today's ride was a 45 minute "recovery spin," as ordered by my tapering plan. whee! I love being home before 7, making coffee, enjoying the cool morning before life gets wound up.
the challenge, of course, is where in the world to ride where I can really do that. (or more accurately, where in my part of salt lake city can I do that.) so I do my best to spin more, go slower up the inclines, and keep to streets that are as flat as possible.
this morning I took a slightly different route than my usual recovery ride, and passed a street named "lost river road."
oh, my romantic heart just soared! I want to write a book about this street, which would of course be set somewhere quite different from its actual location, a very nondescript part of the millcreek area.
my book would be about an older Cape Cod style home, with a huge porch, in which generations of the Stewart family had lived, labored, and loved . . . all on Lost River Road on the remote edge of, gee, what city shall I place them in? oh, I'd have to do some research, but they'd probably end up back east somewhere, some romantic-sounding little town in north carolina . . .
okay, so this is what happens to me while I'm riding.
people ask me what I think about while I ride, and I am always at a loss for words. (I know, that's hard to believe.) but I think about a million things, I think about nothing. song lyrics repeat themselves, over and over, and I go to a meditative place where everything comes in and out and leaves nary a trace. I solve world problems, I create shopping lists, I zone out. I curse yellow lights, I give thanks for greens, I look all ways before cruising through 4-way stops, and my mind is on auto-pilot. I think, I memorize signs and street names and flower beds, and I absorb the cool air so I can relive it later in the day.
and I sometimes take myself to a beautiful spot alongside a river, where huge trees let their branches hang over the water and rocks stick their backs up high enough that you can walk across to the other side, where there are no people at all, and just a few houses set far apart and back from the simple, packed-dirt road that is only occasionally traveled and named, lovingly, 'lost river road.'
1 comment:
Susan,
Maybe I should take you to Lost River. It's a cool (literally, even in the summer, which is one of its attractions) rock formation in my home state of New Hampshire, within the White Mountains. The river surfaces and then gets lost in jumble of ice age strewn boulders the size of buildings. Years ago the owners built paths and ladders to explore the lost river. What I remember most is the gift store and the twisted colored stick candy! No really, I visited the lost river many times as part of ragged lake camp day trip. We had to scramble, crawl and climb through the labirynth that was the route. And let's see, could I also find you a road to nowhere that makes you wonder what is around the next blind corner where the large maples and oaks hang over the center of the road forming a canopy that filters the rays across the dusty road? Yes I could, and yes I can.
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