I've always had a great deal of energy. In the old days, I ran, played football, soft ball, hiked. Then the knees wore out, so I discovered biking, a low-impact activity. What a joy. I'm no Greg LeMond, mind you. I putter along on the bike trail on my rusting TREK at about 15 mph, which puts me in the grannie class. The serious cyclists, clad in skin-tight zoom-wear, fly past me on their derailleurs at 30 mph. But I am not out to prove I'm still 20 or to set a land-speed record on the Mount Vernon Trail. I like to sightsee and people watch ad take in the river and the trees, and natures creatures.
The birds were singing joyously today, their poetry appreciated by man as well as their feathered friends. I wonder if the songs today are the same as a millennium ago? Do bird song styles change from generation to generation? Do birds ever add new songs to their repertoire?
I spotted four turtles sunning themselves on a log in the Potomac. Four Mile Run creek, recently stocked with trout, was lined with fishermen. Those trout are doomed whether or not they are caught. Four Mile Run near its confluence with teh Potomac, is aa muddy, urban-runoff soup that becomes warm as tea in the summer--no habitat for the cold-water-loving trout.
Also saw the laziest businessmen in America. Two enormously fat African Amercian fellows with an industrial-sized barbecue roasting sweet-smelling ribs had pulled off the road by the bike trail up in Shirlington and were sprawled beside the contraption in lawn chairs. The occasional customer had to rouse them from their napping, no mean task. The effort of raising their huge bodies from the chairs exhausted them. After serving their customers, they lay back down again, conten as hippos to be in repose. I wish I could be that relaxed, that casual, that carefree--but not so enormous.
Saw lots of Mexican day laborers in the Shirlington section hiking with back packs to a central gathering place two miles up the trail. They walk to jobs that demand heavy physical labor and then walk back home again. They don't complain because they have come from a place where there is no possibility of work at all. They make me realize how fortunate I was to be born in the USA.
Saw dads and moms on bikes with kids on carriers or little hitches working their way up the 3% incline of the WO&D trail, an old railroad track bed that parallels Four Mile Run. How do they gather the strength to do this on a Saturday morning after a week of labor?
Saw young boys on baseball teams and it recalled my days as a coach when my own sons played the great game.
I love to bike-- and see the world.
