Thinking about Robert Frost

So I'm riding into work the other day...it's a warm day, the sun is shining and the traffic is light.  Kimmie and I lean into a turn and before you know it I'm laughing like a damn fool into my helmet.  We come out of the turn and I lean into another with a big smile on my face.

I feel light, I feel joyful.

Fast forward eight hours and a very good workday later and I'm driving home.  Again the traffic was light and the night cool.  A cloudless sky and a big Mourning Moon in the sky.   I stretched out and relaxed in the moonlight.  I have not enjoyed riding this much in a while.

I have Thanksgiving off.  I will be spending time with family and friends but then will have a large chunk of the afternoon off.  I have a lot to be grateful for this year, and generally speaking the last two years have been..."rough" is a good word.

As it so happened, I didn't really get a chance to go anywhere on the bike till Sunday.  It was great weather to ride in the Tampa Bay area, and yes, I understand how my Northern friends hate me at this moment.  I headed out with no destination.  No particular reason or place to go, I let Kimmie choose.

She started off in Zephyrhills, went around town then through it.  We stopped briefly in a old trailer park that is eventually going to become an Aldi's.  There is yellow tape around the old majestic oak trees and here and there some native plants are taking over, ripping up the concrete roads through root systems and time.  Up and over Fort King Road...then down into Dade City, past one of the last remaining drive in theatres.

I'm cutting down back roads that I'm not familiar with now.  Thinking about Gary B and how I really wish I had someone close to ride with on days like this.  I pass some odds and ends, pulling off to take some pictures with my phone.

I've been a city boy all my life but there is something about get out into the country, hearing the low soulful bellow of cows, or the hyperactive chatter of chickens that I love.  Wandering back country roads with no destination, no plan suits me.  I find myself looking for curves and take another road I don't know.  It does not deadend but it turns into dirt, and that is not what I have in mind today, so I turn around...stopping at an old cemetery that had to be over 100 years old.  I don't enter out of respect in case it's a family's private land, I  can see that the grass has been cut recently but the gates themselves are rusted open and I can see a orb spiders delicate web spun between the gates.

Kimmie and I agree to point our wheels and head towards home.  It's about 2:30 in the afternoon and I'm hungry for peanut butter and jelly.  For some odd reason I want a comfort food today.  Kimmie purrs a bit as I open her up as we race an old freight train running parallel to the road.  I think of Robert Frost and his famous poem.   The last stanza resonates with me right now.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.