Nearly a half hour had passed since I rolled out of bed with the weak resolve to get out into the countryside on my bicycle in today's cool morning air, and I was still stuck like a lead weight in my office chair, sipping from a mug of Italian roast coffee, finishing a pipe half filled with Yenidje Highlander (that's not cannabis, for you non pipesmokers - it's an English Oriental tobacco blend), looking ridiculous in my tight lycra shorts and summer wool jersey. Ridiculous because you don't want to be seen like that unless you're on the road pedaling at a respectably athletic rate on a racing bike. And even then . . .
But it got to be 6:00AM and I hauled myself out of lethargy, stuffed my notebook size sketchbook and dozen tin of colors into my stretched out back jersey pocket, and headed down to pull my bike off the wall hook. An easy excuse not to go presented itself immediately when the rear tire valve sprang a leak as I pumped air into the tire. Tina and I, however, have exactly the same size bicycles, and although hers has different pedals, we also wear the same size cleats. Grumblingly I hung my bike back up, took hers down, pressurized the tires that were soft from a season of disuse, and went out the front doors into the morning.
The next excuse came just a mile and a half up the road just outside town when I rounded a downhill corner and saw that white barn, bare electric bulbs glowing through the dusty windows below the haymow, telling me that the cows were being milked. A few pedal strokes up the hill beyond, I interrupted my jaunt, pulled off and sat down in the gravel tractor path next to the alfalfa field and sank my attention into the dark timbered cavern of the barn through the yawning opening, its door hanging askew, stark and startling surrounded by worn whitewashed wood siding, trying not to get too fixated on all the details unfolding themselves to my view as I processed what I saw into a simplified version on paper. A larger sheet of paper might have kept me there, mesmerized, for longer, but I was reminded by a commuter who stopped to see if I'd fallen off my bike that my outing had the additional purpose of getting my sluggish blood moving and stretching my muscles. Tempting as it was to just turn around and come back to the studio, I picked up the bike and turned off Route 23 onto the first hilly backroad.
I wanted to stop dozens of times as I churned down the quiet roads through the slowly unfolding farmscapes, not because I was getting tired, but because unlike the rest of my body, my eyes and what they connect to in my head and heart were wide awake. A morning appointment, for which I have to depart momentarily, prevented another back pocket drawing, but with a week of cool mornings forecast, perhaps I'll be back.
barn by Donegal Creek, 8 1/4 x 5 1/4, Derwent Inktense pencils