thrown for a loop

Sometimes it’s lovely to have a  bike path all your own.

Though I’ve an invitation for a ride with someone – and a ride with someone would be very nice – I kind of felt like riding on my own this morning. I wouldn’t say it was perfect weather, but I couldn’t help but think it was pretty damn close. A little light wind, a lot of bright morning sunshine and a good night’s sleep behind me. Great weather for a ride.

The reason I wanted to go solo, however, was that I was fairly certain that the Brisbane River Loop I’d been meaning to go ride, well, it wasn’t really going to be all there. And, sadly, it wasn’t. (Bless the orienteering runner in the top right corner.) Understandably, due to flood damage, general disarray and confusion, there are large portions of the river bike loop which are closed.

Equally, some of the sections which remain open have a slight air of apocalypse that can feel kind of a bit depressing to ride around. In other ways, it also just feels a bit unseemly to be getting about on your bike having a nice old morning ride, while others are trying to calculate the damage.

So, in some ways, although the weather was quite lovely, it also felt oddly sombre and strange to be riding around this morning. I won’t be able to attend, but I’m curious about what the mood will be like tomorrow morning’s “Twitter” Ride. I’m hopeful of being at my office for the first time in a while and reintroducing a sense of balance and order in the face of nature’s mighty interruptions.

Either way, this morning I managed to ride somewhere (although at one point I was reduced to cutting laps of the CBD – figuring, well, empty city streets are kind of fun to ride too), and even popped over the Story Bridge which affords an amazing view of the strangely empty city. I had to stop for a bit on the bridge to calm down after been swooped no less than four times by a magpie, grateful every time for my helmet and the resounding click of beak to plastic and not the dull fleshy pain of beak to skull. Each time, I also wondered if cable ties would really have deterred the malicious beast. I doubt it.

At this point, having seen only three or four other cyclists, I was feeling rather lonely. And somewhat attacked. And a bit sad about the whole floods thing.

Then I remembered that even as strange things are happening, normal things are happening, and life is full of contrasts and complexities and as much as the world seems to make sense, it just does what it does, and we all just have to muddle along as best we can.

And many people are getting on with the business of living life, riding about with friends and – if the bike path is closed, well, the roads are still open and you can always break for lattes earlier rather than later. (For another time, there aren’t very many women who tend to ride in these sorts of groups, are there?)

Oh! And another aside – I saw a church with OPENING STAIN GLASS WINDOWS. How practical. How wonderful. How Brisbane.

And I was most pleased to see some nice people on the road, two Filipino fellows (my people) and they were politely (my people) inspecting a “road closed” sign when I popped out from behind it. Which was kind of the crazy thing, some roads were closed from behind but open at the other end, and often I only worked out a section was closed with the riders who had passed me (it was that kind of a speedster morning) were quickly returning shaking their heads and saying, “that section’s closed”. For my mind, the thing that tops off the sensible manners (politely considering if a section was in fact closed before entering), and the very swish neat kit (my people) is the little scarf tied around the first rider’s neck. That’s very sweet that scarf.

I often like to ride with one of my own. Tee hee.

Here’s to riding alone. As slow as it might be some mornings, sometimes you get a lot of good thinking done on the road. Even when you can’t really go where you want to go.