Have you ever really stepped out your front door with no destination? No plans of how to get there, what route, traffic, how long it will take, arrival time, do I have my keys, do I have my phone OH MY GOD WHERE’S MY PHONE! Now imagine just walking out into the world and seeing where your feet take you. This is what I do with Number Two on his biking expeditions. He picks whatever vehicle is at hand–a rideable indoor-only pirate ship, a quadcycle, a wagon–rolls up to the front gate, and begins his plaintive call: “Walk? Walk? Walk?” Pending any disturbing irritations of reality like dinnertime or baths I open the gate and we head out. Maybe gravity is the impetus, or the irresistible call of the far hillside, but we usually head downhill, he with his little legs pistoning forward and me with my hands in my pockets wondering where we are going and when we will get back. Within a few blocks we always manage to find something of interest: a senior’s softball league game with grey-haired fellers cussing and taking mighty swings at a ball the color and size of a pomelo, a yellow truck parked on the road which is Very Exciting because it is both yellow AND a truck, a woman who is so overjoyed at the cuteness of a toddler on a bike that she almost drives her Prius into a lightpole, a wire-haired pensioner walking a phalanx of small dogs resembling dust mops with feet. There’s always something to find out there if you just follow your nose.
Writer, architect, father, husband.