Little Moments

For the most part, my bike ride home is pretty, well, to be honest, boring. It’s a bike trail that runs parallel to a major road and it’s just not very interesting. It’s great that I don’t have to ride on the major road and I love that there’s a bike trail, but it’s rather boring. But then there is this brief section where I get off the bike trail to get to my actual house. It’s on some surface streets in a neighborhoody neighborhood (and if you don’t know what that means, it’s because you’ve never lived in a downtown where the neighborhoods are really barhoods). Rarely does a car pass. When they do pass, they inch by me slowly, as if to digest the fact that there is a random person pedaling down the street with a billion manically flashing lights attached to her bike. It’s so quiet I can hear the CRICKETS. Crickets, people. Crickets in Minneapolis (spell check just underlined Minneapolis – I was momentarily convinced I had been spelling the name of this city wrong for three years)! Who knew that there were noisy bugs here? I can hear the wheels of my bike on the asphalt and the wind echoing around in my helmet. I pedal slowly to savor every last bit of the stillness. The smell is Downy-fresh, as if someone is constantly running a dryer full of towels, strictly for my benefit. I can act as a voyeur as I ride along, peeking in open windows to see who’s watching Monday night football, who’s chatting on their computer, and who’s holding hands on the porch. And the porches – the porches are all lit up and people sit in them. Some people read on their porches, some people talk to each, and one cute little family is always on their porch playing games. It’s a moment of peace I am thankful that I get when I am biking home at 10:30 on a Monday night.