Monday, June 7, 2010

Ponderings

Warning: I talk about science below. If you hate science, you've been duly warned.

My ride today started with a trip to the bike shop to get a backup tube. Then, I was off for a two volcano ride. I didn't want to push myself too hard because I plan on doing a long ride tomorrow, so a short 18 mile, two climb ride seemed nice. My mind today was in that sweet gentle place where you just move from pleasant thought to pleasant thought at an unhurried pace.

As I climbed the steep side of Tabor, grinding out each pedal stroke, feeling my back (but not too terribly bad), and relaxing in the beauty of the park, I mostly thought about what I was reading. I have three books right now. One easy, one medium, and one hard. As I bombed (okay, to be honest, I don't really bomb down hills...I carefully brake my way down hills) down Tabor on my way to Rocky Butte I thought about the easy one: Star Trek...something or other. It's number six in a series of nine and just mindless fluff. Everybody needs mindless fluff from time to time.

Making my way north and starting up Rocky Butte I get passed by a couple of road bikers (serious road bikers. I know I'm on a road bike, but I'm just a beginner) and one of them yells back, "How's it going?" "Great!" I respond. I think then a little bit about my medium book. This one is about the inheritance through genes and memes of inheritable traits and certain ideas in our culture. I really like this book a lot, but I really don't have anyone to talk about it with. This is one thing I miss about school. When I'm almost to the top, I stop to take the picture, above.

I round the top of Rocky Butte twice to really get a good view. I switch water bottles from water to my homemade "sports drink". Yick! It is way too sweet. I need to get some kind of formula down. As I came down the hill and made my way home I started thinking about my hard book. This book is about Einsteinian Relativity and requires paper and pencil because there are problems to do. This is the book that really is lighting me up right now. Last night as I was working through the problems about general relativity I really grasped with my whole mind the concept of time speeding up as you go faster. I mean, I really got it. "Yes, that's it," I said. "It absolutely must go faster." Not bad for a 34-year old pilates teacher. But, then when I was trying to explain my Aha! moment to Peter I couldn't quite figure out how to put it into words. Books like this are what I don't miss about school, actually. I like learning about whatever is intriguing me at the moment.

And, so I rode through the bike streets back to my home...relishing the general relaxation I felt. Pondering this, musing about that, thinking about how much fun it is to learn and to live in a time where so much information is at our fingertips. I got back to my house, parked my bike, and then walked back to the bike shop to pick up Reilly. She looks great with her new wheel and I was happy to bring her back home.

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