But here's what I did notice: the way you can tell something about a neighborhood from its smells. Even at 9:30 pm, I went by a house of fried chicken. Three times. And down a dark neighborhood street where I told myself all the places I could stop or scream someone's name if I got jumped, the smell of cigarette smoke. As if the ghost of a person had just exhaled. No sign of a human, but a lingering scent of vice. I felt watched in the dark tooling by on my Electra Cruiser with a pink silk flower on one handlebar and a squeaky wicker basket on the front.
Ride by a car full of people chatting by a well lit park during a ballgame once, they look with some interest but continue their car/sidewalk conversation. Go around the park and ride by again, they stop talking for a second. The third time, you and they look each other in the eye. It's the polite thing to do. They notice that you are a middle-aged pudgy joy-rider. You notice that they parked their white SUV at an odd angle as if to say, "I own this here part of the street and I'll make it mine."
I read someone's comment on a blog or an article or maybe Facebook recently amounting to the declaration that biking is shitty exercise. That was deflating. I hope it's not true. I felt my heart rate rise tonight in the coolness of an autumn summer breeze. I was even sweating a little when I got home, talking through the window to my barking dogs. "It's me guys. It's me."
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