Friday

It's Friday and it's still cold - in the 20s again. But the sun is showing her bright face in the big blue Colorado sky. My bike has a new rear tire and a new rider. Everyday I'm a little bit different. I hope for being more perceptive too, but that's a bigger challenge. It's a rough couple of weeks at school -- copied papers, student grievances -- and yet some things turn out better than expected. The pain of confronting a student who copied a paper turned into an acknowledgement of and even a thank-you for a lesson learned. Still, I am discouraged. The karma feels off. The fit isn't. It's not new, not out of the blue, not once in a lifetime. But this morning this misfit seems worse.
Nevertheless small things can have big payoffs -- shadows for example. When we think shadows the mind can go in two directions. The "out of the shadows" direction is scary and dark. But shadows have another aura too. In my funk this morning I noticed my shadow out ahead of me as I headed west. And there dancing in the sun were the straps of my back pack. Carefree and energetic. Light and gleeful, they hopped and bobbed in the morning light. It seemed almost two-dimensional, black and white. My movement through space creating wind added the third dimension. I thought about how that's a sort of opposite of how we define"wind" as air moving through space past us. And the joy of the dance made me smile.

Thursday

It was a cold morning -in the high 20s with a bit of drizzle. So I got on my bike with a bit of trepidation and three layers from head to toe. The heat of the earth had kept the ground from freezing despite stubborn ice on windshields. The cold air against the small slice of exposed nose and cheeks felt clean. My legs worked and my core heated up. I wasn't the only biker out there, but no one was in shorts. And the homeless woman I wonder about was still there, under the same bridge sitting stoically as always, but bundled up more tightly with more layers making her lumpy figure just a bit larger. I was headed to a warm office with warm interaction. She sat. Alone. Quiet. Three weeks ago during a cold spell she was gone. I wondered if she had moved to a shelter for the winter. But she hasn't. It worries me. But I have no idea what her reality is like or what I could do to make it more of what she might want. So, I go on and just wonder.

Wednesday

I ride my bike to work. Somewhere in the back of my mind I’m thinking about saving the planet. But I know that I’m really doing it for selfish reasons, for my body and soul. To feel the wind, to breathe the air, to think the thoughts that traffic won’t permit. Brain and muscles complement a life, sweat and meandering wonders make a person whole. Being on a bike gets it done.