Two Wheel Tuesday: High Days Low

I could almost - almost - understand a lack of riders this night. The kiln was stoked. Was it still one hundred degrees at six-thirty in the p.m? It very well might have been. And then there was that August air corresponding to the elevated heat, thick and heavy, a yellow pall in the sky, the stuff that lungs rebel against breathing in, especially when speeds pick up, or when those punchy climbs become a labor. Yet there were still some twenty riders spread across the road and dirt - well, mostly the road, but still, the number of dirty riders had doubled from last week.

After the long, high days of summer, the transition to autumn is picking up speed; the park, its trails, lakeside, and picnic areas are a little more still, revelers and quiet contemplators sparsely spread. The calls of geese, splash of ducks, panic flight of quail, whisper of doves, the scramble of rabbits, have begun to dominate once again.

A little late for this (strangely or not this passage seems more appropriate to the last week of August this year), but: "The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color."
-Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting