Voices

A perfectly miserable day. Bluesky. Nary a breeze. A prescient 38 degrees.

I say prescient because can there be any doubt that Spring is nigh!

Spirit-filled, I lifted the Santa Cruz off the J-hooks, re-aired the tires, oiled the chain and set out on this year’s debut ride. In an ordinary year I would have been out riding several times by now, but this year I didn’t bother to put studded tires on the bike, in part because I’ve been too damn preoccupied. Besides, today riding on slightly under-inflated knobbies was all that was required, most everywhere the trail surface was  tacky and sticky. I pedaled a brisk 8-10 miles through Anchorage’s southern neighborhoods. The familiarity felt good. Like a walk in the mountains with the dogs a bike ride centers me. Introspection comes easy and it’s not unusual that I find myself talking to myself. The beauty of this symmetry is you always win an argument should one arise, the tragedy being you always lose.

As I pedaled about I thought about our science and where to take it next. Sometimes an idea will come to me and I feel an urgency to write it down lest I forget, but then I think, if it’s an idea of merit I won’t forget it. I should know better by now. When I was in the lab conducting experiments I never got into the useful habit of quickly committing important results or findings to my lab notes, I would leave that for the end of the day, but inevitably I would occasionally forget things. Why do we sometimes ignore our own good advice? ‘Tis a mystery.