Or is this just Fantasy

A pair of Apaches circle overhead in formation, passing so close I can hear the thwokthwokthwok of their four blades cutting through the clouds.

A woman is pushing a baby stroller awkwardly through the door of the post office, a stack of packages balanced on top of it. She makes it through before I get close enough to grab the door for her, and she stops to hold it open for me. I smile and thank her.

The dog strains at its leash, tethered to the backseat of a badly-parked car, yelling through the open window with a look of absolute despair and worry. "Sit," I instruct it as I approach, and it does, snapping its mouth shut to face me. "Good dog. What a good dog." I offer it a gloved hand for inspection.

A stream of elderly people with senior center ID badges and a variety of mobility aids flow along the sidewalk. One of them is wishing everyone a wonderful day. In the middle of them is a young woman wearing a baby sling, and a blanket draped over the sling. The sling looked empty.

A block away, a man who does not acknowledge the existence of other people in his vicinity is pedaling his wheelchair backwards, up the middle of the busy business district street. Many people encourage him to come to the sidewalk; he only drifts closer to the center of the road. He doesn't look at me as I pass him.

The block next to my house is surrounded with orange cones, and at every corner of the intersection sits a truck with a crane dangling a claw full of rotting vegetation. All the storm drains are uncovered.

And when I wave to the landscapers cleaning up my neighbor's yard for the spring, one of them shows me a palm in response and hollers, "Rasta!"

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02 May 2014 14:02

Lane Position

Ten vehicles passed me this morning, including one city bus and a work van with a 'Watch for Motorcycles' sticker. One buzzed me fairly close, but on a whole, the traffic I've encountered as of late has maintained a sane berth around me.

I've mostly curbed the habit of flipping off cars that are dicks to me on the road.

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29 April 2014 12:02

Watching

I'm still beating my path into the side of the hill, and with a daily crushing of the blades of grass, slowly, that path becomes evident. The tops and bottoms of the hill have been shorn, but the side is too steep for the common mowing unit; I push my way through the trimmings until my wheel bites into the tread it knows, and dare myself to ride down as slowly as possible. I hug the brakes and lean to keep from tipping forward, and the mothers dropping off their children for daycare flinch in shock when I finally come crashing over the curb in a scattering of toddlers and splashed mud.

An ambulance parks at the end of the road where my running trail exits the park system; I wonder who got hurt, until I notice that the drivers are just idling the truck next to an ashtray so they can smoke. I can't decide what's more ironic: the smoking ambulance driver, or the smoking fire truck driver.

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28 April 2014 17:43

Equinox Waxing

The longer the days grow, the harder it is to talk about doing things when instead I am just doing things.

I am waging a constant battle between healing my fingerskin and shredding it again, and slowly, with each pass of the rope over my palms, more blood and sweat builds into the fibers and it becomes mine. I am playing an endless game of chicken to see if I can pedal harder than my nerves can handle, because I know my nerves will fail before my brakes. Every time my shoes lose their traction in the mud, I experience an infinite span of time in the moment it takes for my ankles to respond and recover my balance. Each sunset that rolls away from me, I breathe in the sky and know I am alive.

The mornings when I don't wake up sore from head to toe, I know I slacked off the day before. I can't stand to sleep or wait or rest because there never seems to be enough time in the day to pummel my way through everything I want to do. I don't feel like there's anything I need to do, and that's a luxury I know I should never take for granted.

I can't wait for the next day, but I'm never in a rush to get there.

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06 April 2014 18:25

Mud Month

Every day, I pass over the same lines, tracing paths that carve slightly deeper into the hillside. A furrow grows where the grass won't, sketched in when the ground was still frozen, and etched once the dirt turned to mud. Just add water. If I deviate slightly, the wheels wobble and threaten to throw me over the bars, and I don't often dare to breathe on my brakes.

I run through mud that splashes up my calves, knowing that my feet will find purchase somewhere beneath the surface. Rarely are my socks dry.

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02 April 2014 21:59