After a day of reading and prepping and typing away at my keyboard, I went for a little early evening bike ride. The wind was up, my legs were down and it was slow, but that’s OK. We got vaccinated last night and so I blame the quality of the ride on the conspiracy theories floating through my system.

There was a new-to-me road I wanted to see so I pedaled my happy little self toward the winery, but turned right before I got there, marveling at how I was easily doing 18 and 19 miles an hour up this hill on Wednesday, but doing considerably less than that today. I turned right and then left, and went down this road.

This looks flat when you’re on it and in this photograph.

But it is actually a little downhill. It bends off to the right at the tree line and then toward a creek bed. But the wind comes from that direction, usually, and it is actually a difficult down hill some days. Some days I have to shift to an easier gear to get down the hill. Some days coming from the other direction, up the hill, is easier than going down the thing.

In fact, today going down it felt unusually strong and I was doing about 17, but with minimal effort. And with no legs and post Covid vaccine (which we got last night) I felt a bit sapped and didn’t want to put any effort in. Later, as I reversed this route exactly, I came up the hill almost twice as fast.

That road alters reality, is what I’m saying.

I enjoyed some nice time under the trees elsewhere along the route.

And then I finally worked my way over to the new-to-me road. There used to be a little airport here. It was originally named after the town, but then it got a new name in 2021, when a private company bought it and dubbed it the Spitfire Aerodrome.

That’s just a great word. A great combination of words. It’s evocative of times far enough away that we mistakenly romanticize them. No one says the aerodrome without thinking of dirigibles or dashing pilots with silk scarves and leather jackets or barrage balloons or search lights piercing the sky and … they closed the joint in 2023, to make way for yet more warehouses no one needs.

I rode there it just to see what was at the end of that road. How often can I see an aerodrome? What’s there is a fence, through which you can still see two or three buildings, which look to be in still-good shape. The runway seems to be intact, as far as small municipal runways go. This is the view on the way back out.

I got back just in time to clean up for dinner, and fill the evening with tales about how the new microchips ow floating in my system have made me even slower.

This is a story about a boy and his bike. Because it was a delightful day. Because I had to go outside, or risk growing into my office chair. Because I’ve pretty much bored myself with to tears with trying to find new ways to discuss the work and sometimes-confidence-sometimes-anxiety that comes with creating a class out of whole cloth.

But when I closed my computer today I knew I was just two lectures away from being through with this class design. I also feel like I’ve been saying that for weeks. But then I sat down and made a list — for the sake of accuracy, I was already sitting when I started that list — and realized there were several things to do. But now it’s down to three things, which is really five things, but could technically be seven things, and two of those are these last lectures. So Monday. Maybe Tuesday. Because I think I’m taking the weekend off from all of it. I think I need it.

Of course I’ll be back at it tomorrow. Or by Sunday afternoon.

Anyway, this evening I set out for a bike ride. It was a lovely one, and so I went down the road and through one of three towns in the immediate area with town as a suffix. (And two of them, while charming in their own ways, are overstating the case.)

I had the added benefit of a late start, so that everyone was already where they needed to be, always a concern in that bustling metropolis of 487 people. The English got there late in the 17th century, and I guess it has always been some kind of sleepy, especially on Friday nights.

But the views are lovely.

I turned left at the river and continued on one of our usual routes. Their good for this time of day. We are at a latitude where we are already in that dark-comes-in-a-hurry time of year. Sure, roads get predictable when you’ve been on them four or five dozen times, but you want to know exactly what you’re getting into. You want to be able to pace your ride as necessary. You want to be able to make changes if things aren’t going just right. And, always, you’re thinking about where the point is that you can have a flat or other mechanical problem, fix it, and still get back home.

You don’t want to throw in a lot of variables when you’re racing daylight.

That bridge, an overpass, has been closed for a while. I’ve been over it twice since they shut it down. I’ll just weave around the barriers and …

OK, they’ve hardened this up a bit. I could hop the barrier, but despite having gone through the barrels and past at least two road closed signs, climbing over that seems like it would remove any appeals to my ignorance.

I’m sure the bridge could hold me, but they’ve made it clear they don’t want me to go over there.

So here’s the thing. I’m 11.5 miles in. I’m racing daylight. I have, when this bridge is in service, four possible variations back home, each making a completed ride of 16, 16.5 or 20 miles. But I can’t go that way because of my pretending like road closures apply to me, too. So I have to retrace my steps. And if I do that faithfully, which I did, that of course means 23 miles.

Easy quiet roads, though, so that’s good. I had my blinkies, so that’s good. The most important thing, in fact. I did not, however, carry my headlight, which isn’t really a problem. I knew I’d be back before I needed extra light to see the way in front of me.

Anyway, this was the view behind me at one point. It’s a bit fuzzy, as I was shooting over my shoulder at about 20 miles per hour, but the colors aren’t bad. That’s one well-tended field there, let me tell you.

Only the last two minutes or so, when I was inside the subdivision, did it get dark. Two neighbors who were walking did not expect to see me. I apologized as we met. They laughed it off. My lovely bride was waiting for me, in The Pose. She was unhappy with my timing, but, then I hadn’t yet told her about those unanticipated extra seven miles. In fact, I should have just gone out 15 minutes earlier.

We have agreed upon roads for night rides, and I was only on one of them, and that right at the end, and just before it became truly dark. So as she stood there, arms crossed, making a big show of patting one arm with the other hand, she said I could make it up to her by deciding what we’d have for dinner tonight.

By way of apology, I chose the sweet-and-sour chicken.