Spring...

Thanks to Scootin Old Skool

Spring, the story goes, is when a young man's fancy turns to love.  It is a quote as old as time itself...and for someone who is a stone cold geek...very true.  I mean...seriously do you know how many old Pagan Fertility symbols appear this time of year?  But I regress.

It is also a time of hope, rebirth, and resurrection.  Kimmie is repaired and, at the risk of sounding quite mad, she has been calling me from her spot on the driveway.  Whispering in my ear like the petulant woman she is.  "Not yet, I'm still not healed.  The doctors still need to release me." I mumble to her.  "Soon.  Very soon."

I have to admit, I've debated riding again.  I've thought long and hard and questioned everything.  I'm still not 100 percent positive that I wish to ride again.  Then I think about the joy it's brought me.  Things like the Equinox to Equinox rally where I challenged myself to finish well (and I did).  To the idea of just wandering off the map. I recently read the story of Agloe, NY on the web and now I'm curious. It seems that this town did not exist in real life but only on the paper maps of old as a way to catch counterfeiters.  Then growing up like a weed on the dusty back roads, a general store for the non existent town was built.  Then it disappeared again.  Lost in the mists of time.    I read the story and wondered..."Do the remains of that old General Store still exsist?  Empty and full of ghosts of townspeople that never really were?"  

"What stories where there in Florida?"  

There is much that I want to see here.  I've been to the mermaids in Weeki Wachee and to the last refuge of Puns at Solomon's castle.  I've watched the Manatee's.  Where are the interesting stories?  The odd, the unusual?  The Weird?  The old Florida?

Where do the local's eat?  Where is that little winery tucked away in the distance.  That cold wonderful milkshake?  That is way I enjoy riding.  That is what I'm interested in...what I want to see!  Find me that hidden gem, that diamond in the rough!

Sure, jumping in the car and going there is all well and good...but not as visceral.  I get it now, and I dare not even try to explain it.

Once the doctors release me, I shall climb upon Kimmy once again.  I will point her wheel in a direction and we will go.  I've been wanting to go on a "long ride" for some time.  Which I'm defining as any 1 day ride of at least 200 miles.

I'm ready....I'm willing.  I just fear that I may not be capable of such a feat.  Not yet, anyway.  Still, it's a challenge, and I don't back down easily from challenges.  I may have taken up riding for a variety of reasons, and maybe the lovely Susan is right and it was a mid-life crisis.   But the truth is this.  I don't think I could stop now...and if I did.  I would miss it.

Spring is a time of renewal after all.