Rides We Like: A Three Day Blow
(2020) In the penultimate moment of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, a background character apathetically discusses the New Hampshire weather. For those who have not read the play, it is argued Our Town is in production any day of the year - that is, any normal day of the year - anywhere in America. To read the play is to fold a part of Americana into your psyche. And its sentiments were felt over the past few days.
We start on Friday. Actually it could have been Thursday but we lost track of all that. Thursday saw severe thunderstorms rip the sky in half in no time at all. Once the storm moved through, the winds ushered in a new front. A weather alert was issued for heavy winds to cease Thursday night. A new alert was issued starting Friday morning. The Friday winds raked the side of the office windows. It was cold enough to dismiss any sort of outdoor ride because, despite the forecast, it was penetratingly cold. A ride outside would be euphoric in one direction, tolerable in two other directions, and straight up hell with the intense head wind. Zwift it was.
Over to Saturday it was windy and cold just like Friday. It was slightly warmer but a heavy schedule put off a ride. It was that blasted blowy wind buzzing in the mind as to whether a ride would be enjoyable. The equation from the day before was recalled. One enjoyable direction, so on and so forth. The lawn was mowed in relative warmth as the winds calmed down and early libations were cracked. Once that happens, rides don’t. Zwift it wasn’t.
It’s early morning. Only this time it’s been raining. It’s been pouring and thundering.
Sunday saw us get out. There was a slightly buzzing wind along with more gray skies. No bother, as it afforded just enough time to get out on the standard circle. And what a ride. The roads are hardly populated and the recent times have seen fewer people out. There were two cyclists, about normal, but hardly a car to be found. The spring peepers were beginning to whistle their presence in the marshy roadside cattail farms and shallow homemade ponds. The gilet was nearly pitched on account of the creeping temperature.
The final day of the spring vacation saw the least hospitable riding weather. A tornado warning was enough to instantly vacate ideas of riding. The curtains of precipitation passing the windows were not welcoming. Advice from Our Town recommended, “It’s raining torrents. You don’t go out of this house without you’re prepared for it.” The heavy accumulation of rain resumed the presence of ponds out back only this time without ducks. Being spring the smell of newness tiptoed into the windows flung open after that last raindrop. Then the beautiful low level clouds, seemingly heavy with regret passed in front of a blazing sky. It was a night reminiscent of our time in upstate New York. Our thoughts, like the wind, drifted back to the grassy hilltop mentioned in Our Town. Our usually busy area has even become quiet like those small mountain towns.
Saturday saw a bike cleaning. The rains that passed through saw a natural cleansing: sidewalk chalk swirled away; tree flowers spiraled off branches, clumped together, and created brakes in storm drains; surfaces were shined of early pollen build up. Tonight’s sunset saw another cleansing of hope. Kids rode by on bikes in the setting sun, opting out of their virtual reality world. Atop that grassy New Hampshire hilltop in Our Town, the character states, “The northeast winds always do the same thing, don’t they? If it ain’t rain, it’s a three-day blow.” The three days of storms moved on. So, too, will we. That same peace ushered in by Wilder’s quote filled us along the rural roads of our area. Yes it’s clearing up. And the stars are coming out.
