Cycling photo challenge #10 - Bike People keep me grounded

It is not too great an exaggeration to say that bicycling has saved my life.

It's not just the physical benefits, though that has certainly helped. Nor is it the mental benefits, though that, too, has been a boon not to be ignored.

The thing that has been key to my survival is the way bicycling has kept me connected, the way it has provided a grounding that is otherwise missing in my life.

 Baton Rouge bike people, October 2011

I've been on my own, more or less, since I was 13. That has had its ups and downs as you can probably imagine. Between then and now I've had a variety of relationships with a varying number of people. Some of those relationships still live, most do not. This past 16 years I've been living by myself but I haven't been alone.

It's bicycles and the people who ride them who have been my companions.

There are lots of hospitality exchange (HOSPEX) websites, the most famous of which is probably Couchsurfing. I learned about a community of people who tour on bicycles and people who host them. The organization is Warmshowers (it's not what it sounds like but I understand why you might think it's something else), a mutual hospitality exchange thing that is limited to bicycle tourists.

Kevan and I, October 2011

Alex, Bria, and Ben, December 2011

It is astonishing to me the array of people who bicycle tour. Age is not necessarily a limiting factor though things tend to skew younger than older, of course. Granted, most of my guests have been in their 20s but a number have been in their 60s with a few in their 70s. Encouraging, that.

Ross, January 2012

Being around younger people helps keep me open, flexible, learning. My worldview can be challenged and, on occasion, I manage to get through my own limitations to see what the view on offer may be.

Valeska, Phillip, and the Pancakes

The best part may well be being around energetic people who take risks and reap great rewards thereby. It encourages me to be more like them and to remain aware of my inertia. Better to move forward than fall back.

Another inspiration.

Two days of dental fun draw to a close. Film at 11!

Two days of dental fun draw to a close. Film at 11!

Just kidding. You'll have to read or skip this. :-)

Yesterday's cleaning became today's date to extract a failed molar implant. Seems my night grinding was sufficiently robust to move the implant. Implants don't like to be moved, can't adapt to moving, and just give up leading to infection of the socket and other unpleasantness. Yee-haw.

Two trips down Highland Road before 8 AM two days in a row is not how I prefer to start my day. It does reveal that being in a motor vehicle heading toward campus on that road is ill-advised, that is, sucks to be you if you try to get to or through campus at that hour from that direction.

The extraction, crown removal, various drillings and shapings went relatively well. Temp bridge in place we reached the point to fine tune the fit. In the process I managed to get my benumbed tongue in the wrong place during the "close and grind" portion of the program. The results must have been impressive as the doctor felt compelled to tell me, "You bit your tongue and I'm going to apply direct pressure to the wound." Please do imagine what that entails.

It was a beautiful day when I emerged two hours later, cotton wad in place to continue sopping up the blood from my tongue. Fortunately, my blood clots well.

Gauging the traffic on Highland, I opted to head to Lee Drive, turn right onto Brightside, and continue to River Bend and Farr Park. It was a beautiful day! So rare for us - cool and sunny with relatively low humidity. Glorious!

The DOTD has begun moving utilities at the intersection of Nicholson and Brightside for the upcoming "improvements" to the intersection. Doing this completely blocks the bike trail requiring riding on the shoulder of Nicholson, should one be so inclined.

Did I mention it was a stupendously beautiful day?

As I was at Farr Park I decided to go see if the eagles were at home. Turning onto the levee top I could see an SUV parked at the nest site. Arriving at the SUV it was clear that it was NOT an authorized vehicle. Two older birders with cameras, etc, had either backed down the levee from the Farr Park access point or driven up for a few miles from the downriver access. I was torn in my feelings about this and only made one snide remark.

Fortunately, as I was pulling up to the SUV I saw one of the adult eagles returning to a tree just upriver of the nest. As the eagle approached its chosen branch it made a sound I had not heard before, a kind of chittering call not at all like the one almost always serving as background for television commercials extolling the manly virtues of a truck or a deodorant or some other suitably manly product for suitably manly people. I've read somewhere that the supposed eagle call used in commercials is actually a much smaller bird, a hawk perhaps?

The second eagle was perched on a branch above and river-side of the nest. A moment later the lone nestling poked its head above the edge of the nest. It will only be a few weeks before it fledges, I imagine, and all three will disappear for other climes.

Riding home a few of the taller trees in the batture, still bare, drew my attention. Somehow the blue sky behind their bare branches seemed more intensely blue. It was still morning, the sun had not passed the meridian, and the trees were illuminated fully from what constituted "the front" as I rode along the levee top. I don't know if it was the lighting, the contrast between the color of the limbs and the sky behind, or what, but I was struck by the beauty of the day, again, and grateful for it.

It doesn't matter what I'm doing or what might have befallen me, the beauty of the world abides. Noticing it, appreciating it, allowing it to touch the ancient within, the wet-wiring, that's the trick.

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.