Another boring hot cocoa ride

"And I, for one, have this idea that constant exposure to the ordinary is good for the soul."

John Gierach

Most bike rides taken by anyone are run-of-the-mill.  Hell when it really comes down to it most of everything is run-of-the-mill.  In the above quote John Gierach was talking about fly-fishing.  And, as I see it, his point was this: There are the famous, big-name fly-fishing rivers - and while he talks about fishing those, the kind of fishing he loves best is the everyday stuff.  You can spend half a day (or much more) getting to a really hot river but if you're really into fishing like he is you've gotta scratch that itch much more often than you can if you were to only fish in the "good" places.  If you only have time to fish on your lunch break or a couple of hours Saturday morning you go to the place nearby.

He's talking about fishing but, of course, he could very easily be talking about biking, or hiking, actually he could be talking about a lot of stuff.

For the last 7 years we have been collecting and boiling our own maple syrup.  We've had an odd winter (remember the warm spell back in January that melted my bike trails?) and I have been keeping an eye on a couple of things: the weather, and if more experienced syrupers are talking about tapping their trees.  People were saying they had tapped some trees and they were running so I decided to put in 10 taps myself.  It was forecast to get above freezing this afternoon and I wanted to have the taps in before then.  But I knew the trails were probably going to be rock-hard and wanted to go for a ride before they thawed out (oh, and by the way - I had a hankering for some hot cocoa).  So I had a couple of hours window this morning.  So I had a short ride that was virtually all on the rail-trail Tri-County Corridor, set up my woodstove, boiled water, drank cocoa, and headed back home to work on getting taps in.

Was today's ride an epic ride that I will remember when I'm old and gray?  Of course not - truth be told not much happened and it was kind of "blah."  But it was a quick, enjoyable, ride that got fresh air in my lungs, and hot cocoa in my belly.  If I didn't think this was a good time I think I'd need therapy.  This was a hop-on-your-bike-and-ride-even-if-you-only-have-time-for-a-quickie ride.  This was an ordinary ride that was "good for the soul".  

Ever heard the saying, "I ride my bike to burn off the crazy"?  That might be a little extreme, I haven't been able to ride for extended times (nearly three years) and haven't gone crazy (unless you count Arrowhead, which, now that I think about it, is nudging crazy).  But the world just seems to spin truer when I ride.

Porcupine-chewed limbs of a sumac.