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No more day-numbered bike posts! Our friend Rey is visiting for my weekend birthday shindig and I didn’t want to leave our chatting. So I pondered, and realized I’m ready to be done counting days! I’ll still post pics of rides, but I realized I’m just a bicyclist now (HUZZAH!), not a person doing a challenge. I got what I wanted: I’m fully adjusted to daily bike rides, my bike feels like a part of me, I’ve got new muscles, and I LOVE riding again.

So like….I’m good. :)

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Day 35 of biking every day! Tired tonight, very quick ride. Forgot about a photo and then a car was being a little pushy so I moved up onto the empty sidewalk for a quick pic, then back into the road. The pub had outdoor trivia and the guy with the mic was calling out team names, and one was I Drink And I Know Shit, a nod to Tyrion. Two more names I could make out but both seemed to have “shit” in the title? Kind of an odd theme for an eatery but hey who am I to judge.

View over handlebars down a sidewalk lined with dry grass and a few trees. There's a green house on the right.
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Day 34 of biking every day! No photos tonight! I went out for a quiet ride, the first of my 50’s! :) I wanted it to just be me and the wind, and so it was. I recorded nothing. I can share that the air by the post office smelled of lavender - like good, real lavender, not a synthetic version. The pub had a band playing outside that I really liked, it reminded me a bit of the music in Amélie. On the corner were two women talking, one holding the leash of a beautiful white dog with one blue eye.

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Been doing LOTS of thinking about turning 50 tomorrow. I had a really hard night a few days ago, related to chronic illness stuff, and sometimes in these moments stuff just spills out. I told Greg that in all this recovery work, digging yourself out a very old mess, I kept hoping to find this inner PHYSIQUE, this rock solid iron-clad something, and instead it’s just “all this gentleness,” miles of it. It permeates everything. By this point I’m crying and Greg laughs and asks why that’s so disappointing and I said, “Because the world needs fighters,” and he looked me right in the eyes and said firmly, “The world needs gentleness too. The world needs goodness.” My 50th birthday present to myself is to declare that this <waves at self> is enough. I’m enough. I don’t mean I won’t keep evolving - I will. But after 49 years of feeling not enough for the world, I’m going to put down that old recording. I’m enough.

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DAY 33 of biking every day - I’m back to being in a flare so it feels even more miraculous that I do these little rides, but EVEN MORE miraculous is that I stopped by Drinks On The Porch happening across the street and we got Hazel to sit in my pannier for an entire 7 seconds (note the Chin Lick Of Contempt she’s giving Aunt Hollie), AND folks down the street put up the most epic Olympics skeleton display. Well done, people! Last cycling day in my forties! 🎉

A small brown dog sits in - well really ON - a pannier on the back of a blue beach cruiser. She is licking her face and looking extremely put out, which she has every right to be.Skeletons in a yard display, one large one and three small ones. The large one is wearing a toga and an Olympic medal and holding a torch. One small one is wearing a pink leotard, the second is wearing a basketball uniform and the third is wearing swim trunks and a swim cap, hanging by a wire strung from the roof, and is diving into a kidde pool. AMAZING.

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“I’m as lively a sailor as the next man but continue my practice of bicycling year around on the principle of modernity and the hope of scandal…”.

Wild Life by Molly Glass

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Day 32 of biking every day! Me neighbor was outside and she yelled, “Day 32!” Awww! ☺️ Then she had to come over because her dog Hazel (who I accidentally named as a puppy when I said she looked like a wee hazelnut) needed to get hugs from Auntie Hollie. I love dogs. And neighbors! Then I delivered a sweet book I don’t need anymore to a Little Free Library, and then found a door - I’m a little obsessed with photographing doors (they feel a bit symbolic these days).

A tiny brown fluffball of a doggo giving hilarious side eye while sticking her tongue out. She has a purple leash and is standing in front of the brown pant legs of her human mom.A copy of A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer & Trans Identities by Mary G and JR Zuckerberg. A set of double brown doors that go into the kitchen of a favorite local restaurant. There are windows above the door and a big vent hood pokes out of one. The wall surrounding them is deep red, and the to the right it shifts to a sky blue for that half of the building.

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Day 31 of biking every day! It isn’t super hot but nonetheless I’m starting to dream of autumn. Said hello to neighbors in their garden, wandered downtown. Passed my favorite pub, in the parking lot were five young women all in the same jeans and navy t-shirts standing around talking, and it reminded me so much of the Han Solo meme I laughed. Loved the message on the window of the pediatric speech therapy clinic. Only two more cycling days left in my forties.

Doorway of an empty, pale green building with two wooden double doors. The warmth of the wood against the cool green makes the building seem friendly (to me). The window of a pediatric speech and language clinic on which is printed the charming phrase: Teaching tiny humans to talk back. The Han Solo Season meme, five or so young white women standing together at a music festival, all of them wearing jeans, long sleeved white shirts and navy down vests, all with long brown hair and tall leather boots.

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Day 30 of biking every day! I almost didn’t go tonight, been so wiped out and then we had birthday game night to celebrate Greg and our friend Ben’s birthdays. Two cakes! Double the fun! And it WAS fun, but oh man. 😂 By the end of our RPG I was almost asleep at the table. And that’s when I realized I hadn’t biked yet! OOPS. I shuffled down to the bike and did a slow circle around downtown. I still love that rush of air that hits me when I pedal away from the house.

View through four tall windows into a local pub, where a guy stands behind the bar. The image is a bit blurry, but the light is warm and golden.
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Day 29 of biking every day! Almost forgot tonight! Ran errands today and tonight was watching a movie with Jupiter (Monolith 👎), and we got done and I suddenly realized: BIKE! Very dark, was only out for a few minutes, but saw: a crowd of young people trying to figure out how to jump start a car, a lone guy sitting outside a pub at a table, happily chowing down, his cargo bike next to him, a cute couple making moony eyes at each other, and two people chatting on a porch.

The bike way symbol painted by the city on a street. The street is dark, cars are parked alongside, the symbol is lit up by my bike light.
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We just got back from the grocery store and I’m trying to open up a new jar of something, and the lid is on TIGHT. Jupiter and I are in the middle of a conversation and I interrupt them…

Me: <hands them jar> Give this to your father

Jupes: <judges me as only a 19-year-old can after I just lost all feminist credentials>

Me:

Jupes: <tries to open jar>

Jupes: <cannot open jar>

Me: <trying not to laugh>

Jupes: <wry look> DAAAAD!!

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Day 28 of biking every day! Due to chronic illness issues, in the last three nights I’ve slept a combined total of 16 hours, so I’m severely wiped. I didn’t go far tonight, but farther than I meant to. Once I get on the bike and feel that breeze, it’s hard to come home even when I recognize I’m too sleep-deprived to be dallying about in traffic.

I don’t even know why I liked this building, I just did. And here’s a bonus fish!

A long white building with long rectangular windows. It looks like any small urban storage building. Empty parking lot in front, blue sky behind and a golden sun trying to set off to the right. A mural of a three-eyed fish like in The Simpsons, colored in blue, green, and pink, with the words KEEP IT CLEAN STREET TO STREAM. My blue bike is off to the right.

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There’s a couple that walks around the neighborhood all the time, I joke they’re Younger Hollie and Greg (she’s a tall, chubby brunette who laughs loudly, he’s a quiet, obviously nerdy brown guy), and they just paused in front of our house. She jerked and startled, and for a moment I thought with horror she’d just been stung by a bee. But then they started laughing, and SKIPPING - through the garden sprinkler that was hitting the sidewalk! 😂 So sweet!

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Someone moved his box so he’s holding my favorite shirt hostage.

An orange cat laying on a blue button-up shirt on a kitchen table.
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Day 27 of biking every day! Gorgeous night, everything lit up from the sunset. It was so neat to see this familiar route look so different, like a watercolor painter with a giant brush and pink palette had just come through and glazed everything they could find. Me and the bike are such good friends now, our movement together feels so natural, like being a joyful kid, when your bike is practically an extension of yourself.

View under the I5 bridge as it goes over the Willamette. The pillars are bathed in pink light.A normally dry, golden meadow of grass and wildflowers lit up pink, the sun a small orange ball floating just above the horizon, about to sink. View over my handlebars through the pedestrian bridge guardrail, looking at the river and the distant I5 bridge. Someone spray painted in green on the sidewalk under the bridge: WE ARE ALL EXPERIENCING THIS LIFE FOR THE FIRST TIME

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Day 26 Biking Every Day! Went too late again, am reminded midsummer has passed so I need to haul my butt out there sooner and sooner (or switch to mornings <shudder>). I started with the neighborhood, then got curious what the river park would look like. Almost stood in the water to catch the last bit of pink light in the distance, then thought better of it. Despite my effortless, delicate grace (🤣), slogging through a river in the dark with no one around could end poorly.

Two park benches along an empty paved trail. It's dark and the streetlight is throwing off beams of light such that it looks like a tiny UFO or visitor from the astral plane is descending on the park. Church doors up some cement stairs, it's night out and the sky and building are dark. The doors and stairs are only visible because of two small porch lights.

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DAY 25 of Biking Every Day! My biceps are definitely developing, when I pull the bike up our couple little stairs, it just follows easier. T’was a short ride, I rode a few postcards for friends to the post office, including this one about the day Greg brought walnuts into our house, and then got to deliver some beans (long story) to a friend at a cafe nearby! I still very much love this biking experiment. :)

Two women in blue t-shirts smiling in front of an outdoor cafe wall that has some pretty stained glass windows. A watercolored postcard of cinnamon buns, that says, GREG'S BUNS ARE FULL OF EVIL, May 7th, 2024, In which Greg brings walnuts into the house.

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I have this ongoing mental list of minor, non-spectacular, somewhat mundane things that I think would change the world. One I added today was “eliminate pop-ups”.

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Okay but you know who I feel sorry for? All the people in this grocery store who do NOT start dancing barely-perceptibly when David Bowie’s Fashion comes on. Is all I’m saying. How can you not move, just a little?

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Day 24 of Daily Biking: HUZZAH! My biceps, on hiatus lo this past decade of chronic illness, have returned! As I hauled the bike back in, they ENGAGED. I’m still squishy (today I tried to tighten my abs in the kitchen so I could tell Greg to poke them and be impressed; then I literally couldn’t find them 😂), but it’s a beginning! I love evening rides but still don’t enjoy night ones. But I liked this neon sign (and our walnut tree is doing great since the ice storm!).

A very old small town car dealership that has a sign saying BUICK Springfield Motors, the last two words lit up in golden neon. Inside the building one can see a red mustang facing the window.Night time, looking up into a tree, only the dark blue sky has some light, the tree shape is just a silhouette, so it's moody black on blue.