Second Day of Summer (June 22, 2013)

We took a bike ride tonight. It's been a very long time.  We put on our helmets and jackets and took the backroads to the outlet malls on the coast to look for some new running shoes.  It was a warm summer's day today, and I didn't think I'd like wearing the jacket, but it was fine.

Not our photo, but GoogleImage found John's bike!

My helmet is an interesting piece of equipment.  I'm grateful that it protects me from splatting bugs and tossed up bits of gravel.  We won't talk about the other things that it's designed to protect me from.  We don't talk about those at all; just about being safe, and wearing the right gear.  However, wearing the helmet makes scratching your nose a little tricky.  Let's just say I smacked my hand into the visor more than once tonight and leave it at that.  Itchy noses and stray bugs that make their way inside the helmet are no fun.  At.all.

These are the shoes I bought.

We found shoes -- two pair.  I couldn't decide, so we got them both.  My knees will be happy.  Since I'm committed to running and trying to improve my health, lower my bad cholesterol, and fight the uphill battle of the downhill slope of aging, I decided to be nice to my meniscus-challenged knees and make sure they have the cushion and support to survive long walks and regular jogs.  Running is actually working for me right now.  No one is more stunned by that statement than I am.  I still hate it, but I can feel that it is making a difference.  As long as my body will let me, I think I'd better wise up and make the effort. If my dad can do this at 91, I have no excuse at 54 to not.

It was the ride home that made me want to write tonight.  It was ... perfect.

We took even more remote roads to get home, so there was very little traffic, and wonderful scenery to enjoy.  It had been warm today, and after a short thunderstorm this afternoon, the air was a little damp - not oppressive and fly-paperesque, just gently moist and soft on your skin like a baby's breath.  As we pulled out of the parking lot, the air was drenched in the scent of salt and sand and seaweed.

 We drove along estuaries and coves and tiny inlets and outlets until the forests overtook the low brush.  We passed newly mowed lawns and houses trimmed with beds of blooms, some tidy and well ordered, others more sprawling and wild, but all bright with color.  Sunny daylilies were just closing their eyes for the evening along the roadside and we dipped into and out of the sweet aroma of wild roses as we wound and twisted our way home.

From time to time the trees opened up onto broad fields where the tall grasses, recently cut, still lay in stripes, waiting to be gathered.  Somewhere along the way we passed a cluster of cow barns with their own distinct  scent ... never offensive to my sensibilities.  The smell of cows and horses always takes me back to summer vacations at my uncle's ranch, or my other uncle's farm.  That warm mix of hay and manure never bothered me then; it doesn't now.  It is the smell of summer and growing things, of trying futilely to learn to milk a cow, and the wonder of learning to ride a horse.  No matter where I am, that "cow country" odor takes me back to a place that feels like home.  Farmer's granddaughter, I know.

So, tonight we rode and I closed my eyes and saw the world through my nose.  Sometimes we talk about leaving New England.  Long cold winters are getting harder with John's heart condition, and my circulation issues aren't getting any better with age.  We talk about living nearer to children, to grandchildren, to parents and siblings.  There are people, important people to us, who we miss so much it just aches.  We talk about it, and then we put that dream aside and look at the dream we're living.  A dream where the crash of the ocean is a short drive away, where the screaming of gulls and scent of saltwater are so commonplace that we have to stop to notice them sometimes.

It's a dream where the green of summer is soft and dewy, and the flowers that bloom wild along the streets near our home are just as lovely as the ones I plant and tend in my garden.

It's a dream where a drive to the mall takes you past lovely historic homes set back from the road on well-tended but not obsessively manicured lawns, where picking blueberries still means a climb up a rocky old mountainside with a plastic bucket in hand.  It's a dream where spring announces itself through the voices of the peepers and the songbirds, and where the shade of that maple we let grow from a wild sapling is just now cooling our deck from the heat of the summer's sun.

Someday we might leave this place, but not today.  Today we took a ride.