Wild Optimism

Woke up early this morning to watch Stage 14 of the Tour de France. Today’s race was a 185 kilometer jaunt from Revel to Ax 3 Domaines, the first of four days to be spent climbing the Pyrenees (days filled with mile-high ascents and dizzying cascades on the flip sides).

I was inspired. So much so that I waited for the thunderstorms to pass so that I, too, could pump up my tires (and chest) to sally forth on my own two wheels.

I won’t claim this was a perfect day for a bicycle ride. The storms turned 90+ degree air to stew. The heat index climbed to 103. And did I mention the wind? Oh, yes, there were breezes aplenty. 30 mph zephyrs, in fact. Accompanied by their big brothers. Nothing a professional cyclist can’t handle.

But I’m a hapless dilettante.

I leg-wrestled with the wind for a solid hour. Turned around and breezed towards home. Didn’t quite make it. One mile from my doorstep and I ran out of...youth (nearly all my geezerhood, too). I was spent, shaking, darn near hallucinating. I found a patch of shade and collapsed. Prostrate in the grass, I wondered how long it would take for my heart rate to slow to something more reasonable like, say, 500 beats per minute. Too dizzy and weak to move, I amused myself by watching sweat geyser from my thighs. A gypsy crew of house flies arrived momentarily. And (I kid you not) two buzzards began circling overhead.

How do they do it? How does the house fly find decaying organic matter within seconds? I tend to ponder questions such as these whilst semi-comatose. The flies come to feed and lay their eggs. I suppose a creature with a lifespan shorter than a month doesn’t just hear the ticking of its “biological clock”. The explosions must be downright inspirational.

The flies descended. But I wasn’t dead quite yet. I thought I heard them mutter: “Any second now. Any. Second.”

Say what you will about the common house fly, but you have to admire it for its boundless optimism.

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