You could be in Ft. Myers, Florida, half-drowned and digging out of your hurricane-ruined home, but instead, you’re standing atop a deserted parking garage, seven stories up, drinking beer and marveling at the crescent moon hanging over a baseball stadium where fireworks have just been set off to celebrate a home run by the home team on the verge of their first playoff appearance in more than two decades.
Or, you could be in Ukraine, without water or power amidst the rubble, defending your homeland from military aggression by one of the world’s nuclear powers, but instead, you’re hanging out at a secret gazebo in an arboretum, surrounded by native and exotic trees and shrubbery, (also drinking beer) and contemplating life, death, and everything in between including rock stars with a small but enthusiastic group of cyclists, some of whom have made the classic blunder of carrying their bikes down the steps, but that’s about the worst of it, to tell the truth.
Or, you could be in Wittenoom, Australia, a town so polluted by asbestos that it became a carcinogenic time bomb as mining waste products known as tailings were brought there, paved into roads and scattered in playgrounds to suppress dust, but instead, you’re bombing down a hill free of cars, thrilling to the speed of descent and laughing maniacally just for fun.
So many places in the world touched by so much tragedy and loss, and yet here you are, on a Thursday night in the upper left hand corner of the American map having nothing to really complain about, but rather, nearly everything to celebrate: cycling, fellowship, gentle intoxication, the unseasonably warm and dry weather, the simple, unparalleled joy of pedaling through the woods to someplace wonderful, casual banter and the occasional joke at someone else’s expense, and all of this for free (more or less).
It's enough to make a person cry. Or laugh maniacally.
Or with luck, both.
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