bike experiment, day 19

i rode 27 miles today. yesterday i rode 23. everyday this week i've been riding to and from columbia, where i've been teaching creative writing to high school students. i taught my two classes, went to a quick happy hour, talked and stood around with some of the other teachers for a while (one of whom had, earlier in the week, sold both his screenplay and his young adult sci-fi novel and who, at some point even earlier, i suspected had de-friended me off facebook). and then i rode home. along the greenway there was an usually large amount of horseshit, substantial mustard-colored clumps of it, littered across the lanes. i thought of poetry, and of how my work week was over, and of how i was going to spend the rest of my night. it began to rain hard and then thunder. i don't like to stop but this time it was too much. my shoes were filling up with water. i found shelter under a lean-to. standing there were a female jogger, a male jogger, and a guy in a business suit, all of whom were drier than me. hello, i said. i think i got a nod or two, though i couldn't really tell because my glasses were too fogged. we stood there. after a while the rain let up some and the business man and then the male jogger left. it started raining harder again. i pulled out my portable stereo and ipod and played "buckets of rain" and the female jogger smiled and i smiled back and thought about the city. the rain kept on and there we were. wet and waiting.