amazing what a little bike can do

(this is a picture of S.'s bestest pal, Dan, who is a Biology PhD at UW in Seattle...he and his student assistant came through Denver Friday on his way to Aiken, S.C. Dan is in the process of driving 2000 seedlings across the country as part of his dissertation research. It's a huge undertaking--here you can see Dan spot watering before they hit the road again Saturday morning. That's me looking very sleepy in the foreground. And that's the back of my head at the end of this post...)

Yesterday I took a two hour bike ride with my neighbor, Tim, and his son, Alex. We wound our way downtown, which was (as we suspected) pretty empty, stopped by the Millennial Bridge, then made our way to the river, where we parked our bikes and let Alex watch the kayakers run a rapid chute in the South Platte. People were out yesterday, enjoying the clear blue skies and warm sun--Alex stripped off his shoes and socks and walked on the sandy beach; other kiddos had engineered canals in the sand and the water seeped in, darkening, snaking its way from one end to the other. It was a marvelous day. I felt great. I almost didn't go on the ride but S. encouraged me..."you'll feel better" she said...and of course, she couldn't have been more right. I called Stine right after my ride and I'm sure I sounded all the world like some hopped up lunatic--I was riding endorphins and she was heavy on my mind. It was she, after all, who helped me research my bike. It was she who I called several times from the REI during my test rides. And it is she who continually sticks by me, even if she doesn't see it that way (I do), through many falls and many getting back ups, through my bitching about how "everyone else" (nice globalizing) seems to have the stamina and discipline to win this weight loss battle while I sit by on the sidelines, horking a fatty...ugh...anyway, the fact is that I felt so amazing on that ride, and my bike is FANFUCKINGTASTIC, it rides like a dream, manuevers well over rough city terrain (like brownfields strewn with rock and gravel and pocked asphalt) and the best part is that this morning my ass doesn't feel like it was whacked a thousand times with a mallet. I'm sore, but it's a good sore.

You know when you have those experiences that seem to take you over whatever hump it is that sits between you and what you want to accomplish? Yesterday was one of those. I feel empowered, lifted, grateful that my body responds (still) to physical exertion without giving up. THERE IS HOPE. And that, my friends, is all I needed to catapult me into a better frame of mind.

Buzz rides again!!