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We had a nice little 32-mile ride on our group bike ride this evening. Of course I took pictures of me chasing people. This is is off in the wilds of the farmland:
And here we are on the suburban stretch near the end:
I took a shadow selfie on the last road before our neighborhood:
Look at these speeds:
That’s a new personal best.
On our bike ride today, we stopped and regrouped in the parking lot of this little church.
The place is basically carved out of the woods. The new place, that is. I don’t know where the “old one” was, though. But you think about when that stone was ordered, sometime in the 1950s or later. Whoever placed the job, do you figure they were up against a per letter budget, or there was a committee or a severe case of writer’s block.
I chased her …
And I chased her for 34 miles …
Now, she’s riding pretty well right now, and I’m doing what I can to hang on, but I think my app might have malfunctioned. It says my maximum speed for today’s route was 452.4 miles per hour. And it thinks I did that for about four miles. The precision in the error is what I like. Point four.
And, finally, this picture:
What is significant about this picture? I took it at 8:37 p.m. It would be some time later before the sun went down. That’s a nice feature.
Allie is settling in just fine. She’ll have a routine down in a few days and all will be right in her world. I believe I stress more about her stress than she ever actually gets stressed.
Plus she has her yirt:
Also, we tried the local barbecue place tonight:
It will suffice.
Anyway, back to cleaning and settling.
We found, online, the local bike group. One of their rides starts from just up the road from our house. So we joined them today. Also, just before this I broke 7,000 miles on the bike.
Also passed this barn, just before which I realized I was going to have to learn how to actually climb uphill now. It might be too late in the game for that, for me. But I have to try. Anyway, the pastoral beauty:
So that was a quick 22-mile ride that won’t ever turn anyone’s head. And, also, my first ever group ride. That will take some time to get used to. But they are nice folks and they know the roads.
So we’ve been here for about 40 hours and are already riding. That’s a good sign.
Also, it doesn’t get dark here until after 9 p.m. That’s nice.
That sounds melodramatic, I suppose, but it is what it is. I spent two years trying to get here, then five years living here and then nine years missing it and, returning, six more years here. That’s, all told, more than half my life thinking about the place. And, in most ways, that’s unrequited. I don’t really have a lot of other ways to talk about it than that.
And now I’m leaving it. Don’t want to, but there it is. Here we are. Here we go.
So I rode around one last time and took a few pictures of buildings because … I don’t know, but that’s what you do.
My first class was in this building, many years ago, just off to the right. It was an 8 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday class. Animal Dairy Sciences:
Comer Hall, my major lived in there. This is the top of ag hill, and I spent half of my undergraduate career there.
A few more views of Comer:
And this is Duncan Hall. I did my internship there, and worked for another year or so besides. Did some writing, some photography, some online work, some radio editing, some satellite uplinks and so on:
And one of the better oak trees on campus. Always looked like a place to climb or read or kiss.
Tomorrow we sign our papers and drive away, on to the next thing.
