The garage door whirs up, revealing the great outdoors like a curtain rising over a grand stage. Cricketsong fills the cool evening air. I ease out of the dim garage, guiding the bicycle by hand, and slip into the narrow driveway between the pines and the dying Bradford pear.
It's becoming a tradition, this evening escape to the outside world. I'm becoming familiar with the lay of the land. There's a rocky spot at the edge of the driveway, a transition from pavement to concrete and back again at the east end of the street. At the bottom of the neighborhood, two streets run parallel to an abandoned railroad line. These are both covered with a series of pitch black asphalt bumps, a half-hearted attempt to patch potholes from last winter. A sharp hairpin curve turns at the far east end of the neighborhood, loose sand and cinders littering the roadway and sending me skidding. But I recover.
The air is cool and smells faintly of sewer gas. Not an entirely unpleasant odor. It reminds me a great deal of Hollywood School when the "playground" was little more than a partially-tended field of weeds, ponds at the edges filled with tadpoles and dragonflies. It's paved now, a sterile surface for controlled play with bouncing balls and painted lines on the surface directing kids where to stand, how to line up straight. Building the future, one chain link fence at a time.
I turn around at the southwest corner, my front tire mere inches away from a mailbox. I'm also becoming familiar — again — with the handling of this bicycle, familiar enough to negotiate tighter turns like this. More confident in my approach, less likely to slow down or extend a foot to the ground and hoof past the difficult parts. I'm not out here to have feet on the ground. I gear back, pick up some speed, and loop back around for my first lap.
Five laps in all this evening, 5.6 miles. Cars filled with churchgoers forcing me off the road and waving, dogs in an uproar, two kids throwing a basketball around half-heartedly. Beyond that, the only sound is me racing past the houses, chain feeding sprocket, powered by frozen waffles, leftovers, Chinese noodles.
Then back home again, guiding the bike back into the garage and closing the door, my calves and hams complaining, feet back on the ground, feeling like I'm moving in slow motion.
But — it feels good to be alive.