A Good Sunrise

A good sunrise can keep me going all day. Yesterday was one of those mornings. The sun was just barely peeking over the ridge of the Chugach Mountains as I rode down the trail. The clouds were all crazy like someone had taken a whisk and whipped up the sky. The morning light then followed after frosting the tips and valleys leaving the sky all ablaze with pinks, blues and purples. All this against the backdrop of the wondrous Chugach. It is a miracle I didn’t crash! It was so inspiring that I had to smile every time I thought about it all day long.

In fact, it even made me happy almost my whole ride home too, which was an impressive task. While folks in the lower 48 get excited this time of year preparing to plant their gardens and relishing the warmer weather, I cringe the whole way through spring. Spring for me is a mad rush to get as many final days of skiing as I can. On the bike trail it means trading out my bike lights for fenders. It means navigating through half frozen tire ruts trying to stay upright and out of the bottomless puddles that appear out of nowhere. It means biking with your mouth closed to limit the amount of road grime (a special blend of 6 months of winter road oil, sand, gravel, ice melt and a healthy dash of litter) that spits up in your face. And it means testing your agility on the ever changing minefield of potholes that appear daily.

What a whiner I am, right? Okay, I don’t mind getting dirty. Truly. I mind getting coated in grime on my way to work. There is a difference between biking and getting dirty for fun and biking as a commute where you have to look presentable momentarily. Okay, it still sounds like whining.

I need another sunrise.