Glorious Sunshine

"O, Sunshine!  The most

precious gold to be found on 

earth." 

Roman Payne

It is amazing how a bicycle and a good dose of sunshine can pull you out of the doldrums.  Monday and yesterday were perfect riding days, and I ride 67 miles one day and 27 another.

The red buds are receding, colors slowly dulling and fading, to be replaced by dogwoods trees.  Green has taken hold and runs riot through the forested areas.  Yellow flowers, Field Mustard, Butter Weed, and Wintercress, begin to color road sides. Daffodils are gone and the orange day lilies I love so have not yet emerged though I notice the foliage is growing tall and green.

  When I pause nearby, I see the pollinators beginning to work.  Looking down at my leg one time, I  notice a young bumblebee has settled down for a ride.  Stopping, I take a leaf and gently brush it away.  I wonder to myself if bumble bees navigate by the sun as my husband said honey bees do.  I suspect so, but I really don't know.

The bumble bee makes me think of when my husband and I first married and sold hay over at Churchill Downs.  I would go in the morning and make sales and after he got home from work we would deliver.  We would buy fields of hay or straw at times and put it up ourselves.  Once, retrieving it from a barn, we ran into a nest of bumble bees.  How we escaped with so few stings remains a mystery.  I miss those days, the way it felt working together.

I arrive in Commiskey wondering if the store will be closed.  As it sells gas, it is not a mandatory store closing, but it is such a small store.  I arrive to find it open.  I don't go in because I brought my own snacks and drinks, but I am glad.  I wonder how the closing of small country stores will impact distance riding.  By now I should have numerous centuries in, but this year is different in so many ways.

The spring is constant, however, and that is comforting.  Each spring is unique in some aspects:  some are unusually rainy or dry, some are windy and some are not, but all springs eventually melt into summer.  And spring always follows winter so long as we are alive.

The only down point either day is a dog, a big German Shepherd, that comes out in the road after me.  Since I have no chance of outrunning him, I hop off placing my bike between the dog and my body only to have the owner come to the edge of the yard yelling at me for daring to stop in front of her home.  I attempt to explain how if the dog bumped my wheel chasing me there would be more damage than if I just stop, but it never sinks in.  She struggles but eventually is able to gain enough control of the dog for me to quickly move onward.  She is yelling the entire time, face red and angry.

I thought about the stress we are all under in our changing world.  The words of a Jewell song come to mind, "Nature has a funny way of breaking what does not bend."  I hope the lady with the red face finds a way to relieve the stress she obviously is under at the present time.  We are all under stress, but some more than others, and we all have different resources to use to combat this stress.  How thankful I am that bicycling is in my arsenal.  

Today it rains and I will use this as a rest day and a day to clean my house unless I decide to Zwift, something new to me. The trainer my husband bought me in 2004 broke right before the pandemic became apparent and I replaced it with a smart trainer and started a Zwift subscription.  While it does not and never will replace cycling outside, it is less boring than the old trainer.  But, oh, how I miss my riding companions, the jokes, the laughter, the shared miles.  I remind myself it is not forever and that God has a reason for what is happening, and I remind myself to smile.  I am blessed in so many ways. 

I have a new painting idea that I want to start, a way to pass time that also started right before the pandemic hit.  With each one, I learn something new it seems.  And it helps to pass the time.  My most recent was plagiarized from Jay Lee's "Red Umbrella" painting.

  But soon I will be back on a bicycle.   Nothing could ever take its place.