So in desperation as much as anything else, I get out my road bike, a Cannonade Caad5.  It's Sunday.  I could sit in and read and write, or I could act in the interest of my health, go out and get some exercise.

It takes me a while, of course, to put myself together, with the extra precaution of a mask or a bandanna and some alcohol wipes, pulling up the padded cycling shorts, putting on a cycling jersey, blue, with three pockets in back, cycling shoes... where are they, at last I find them under a chair.  Pockets stuffed, cellphone, an extra inner tube, a few bucks cash in a plastic bag, I pick the bike up, shut the door to my apartment, and clack my way gingerly down the steps in cleated cycling shoes and out into the light.  The world is going to hell, but lots of other people are out on their road bikes along MacArthur Boulevard.  I had the mountain bike out on the crowded tow path by the canal.  Now I'm ready.  I lean the bike up against a car, send a picture to my friend Betsy.

The bike is red, decked out with the colors of a long ago team that rode in the Tour, advertising Saeco, an appliance maker, along with the bicycle's own brand.  It's aluminum, with a carbon fiber fork.  The brakes and gearing, Campagnolo, Chorus.  And soon I'm up on it, and it feels good being on it, really good.  The tires are pumped up to 100 pounds, and they are skinny as they meet the pavement.  There is not even much traffic on the road.  Sunday, during quarantine.  I get rolling.  And I'm the slowest one out on the road, and I don't care.

Earlier, I made it to the Palisades Farmer's Market.  I purchased some meat, ground beef, chicken breast, and a dozen eggs.  I got up when my mother started calling.  Someone stole her cat, she's telling me.   The situation is unclear.  And on top of that, she is insisting that she needs to be taken back to her real home, "a few blocks over."  "Well, just open the door now and again and see if he's out there," I tell her.  "But I'm not home," and she is getting irritated at me.  I call her again, walking back, and none of this is happy to hear, and I had too much wine last night, one of those Zoom happy hours.  My heart is pounding, and I'm feeling anxious anyway, without Mom getting in on me from far away.  "Are you coming over, to take me back there," she asks.  "I'll try to drive up at the end of the week," I say, wishing to lie, wanting to.


I roll on, out through the neighborhoods.  I stop at the light at Sibley Hospital, the next set of reservoirs just beyond, before the road climbs a bit.  I've not taken this ride in years.  I used to.  I used to pretty good about biking.  I'm comfortable in the saddle.  My back is straight.   My ass doesn't hurt.    All the gears are working.  Most of the road is smooth.  Go at your own pace.  Up the hill I stop and pull over in a government parking lot.  I call mom.  No, it doesn't seem the cat has come back yet.  And still, she is angry if I suggest anything about her being, in fact, home, at her real home, and maybe the cat is upstairs sleeping.  She has wine, we checked that before.  She wonders if she can walk to the other house.  I keep trying to tell her...  just stay there, calm down, the cat will return, but she shouts at me that she can't have any wine now.

A couple of fast guys, with strong muscles in their legs roll by, not bothering to slow down as they go through the light and down the hill.  A couple riders are making their return back to DC, and they look pretty strong too.

The call has reached the end of its usefulness, we end the call amicably, more or less, and I get the pedals back in position, clip in with the right foot after checking for traffic, and I'm on the road again.

Down the hill, and through the woods on the left side of the road, the Potomac River comes in and out of view.  I can place my towpath riding experiences now with this view from a greater height, though there are trees in the way, leafed out.

And there are thoughts, many thoughts.  How foolish to have been a bartender.  How foolish to be poor, and 55, without anything to fall back on for a career.  Renting, at 55.

But the body feels good.  I roll on, past the Irish Inn, past the old amusement park, through Glen Echo, sprint behind a car getting over the one lane bridge.  Past Clara Barton signs, small communities, small shopping malls, past all variety of houses, open spaces past the crossing underneath the Beltway, the Naval Surface Warfare complex... past the parked cars along the road just at Old Angler's Inn, in business since 1860, then the climb, and onward, to Great Falls Park.  I stop to check the forecast.  Thunder storms called for, later.  How long have I been on the road?  Do I have time to stop at the river, after the beautiful turning descending road down to the park at the bottom.  It's a time consuming sport, but in many ways it matches the needs of the animal, the beast within.

I get down to the boardwalk, out to the view of Great Falls, walking my bike, carefully.  Great shutes of water.  Mom is calling again.  "Why is everything so hard...  Everybody is making things so hard,"  she says, on the verge of tears.  My iPhone is down to 10 percent power, and the signal isn't good.  Does she need food delivered?   I reach her again.  She has enough food to get by.

I walk out to the end of the boardwalk path with its system of bridges.  The air is different out here.  You come all this way, you owe it to yourself to see the great rapids of the falls with all the spumy white water and spray and objects carried along in the current.

I'm able to receive a call from her as I climb up the park's road back to the main road.

I get back to the main road, make the descent back down past Old Angler's Inn and the cars, people who have brought kayaks to the river.  I take it a little fast.  A fancy Porsche gives me a wide berth as he passes me, the edge of the road a little rough.  I catch up with the cars that have passed me, as they have slowed through the parking area, and the road is empty again, the flats.  Back over the one lane bridge, along the sidewalk.  I take it easy now, no need to push it.  The thunderstorms apparently holding off.


And then I'm closer in, up the hill, and then down along the reservoirs at Delacaria.  I stop for a bottle of wine at an unfamiliar little market, open on a Sunday, tucking into the center pocket of my blue cycling jersey, just like they used to do, the domestiques in the old days, the early 1960s, the bad old days of the Tour de France.

I get in up the stairs, get the bike in through the door.  A decent work out.  Probably too much pollen taken in.  I plug my iPhone back in to charge it up, and I call mom.  She's doing okay, somehow, though it's unclear where the cat is, and I still cannot bring up comfortably the proposal that the cat knows where home is.  She's in a decent mood, that is all, and that helps, helps me anyway.

I reheat a hamburger in the toaster oven, with onions.  And I refrain from the wine, take a shower, getting the sweat off, my face clear again.  Could have been a worse day.

And actually it took some courage, on my end, even to get out on my bike.  I don't try and go fast anymore.  I'm not that strong.  Just getting out is the point, to take in some scenery.   Wonder about how people have careers and nifty little houses and I roll along.

Just as I bike, I don't even write very well.  I'm just not that strong a writer, not opinionated enough.  I get interrupted too often anyway.

I wake up the next day fairly early, with sunlight streaming in through the blinds, the air fresh after the thunderstorm and rains the night before.  I might get up for a walk in the morning, just to be outside, but I fall back into dreaming.  I have my phone on silent, but I feel it buzz.  Mom calling.  I get up, have a cup of tea, put the water on, give her a call.  And she's doing a lot better than the day before, and empathizes with my down mood.  "I'll be lucky if I end up working in a grocery store," I tell her.  "You're funny," she tells me, "in an Irish way, and you don't even know you're being funny."

I go out for a walk, after making a pot of Dragonwell tea.


But it isn't easy not knowing what to do with yourself and living alone.