Boy in the Hood: First Winter Ride

Me in my hood this morning.  It fits under the hew helmet. I put on warm gloves after snapping this photo.

The title of a movie made in 1991 confused me, because I was already old in 1991 and easily confused.  It was called “Boyz in the Hood,” and I wondered what nefarious acts were committed by people in parkas.  I had no idea that “hood” was a contraction for where Mr. Rogers spent his lovely days:  the neighborhood.

Well, while the “hoodie” is sometimes a hoodlum disguise, the hood, I think, is more nerdy than menacing.  Today, for the first time, as I rode through my ’hood, I wore my winter hood.

I was testing my new helmet with my winter regalia.

It passed with flying colors.  Not gang colors.  I just mean it passed.  No, not that “passed.”  I mean it was acceptable.  As a hood and not a ’hood or even hoodlum.

Back to our morning ride.  This was the day after a cold front roared through Iowa, dropping temperatures by 20 degrees and also dropping the first raindrops this arid desert has seen in many a moon.  I actually drove a car yesterday, something I rarely do, anticipating the rain and having an evening appointment at Coe College, and I was pleased as punch that the rain fell.

It made for a breezy, cool ride this morning—cold enough for me to try my winter outfit—my wind-breaking jacket, with the hood that can fit under my helmet, and gloves.

It wasn’t the complete winter outfit.  No need for long johns, yet.  I suppose it was just under 30 degrees as I rode in, and I did miss the fuzzy warm winter socks I would normally wear in colder months—about 1/3 of the way on my journey, my toes were colder than the nose of a Chicago hoodlum hanging out without his hood in the ’hood in January.

But, honestly, my head was getting a bit too warm.  I had a little sweat stored under that hood by the time I crested the Warde Hall hill to finish the morning commute.  And my feet were fine by the time I arrived—the heat generated by a big person moving a bike 4 ½ miles eventually took over.

It was a beautiful morning.   And I could not be happier about my hood fitting under the new bike helmet.  Well, I guess I could be a little happier.  Felicia Day could have been commuting to some Guild filming in northern Hiawatha, and she could have sung out as she rode her pink road bike past me (headed north, as I headed south), “hey, stranger, nice hood!”

So I could have been happier.  But not much happier.  It was a lovely day in the ’hood with my hood.

PS:  So how did I do, class?  Students are spending a lab time writing an opinion column.  I told them their upper limit was 650 words, but to aim for 500.  Me?  I did other work for 10 minutes and wrote this in 20.  And “20” was my 500^th word … pretty good for an old man in the hood!

A New Rack In Town

My bike Monday in relocated rack at MMU.  Looks happy, no?

To avoid repeated bombings by pigeons, MMU facilities relocated the bike rack that I use at Warde Hall.  It was directly against the building, sadly, under some nests of big birds that Mitt Romney has not threatened to fire.

Although I didn’t ride today (for the first time in many days) due to rain in the forecast, here is what my bike looked like Monday in the new rack location, in a garden next to the back walk.

I think the bike looks pretty happy here.  And I don’t mind if it gets almost buried in ash leaves.  They beat heck out of pigeon poo any day!

It’s Beautiful, Despite Wind, Rain and Cold

Looking east at Collins Road and F Avenue NE.  Never has a Fed Ex truck looked so good.  I'm where I am so my bike is resting in just the right spot so the magnetic traffic detector will be triggered and the traffic light will change for me, in case you wonder why I seem dangerously close to Collins Road.

I know it will be a blustery, cool ride home tonight, pumping into the wind with lights on.

But, that’s OK.  It’s that time of year.  We get a few freezes under our belts, it drives a stake through the heart of any remaining mosquitoes, and the brown of the winter commute will start to appear.  I’m ready.

This morning was unbelievably gorgeous.  As I started out on the morning commute a few minutes after 7 a.m., I felt like I was riding in the inside of a conch shell—the pearly white clouds and pink light of the rising sun, combined with the soft baby blue of a newborn day’s sky.  Well, it was a 10 of a morning.  It’s been so dry that clouds are a rare treat, and these were high and thin and broken, which made for a pretty picture.

So even a breezy, damp, cool ride home won’t break the mood.  I parked inside Warde Hall by my office (biker’s privilege, try parking your SUV inside when it rains).  What little rain we had blew through quickly, and frankly I would have been willing for much more.

But what a morning!

A much prettier view of the Iowa sunrise can be seen here, in a blog post from a former newsman in my old town of Muscatine.  That’s the Norbert F. Beckey bridge, that I occasionally crossed in the late 1970s on a 1974 Schwinn Continental to reach a nice park with a lake that was nearby in Illinois.

Nice as the morning sky was in Cedar Rapids, clearly having a Mississippi nearby made it even more beautiful in Muscatine.

The Morning Counterpart To A Dusk Ride

Last week, I rode at dusk and photographed leaves and the moon.

This morning, the Cedar River Trail was irresistible, so I rode early and photographed the colorful leaves in the rising sun.

And these images, I think, are a pretty good explanation of why I bike.

In Which CR Biker Wonders Where the Birds Went

Birds gathered near Boyson Road trail very late one afternoon last week.  Paging Alfred Hitchcock.

South, I know, it’s that time of year.  But, they left suddenly.  I saw them last week and it seems that this week there are far fewer avian crowds on our neighborhood wires.

One reason to bike is to be “out” and to see the natural world a bit more often.  I’ve noted before that in Iowa, seasons sometimes don’t slowly evolve from one to another—sometimes they switch abruplty, like someone quickly slid the dial from “summer” to “fall.”

That’s to a communing biker’s advantage, in some ways.  Cool fall mornings are about the most pleasant biking conditions one could ask for.

But in the twilight of the suddenly earlier evenings, the silence is getting dominant.  Throughout summer, you hear life all around you, even at night when the insects and frogs are seeking sex and singing their love songs.

There are a few diehard Romeos out there, still, but the evening insect chorus has died down from a full choir to a few lackluster soloists and an occasional quartet.  It’s hard for enough beetles to get together to be a fab 4, these nights.

I took the photo of the birds gathered on a wire during the evening ride I blogged about last week.  The picture of the bug below shows a creature that was slowly—slowly—inching its way across a railing at MMU’s Busse Library this Sunday evening, the final night of September, when I had stopped by, on my bike, to check on the student newspaper.

The sudden fall leaves me with mixed feelings.  I like the vibrant change of colors that appeared overnight after one cold evening—but am a little melancholy that the unusual fall beauty is partly due to a harsh drought.  I like the biking weather now, but the chill reminds me that cold is on the way.

Summer might not be my favorite biking time—but it beats heck out of winter!

I had a lot of trouble getting this little guy's image.  I think it was getting too dim
for my little point-and-shoot camera to focus well.