They Shimmered Like Silver Coins in the Sunset

Biking along behind St. Vincent's Hospital around 6:00 P.M., I was suddenly amazed to see hundreds of palm sized mullet leaping into the air and heading south toward NAS. I have seen individual mullet leap many times and my son has always told me the mullet are trying to get away from something that is trying to eat them. This scene did not feel like the mullet were trying to escape a a predator. The school resembled a corps de ballet. The movements were somehow synchronized. The fish arced into the air and rose again a few feet downstream. Then the entire school slalomed through the crab pots and headed south. Each fish was rising and falling and making a hand clapping sound as it hit the silver water. Overhead, the cartwheeling sea gulls provided a type of motorcycle escort for the aquatic parade.

Once again, bike riding has provided me with a sensory sensation I would have missed inside the faithful Buick.

Deluge and Dieties

There are moments when the PIE- peace person in commuter cyclist mode, challenges the gods and the gods win. Yesterday, pedaling to the YMCA for an appointment, the sky was dark. Not that dark I thought. Entering Riverside Park, the sky was ebony; the winds were howling. I can make it I thought. I didn't. Correction, I did make it. I walked into the Yates foyer with rainwater streaming off every part of my body. Wrapping myself in two warm towels, I climbed the steps to the ladies' locker room, stripped off the sodden garments, wrung them out over a sink and used a hairdryer to dry them as much as I could before my appointment in the dungeon. Dear Matt, the dungeon warden, let me borrow his own shirt for the workout. Life is good.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes ( and Nose)

This morning the smoke has annihilated San Marco. I watched it puff in gradually as I was putting collard seeds in the garden. Some P.I.E. exercise there. I lugged the requisite bags of 50 lb.Black Cow to practice my basic dead lifting. I pulled in the miles of hose which replicates a move Jane Fonda taught us in the 80's. Of course, in her videos she was wearing sparkly tights while I'm wearing my older son's gym shorts. I think Jane would understand. She's older now too.

I could have double dug the collards thereby using my biceps,but I didn't. I drug a piece of copper pipe to make a shallow trench and filled it with my Vates collard seeds. These are the first seeds I have ever gathered myself, so I don't have a lot of germination faith. We'll see.

My long bike ride will be this afternoon. It will only add about five miles to my IFWA( If fish were anthropologists..) total which is now 35 miles. I want to bike 3,000 miles to tell myself that I really could bike across America if I didn't have other things to do. Of course, I know this is a major fantasy. Real biking across the USA requires serious spandex plus crossing major mountains. My biggest challenge is the Roosevelt Bridge. :-)

I'm P.I.E. not DUI

It happened again. The elegant little lady whispered the question to me in the Garden Club's driveway. " Victoria, when do you get your license back?" This time I was ready with an answer, unlike the first time that puzzling question appeared. I explained to her that I HAD a bona fide drivers' license. It had never been taken away for alcoholic indiscretion.

I understood that in her experience there were only a few categories of regular urban bikers. There were the wolfpack bikers who zoom by in spandex and reflector shades and the folks who had lost their license. Of course, there were the occasional Gen X riders on one speed steeds and the Yuppie family out for a lark on beach cruisers, but I was obviously not in either of those groups.

Isn't it sad that there are so few folks who use bikes as their regular transport that anyone who rides regularly is suspect? I tried to explain that I was a P.I.E person, someone who personally integrated exercise into real life. I walk, carry buckets of water and lift huge sacks of cow manure in the garden. As David Reynolds, my teacher, was fond of saying, " Effort is good fortune." I believe that. I truly do.

Tongue Tied ( For a moment anyway)

Another biking hazard besides Suburban Assault Vehicle drivers texting angry messages to dog sitters. The hazard is a wasp in the mouth. I was biking home from a family wedding and turned to tell my beloved how much I enjoyed the event, when gag. A crispy winged something flew onto my tongue. I spit it out but not before it buried his stinger in the right side of my tongue which began to swell until it felt like someone had slit it and had sewn a marble into it. I biked on home and made a banana smoothie...the long hallowed, cold treatment. It worked. The marble is now an English pea.