The Bikeubator

I used to listen to my iPod when I rode, losing myself in Lyle or Paul or Keb Mo or Bonnie, just as I do running on the treadmill or driving long distances alone, a way to help the time shoot by and think as little as possible about the physical exertion of what I was doing. On the trails around here, 2 songs takes me a mile, so I would make a playlist for my rides knowing about how many songs it would take me to power through. There was the occasional day when I was riding with someone, or hadn't charged up, or would be on roads with cars and trucks and so would forgo the soundtrack. Eventually, I found myself listening less and less to music and more to the inner soundtrack I always have spooling through my brain and I realized that one of the things (just one of the very many things) that I adore about riding my bike is how much it heightens my senses, clears my mind and relaxes me into thought. I watch for wildlife, think about family and friends, postulate about the future, rehash the past and formulate plans of attack or approach for present entanglements. I'm an insufferable idea person as it is and, while I carry out only a teeny percentage of my ideas, that doesn't tamp down my enthusiasm for dreaming up more. Today on my ride I was thinking for the gazillionth time just how cool is the Student Conservation Association, for which two of my kids work, and wishing I was 20 so I could go live in the woods and work on trails and teach kids about the environment. And then it hit me that there might be a place for a Senior Conservation Corps, that provides training and opportunity for older people to plunge into some useful community projects. I don't know that it would be residential like the SCA is. I don't know that there would be funding for stipends like SCA offers. I don't know how it would work, or if there is already something like it. But I thought it was worth considering and maybe worth developing. The other thing I thought about was the loss this week of banjo maestro Earl Scruggs and poet Adrienne Rich. And I thought it might be interesting to put together a Book of Lives: 365 Deaths of People We Should Care About. Every time I do the obits page at work (these days, about once a week), I often think the stories are the best in the paper that day, even if I have to chop or water them down. Like Patience Abbe, the 11-year-old travel writer, who observed on my pages that "In Paris, women with children can always find a seat on a bus, no matter how first the others are." Or words to that effect.

Today's ride: Thursday, March 29. 24 miles of City trails, North Shore to the Strip, 31st Street Bridge to Millvale, Fort Duquesne to Fort Pitt Bridge along South Side to Hot Metal Bridge. Highlight: Lunch with Sandi at Little Bangkok; the stupid loss of an hour (a fourth time!), weeks after Daylight Savings Time, because I apparently didn't change the clock on my bike computer.

There's a spot of construction on the trail on the North Side just before the 31st Street Bridge. The trail is still closed right in front of PNC Park though it looks like that construction must be getting pretty close to complete. Over in the South Side, I was headed back to work when I noticed two guys running toward me, one in an orange shirt and a waddly gait -- sure enough, it was Lou. "I know you," he said in passing. I was surprised he was running because it was after 5 and he still had to ride home in the wind and the approaching dark. He called me at work a couple hours later and informed me he had done a "triathlon" -- he ran, he biked, he ate a turkey pita. I may do a "real" triathlon tomorrow. I could run on the North Shore, ride over to Oliver Bath House for a dip and then ride back. Something to think about. Happy trails.