Euro Bike, Spring, Mountains, and Quiet Roads

Took a trip out of town with the Ridley and some great mountain air. Warm enough to be in shorts and short-sleeves - a really wonderful roundtrip between Black Rapids and Paxson Lodge (about 60 miles), and pretty much nobody on the road. Diane Ackerman's words come pretty close to the feeling of sitting in the warmth of the sun, ice dripped all around, a caribou on the hillside, gray jays rather than blue jays flitting around, and knowing that all that is so terrible in the news at the moment is far away from this place:

When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart.

Isabel Pass was still pretty icy and summit lake mostly frozen. Swans swam on the few bits of open water and the Deltas glisten in the distance.