Went out for a ride this morning, a beautiful morning; until the "stinging insect!" I have never been shot, hope to never be shot, but it has to feel something like this: riding along in the cool air at about 17mph, with my jersey open because I'd been out long enough to warm up, when a stinging insect (I don't know what kind, I lacked the time for formal introductions) hits me full force about dead-center to my chest. I started beating on my chest, trying to get rid of this thing (I know the cars coming at me probably thought I was some overweight, middle-aged biker doing some kind of macho Tarzan thing, but that wasn't it!), but to no avail, the damage was done. All I could do now was get this thing out of my shirt. It has happened before, I had a bee of some variety fly headlong into the vents of my helmet and start slapping me. Not a pleasant experience. What can you do, though? I kept riding and had one of the best rides I'd had in a while.
I love to ride in the morning this time of year. It gets too hot to ride if you wait, so I get started early. All the cows are in a good mood and speak to you as you roll by. When the sun gets high enough to warm the dew on a field, a mist kind of hangs there just being beautiful. On the ponds there is that same mist, sitting on the suface of the water like ghosty ice-skaters suspended in time. This world has plenty of negatives: Fatty's wife died yesterday, my friend in Tennessee lost his home to fire, and our government wants to control everything. But if I can get out and see the world as I saw it this morning, it is still a wonderful place.
To all those folks in your cars this morning who saw me as a nuisance slowing you down by a second or two, you have no idea what you are missing out on. Like the mists on the field and pond, which is probably burned away by now, so is a man's life: fleeting. "Let your years be full of life, rather than your life just full of years."
Be blessed, be safe.
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