Post-Holiday Blahs

If you only miss one post of mine, this is the one. I think it's time for a new post but I don't really have anything fun to say.

The decorations have been taken off the Christmas tree but they still need to be put away. The tree itself is still sitting there and needs to be taken down. I was planning on all kinds of fun stuff for today, but no bike riding because, first of all, the car that my son drives developed an overheating problem. $150 and a new cooling fan motor later, it seems to be working okay. I thought maybe I could sneak in a ride but no, the weather is just not ride-inspiring- 30s with a strong wind. Yuck. I feel bad about not riding my bike, but then again, I feel bad when I ride it in a strong wind (although a different kind of bad).

When I ride my bike, I like to tune in to the world around me, whether it's the traffic, or the river along the trail, or the residential areas. Part of that is the sounds. I know a lot of people like to listen to music when they ride, but not me.

First of all, there's a safety concern- you're kind of naked out there on a bicycle in traffic, and I feel I need every warning system I can muster. Secondly, I like to listen to all the sounds- the satisfying mechanical clunk as I shift gears, the whirring of the tires, the squeak of the brakes, the chirping of birds, the yells of little kids, the roar of other people's cars. When I ride in the wind, I don't hear any of that. I just hear the whoosh of the wind. It's like being in an isolation chamber. I don't like it.

I rode to work on Friday. It wasn't the standard 15-mile round trip; I had to go to another location of my company which was a 30-mile round trip. Riding there was fine. I had that zen-like feeling of being in tune with the world. Part of the reason it was such a nice ride is that I had the wind at my back. Going home was decidedly less pleasant. It was one of those strong headwinds that feels like it's sucking the breath out of your lungs and dries out your insides. The ride home was an unpleasant ordeal. Yuck.

So maybe that's the theme of today's post- putting up with what you have to put up with because there isn't a choice. We're in that post-holiday period. The holidays are over, now we have to deal with the rest of winter and work, work, work all the way through until the next holiday at the END of friggin MAY. It's like that ride home into the wind- you can't do anything about it; you just have to endure it.