Lessons for the New Year

My birthday falls on November 29th at 5.03 PM. It's always been a little annoying to have a birthday that is close to Thanksgiving but can never be ON Thanksgiving. On good years the 29th falls just the right distance from Thursday - just far enough to have hungry people willing to be social again.

Let's not even talk about 1963 and the Kennedy Assassination. Now THAT'S a great way to ruin a birthday party.*

Nothing quite so dramatic this year. In fact, for some reason I felt inclined to have a party of sorts. Most years I just take the day off work and hole up somewhere or go for a ride, but not this year. I guess I'm feeling my age and wanted to have a little company.

Given the 29th fell on a Tuesday this year, I selected Sunday as the celebration day and settled on gathering at my current favorite bar. The Radio Bar is a laid back hipster watering hole with a great beer selection and some of my favorite rums. What's not to like?

So now, four days after the gathering and two days after my actual birthday, I have to go to work. I took a few additional days off to cover my birthday and provide a little buffer in case I decided to celebrate on the day of, as it were. I didn't, as it turns out, but I enjoyed having the extra time off.

I've been sort of contemplating all the changes going on lately at so many different levels from the intensely minute and personal to the utterly impersonal cosmic-sized stuff. My birthday provided a bit of focus for part of that process. Now, a few days later and about to dive back into the all too well known workday world, I considered the dangers of returning to The Rut, The Familiar, and The Sleepwalking World.

But, what to do to avoid those things? Here I was, starting a whole new year, another Trip Around the Sun, and I didn't want to fall back into the routine.

It didn't take long to discover I was getting my answer served warm and pulsing.

I had discovered my front brakes were pretty much useless the day before. This morning proved them still incapable of actually stopping me. As I rolled out I was paying particular attention to what it took to come to a stop. Unbeknownst to me, that was my first lesson - in the new year, PAY ATTENTION!

As I came around the bend from 3rd Street onto Lafayette, the first place I can see the River and the rail line that parallels it, I noticed tanker cars rolling slowly downriver. Had I missed the train whistle blowing? They usually blow the whistle pretty much constantly while passing through downtown and all the way to the southern edge of town. This morning, nothing. Not a peep. Odd, that.

It could have been a short train being sidelined for making up a larger train but, by the time I arrived at Convention Street, it was clear to me that it was a long train and picking up speed. Not quickly enough to clear the access points to the Levee Path, however, so I had to reroute myself for the trip to work. That was my second and third lessons - in the new year, BE FLEXIBLE and KNOW YOUR OPTIONS!

No Levee Path for me!

More or less quickly settling on a new route I continued on to North Boulevard to head east a bit to Saint Louis and eventually Government Street. But, no! The city was prepping for the big Holiday Spectacular at Town Square. North Boulevard was blocked.

Being on a bike the barricades didn't really deter me a great deal. The truck blocking the street did. So too the cherry picker parked on the sidewalk I headed toward to avoid the truck. Not to mention the second truck coming out of the back of the Old State Capitol arriving at the corner with the curb cut the same time I was heading into said cut.

My fourth lesson came to me as I cleared the trucks and other obstacles - in the new year, BE PERSISTENT!

I hadn't even gone two miles and I'd already been hammered with four very large, very real lessons. With a little over three miles to go I was beginning to wonder if I should turn around, call in nervous, and go back to bed.

Fortunately, nothing big happened between that point and the Student Union on campus. My last little cosmic slap on the forehead was a variation on the Wavering Pedestrian Gambit. You know the one.

Oh, look! Clouds!

You're riding along and notice a pedestrian on the sidewalk heading for the street. They are clearly going to cross and, using that amazing human capacity to work out intricate route predictions that forecast intersecting paths based on so very many different variables, you decide to do a certain thing that will most likely avoid a collision, not require slowing too much or stopping, and not scaring the walker who is most likely to simply and obliviously walk out into traffic without looking up, much less looking right and left.

But this time, just as I had made the last calculation, she looked up, looked me in the eye, blinked the way people do when they make eye contact . . . and hurried just enough to walk right into my path. Holy Shit!

I didn't have time to think, I just, somehow, took the correct evasive action without seeming to think at all. It was like my body bypassed my brain and did what needed doing. My mouth caught up before my mind and I blurted out something uncomplimentary, if brief.

My fourth lesson - in the new year, BE THANKFUL FOR YOUR SKILLS, trust them, build them, find ways to expand them.

The rest of my workday went well. Lunch at The Bicycle Shop is almost always a welcome respite from work. Not so much that it isn't work but that it isn't AT work or around work people. It represents my other life. Actually, it IS my other life. The part of my life that adds rather than subtracts. In this case, it also allowed me to get my brakes fixed while I enjoyed a little food and the companionship of the Bike Shops Boyz.

I left work well after dark but not too much after sundown. The moon was new on the 29th, my birthday (you may remember from way back there at the beginning of this thing), and I was hoping to see it return (the moon, not my birthday . . . well . . . alright, you get my drift).

See? There WAS a birthday cake!

It had been a bit cloudy late in the day and I was concerned the clouds would block my view of the moon. As I approached the Vet Med Trailhead I could see the Fingernail Moon, the finest of crescents, being alternately revealed and hidden by clouds.

What REALLY got my attention was something much more terrestrial - a petrochemical plant flare. I'd been seeing a flare on and off for weeks way off on the horizon downstream. This flare was a whole lot closer, so close I thought it was on campus but there is no plant that close. Maybe there is a well that close and it was having a problem. I don't know where it was exactly but it's forty foot flame, all orange-yellow dancing in the breeze, lit the sky.

I rode a little downstream from the trailhead to get past the lights ringing the parking area. I wanted to get past their glare a bit so I could better use my binoculars to see the flare, the moon, and the ships in the dark, dark River.

The Moon, still doing the cloud striptease thing, was gorgeous through the lenses. The flare was that much more intense, bright and flowing. Ships, moored mid-river, black against black, their lights like Orion's Belt all too terrestrial.

There was a push boat behind a barge facing upriver, immobile near the bank, with its lights trained on the barge covers. I watched another barge, outboard of the moored one, being backed downriver, it's push boat somehow holding it back and pulling it along to maintain steerage in the current, in the dark, no moon to speak of, no lights trained on the river. It was beautiful, as dark as the water it rode on, movement as fluid as the flame on the other side of the Levee.

I have to say, buying those binoculars was a really good thing.

Flowy accidental image thing.

*Yes, I know, how tacky to bring that up. But, as a nine year old about to turn ten, it really was a huge disappointment. It was also the first time I'd ever seen my father cry. The second and last time I saw him cry was not quite four years later when his wife (my mother) was killed. 

A Day in the LIfe: Friday, September 09 Version

I've been aiming for an average daily mileage of 15, which I had first reached on June 13. Because I'm using my birth year as the calendar for this exercise that is actually seven months into the year, not six. To be precise, it is actually 197 days into the cycle.

Lately though, what with the rain, shootings, flood, heat, and humidity, I've been slacking off. For every day I don't ride or ride less than 15 miles I slide backward quickly. Funny how riding more has less affect on the average than riding less. That is, I drop back quickly and struggle to make up lost ground.

This morning I thought I'd get out early enough to take the 11-mile Route in to work. For one reason and another, I didn't leave sufficiently early for the long route but could add a couple of Levee Path miles without being late to work.

If only . . .

As I rounded Lafayette Street I saw the train on the levee line not moving at all. I couldn't hear an engine chugging anywhere either.

Florida Street was blocked.

North Boulevard was blocked.

The road between the casino parking garages was blocked.

Now I'm on Saint Phillip headed to South Boulevard hoping to see the crossing open but it isn't. I should have turned and gone into Beauregard Town toward the Lakes but bulled ahead onto Nicholson and its blown out expansion joints, speeding traffic, and puddles.

When I saw the train across the road on Oklahoma I knew I was screwed but good. There's no way across the tracks until McKinley and I had no desire to ride Nicholson that far.

That train had to be almost 2 miles long, sitting still, and blocking any number of crossings. Oh well. Sucks to be you!

I took an old route I hadn't used in quite a long time. That kind of made it easy to see changes along the way. The biggest change I noticed was a large water oak had come down. Judging by the blue tarp covering the roof of the house the tree once stood in front of, I'm guessing it wasn't a planned drop.

There is also a fairly large lot, one block long by half a block wide, immediately behind Magnolia Mound that has always been well cared for. It looks like a small park with a few pine trees and oaks, maybe a magnolia. I've never seen anyone on the property, with the exception of the mower methodically riding his circuit decapitating grass.

I only lost a quarter mile from my usual morning ride mileage and thought I'd make it up at lunch with a little four-mile loop on campus. When I finally left for lunch the thunderstorms were headed our way. I opted to take the direct route to lunch and thought I'd just ride the long way home to make the distance.

Back at work, 4.30 PM almost on the dot, I receive a call from the Fraud Prevention Unit of my debit card company. Not the credit union but the card company. After the usual prerecorded palaver I'm told that I need to speak to a human . . . please wait . . . your call is . . . yeah, yeah, yeah . . . great.

It's Friday afternoon at 4.38 PM when I am told, "Because you did not order over $1,000.00 of merchandise from a ginseng company your card is no longer valid. You can go to your bank to get a new one or tell us to mail you a new one (to arrive within a week)."

Really? I've got 22 minutes to get to my bank and get them to issue a new card before they close for the weekend, the weekend of the first home football game of the season? Campus is literally crawling with tailgaters looking for "their" spot and little else. No way am I getting to the credit union in time.

Reconciled to having to wait until tomorrow to deal with the card issue, I finish what I'm doing. By the time I'm ready to leave it's raining again. The sun is out and I think of the old saying, "The Devil is beating his wife." Rather than ride in the rain, which I believe will be brief, I get out my new read, "The Passage," by Justin Cronin, and pick up the story where I left off at lunch.

Twenty or thirty minutes later the rain has more or less stopped and I'm on my way. By know I've given up on the idea of taking the long way home. Campus is even more crowded with tailgaters setting up for tomorrow's game. There are people everywhere and I'm nervous on the street knowing how distracted they all are.

I make it to the Levee Path and notice the double rainbow behind me in the east. Yesterday's Cloud Appreciation Society "Cloud of the Day" was not a cloud but ‘Alexander’s Dark Band,’ the strip of sky between a primary and secondary rainbow that tends to look slightly darker than the sky elsewhere. Sure enough, there it is. And the right hand side of the primary rainbow is so incredibly intensely bright near the horizon it looks like it's on fire.

It's still spitting rain as I head up river. As I near the Terrace Street Pumping Station near the Bridge I see the path is blocked but the new detour is open. It's a little odd navigating the turns but the new path seems to be well made and has a curb when it runs parallel to River Road. Maybe that will keep most of the cars off the path?

I figure the Levee is still blocked by the AT&T mobile cell tower truck so drop to South Boulevard to take the casino parking garages road to Government. As I'm about to turn off South I notice two lanes on one side of South are open. They have been closed for a month and I've grown accustomed to there being no motor traffic coming from that direction. Good thing I noticed it.

Government / River Road remains closed around the River Center. The Flood refugees have been there long enough to have found a good place across the street to sit outside in the afternoon. The amount of trash littering the area is a sure sign of regular occupation.

I thought I'd just stay on River Road to Florida since it's mostly closed and there isn't much traffic, usually. Today, however, is the first Live After 5 concert of the fall featuring Rockin' Doopsie and, despite the light intermittent rain, there is a crowd and that means motor traffic. They have also moved the stage down from Town Square to Repentance Park due to the demolition of the River Center Branch Library so I can't ride up to the Plaza from River Road. Too many people.

Ah well . . . as we used to say, adapt or die.

Good thing I had some cash on me now that my debit card is dead. I picked up a little something for dinner and some beer at the Mathern's and headed home.

It's been an interesting and . . . um . . . shall we say, "fluid" day.

When it rains . . .

We have had a rather large and strenuous rain system pass through starting last night in the wee hours. Vague as it is, I say "wee hours" because I didn't look at the clock when the first lightening flash lit my bedroom and interrupted my sleep as that flash passed through my eye lids to wake me.

That leading edge of the system was over us some hours ago. I drifted in and out of sleep being reawakened with each passing storm cell embedded within the larger system.

From where I lay slumbering the sound of the storm comes to me from three different sources, each separated by time and space.

The window over my bed on the eastern wall of my apartment brings the flash of lightening and the sound of the rain falling in the street and parking lot. The vent in the ceiling of the bathroom across the hall and a few feet down has a sheet metal cap that provides a sort of muted high-hat or snare drum sound as rain strikes it; hail is particularly impressive. The windows at the western front of the apartment, which I leave open for fresh air to balance the mechanical taste of the A/C, brings thunder and the sound of rain draining from the roof through the broken gutter along the southern edge of the roof and the still-functioning downspout, both channeling water onto the brick pavement of the courtyard below. There is also the much more subtle sound of rain falling directly onto the courtyard garden and its recovering banana plants damaged in the winter, cut back to the ground by the maintenance crew, and now recovering with ever-broadening leaves twisting up and out of the central stalks.

Lying there, eyes closed, this sonic landscape is a wonder to experience. First brought to wakefulness if not fully awake by the muted rose-white flash of lightening colored so as passes through my eye lids on the way to my visual cortex, I hear the thunder follow. If it comes down the hall from the western windows I can "see" the front arriving from that direction, if it is indeed arriving. Sometimes storms pass to the west of us with all the Shakespearean sound and fury it can muster. This time, well, this time repeated strikes tell me the storm is headed for me.

Then the bathroom vent tells me rain has arrived, light and tentative at first, an introductory few bars for what is to come. It's funny how I can tell the relative size of the drops, whether they are gust driven or merely falling, their terminal velocity ended on the vent cap. And the hail . . . there is no denying hail, rare though it may be, as it strikes that sounding cap.

The first lightening strike on the east side of the building lights my bedroom, its thunder shakes the windows, the sound arriving milliseconds later from the vent and the front windows, each sounding different, each woven into a richer, deeper sound that creates a scene of the world outside my little room, a scene that I inhabit simultaneously both inside and outside in that moment. The echo of the thunder rebounding from the few high rise buildings downtown adds a temporal dimension that both confuses and sharpens the scene in my mind.

The front moves east. The lightening recedes with it, thunder becoming muted with distance, my semi-automatic counting of seconds to gauge distance showing me trajectories, distances, velocities. The sound of rain on the vent cap takes over. The dripping of eaves, of broken gutters, of downspouts supplanting the overeager majesty of lightening and thunder. I return to sleep counting not sheep but sound, receding, drawing me back down until the next cell arrives to wake me.

While I'm at it . . . the strangeness of choice

Following hard on the heels of the previous post, I thought I'd offer this little tidbit for my Cycling photo challenge 5.

One morning, more or less recently, I decided to get to work early. Not terribly early, mind you, just, say, 30 minutes or so early.

I did manage to leave home earlier than usual. Perhaps not the 30 minutes I had shot for, but early nonetheless.

Opting for what has become my default route down the Levee I didn't experience anything sufficiently unusual to draw my attention. At this point, it would take a fair amount of strange to draw my attention.

Up the Florida Street ADA ramp, I take the long wide turn across the wet steel of the railroad tracks set between the slabs of new concrete. On a foggy morning like this one those two very different surfaces can be a little confounding on a bicycle.

Topping the levee I notice a person, a man, with a camera on the river-side levee steps shooting the river fog. He notices me at about the same time, swivels in my direction, and starts shooting. At least I imagine he is shooting as he has begun to track me with the camera to his eye. I can't hear the camera motor or much of anything else with the wind in my ears.

Doing my best to ignore the photographer and not stare directly into his lens, I'm almost parallel to him and gaining speed as he lowers his camera and stands up. At that point I recognize him; it's Jon Barry, local photographer.

I shout a greeting as I pass eager to get to work early, which is the reason I'm there earlier than usual. Early enough to have run into Jon who isn't usually on the Levee when I'm there for the moment passing that point at trail head. He is not usually there either but the fog that morning held promise of a good shot or two, so there he was.

So what?

Well, our coincidental meeting led to this . . .

When it was first posted a friend commented that she thought it was a planned shot, something Jon and I had cooked up and, perhaps, practiced. It was, as far as I know, completely happenstance, the two of us there at that moment for entirely different and mutually opaque reasons.

This is another example of why I love riding my bicycle. Not the image, though my ego does enjoy it. The thing I love is that it happened because of the unseen things that being us together.

Another reason I love bicycling: The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and Schrödinger's cat

There are lots of reasons I love riding a bicycle, MY bicycle specifically. My bicycle, Pythias, and I get along very well, thank you. We fit each other. I worry about Pythias and keep him in fine fettle. "He" forgives my stupidity, usually best expressed when I drink too much and decide I can ride home, no problem. We ride a fairly long way together every year and manage to remain friends, as odd as that may sound.

But, for the purposes of this post, one of the things I love about riding my bicycle is the way things change. More to the point, I love how things happen WHEN things change.

In this instance, it was a single live oak leaf that brought this home to me.

Once upon a time . . . um . . . no . . .

One afternoon, when I was still at work, I received a PM on Facebook from a friend. We had scheduled a chat-over-dinner-thing at a downtown Mexican restaurant that evening.  Life was changing around us both and we were interested in getting to know each other a little better and learn more about how we felt about making Baton Rouge more interesting according to our own interests, which just happened - we felt - to intersect more often than not.

Accordingly, I was planning on going home via the Levee, a route I take quite often. I know how long it takes to get home within a 2 - 3 minute window on that route, I use it so frequently. The whole thing was laid out in my mind, a perfect space-time map of my route home, my route to the restaurant, the conversation over dinner . . . everything.

The content of the PM completely wiped out that map. My friend could not make it. So sorry.

Inertia being what it is, I thought I'd just go home on the Levee anyway. It was VERY clearly in my mind in a way that really, really made it seems like it had already happened, like it was a memory of the future . . .  weird.

Fortunately, I changed my mind. I had plenty of time and no particular reason to hurry so, why hurry? Why not take a longer route home, another familiar route but not so familiar as the Levee?

So, I did. I changed my mind.

And now . . . a digression . . . for a joke . . .

These two physicists, see, are driving across country from New York to California to attend a symposium on quantum mechanics. They have a nice rental (who owns a big car in Manhattan?), adjusted the seats and temperature a long time ago, and got to talking.

By the time they are in west Texas the discussion has become heated, the points increasingly abstruse, string theory keeps weaving its way into and out of the conversation, and the velocity of their automobile has increased to well over 100 MPH, which neither of these overheated physicists notice.

A Texas State Trooper, headed the other direction certainly did notice.

Now, in west Texas, speeds north of 100 MPH are only borderline problematic. It's a long way to anywhere and, as long as the driver is keeping it cool and staying in their lane, well, it's not necessarily a problem . . . unless the car has New York plates, then, it's a Problem.

Whips around the state trooper, pursuit mode engaged, and before you know it those New Yorkers are all lit up, the siren is wailing, and they are getting a command to pull over NOW via the secretly juiced up PA.

You know what happens next. The cars pull onto the shoulder more or less in unison. The trooper takes a little time getting out of his cruiser needing to run the tags and all. Then there's the slow, cautious walk to the other vehicle well clear of the doors and what not.

The physicists are now more or less fully engaged with where and when they are but anxious to get back to the Point, as divergent as that singular point may be.

Window rolls down. "Yes, officer? Is there a problem?"

"Do you know how fast you were going back there?" somewhat cautiously as is the Trooper's wont.

"No, actually, we don't," somewhat huffily, "we were discussing . . . things you wouldn't understand."

Not the thing to say to a Texas State Trooper.

"Well now, is that so?" drawled out for all its worth. "Your license and registration, please." hand out ready to receive said papers.

Looking them over somewhat skeptically, the Trooper says, "Pop the trunk."

"What?" says the driving physicist. "How does one POP a trunk?" Smirking at the rube.

"OPEN the trunk," rabbit ears (air quotes) up and out before he knows it, somewhat embarrassed by this habit.

"Oh . . . " driver fumbling for the trunk latch in the strange car, passenger physicist - being more observant - lunges slightly for the latch giving the driver and the Trooper both a start.

Recovering, the Trooper walks to the rear, opens the trunk lid fully, pauses a moment or two, makes  a sound of disgust, slams the trunk shut, and walks back to the driver's window.

"Do you know you have a dead cat in the trunk?" incredulous that it would be so.

Passenger physicist, shaking his head, leans across the driver into the Trooper's view and fairly shouts, "Well, NOW we do!"

. . .

Thank you. I'll be here through Tuesday

But I digress.

I took the longer way home. The route winds through the LSU campus to the Lakes access at South Campus and West Lakeshore (Sorority Row and U REC). I don't remember if it was crowded that evening, probably not as it was still cold and maybe wet.

At the intersection of Belmont and Drehr I opted for a right turn instead of continuing on Drehr to Broussard. At Belmont and St Rose I opted to continue down Belmont to Parker instead of turning on St Rose to Rittiner. At Parker I opted to turn on Myrtle rather than Kleinert.

And that's when the single live oak leaf hit the "frog" of my left hand.

This was no Sam Peckinpah slo-mo exploding blood bath of a hit. I didn't lose control of my ride. I didn't dodge and weave. It was more of a Zen master tap, an awareness note, a little thing of no intrinsic value but of great import.

Why?

All those changes, all the choices I made, all the route options I exercised, they all brought me to that point at that time to be tapped on the left hand by a single leaf. There was no shower of leaves, no curtain to pass through, just one small leaf falling through space directly into my path.

My morning ride - 2016 02 01 #mybikestory

First post in the week-long "BIKE COMMUTE STORY WEEK", Monday, February 01.

#mybikestory

"Everything changes and nothing remains still ... and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream." - Heraclitus of Ephesus

I enjoy riding beside the River. It's a lot more peaceful than riding with sharks . . . er . . . motor vehicles . . . on the surface streets. It also gives me the space to consider the eternally changing now that the River represents and is.

---

This morning's fog had obscured the Capitol when I first looked out my door. By the time I left for work the fog had lifted a bit and I could once again see the Capitol. Not so the River.

The Levee contains not only the River but the cold air above its chill waters. With the warm air coming in from the Gulf what choice was there but to have a deep, rich, luxuriant fog? A fog that hid barges, casinos, and push-boats along with the water they rode upon.

Riding downriver there is a curiously and obviously cooler region along the levee between the Paper Clip and the soon-to-be-rebuilt City Pier. The temperature difference is noticeable especially where it allows fog to overrun the Levee.

A little further downriver the warm air on the land side of the Levee takes over and drives the fog back into the trees of the batture. This back and forth, warm against cold, fog against clarity, continues sporadically all the way to the Vet Med trailhead where I descend and once again play with mechanical sharks.

Before I reach my "exit" I happen to look up as the fog, rising now with the morning heat, thins and the world brightens a bit. The disk of the sun is there, blocked somewhat by the fog, bearable in its terrible brilliance. So far away and yet so large, so powerful, that power somehow magnified by the fog. . . the lizard brain at the base of my skull wants to run, to hide from that, to find safe haven before its full power is revealed.

My morning ride 2016 02 02 #mybikestory

Second post in the week-long "BIKE COMMUTE STORY WEEK", Tuesday, February 02.

#mybikestory

A gray overcast sky replaced the fog of yesterday. With the temperature in the 70s and humidity at or near 100% my apartment was warm and damp. Everything not cloth was a bit slick. I don’t particularly like it when my sweat drips into my oatmeal but it was that kind of morning.

The weather report spoke of rain, tornadoes, and gusting winds. The humidity made the streets a bit slick, the concrete cool enough to be below the dew point.

Fortunately, I head south through town and almost all the motor traffic is heading west. The streets I cross are crowded with state workers swarming off the Interstate toward the parking garages lined up along North Street and points upriver behind the Capitol.

My route takes me past a number of historical buildings and through the old neighborhoods of downtown that were spared the wrecking ball and bulldozers of the recent past. Those neighborhoods bracket the middle passage in what is now called the Central Business District with its many surface parking lots and a notable lack of businesses.

I can see the undulating surface of Beauregard Town, the houses’ foundations built up to create a level floor. Had they been built a little later the ground would have been leveled completely changing the face of the earth on which they were built. I am happy to ride up and down these remaining undulations, these traces of the past.

Passing through the Expressway Park it occurs to me that it looks like a park with its grassy lawns, playground equipment, and basketball courts but it does not feel like a park. It can’t, really, as it lies under a massive Interstate interchange where Interstate 10 and 110 intermesh.

The noise level is astonishing. The scale of the roadway supports dwarfs everything in the park. It is a superhuman place, daunting to the human spirit and yet an outgrowth of that spirit. Best to pass quickly through.

Fortunately, it is only a few blocks to the Museum of Public Art with its very human scale. What a pleasure to see this place even on a drab day like today with the Interstate roar still very much in my ears.

Not much farther and I enter City Park. The view from Picnic Hill is radically different from Expressway Park. Here I can see the “hills” of the park across Dalrymple Drive but the trees block my view of the Lakes. The grass is oddly brown given the amount of rain we’ve had lately.

At this time of the day, the cypress trees in the Lakes, at a spot I call Roosting Cove, are almost empty of the cormorants, egrets, and ibis that come here in the evening in their hundreds. I do see a few cormorants and one lone little blue heron perched on a cypress knee near the shore. The white pelicans are no longer here or, at least, not on this part of the Lakes.

Motor traffic becomes denser as I approach campus. Unlike a friend of mine, who passed me on his bike as I was taking a picture, I stay on the bike path along the lake shore rather than riding in traffic. I will be in traffic soon enough. No sense looking for trouble.

I work late, 8 PM late, and the weather has yet to arrive. When I leave work it is well past sunset. The temperature remains in the mid-70s, the south wind blasting in from the Gulf keeping things warm and damp.

Rather than risk being caught out when the weather arrives I opt for the Levee route home. As soon as I top the Levee the south wind pushes me home. How nice to have a stiff wind behind me making my much-faster-than-normal 20 mile per hour pace effortless.

Riding that fast with the wind behind me I find myself in a quiet bubble, no sound of wind in my ears as I pace the wind itself. As I near the bridge I can hear things being blown against one another in the construction site to my right, down and across the empty River Road. Plastic snaps, metallic things ping like lanyards on masts, something rolls and stops.

The new grocery store downtown is on my way home. I stop in for something to eat, a short chat with the checkout clerk, an internal debate on beer or no beer. No beer wins and I ride home wondering when the rain will come.

My morning ride 2016 02 03 #mybikestory

Third post in the week-long "BIKE COMMUTE STORY WEEK", Wednesday, February 03.

#mybikestory

The weather we’d been anticipating all day finally arrived yesterday evening. I suppose it was worth the wait. It rained hard for quite a while supported by gusty winds and lightening every now and then, some quite close. There were times the howl of the wind rose and then sustained itself long enough that I wondered if it was a tornado on the way. Thankfully, it wasn’t.

When I left my apartment in the morning I looked up to learn the wind direction and strength. This is one of the benefits of living in Spanish Town – I can very clearly see the flags at the top of the Capitol 450+ feet in the air. Since the Capitol is oriented to the cardinal directions it’s easy to tell wind direction at that altitude. Its strength is more subjective based on how far the wind extends the flags. This morning there were straight out, flapping rapidly, with the wind out of nearly due north. That’s a good direction for going down river.

I headed out for the Levee path passing down Spanish Town Road running directly in front of the Capitol and dividing the Capitol park grounds from the state Museum and state Library. My plans changed as soon as I turned onto Lafayette Street by the state Welcome Center.

I could see a train on the Levee tracks and knew it would block all Levee access points even though it was moving oh so slowly. It would not be unusual for the train to stop, sit for a time, and reverse directions back into the Exxon plant. Rather than wait at the trailhead to see what would happen I opted for an alternate route.

I continued down Lafayette past the state LaSalle Building. Most mornings I can smell breakfast cooking in their cafeteria – biscuits, bacon, coffee – but not this morning for some reason.

The new IBM Building catty corner from the LaSalle Building is almost but not quite done. The past few weeks a crew has been removing and replacing the facing of the building at sidewalk level. This morning there was a crane stretched across the street with the upper end hidden from view.

A little further down the street Po’ Boy Lloyd’s was missing the usual police cars and bicycles that I see there at breakfast time. Either I was a lot later than usual or there was something going on breakfast-wise downtown.

The Old State Capitol stood there in its Gothic Revival glory. Mark Twain may have hated it but I enjoy its crenelated parapet, corner towers, and massive skylight. It’s such a rare and wonderful thing that castle-like building. I wish the cast iron turrets added in the 1880s were still there.

What little traffic there is on North Boulevard tends to clot up at the light on the corner of St Louis and in front of the 19th U.S. District Court Building. I remember sitting outside a Starbucks in Washington, D.C., on Constitution Avenue near the Capitol at rush hour watching the bicyclists dodging and weaving in rush hour traffic and count my blessings. It doesn’t take long to clear the knots of confused drivers and turn onto St Ferdinand.

The Frostop Drive-In drew my attention as I waited for the light on Government to change. The Frostop is a ghost from the car culture past having occupied that corner since 1957. Its giant mug on root beer no longer rotates but still stands luring customers in for a tasty treat.

I pass the northern edge of Expressway Park today instead of passing through the park. It still awes me with its size and noise and makes me happy to not be in the traffic above. South Boulevard is largely empty and a pleasure in comparison.

I pass the burned out wreck of a shotgun house collapsing now under its own ruined weight. A bit farther along and I notice a red camellia in full bloom, the grass around it carpeted with dropped petals. A Japanese Magnolia, time, the cold, and rain having dimmed its glory, still brightens another home.

By the time I reach The Lakes I can’t help but notice the Interstate, crawling with motor traffic, bisecting the Lake. Whoever designed the route for that road must have hated Baton Rouge to place it there. It certainly ruins the view and the peace of the area. I guess destroying the then-successful middle class black neighborhood just to the north of the Lakes was more important than esthetics or nature however altered by the hand of man it may have been.

After work, the sun was still up, the sky a motley mix of cloud types. It was considerably cooler than yesterday but the sun, however diminished, was good to see.

My ride through campus and around the Lakes on my way to a Front Yard Bikes board meeting was a pleasure. The transition from light to dark is one of my favorite times of day, made even better by the light reflecting off the water.

My morning ride 2016 02 04 #mybikestory

Fourth post in the week-long "BIKE COMMUTE STORY WEEK", Thursday, February 04.

#mybikestory

When I looked up as I left my apartment in the morning the Capitol told me the wind came out of the north-northeast at a pretty good clip. The clouds left behind by the storm of two days ago were completely gone and the temperature had fallen into the low-40s. The humidity was a mere 65%, arid by Louisiana standards.

The light was stupendous up on the Levee. Between the wind and the rain almost all the air pollution had been scrubbed away leaving relatively little to scatter and dim the sunlight. The River, as muddy as ever, looked blue, as blue as the sky above.

I guess the River had dropped enough to allow river traffic to resume and try to make up for lost time. There were more barges than ever on both sides of the River and in the channel. Push boats were churning up the River heading against the current. I think I counted 5 or 6 boats moving towards the barges. One fairly large raft of barges was being pushed downriver riding the current for all it was worth.

Further down river, flotsam lay all along the levee face leaving a tide line to mark high water. Logs lay stranded on disused roadways leading into the batture. One mangled green metal float lay beached in the grass, a different shade of green entirely. I could see the superstructure of ocean-going vessels, stranded in their own way, in the tree tops along the River’s edge.

The batture at the Vet Med School trailhead showed a narrow isthmus of land heading toward the River. No longer was there a continuous stretch of water between the Levee and the River.

I had partially unzipped my hoodie as I warmed up on the ride downriver. The cold, relatively dry air was refreshing after the days of high temperatures and humidity that led up to the storm a few days ago. It won’t be long before there will be no relief from the heat and humidity.

I guess I don’t do very well with the Long Dark of Winter. I’ve been obsessing a bit about the returning sun at the end of the work day. Today was no exception. I had a Warm Showers guest coming in so I left work and took the Levee home just a bit before sundown.

The sky, going from blue and orange in the west to blue and purple in the east, was a joy to ride under. By the time I reached downtown the sun had that intense thermonuclear orange thing going in the still cloudless sky. I descended to River Road as the sun set behind me, climbed Florida Street, caught the green light, and headed home.

My morning ride 2016 02 05 #mybikestory

Fifth (and final) post in the week-long "BIKE COMMUTE STORY WEEK", Friday, February 05.

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The flags were barely moving this morning, less flapping and more desultory dismissal, a waving off of a bothersome child. The temperature had warmed to 40 degrees by the time I left home, I assume almost entirely a function of another crystalline sky.

I must bore easily. I didn’t want to take the Levee again today. It was beginning to feel tiresome so I opted for the Spanish Town Road route out to 19th Street. I hadn’t ridden that way in a while and I wondered what had changed.

As it turns out, not much.

Spanish Town Road was quiet as it usually is this time of day. That will change on Saturday as the Spanish Town Mardi Gras Parade will roll right down that street. Traffic on Interstate 110 was moving, as usual; it’s too far from the junction with 10 to be backed up unless some monumental cluster fuck has stopped everything from crossing the bridge. The sewer access halfway to 19th Street continues to collapse but someone has placed barricades entirely around the widening hole.

Seeing the Museum of Public Art work on the north side of Dave Cano’s building is always a pleasure. Such good work and so unexpected.

Traffic is light this morning, light enough for me to take a long look at Magnolia Cemetery as I pass and the National Cemetery across Florida with its ranked white gravestones glowing in the morning light.

It was good to see a police officer pulling a speeding motorist aside in the school zone at Dufrocq. Why drivers feel compelled to speed through a clearly marked area teaming with children crossing the street is beyond me. I had a chance to say good morning to both crossing guards as I passed.

I turn off Park Boulevard as quickly as I can. As it happened, a friend was walking back to his house so I stopped to chat a bit. His house is adorned with a large sculptural piece that a small group had taken to Sundance Film Festival as part of the pitch for Louisiana. I had seen a picture of it in a local online newspaper and was surprised to see it hanging on his house.

The rest of my ride into work was as quotidian as it could be. The cold weather quite enjoyable, the clear blue sky resonating on some obscure cellular level, some ancient wet-wiring soaking up the beauty wordlessly, joyfully.

My morning ride 2016 02 17 #mybikestory

Spontaneous, out of context post in the more or less randomly created "BIKE COMMUTE STORY", Wednesday, February 17.

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It's been a strange week. It started at a little before 5 AM Sunday when the novovirus I'd somehow ingested had had sufficient time to incubate. Having done so it no longer lurked instead choosing to make its presence known in no uncertain terms.

I'll skip the details. Turn to the All Seeing Interwebz if you are that curious. You can thank me later.

I took Monday off to recover a bit. Tuesday started more or less alright but I could tell I was in for a short day almost before it started. I don't get sick often. When I do it isn't pretty, but I assume that's true for most people.

That evening the two bicycle tourists I'd kind of expected arrived. "Kind of expected" because I hadn't heard from them in a couple of days and didn't know if Monday's "rain event" had delayed them or worse. Time would reveal that a glitch in the Warmshowers mail system delayed their message until after they had continued on to New Orleans. Oh well.

We left together in the morning, a morning that was the meteorological opposite of the previous morning's dense fog. They agreed to stop on the Paper Clip for a departure shot taken over the Mighty Mississippi, fallen but not completely back in its banks.

Our leisurely pace allowed a little chit chat on the way to the place I would bid them an enjoyable trip and turn back toward work. I hope they enjoyed the kolaches.

The day passed uneventfully. I have to say, recovering from an illness makes me appreciate being well. Funny how that works.

I was heading home on the Levee when the sun had already dropped below the horizon. That horizon was limned with those colors and intensities one occasionally experiences at that hour.

What a pleasure to be there to see the contrasts, the oddly stark boldness of things seen from this side of the setting sun, back-lighting doing its dramatic best. In a few minutes all would be changed again, lit not by an unimaginably large ringing ball of burning hydrogen but by more mundane lights.

As I was completing my second panoramic image a friend rolled up on his road bike to chat. Another great pleasure taken in small things.

My morning ride 2016 02 22 #mybikestory

Spontaneous, out of context post in the more or less randomly created "BIKE COMMUTE STORY", Monday, February 22.

#mybikestory

The weather is changing again. The River remains cold and this new air is warm and wet. Is it any wonder that we have fog again?

This time the fog stayed low and, for the most part, stayed between the levees. The cloud cover wasn't too thick but the sun was only a vague smudge somewhere over my left shoulder as I rode to work.

It's easy to tell where the cold parts of the River come close to the bank. The air temperature drops noticeably and the fog tries to escape the levee but the warmth of the land side of the levee is tough to overcome under the current conditions.

There was no fog away from the river. Overcast skies darkening toward rain then lightening as a wave passes slowly overhead, Slowly, in this case, means a time scale measured in hours.

By the time I leave work the rain has stopped. The sky is gray in places, thick clouds looking like trouble. The horizon showed a hint of blue in one small place and the setting sun is burning it to ashes.

Once the sun makes it fully into that space it shows that peculiarly intense orange-red that implies a golden tone. It's possible to look at the ball and not wince, not for long of course but long enough to see it in its intensity.

The River is still foggy. Perhaps it was not foggy at some point during the day but I imagine it has been hidden under this shroud since I first saw it this morning.

Bits of things in the River - the superstructure of a push boat, the upper deck of an ocean-going ship, the implied line of a barge, plants emerging in the batture with the falling river, mallard pairs eating near shore - add to the scene.

As I near the end of the levee the fog is now gaining on the Levee. Walkers appear out of the fog slowly drifting in their course toward me. The fog chases me up Florida and home.

My morning ride 2016 03 03 #mybikestory

Spontaneous, out of context post in the more or less randomly created "BIKE COMMUTE STORY", Thursday, March 03.

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I didn't set out to be the guy talking about fog all the time. It just kind of happened. 

It seemed like we were experiencing fairly frequent fogs this past couple of years, more frequent than I remember from the years before that going back to 2000. I'm probably suffering from whatever they call the all too human thing of suddenly seeing lots of examples of something we're interested in that we hadn't noticed before we were interested in it, whatever "it" may be. 

So, I thought, "Why not take a photo or two on foggy commutes?" There's no guarantee that I'll document EVERY foggy morning if for no other reason than I don't work on Sundays and only one Saturday a month. Still, it's better than nothing.

Now that I'm paying attention to fog I can see that there is more than one way to be foggy. Sure, there are similarities between events but the spectrum of possible fog qualities, while not infinite, is fairly broad for ground-hugging clouds.

Thursday was a new point on the spectrum for me.

 The sun was well on its way when I arrived at the Florida Street Levee access. On most if not all of the previous foggy days the fog was vertically thick with another deck of clouds above it. The sun was more an implication or a smudge than a big ball of intensely bright burning hydrogen. Not this day.

When I turned on to Florida Street I knew I was going to stop for a photo. The light was fairly intense compared to the fog hiding the River behind the Levee. 

There must be a huge backlog of barge traffic following the most recent high water. I've noticed a great number of barges lining both banks of the River as I ride. There has also been a "raft" of barges moored in the River right off the Florida Street access. I doubt it's the same raft but there has been something there for weeks.

The fog was thickest over the River, especially in the center of the channel and those places near the bank where colder water ran. The further from those places the thinner the fog but there was fog up and across River Road. I very seldom notice the land side of the Levee but looking at and for fog brought downtown into focus, oddly enough.

The Paper Clip was in a very thin fog illuminated by the bright morning light. The KIDD was particularly interesting. Blue sky and fog . . . I hadn't noticed this before.

With all the recent run off the River is REALLY heavy with silt. I wish they would re-open the distributaries they closed over the past nearly-100 years and hope it would at least slow the erosion of the coast. Too much money invested in really stupid locations to do that though. Better to erase the state than hurt someone's profits.

I arrived at work having passed in and out of various degrees of obscurity. That proved to be the metaphor for my day.
 

My ride 2016 02 28 #mybikestory Part the First

Spontaneous, out of context post in the more or less randomly created "BIKE COMMUTE STORY", Sunday, February 28.

#mybikestory

Saturday was a beautiful day but I did very little with it.

Sure, I went to the Farmer’s Market as I usually do. Another bittersweet event as Richard Markert, the owner of “Taste” in the Market, was moving out and moving on to become the Executive Chef at “Olive or Twist” out on Perkins. I’ve really enjoyed having breakfast at “Taste” on Saturday mornings, getting to know Richard and the crew, and feeling the camaraderie of the place.

 

Alas, no longer. As when Chelsea’s closed, I’ve lost another favorite place to eat, chat, and hang out with friends and acquaintances. 

 

Richard and crew were having a little “so long and thanks for all the fish” gathering after the Market closed at noon. I had come early that morning to beat the anticipated crush of well-wishers eating their last brunch at “Taste” so I had time to walk home, get my bicycle, and go back for the last hurrah.

Did I mention there was wine?

Beautiful day or no, by the time we were finished it was nearly two o’clock, I was a little buzzed, and feeling a little gloomy. I had thought to go for a nice ride but, as time passed, I became less inclined to do so.

Ah well . . .

Sunday opened sunny and bright. The wind was up, a little gusty, and out of the south, a sure harbinger of warmer weather, increasing humidity, and storms in a few days (maybe) but for now, sunny, cool, breezy, and just a great day. I got ready to go and saw my phone battery was running low so I plugged it in. Or so I thought. 

As I finished my pre-ride preparation I grabbed my phone to go and saw that I had not actually plugged it in. The battery was even lower than before. Damn! Now I was delayed by my tech! I wrestled with the idea of leaving the phone behind but the phone won.

Forty-five minutes later with a partially charged phone I left. At last! The feeling of being underway is almost always terrific and this was one of those times.

As soon as I turned downriver on top of the Levee the wind hit me in the face. Ah . . . crap . . . headwind and a stiff one at that. 

I found the right gear and headed south into the wind. When I reached the Vet Med trail head I was holding an internal discussion on headwinds, good or bad? Thinking about an entire day riding into a wind like that made me want to turn around and enjoy an excellent tail wind, but I didn’t.

If I was on tour (and one day I hope to be) I would have no choice but to continue.  I worked at finding the best way to NOT fight the wind and suss out how to best deal with it. Another golden opportunity to learn (also known as “suffer”).

My first goal was to see the bald eagle down by Farr Park. I had heard the nesting pair had returned, successfully mated, and brought two more chicks into the world but I had not seen them yet this year.

The nest isn’t obvious until you get fairly close to it on the gravelly unpaved path. There aren’t any really good geographical markers out there and the batture trees look pretty much alike. Well, they did. This past high water event on the River saw a lot more barges being rammed into the tree line to hold them in place. Quite a few trees are now leaning toward the Levee. In one or two places the batture is dry enough to see scars in the sand and grass where barges sat grounded in the batture.

As I was bouncing down the gravel path I noticed a figure standing on the River side of the Levee near where I thought the nest would be. I've seen others looking at the eagles from that spot. The closer I got the more human the figure appeared. It began to walk up to the top of the Levee reaching it as I arrived. Turns out it was a German petrochemical engineer working for BASF.

We chatted a bit . . . okay . . . I did most of the chatting . . . turned to admire the eagles and comment on what seemed to me to be the rather surprisingly large size of the chicks, one of which I had confused for an adult. I am so very happy this mating pair has returned to this nest for at least five years.

When I turned to go upriver to the Farr Park access I was so very happy to now have a tailwind! Even the gravel seemed smoother with that hand on my back.