaking rain, not pounding but steady. Unlike yesterday (where it rained off/on maybe 50-50 through the ride) today it rained the whole ride through.

Raining as it has been, and wet as I'm going to be regardless, I don't dodge the dang puddles -- I head right into them, the deeper the better, I hit 'em hard and fast and SPLOOSH! and I'm eight years old again, smiling and happy, Neil Young in the headphones both yesterday and today, older music of his which I am not that familiar with, so I'm learning and listening and I'm smiling and I'm happy.

It's so much fun!

~~~~~

I only *thought* I was dirty yesterday. I only *thought* I was muddy yesterday. I only *thought* I was soaked through yesterday. I bought this bike in like 2001 maybe, I *know* I had it in 2002, know that for sure. I have been on lots of rides on this flippin' bike, lots of them muddy and wet and fun.

Today I came home muddier and wetter than any other ride I've ever had.

Even stuff inside my pack was soaked through, and it's a damn fine pack, REI, designed for weather etc.

Home, I turned the bike upside down, hosed it on this side, that side, front wheel, back wheel, blah blah blah. I hosed off my legs, my feet, my shoes (which are not going to dry out anytime soon, if ever), and my arms and my hands and my butt, I shed the pack and it was every bit as muddy as I was, if not moreso, and needed some hose action itself, and got it.

I put the hose up, grabbed the pack over one arm, grabbed the bike with the other and dragged on up the stairs, the music still blasting of course, I got everything inside, unloaded the pack and took it and some stuff out of it to the dryer, where it rattled and clattered very satisfactorily indeed. Showered wearing my bike shorts and my t-shirt, dragging them off and twisting them out after rinsing out all the mud. Toweled off, and in the mirror I saw a body with considerably less goo ringing my gut than when this whole things started, and Lo, it was Good.

~~~~~

But that's not what I set down to write here.

I had to write that so's I could write what's next.

I wonder if you're still with me.

~~~~~

What I set down to write about here is all of the cardinals I saw on the ride. At *least* thirty. At least. And cardinals, they are my very favorite bird -- have you ever seen a cardinal, have you ever looked at a cardinal? Cardinals are the best. So but anyways, while I've been seeing a lot of cardinals in this past 50 days, today was Something Bigger. What is it... ... About half-way through the ride I snapped, I got it -- the baby cardinals have left the nests now!

Some of these cardinals are the size of a small wren, but just as bright and beautiful as any other cardinal, maybe moreso -- fresh, young, brand spanking new, right from the factory.

I saw one hell of a lot of my favorite birds today, and that even though I persisted keeping eye protection on for over half the ride, and they kept fogging up, and I had to keep stopping to wipe them clear -- ask me some day why I hate to ride without eye protection and I'll show you some x-rays of my broken skull, and some images also of a terribly scuffed left lens of a pair of riding glasses. I'd have lost vision and perhaps my left eye if I didn't have them on.


But I saw one hell of a lot of my favorite birds today, and I was almost certainly the only one to see all of them.. Who else was nuts enough to be out riding today? Answer: No one with any sense, that's who. People who don't have sense to come in out of the rain, as the saying goes. But all of these gorgeous birds, these flat-out gorgeous birds, they were all flitting about and the whole damn show was *mine*!


It was awesome.

I don't know if I can adequately describe how happy it has made me. Though I just did try.

dancestoblue
Monday April 18 2016
4:19 AM