His top is down and his gray hair blows in the wind. I really like his car.
My hair is blowing too, but I'm going 15 in a 55. He passes me like I'm standing still, giving me a ridiculously wide berth like he doesn't trust my commitment to this straight line.
Maybe he's right to be so cautious – there's a wind coming out of the east that's trying hard as Hades to knock me off my bike. But I'm holding my own, moving forward, making my own breeze that rushes like an ocean in my ears.
I watch his car shrink and I squint after him, narrowing my eyes because the sun is so bright – for once not because sleep weighs heavy on my lids. Maybe I'm spending this extra energy with heady ambition – my tank will be so empty when I get home – but it feels good to move this fast. The mottled pavement beneath my front wheel blurs by in a dizzying pattern. My feet trace rapid circles and my lungs move like bellows to extend breath and life to all my edges.
I'm sure Convertible Guy is enjoying his Sunday drive, out here where 10 minutes replaces rows of houses with rows of corn and sings silence if you slow to a stop. But I smile the grimace of the grind off my face and inwardly brag that I'm enjoying mine even more: earning imagined merit badges for this stream of sweat and consciousness, for baking the winter white off my skin, for cresting these hills –heaving heavily but Here. Here. Here.
