I slept in, because I stayed up late, because I had a cup of tea and was wide awake for the next seven hours last night and early this morning.

So when I woke up the story was fully developed. A UPS plane had crashed on final approach into Birmingham. The pictures are horrific. The two pilots were dead. And, thankfully, for a change, I knew precisely where my step-dad was.

He flies out of the same hub as those two pilots. The co-pilot has been named, someone he doesn’t know. We’re still waiting to hear the identify of the pilot. The reporters at al.com have done an incredible job on the story if you’re interested in the latest.

I’m ready to turn away from it. I’ve covered stories about neighbors, became friends with people I covered over time. I’ve reported and written and read about some horrible things people to do to one another and have a healthy detachment.

But I’m invested a bit here, enough to set the whole day off. There were emails and Facebook and a few “That’s not him, is it?” questions.

It was not, but what could have been. I couldn’t tamp down the anxious feelings until the late evening.

So I went out for a little bike ride in the rain, down through the neighborhood, around the roundabout and out the back. I planned to turn left, but as so often happens in the saddle I changed my mind almost mid-turn and went right.

The rain picked up and I smelled the river. The stagnant water at the boat launch. The still and mild decay of a fish. The synthetic carpet of a boat. The funky tinge of artificial bait that has been too long in the tackle box and couldn’t catch anything but weeds. There is no water there, but those were the smells. It made me think of my grandfather, and so I pedaled on.

I started having a tough time seeing through my sunglasses on the rainy, graying road. I enjoy a rainy ride, but this wasn’t quite the same. I hit a sprint stretch, wheeled to the right and realized I was cheating on all the turns. I blamed the new front tire. We don’t know each other yet. It doesn’t trust me to dive into turns yet. If I listen close the hum is saying what could have been?

I was dying on everything. But my socks were getting wet, so my feet were getting heavier and, thus, faster. That’s my theory, anyway. Doesn’t always work. I found myself shifting toward my easiest gears and climbing up the biggest hill of the day, which is no big hill. It is already a forgotten blur. So was most of the rest of the ride. Raindrops and panting. Chickening out in curves, full of unease about them, feeling my bike get lighter the few times I put in some speed.

Somewhere I picked up the smell of an old grandmother’s hairspray, baked in by decades of cigarettes. I don’t know why I smelled these things today, since I usually can’t smell anything. But I love being on my bike because it gives me time to think about things like that, the sensations, analogies and forgetting the whompwhompwhomp of my legs.

I took that picture above just before getting home, dawdling in the sprinkling rain and the purple and orange sky. I lingered to get the right fuzzy shot because a crisp one didn’t fit the mood. I took my time because getting home means going inside means cleaning my bike — the no-fun part of riding in the rain.

And there was still UPS plane talk. What could have been is such a bizarrely odd sensation. I got so distracted I almost gnarled two knuckles of my left hand in the spokes of my bike’s back wheel.

Here’s the last story I’m reading about it tonight:

More than 13,000 bags made by Freeset USA, a local nonprofit that provides jobs to women in Calcutta, India, were among the cargo lost when a UPS cargo plane crashed Wednesday morning near Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.

The company, which lost what amounted to its entire fall inventory of bags, has decided to begin selling a T-shirt to raise money for the families of the two pilots killed in the crash, according to a news release from the company.

[…]

The company is also worried about its 200 employees, mostly women freed from Calcutta’s sex trade.

People are donating via Twitter. Freeset’s Facebook page says they are working on the design. I know this company through Samford connections. They do incredible work and I’m glad they are involved here. Can’t wait to brag on them. That will be the best thing for a perfectly sad and strange day.