Route: Ruston, LA to Shreveport, LA (Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament - Fuller Center Volunteer Center)
Distance: 71.44 miles
Riding Time: 4 hrs: 56 mins
Average Speed: 14.4 mph
Max: 33.9 mph
Weather: Sunny. Humid. 92ish plus degrees. A little crosswind/headwind later in the afternoon. Pretty nice overall... once you get into a building with some AC... and then it's reeeely cold - Brrrrrwowzahs!
I'm sitting out on the back porch of the volunteer center here in Shreveport, Louisiana listening to the cicadas saw out their evening rattle-tunes. The sun is setting beyond the hills of this porch and slowly, slowly the world is turning from day to humid, southern evening to dusk. It's been a long week, but we have arrived somewhere... again. It is good. Tonight we get real-for-sure bunk beds to sleep in complete with fresh sheets and fluffy blankets. And we get to sleep in those same bunk beds for three whole nights in a row! The greatness of this fact is really indescribable. Also, it is great that I probably won't need to sit on my favorite bike saddle for another two whole days before we ride again. I do love my bike so, but "Charley" and I do a little better when we have some alone time now and then. True story.
It has been quite a week... heck, it has been quite the last 14 days. I can hardly believe that two weeks ago today we started riding together as a group of Fuller Center Bike Adventurers and, by now, we have ridden almost 900 miles from Savannah to Shreveport. Just to keep things in perspective, the total mileage of all of my training rides from January to the start of the ride on June 8 came to a grand, amazing total of 1,383 miles. Soo... (if all goes as planned) I will have surpassed that amount by sometime around... oh... July 1. That is a whole 5 months of riding squished into 3 fabulous weeks. Woah. Thunder thighs here we come! (and dearest, loveliest knees, please hang in there. I believe in you!)
Alright, well I think I am past-due for writing another poem, so here are the rough scratchings from my soul this evening. I hope you all had a lovely Saturday and that your Sunday affords you rest. Peace to you!
Biking to Shreveport
The sun is dipping
down beyond
the hills of this
porch and slowly
the world is
turning from day to dusk
to slow southern
evening: thick and
velvety-dark as sweet,
sweet tea.
The moisture-laden
air is laced through
with rattle-tunes
of 17-year cicadas
and the brush of
wind. To travel
is to make your
home anywhere, any
corner in this
softened world.
Tonight it is a top
bunk that rocks
when I climb the
ladder and cradles me
afterwards like the
softest nest or the way
cypress trunks
nestle into the waters of
the bayou. These days
the breath
catches a little in
my throat and pauses
at the gracious
c-curve of a great
white heron and the
way she rises
from the water like
praise ahead of
the moving green
and blue.
I wonder at the way
she lives forward –
looking only at the
cattle grazing or
the reflection of
sun on water or perhaps
at the sight of her
own shadow.
I marvel at patience and the trust
it demands – waiting, moving one
foot forward with all the resolve of
your very best day. And then moving
the other. This is
the only way anyone
gets anywhere worth going, really:
Start something. Continue to move
until someday you glance back and
notice the miles stretching behind you
like ribbons in every color imaginable.
So bright you forget every cramp in
each muscle of your thigh. See the night
sky is navy now, stretching down to cerulean
on one horizon and chocolate on the other.
Nothing, nothing is more precious than
this sky and these feet and the road ahead.
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| One of the many reasons why bikes rock: Bridge out? No problem. |
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| One of the most beautiful things today: homemade cookies in a package from my Mama and Papa. Happiness. |
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| Also this is an origami cicada from Petey. So great. (Fuller Center houses in the background just across the street from our little house) |
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