“A long bike ride or whatever your passion may be, is the answer to puzzling questions of life you will soon forget. Or as the old saying goes, time flies when you’re having fun.”
The following photos are from two recent biking excursions to the Lexington Reservoir, one with my friend Bill earlier in the week and one with Gary Covell which we arranged on the spur of the moment this morning. It was perfect day to ride and a perfect day to be alive. As everyone knows the news hasn’t been pretty of late, tensions are high and mental health experts say that stress and anxiety of living during this pandemic are on the rise. There is nothing like a bike ride to cut through the monotony of staying at home. In fact, more and more physicians, psychotherapists, and politicians are encouraging people to spend time outdoors biking, hiking and walking.
I met Gary at the parking lot of Bay Club Courtside where we are members and has been temporarily shut down pending re-opening orders from Governor Newsom. We hopped on the Los Gatos trails leading us through the parklike setting on the back side of downtown and began our steep climb to the reservoir. There were an equal number of bicyclists and walkers, but not overly crowded. We continued on a secondary climb above the heavily wooded Santa Cruz mountains that looks down at the reservoir.
Many times, during a bike ride I find a convenient place to take a pit stop and do some yoga stretches to ham it up and loosen up the body to stay connected and to be fully present. Afterall, as much as I feel at one with nature during our weekly rides, holding on firmly to the handlebars especially on gravel and bumpy terrain, and even smooth paved roads on steep inclines causes the neck, back and leg muscles to tense up. So, in a cool wooded area overlooking the reservoir I saw an old isolated flatbed trailer that lended itself to doing a few yoga stretches before continuing down the mountain. On the earlier ride with Bill, we had continued cautiously down a steep but doable dirt trail that took us further down to the water’s edge on the other side of the reservoir where a mother was taking photos of her young son and daughter who were sitting on a tree stump. We greeted a family sitting under a canopy, having lunch, drinking and fishing. Other than these few people we had the place to ourselves and bathed in the tranquility and majesty of it all. Gary continued along the highway 17 past Bear Creek Road. I parted ways with Gary on Lark Avenue as I continued on the trails heading toward home, passing fellow bicyclists young and old alike, I realized anew, a bicyclist little secret that melancholy is virutally incompatible with bicycling.
