Thursday, November 14, 2019

Home to the birds








The biking season should perhaps have officially ended last week. But I went out and biked to the University anyway. The wind cut through my wool mittens like a circular saw going through a piece of cheese.

"Hey," I said to the cold. "You do know that you don't need a circular saw to cut cheese, you can even just break off a piece of cheese?"

"Yes," Replied the cold "That's what we're planning on doing when your fingers sufficiently... stiffen."

So when it was 14 degrees out this morning I understood that I like my fingers. I'm using them right now to tell you all about how much I like them! I put away all biking things and prepared my feet for walking.

The down side of walking is it takes longer.

The upside of walking is it takes longer. 

While walking one sees everything. Cardinals, bald eagles, blue jays, geese, turkeys. Well, maybe one doesn't see everything, but one definitely sees birds. Riding a bike it is not very safe to be gazing over one's head, watching an eagle circle in the clear and bitter morning light. Walking it's almost safe to look all one might want. I mean, it's probably safe enough.

Furthermore, biking, this, that happened today, has never happened before:

Coming to the point where I leave the river and head into the University, I was writing my usual dark blog posts in my head. For no reason that I understand I looked up and saw three huge turkeys perched high in a tree. They were enormous, four foot tall, 50 pound turkeys. The biggest one was at the very top of the tree, like an absurd Christmas ornament.

Of course, I've never seen that not on a bike either.









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