As I ride

Every morning before the sun rises too high and the clouds burn off, I get up on my bike and ride. The route generally follows Broadway towards the downtown. As I ride a transformation takes place; the new day officially arrives. The sky announces it.

I ride for peace, I ride for the focus. I ride to snuff out the voices in my head. Up on my bike on an urban pathway I’d better be alert or I could get hurt. The rhythm of breathing and the simple activity of listening for cars, opens the doors of perception so I can register what’s going on around me. Entertaining thoughts of any kind downgrades the acuity of my receptors. It just does. I have run the experiment many times.

We know what’s going on around us because of our sensitive receptors, right? Sight, hearing, feeling, smelling, our sense of balance; our cognition gives us the sense of time so we can time things. How fast is that car moving for example.

When the voices inside my head are quiet all the receptors function optimally. Nothing sneaks up on me. When my focus is not on the rhythm of breathing and listening for cars, I get surprised. Whoops! Didn’t see that. Usually nothing bad happens but the percentage possibility that it could goes up. I ride alot, I can’t afford the jeopardy so I have to focus.

That’s all i wanted to say. I get up on my bike and I focus and I have my little urban adventures which are big enough for me.

In San Antonio, the ancient pathway from the springs to the verdant jungle downtown is now represented by Broadway. I meet people there. Like Mike, with the bike, who seems to be a vagabond bicycle explorer like me, roaming around the urban landscape. I encountered him at the top of the Mahncke Park hill where you can see the entire valley of San Antonio as it makes its way towards downtown. He was coming up the hill and I was on the top, both on our bikes, out riding. 

“Look at that.” I said, “you can see the valley of San Antonio.” and we started talking. Then I ran into him again and we went to the Blue Hole and he told me about Rosedale park and the mounds that he found there that he believes are ancient Indian mounds. Mike with the bike.

Eddy, the street person, camps out on the edge of the empty lot, next to the book store on Broadway. I made a point of saying hi to him and exchanged a few words the first time I saw his makeshift camp and him hanging out there in his wheel chair. He’s lame, can’t walk, he’s all grubby and dirty in a hoodie, his darkened tattooed face looks out from inside. He likes to talk about the Bible and tell you about all the things he’s discovered reading it 13 times. Jesus and the devil are the same, for example.  Both are described as the morning star.

There’s a polling place on Broadway, Lion’s Field, where you can stop and talk to politicians or supporters of politicians if they’re having an election. That’s a lot of fun.

And when you come into downtown and the full glory of our majestic buildings and our sacred streets (we have signs advising us of how to respect them), there is the feeling of having arrived somewhere. The lights are on, if it’s night time, and if it’s daylight the lights are still on. Downtown is the city center and it buzzes with its own energy.  The tourists come just to take pictures.

This is generally the far end of my journey, maybe Main Plaza in front of the cathedral. Maybe while I’m there the bells will toll, maybe the pigeons and the squirrels will forage among the paving stones, maybe the city streets will spread out in every direction, maybe I’ll see a bicycle cop trying to help out a homeless person, re-enacting the play that has played out here in this plaza for 300 years ever since the Europeans established a city here and for thousands of years before that, when this was a verdant forest filled with all kinds of goodness. 

That’s all I wanted to say. I get up on my bike and ride.