July 27, 2010 Archives – The Shrinking Jeans of April

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July 27, 2010 By april

At work today, I noticed that I kept glancing nervously out of the window.  I soon realized why.

I was worried it was going to rain, and I wasn’t going to get my ride in.  I missed my ride yesterday and was itching to get one in today.  Don’t get me wrong, I can handle a little bit of rain.  I welcome it.  One of my favorite things to do is to hike in the rain, so a bit of rain on my ride would have been awesome, but the sky looked as if it was going to open up and dump thousands of gallons of water all at once.

But the rain gods were good to me.  They decided to just make it really overcast and cool and overall awesome riding weather.  (I may have bounced in my driver’s seat on the way to the greenway.)

Within minutes, I knew this was going to be a good ride.  I began to think about how I was raised with my brother and my two boy cousins.  When you’re the only girl, you don’t really get a choice on what is played.  It was either football, basketball, baseball, riding four-wheelers.  Because of all three of my “brothers”, I’ve always been pretty good at sports.  Not really because I have amazing athletic talent because I don’t.  What I DO have is the ability to learn the sports completely.   I love playing sports, but honestly, no sport has ever felt immediately natural to me.  (See, my previous posts on running.)

But riding my bike just feels NATURAL.  It’s amazing to have that feeling.  I feel like I’m free.  Like nothing else in the world exists but me and my bike. (And the occasional rider in front me whom I really, REALLY want to pass if I can.)  I love hearing the tires on the pavement and the sound of my feet pedaling.  I love wearing my helmet because I look super cute in my helmet. While I’m sure I don’t look AS cute in my biking shorts, I even love those.  I love passing an oncoming rider.  The nod you give each other that you understand why you’re there is awesome, and I love that you understand each other in that way.  Most of all, I love my bike.  And I know that she won’t last for very much longer, because she IS 22 years old and begging me to be retired, but I know she’s giving me all she has. While we are together we are one when we ride.

For some reason, the image of Harry Potter on his broom kept popping into my head on my ride.  I thought, this really must be what Harry feels like when he is on his broom.  Then the phrase, “This is almost like magic” started running in my head, and then I began to think, “Not almost like magic, this IS like magic.”

And magic?  Is amazing.