Ride

After that dickbag in the landscaping company truck buzzes me while I pedal above the wet white line, I turn off Rt 6 and head toward the canyon. The path is quiet, but the clouds beyond the canyons, above the wide, white mountains, are filled with thunder and lightning and rain, and so I do not stop to put in my new wireless earphones even though I had wanted to listen to music on this ride. Instead I pant and swear into the 20 mph headwind, my quads straining even to move my bike downhill. At the crest of each hill I think surely I've nearly reached my destination at the construction site on the far side of the new bridge, and each time I am dismayed to realize that I'm still miles away.

Until I'm not, and I coast to a stop at the white-orange fencing, drink some water from the glass kombucha bottle that's been enjoying the ride of its life on my bike's downtube, and slip the headphones into my ears. I don't have signal and for some reason (it feels so weird to write) Spotify won't even let me play the albums I've previously downloaded, so instead of listening to The Gilded Palace of Sin I find myself in a muted, introspective world of my own, akin to slipping into the underwater wonder of a lake or a bathtub or a swimming pool.

For once there's no headwind on the return trip--the storm is at my back now, sweeping in from the east--and I bike the 10 miles home in less than 25 minutes, swerving around ground squirrels as they sit and stare and scamper and loiter and mingle and haul ass across the path. As I pull up in the alleyway behind my apartment lightning zigzags across the navy blue sky and thunder claps so hard that the thin walls of my apartment, once a two-car garage and still not at all fit for human habitation, shake.

After I greet Hanna and Wilson and stretch on the carpet I call the landscaping company, where the young woman receptionist apologizes profusely for the driver's aggressive behavior. Oh it's not your fault at all, I tell her, and she laughs with relief. I just want people to stay safe out there, ya know?