In the beginning I woke up frequently and had trouble falling back asleep. If I could sleep late it was a good thing so I stopped setting an alarm. But it’s been over four months and good gracious, good gracious: I know at least two unrelated people who use the expression, ‘Good Gracious’ or ‘My Gracious’ and if nothing else, I find it quaint. In the 1940’s & 50’s it wasn’t that strange but in the new century it is strange, a phrase abandoned for something less hallowed. Grace after all is generally associated with the all mighty. My natural inclination would be, ‘Oh my!’ or ‘Good grief.’ But I’ve been stuck on this merry go round since March and I don’t want my vocabulary to wither away from neglect so I’ve recommissioned ‘Gracious’. Oh yes, I have been setting my alarm again now for a couple of weeks. It starts peeping at 6:30. By the time I can get out of bed and across the room the peeping has increased in both pitch and volume as if to say, “Turn me off right now or I may explode.”
By 7:00 a.m. on a typical day I am wheeling my way through the neighborhood. I stay on smooth streets within five blocks of my house. By 8:00, after an 11-12 mile workout I will have dismounted and parked in the garage. I really need the exercise. With pandemic Lock down, for the most part, my days are sedentary episodes of exploring on the computer and cleaning up after myself. But for an hour, riding the recumbent trike, the other me gets to live with the feel of the old normal.
It is scary how how quickly cars come up behind you. True the limit is 25 mph but that only makes them less loud. My average speed is only about 11 mph. So I must constantly check my mirrors against 4-wheelers. The trike has 3 chain rings, 9 sprockets on the cluster which works out to 27 speeds. I leave it on the middle ring. That gives me 9 speeds although 6 or 7 of those are enough. It keeps me busy, navigating traffic, avoiding bumps and hazards and being in the right gear for the situation. I want my legs to get good work. On descents, gentle and short as they are, I don’t want to coast so I go to bigger gears and keep cranking. The gear changing is endless, trying to hold a constant speed on corners and subtle changes in grade. For that first hour of the day the physical and mental demands are greater than anything I will do the rest of the day. If I get rained out, it tends to spoil my day.
Even at that, with everything to remember on the trike I think about stuff as I pedal; about life, family, about the world. My mind is like a three year-old with ideas that go nowhere and questions that only beg more questions. Certainly it crosses my mind, the day to day high risk reality of disease and of marrow minded, slow witted people who flaunt their ignorance and disregard for others, mocking pandemic as if it were nothing more than scare tactics or sneezing and a runny nose. Then of course, there is the consummate narcissist who throws American lives under the buss like sand on a slick street, traction for his reelection campaign. His moral compass has no dial, only an arrow that points at him no matter where he stands. I don’t want to say anything more damning lest I wake up some morning with a NSA van parked up the street, monitoring my every thought.
Remember the movie, ‘Enemy Of The State’ with Will Smith and Gene Hackman. The goons from NSA repositioned satellites to track Will Smith. He stripped off his clothes getting rid of GPS devices they had planted, running near naked across rooftops with helicopters in pursuit. That would be me but my luck wouldn’t provide me with a benefactor like Gene Hackman. I’d be lucky to get a stumbling, fumbling Danny DeVito.
My minister told me “You didn’t screw up this world and you can’t fix it.” It was 1999 and I was going to a UCC church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. UCC is the most left leaning, most progressive Christian denomination anywhere. I had been feeling bad about the way our ancestors treated America’s indigenous people. He tried to reassure me, “Your responsibility is to do no harm and to live the best life you can.” That washed for a long time but Black Lives Matter has put a kink in that logic. We may not be guilty of our father’s sins but by its nature, White Privilege and its systemic disparity leaves us with a blind spot. If we continue to profit from those sins, after the fact, we become complicit. Good gracious, I think about that too in the morning, riding my trike.
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