This is quick, because I am doing class prep. We’re reading two stories in Criticism tomorrow. In Org Comm we’ll be talking about the very important and incredibly interesting definitions of communication. It’ll probably be the slowest week in that class for the semester. You need baselines for everyone, though, because there are students from multiple majors and it’s important to make this approachable. Next week will be more fun, this week is definitions.

That’s what I’ll tell them tomorrow.

And there’s also my online class, which is new. Three new classes to wrangle, every week, between now and December. It seems like a lot to me, but I’m gamely going to try.

And that’s why this is quick.

For some reason, even on a mild day, the irrigation systems out in the fields look refreshing. This was part of an easy 20 mile ride on Saturday afternoon. It was one of those days where I set out to go this way, got halfway there, and then went that way instead. It was a good day for that.

Sure, it was right out of the neighborhood and then a mile and a quarter down to the stop sign. There, instead of going straight, I turned left. We go this way sometimes, but I don’t do it often when I’m on my own. It’s an up and down thing, and then you cross a busy intersection — if you can catch the light — and go by the warehouses that they’ll never finish building or fill with inventory. Down to the river, and back up through some farm land and you can keep going down that road, where you’ll eventually run into a town, and the big river, and have to change directions, or you can turn early. This is what I did today. There are two or three roads that you can turn onto that will lead you back to another road that can point you home. But we rarely cut those short, and so it’s a guess: Is this a road that crosses over to the highway, or is this a road that dead ends in a corn field?

And so I’m going down this side road, hoping it is an in-between road, trying to remember if I remember it or not. The features don’t really help. It feels right, but not distinctively so.

Then, the road bends to the left, and forks to the right. This is where a white Cadillac decided to pass me in a slow and unsafe way. (Thanks for that, young person driving your grandparent’s Caddy … ) She went left. I went right, and I was rewarded with distinctive features. I was on the road I wanted, a double tree-lined affair that was quite and pleasant and demanded you sit up and go slow — which wasn’t a problem for me.

Eventually, I ran into this sign.

If you turn right, you’d go this way, and wind up down at the river, or someplace.

If you turn left, you wind your way to another tributary, but the highway which will take me back toward home.

I stood there and felt the sun and listened to the wind for a few pleasant, long minutes. It was the perfect time of day in a lovely little place and I had it all to myself, all of it. And maybe that’s the reason we should ride bikes.

OK, here’s the last clip from last week’s show. Four, from me, is a pretty decent amount of restraint. Anyway, because they’ve been at it for four decades now, the Indigo Girls obviously have to play the hits. And they’ve long established their most mainstream number as a regular big finish. It got a lot of people in the door, and those people won’t let you leave without it.

(I wonder how long a show would be if they played all of everyone’s favorites. We already wound up taking a late train out of town, and they didn’t play all of my favorites this time. They can’t play them all. They should play them all.)

Anyway, the regulars are counting songs and they know it’s about to come and OK, everybody sing along. And also here’s three-time Grammy Award winner, and holder of Four CMA awards, Jennifer Nettles, to help us out too.

I hope we get to see them again next year.