Waiting for the journey to continue

Thanks, everyone, for your kind words on my admittedly minor bout with illness. I stayed home again today, but will try to get to the office tomorrow. I could probably stay home another day, but I worry the world is passing me by while I languish at home. The weather's supposed to be nice, so I'll try a carefully-paced cycle to the office. Hence this entry...

By this date, I've usually been riding my bike regularly for about a month. I've shaken off the early-season cobwebs and am into a pretty good riding groove - to work every day, and the occasional extended ride after dinner or on weekends.

Thanks to weather and the fact that I've been away more often than I've been home, I'm well behind my usual cycling pace. And it's starting to bug me. I use my time on the bike to toss ideas around and think through things that simply can't be mulled when I'm being interrupted every few minutes. And I'm not getting as much of that quiet time as I'd like.

I once read somewhere that when you're concentrating on something, it takes upwards of 15 minutes to get back to that state after the phone rings or someone drops in. Trying to write during the day is often a futile process because I'm constantly flipping from one thing to another. Answering phones, responding to taps on the shoulder, even watching the little popups in the corner of my screen that announce new e-mail. I'm a good multitasker, but I admit I need quiet time to come up with ideas and figure out priorities.

The bike takes me away from it all. Sure, I have to avoid being flattened by SUVs and tractor-trailers, but - oddly - that doesn't seem to be as obtrusive as a ringing phone. I often point my bike just outside the city limits and cruise the concession roads that line the never-ending farms and pastures that define our region. The city literally and figuratively disappears from view. Everything gets quieter, clearer, somehow easier to deal with.

I've been home from work for two days thanks to this nagging chest cold. I still feel miserable, but I think I need to take the beater bike (my big purple mountain bike, not the one in the picture above) to the office tomorrow morning, if only to convince myself that I am still somehow plugged into my world.

Then, at the end of the day, I'll head to the country and try to restore the silence, if only for a few minutes.

About this picture: My hybridized Specialized Stumpjumper (aka the urban commando wondercycle) waits patiently by the side of Hyde Park Road, just northwest of the city. There's nothing overtly stunning about this shot, but it's always been one of my favorites. I was busy taking pictures of a setting sun and the landscape it so artfully painted, and the bike allowed me the freedom to explore the area with relative ease (just try doing the same thing in a car. I have, and it's not so much fun.) The image takes me back to a moment that I hope more of you get to experience, and soon.

BTW, yes, it is pink. A lovely color indeed.

Your turn: Are you riding? Why?