8.8.00

Smelling dead grass and blackberries all along the section of Burke-Gilman trail between the University and home. This is the way I remember summers being--baked or incubated. Bugs flurry before the halogen lamp and my eyes best mitts for catching them. It must be hay season. The regularity of riding has changed something about the way I ride. Speed for one is greater, and now when a corner approaches, I lean instead of turning. For long stretches stretched out to the ends of the handlebars not resting but finding the angle that produces the most torque. Even when dressed in street clothes and those too-big sandals whose straps dangle and rattle their way around the crank, I'm breaking speed barriers. I'm the one coming at you pedestrians strolling amid the blackberries going five miles over the posted limit. These recent weeks the music has gotten louder too, to drown the growing throb in my middle. I realize I'm sensing the vibrations of things moving nearby; it's amazing. Tonight waiting at the stoplight on Fremont I saw my friend drive by. She looked pretty the way we do at this age in this season with our long hair pinned up and our shoulders bare and colored with summer, the way we look arms outstretched toward a wheel and box of a vehicle around us, framing some best features. She looked directly at me but didn't recognize me in the dark and with my helmet on. This isn't a place she normally would be (in my mind). I haven't heard from her in days though I've been trying to reach her. I thought, perhaps she wasn't out of town all this time. Perhaps she's taken a lover. Maybe that's why she didn't recognize me--she was trying not to be seen.

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