Monday, March 20, 2017

Muscle memory

It's easy to love from a distance.

From a distance, the city is skyscrapers, life is an adventure, and commitment is easy to maintain.

Up close and personal, love takes effort .
  
I bring my bike into the start control because leaving it on the predawn city street is naive. 

Riding the long gradual climb over the Ben Franklin Bridge hammers my off season heart. 

The distance again seems insurmountable, up close and personal.

Camden, NJ, is not a metaphor. It's an urban reality of progress amidst poverty. I pick my way through its rutted streets and overgrown paths to the NJ suburbs; picturesque, quaint, idyllic.

On an unusually warm Sunday in February, after weeks of no riding, my winter legs spin over a 127 mike route from Philadelphia to Princeton and back. 

The day unfolds along the roads, up close and personal

I rely on muscle memory to get me through

Until the course shrinks into a distance 

that is easy to love

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