If life in your mid-twenties is an accumulation and nurturing of a bouquet of simple pleasures, I have added a new flower — dockless bikeshare.
Hm, that’s an awful metaphor.
Let me try that again: there is a panoply of moments when I am reminded of how fortunate I am, to be young and free and unplagued by worries (worries of money, worries of health, worries of chaos). Most of those moments are routine: a quiet Sunday morning spent listening to Ella and Louis, happy hour with friends, whenever I’m in an airport.
Here’s a new one, though: the first few days of Spring, when I’m still so starving for sunlight — let alone sunlight after work. And I grab a LimeBike (or a Spin, or an Ofo, or… I think one’s called Stride or something? The names aren’t great) and soar down Pine, downhill for three miles that feel like twenty, passing cars and pedestrians and dogs and commuters and old buildings and new buildings and cranes and artifacts of the static world.
You barely have to pedal. Gravity does its thing. Plus you can ditch the bike anywhere, you know — you feel like a king.
In other, non-dockless-bikeshare-related news:
- Okay this one is kind of bikeshare related, but check out this photo essay on the crisis of supply in China. This is a delicate spectacle: even now, I am a little surprise by how dotted Seattle’s streets are by these things, and wonder how many more are to come.
- I’m in the process of moving things to Notion, which is an act that I recognize is largely empty — taking all these notes and micro-CRMs and journals and little databases and throwing them in a new tool isn’t going to magically make me more productive, but it’s one hell of a placebo effect.
- I downloaded Rocket League for the Switch. This was a great move for my nucleus accumbens and a terrible move for my to-do list.
- My bracket remains relatively un-busted! I have Villanova beating Michigan and I’m right on the verge where I’ll place high enough to feel okay about my (entirely unresearched) submissions but probably not high enough to actually win.
Can you tell that this has been a good week? It is spring — you can feel it in the lightness of the air and the look of dogs in Cal Anderson. I am sneaking away there for most weekday lunches, book in hand. Some days I close my eyes to the sun and breathe in deeply, as if to try and inhale it all.
Happy Sunday.
I hope you get a good bike ride in.