CULT OF JAMES

Second ride of the day. The afternoon one was three miles in seventeen minutes. This one was almost four miles in thirty. Slower, easier, the kind of ride where you’re just out there because the evening is nice and you already proved you could go fast earlier. April 11th. Same day, two rides. The first one had purpose. This one…

Three miles in seventeen minutes. Afternoon ride — the kind where you just go and don’t think too hard about where. April 2018. This might have been one of the first rides after the move, or one of the last rides before it. Either way, the air was warm and the route was flat and seventeen minutes passed without me…

Strava called this an “Evening Run.” It was a walk. A mile and a half at twenty-two minutes per mile — which is the pace of someone who is thinking, not exercising. October 2017. Louisville. I was an Engineer I in the NOC by then, working backbone stuff, staring at dashboards and traceroutes all day. Sometimes you just need to…

One mile loop. That was the plan and that’s what happened. Took seven minutes and change. May in Louisville. Warm enough to ride in a t-shirt, cool enough that you don’t hate it by the time you get back. The loop was probably just the block — out the driveway, around, back. Quick enough that the bike seat didn’t even…

Three point nine miles to the Spectrum office. Tec, Insight, whatever they were calling themselves that month — the cable companies in Louisville shuffled names like a deck of cards and expected everyone to keep up. Half an hour on the bike to handle something that was probably a five-minute conversation. But it was April, and the weather had finally…

Three-quarters of a mile. Five minutes. No name for this one — just a date stamped on it like a receipt. August in Louisville. The kind of hot where the asphalt shimmers and you question every decision that led you outside. But something made me get on the bike that evening, even if it was barely long enough to break…

Fifty minutes after the last ride. Back on the bike. Eight tenths of a mile in five minutes — the shortest loop yet. Definitely forgot something. That’s the honest version of “Evening Ride.” It sounds nice until you realize it’s just a round trip to wherever sells what you needed at 8:30 on a Saturday night. The legs were already…

Saturday evening, quarter to eight. Bike ride number one of two — because apparently whatever I went out for the first time wasn’t enough, or I forgot something, or the evening was nice enough to justify a second trip. A mile and a third through the neighborhood. Ten minutes. The kind of pace where you’re pedaling but you’re not in…

Mile and a third on the bike in the early afternoon. Nine minutes. The kind of ride that has a destination and the destination is probably a gas station or a convenience store. Louisville in August, one in the afternoon — the sun is doing its absolute worst and you’re on a bike because the car seemed like too much…

Back-to-back evening shifts. Got up from the desk around 8:20 and walked the mile loop again. Slightly faster than last night — eighteen minutes instead of twenty-one — which probably means nothing except I had less on my mind. Or maybe more on my mind and I was walking through it faster. Hard to tell. The NOC does that to…