I forget how much pleasure there is in a bike ride.
I don't do as much of it as I might like because there is only so much time in a day for exercise and my time must first be given to doing justice to the four-footed creature in my life. It's hard, with a dog, to justify sailing off down the street for an hour or more, leaving said canine behind. While Cajun is a pretty good biking companion on bike paths, there is no way I would take her out on Concord roadways.
So finding myself on Nantucket with a morning to while away before my plane and while Beverly was engaged with visitors, I saddled up and headed for Smith Point and the Eel Skin Inn loop, and then backtracking, to Children's Beach, where I dismounted for a stroll and a think along the water's edge. It is time like these — and only times like these nowadays — that I can indulge the pure pleasure of taking in the world around me fully. Sans iPhone, laptop, beeper, all those electronics that barge into private moments of contemplation. Sans conversation too. Sans the demands of one charming dog to have a ball or stick thrown or antics with a horseshoe crab or dead fish monitored.
I have a mental image of lying on my back watching the clouds drift by. Back in high school, I think. When I took myself all too seriously and thought I would grow up to be a poet. Lines of staggering naivete formed and were refined in my adolescent psyche. To be committed to paper later in the day. I have recalled this image all my adult life, especially when I feel that I simply don't have, won't give time to just hanging out, thinking. Wondering. Wishing (of course). Speculating on the Cosmos as it applies directly to me. But then kids are self-absorbed. And adults shed their poetic souls for more practical pursuits — paying bills, say.
Perhaps this is why I remember my youth with such clarity and affection, why I would do it all again (pimples, boy-angst, friend-angst, self-worth-angst, angst as a Way of Life). I'm not sure it would apply today. Do kids now ever walk away from their phones, iPods, video games, long enough to take on the big questions of the world — Why? Why not? They must. I just can't figure out where they work it in.
It all came back to me this morning as I went free wheelin' around Madaket. No sound pollution in my ears to distract me with music or words, nothing but the hum of my tires and a clear view to Tuckernuck and beyond.
Truffle: AKA Bistro, Lincoln,MA — finally a fine restaurant in our neck of the woods! Two chefs, one French, the other Asian, combine their talents side by side. Not fusion. Just a culinary phenom.
Quote of the day: "Life is like riding a bicycle — in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving." (Albert Einstein)
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