Mike Crawford's New 45 Mile Ride

"Summer was here again.  Summer, summer, summer.

I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic

all their own and they always brought something

out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom

and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure 

and exploration.  Summer was a book of hope.

That's why I loved and hated summers.  Because

they made me want to believe."

Benjamin Saenz 

Summer yet again has flown by, streaking past me without so much as a fluttering wave or a rigid middle finger as I prepared for retirement and tried to ignore him.  Oh, there is still summer left for a few weeks more and the world remains lush and green, not yet cloaked in her merry fall clothing, but I feel it winding down.  So much missed.  I had thought retirement would slow down the whirling dance, but life happens. As the saying goes, "Man plans.  God laughs." I only have been retired about two weeks, but my sister, already handicapped, falls and breaks a hip. My brother is diagnosed with a serious illness breaking my heart, the brother whose first words upon seeing me when my parents brought me home from the hospital were, "I don't see what's so great about her,"  the brother who was the first to make me buckle my seat belt in a car, the brother who took me to swim practice and baseball practice and cheated me when we played cards, the brother that I love. I offer a bone marrow transplant if it will help and we match, but he has been told he is too old. It is hard and I wish they had not happened, but these things also assure me that I have made the right decision in retiring rather than continuing to work.  Life, like summer, whizzes by at breakneck speed with an unknown finish line.  At least some summer is left, and I want to believe in possibilities, in adventure, in changes.  And I intend to explore.  One fear I have always held is leaving life before living it fully.

I struggle with whether to drive all the way to Elizabeth for Mike Crawford's new ride as it is only 45 miles, but the possibility of new roads and companionship draws me like the moth to the flame. I decide to go, and I am so very glad I do.  The roads are magnificent:  lightly traveled and scenic.  I have ridden some before, but a few are entirely new to me. Some of the pavement is rough, but that does not bother me.  I would rather have scenery and little traffic on rough roads than smooth roads that lack these treats.  I get to see and drool over Lynn's beautiful, new, bright orange Calfee and hear his first impressions as this is the third time he has taken it out to play. 

I start out near the front of the pack, but decide to ride at the back.  After all, what is the hurry? And I really don't know the others despite a rather large turn out.  Getting to know people is difficult for me, and today I will not force it.  A silver mist coats the air at the start.  As my tail light is not working, I am glad for the light traffic.  It is beautiful, this mist, shielding us from the sun, making the word fairy like and odd, and the mist stays for a couple of hours before the sun pops through, wrapping his arms around us and heating everything up. I ride with Lynn and Mike occasionally talking and occasionally riding in companionable silence.  The corn is tall and not yet brown and withered.  Soy bean fields abound.  Yet there are also roads where tall trees line the sides, stately and dignified. All around me abundance, and I am thankful, thankful for friends and country roads and bicycles.  I think of when I was a child and school ended.  Summer seemed a magnificent eternity before being jailed again, full of forts to be built, woods to be wandered, and games to be played.

Now I am as free as I suppose we ever can be as adults because even though retired, there are responsibilities that I did not have as a child.   And perhaps every season can and should now be a "book of hope" full of possibilities.  What a thoroughly delightful route, Mike Crawford.  Thank you for sharing it.  I have enjoyed it and the company.  It was worth the drive.