Zooom

The weathermen tell us 2006 was the warmest on record. I worry for our planet but can't help feeling personally gratified. It's way too warm outside for January in Michigan, and I love it.

One by-product of these balmy conditions -- it's 50 degrees F outside, 50! -- is the daily ride I've been able to reinstate on my bike. Your cars, your buses, even your motorcycles -- you can keep 'em! I'm back to working on one of the things I love best -- shaving seconds off my ride to the medical center in the morning.

Seriously, I'm back to kid status again. Cutting through yards, back lots, and parking lots. Taking street signs and street lights as suggestions. Zipping past peds on the sidewalks like they were standing still. Especially the ones waiting at the three bus stops in between. I used to be one of you. Suckers.

It's been evident to me for about the last ten days that I've picked up a mean streak. No fewer than three people who have known me 5+ years have pointed it out. Raison d'insatisfaction? Too much coffee. Not enough sleep. Deadlines looming. Transients and drifters who pass as friends. Defense mechanisms. War. Too few Wesley Autreys in the world.

But at the heart of the ride is still something pure to me. It calls me back to afternoons, second-grade or third-, when I used to ride my bike out to the edges of the subdivision. To the undeveloped lots that had baseball diamonds scratched into the dry Texas dirt, where the husk of an old washing machine became a space pod with a lookout portal. Tall spear grass weeds with pointed seeds you could pluck out and chuck at your friends. And the one afternoon I rode out on Trinity Mills Road -- away from my house a distance of maybe four miles, gone three hours, along the gravelly shoulder -- and my mother called the police. Sorry about that, mom. Some things I'll always have to find out for myself.

As I suited up this morning -- put the jacket on, the hood, the helmet, the gloves -- the strangest thing popped in my head: "On the Road Again" by Willie Nelson. My dad used to play it in the car when the four of us -- my dad, my mom, my brother, and I -- headed out for two-week summer vacation. As the car split the Appalachians and I propped my feet on the cooler full of snacks, the song went: "Going places that I've never been / Seeing things that I may never see again / And I can't wait to get on the road again."

I see roads ahead both silky smooth and gravel-lined. I see myself traversing them alone.