Theme

I miss the old days when nostalgia was so much sweeter, don’t you?

In other words, we used to be so cool, didn’t we?

Remember how a Thursday night ride used to take you to the farthest reaches of county, through a hidden riparian zone or up some spookily forgotten bluff or over a decaying bridge to a place you’d never even heard of, much less ridden your bike to near midnight and well into the wee hours of the morning when the birds began chirping at the rising dawn?

Nowadays, a little wiggle in and over a familiar wooded trail and up and around to what just might be the watering hole that, in terms of elapsed time, you’ve been going to for longer than any other one in the whole darn town, is sufficient for a first act, and then, the usual back way to what’s become, more or less, the default spot in our fair city for tidy little bonfires, makes for a perfectly satisfactory Act Two in the overall production that, while it may not win an Academy Award this weekend for Best Thursday Night Ride ever, certainly gives you your money’s worth in thrills and chills, not to mention LOLs and chuckles, plus a few poignant reminiscences, as well.

And that’s fine, really, because another benefit of having done a thing for so long is that any comparisons one might be compelled to make with the past are shown to be no more relevant to present satisfaction than are tomorrow’s aspirations to yesterday’s joys; it’s all water under the bridge or sand through the hourglass or whatever other metaphor you want to use; what matters, really, or all that there is, as a matter of fact, is the moment you’re in and if you’ve gotten there by bike, and it includes fellowship and libation, then who cares if it isn’t what it was because it is what it is and that’s plenty.