How Writing Has Helped My Bicycling

It’s Leap Day, 2024. Let’s jump right in. I have kept a journal for most of my life since being a young teen, encouraged by my maternal grandmother. There have been plenty of long gaps and since starting this blog in 2016, many days that I skipped both to work on my bicycle memoir. Writing is a way to express your feelings, and in a journal it’s private. Blogging is sometimes an online extension of that, depending how personal you want to get. Either way, helping to clarify thoughts, process emotions, outline goals, and refine motivation are all good for your health. Which in turn is both what one needs for any sustained exercise habit or practice and a benefit of the same. The fact that I’ve written a whole book (or two, since it’s too long–even as I try to revise it a third time, what it really needs is funding for an editor) is another way I’ve expressed myself, usually about all my biking. Sure, I could still ride a bike without writing, but both are entertwined and part of my daily do’s, and so far as I’m able to continue, I plan to and hope I will.

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Verisimilitude: Leap Day Twenty Twenty Poem

Sitting at my keyboard
wondering what to type
college friend emails from India
she ain't got no Skype
Once did yoga on her lawn
sun-drenched shorts of orange 
light dappled her auburn hair
nothing rhymes with orange
I've no right to write poetry
just a simple bike ridin' dude
but who says I can't rhyme
and speak of verisimilitude?
Barely rode my bike this week
cuz of my damn temp job
gotta pay the man rent, man
or land on the street, a slob
Have you heard the news today?
oh boy, every day a new doozy
while the tyrant rants and sycophants blather
I'd really rather just take another snooze, see?
It's sunny out there but pitch dark inside
seconds, minutes, hours pass relentlessly
time's on no one's side but its own
never ever can shake this baby called ennui
Can't get no satisfaction, though I try sometimes
through time and space I move this body of girth
endless campaign, killer virus, stock market crash
Antarctica's melting; not to worry, people of Earth!
Don't worry, be happy, this too shall pass
worst form of government, 'cept all the rest - democracy
real Americans do retail therapy, Netflix and chill
problem is telling truth from lies, what's real from hypocrisy
Honesty is hardly ever heard, word to your muthah 
zone out to your jams, take your medicine and sleep
put on a happy face, fear not, and be of good cheer
might as well jump to conclusions and take a faithful leap

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