Absolutely Exercise

There was a fleeting and ethereal light playing across the face of the the Pine Valley Mountains as I began my ride. I stopped a couple of times, but the light faded before I could even raise the camera to my eye. Third time lucky: at the pheasant pens the light lasted long enough for me to take a panorama (below), but even so I did not manage to capture the delicacy of the moment. Perhaps a time-lapse sequence would have worked better if only I had the time!

The standoff on W3000S between road users and construction crews escalated into open warfare today. The first engagement goes to the constructors because they dug a trench across the road that prevented passage. Independent monitors from the Hurricane police department were in attendance this morning. The cyclists have a cunning plan that involves night maneuvers, advances before dawn, and all-out attacks on truce days. Click/tap any photo to switch to gallery view View a STRAVA entry for this post (free login required); click below for limited access:

I rode with a purpose today. I was trying to reconnoître a new route based on my original route that has been curtailed by some road closures. An unspecified data-recording misfire meant that I will have to do it all over again, which is actually the point anyway!

There was less traffic than usual for a Monday morning.

I had intended not to ride today. I was rested by noon and restless by three. Oh, the delightful fluidity of the English language. I changed my mind and decided to have one last early evening ride up to Sand Hollow Top before W3000S closes tomorrow until April 2021.The sky was overcast and the light was so dull that the views lacked any lighting contrast. I was sad that the demise of this route was to be accompanied by a photo whimper.

The first two unprepossessing headline photos for today were taken where the contractors will soon be carving out an extension to SR-7 to provide a more direct connection with SR-9 on the western outskirts of Hurricane, Utah. This is the last weekend before the contractors close W3000S through to the junction with Sand Hollow Road and the Southern Parkway—for a whole year! This is clearly going to require me to find a new bicycling route.

Did I miss the memo? Or was it a meme? Today, it seemed that many people had decided to reboot communal weekend recreation. As anecdotal evidence of that assertion, viewing the full-frames of the photos of Sand Hollow reservoir shows at least twenty-five watercraft in operation; at the golf course there were no more than ten parking spaces available. Perhaps the pandemic will retreat because the majority of people have lost interest, something described as 'behavioral fatigue'. For Southern Utah, it may also be the lull before the storm. When pandemics reboot it's called resurgence. I hope everybody receives that information as either a memo or a meme and they follow the recommended protocols. Click/tap any photo to switch to gallery view View a STRAVA entry for this post (free login required); click below for limited access:

Some days, if there is a sufficient lull in the traffic, I like to just stand and quietly absorb the landscape.  While so doing today, I realized that the water in the Sand Hollow Reservoir is now showing up as a vivid blue in my photos. I ain't faked nuthin', guv, I swear!

The air was laden with pheromones as the Heritage farm made the first cut of the herbage for this year. There were more people about than there have been recently. New flowers appear every time I go for a ride. The horse-gone-wonky that I saw yesterday came up to the fence for a nuzzle today. The spring is in full swing and in the hot afternoon sun there was an indication of the weather for the days that lie ahead as we progress towards summer. View a STRAVA entry for this post (free login required); click below for limited access:

" Say what you will / The countryside is still / The only place where I could settle down " are the opening three lines of  Out of Town  sung by Max Bygraves in the movie Charley Moon . In 1956 it was also a popular single recording in the UK, reaching #18 in the charts. I was jauntily singing those snatches of the lyrics that I remembered as I bicycled slowly around my route today. That is another wonderful thing about the countryside—there is nobody to criticize egregious vocal performances, even though I did scare some of the local fauna. Click/tap any photo to switch to gallery view View a STRAVA entry for this post (free login required); click below for limited access:

I was honked at earlier today for riding in the middle of the right-side lane. I followed the advice that my sensei gave me many years ago for use as a first line of defense: I moved on with an empty mind. Those with an education in the classics may recognize  Epictetus (c.50-135CE) as an earlier source, but it was from Sensei Ronnie that I learned most of my limited wisdom. Outrage, a cheap commodity item in the Internet era, would have been pointless: the only person who would have been impacted by my outrage would have been me. Often, we are unable to control what happens to us, but we are able to control the way we feel and how we react. Before you ask, it was a honk, not a toot, and I do know the difference. The motorcar driver was, I assume, unaware that my road position was dictated by the traveling spray irrigation system in the field immediately bordering the road. The overspray was blowing in the wind and I was distancing myself so that I did not get wet. That driver