In Which I Night Ride to Ghost Town

Bike with lights on, ready for ride home Tuesday night. Pretty proud of myself for holding camera steady in the dark.

I was riding to campus Tuesday night, and felt faint. I had to stop, take a drink of water and rest, briefly. Stress, I think, is getting to me, so I took it easy from that point on and rode very slowly.

The good news is that the rest of the cool, evening spring ride was uneventful. It’s odd to be on a bike this late when days are getting longer, but the streets were very familiar and very quiet. I am used to night riding, but it happens more often in winter. I was deliberately going to campus late, hoping not to see anybody. Isolation is, well, isolating, but necessary.

I went to copy some computer files that I can’t access from home, and hopefully won’t do many more rides to the college campus where I teach. The semester goes on, online. Honestly the adjustment to online teaching has been pretty rough—but harder, I imagine, on students. Their futures are uncertain, this is a historic event for me and I can only imagine facing it with only two decades of experience rather than six.

Too often, six decades is still not enough.

The ride, despite the incident, was comforting. Getting out is harder to do these days—I’m taking isolation fairly seriously and keeping my distance. As I noted, I felt a bit off physically on the ride there, for a brief time, but the cooler ride home was more enjoyable.

Maybe I just felt less stressed having copied the files rather than wondering how my little project would go. Then again, nothing against work, but the ride home is almost always more pleasant than the ride to work. I guess one factor, which was not really the case last night, is that I'm almost always hurrying on my morning bicycle commute, and can ease off and relax more on the way home. So it goes.

Campus was very quiet. The library, where the computer resides with the student newspaper files I was coming for, was closed, but I have the card to get in. I came, I copied and then I left.

Tuesday night's ride was a very slow ride, but a ride nonetheless. We’ll have rain in Iowa off and on for the next few days and a spoke is broken on my bad-weather bike, and I am taking a lot of time to do the teaching thing. I’m not sure when the next ride will be.

End of the ride computer summary. I always start and stop in my driveway, why do the feet climbed and feet descended always vary?

I am not sure when the next anything will be. I miss meals out, movie theaters,bicycle rides with family and friends. I felt very weird leaving the library at the university. When will I see the newspaper office again? When will it be filled with music and cookies and students laughing and arguing and working?

It will be, again. This storm will pass. That’s what six decades of experience says. Ride safely, my friends, I hope you stay healthy. And I hope you enjoy every ride you’re blessed to be able to experience.