Keeping it Close on Memorial Day

You know, Bonelli  may not be riders' first choice for a day's adventure in the saddle, but there is something to say for keeping close to home on these one day holidays. There are enough hills to make it a fitness challenge, enough cacti-lined tech sections to raise your pulse. Sometimes the park can seem small, crossing a bridge where the trees press in, narrowing the world to a straight line through the leafy foliage, or connecting their branches overhead, shutting out the sky, where the only life you are aware of occurs within a worm hole ten feet on either side, until you burst through at one end or the other and back into bright sun light. Mere minutes later you track across a hillside, open slopes and, suddenly, bigger than you remember them; big enough for pines and peppers to spread themselves wide apart, thin groves and woods where trails could run straight and true; but there is no fun in that and so they warp and bend and worm along, flow from high to low.

There is something to say for keeping it close to home - reclining on a patio after a good ride, a computer for a while, just long enough to write this post, then a book, a beer at hand, sun, a gentle breeze moving the leaves, eyes close, but not before I glance at the flag and remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their families and untold strangers they never had a chance to know.