the mile (two roundtrip)

The route from my apartment to the cigar store is roughly a mile. The route to the cigar store is mostly uphill until the last quarter of the distance, roughly, at which point I lose at least the elevation I just attained if not slightly more. Or maybe less. It's hard to see through the hill and accurately judge.

To be honest, I do start out with a bit of downhill, but that's for about fifteen seconds of adjusting my backpack from however slightly wrong I got it before actually getting on the bike. There is a stop sign at the very bottom of the slight downhill, but from that stop it becomes uphill of varying grades for the most part.

And then I finally reach fifth and the traffic light where I usually do wait for the light. It's usually about to change anyway. The road is rough from here on in, but it's all downhill till the train tracks.

The cigar store is past the intersection, a few more seconds away and still downhill. It's leaving there where it gets annoying. And no I don't smoke cigars, but I do roll my own cigarettes cuz I'm cool like that, and the cigar store is the quickest way to get my smokes.

Now, I don't always mind hills, but heading back up the hill I just came down is one of my least favorite parts of any of my rides. It isn't so hard, really, I just hate it. Also, there's a traffic light halfway up that seems to always catch me, and the cars always want to turn right and aren't always reasonable about such needs in regard to my own need for safety. It's not really that bad either though.

But still I hate the hill. So I often avoid it. I take the bricks up to the viaduct via Jackson and then I'm heading up Gay. I gain the same amount of sky while rolling across a lot less earth, and it should be a tougher climb, but it really isn't. Even riding on the spaced out, uneven bricks isn't so bad.

And it is a longer route back home. It doesn't make sense, but I don't hate it, kinda enjoy it. And I didn't stop for a beer. I could have, and I did think about it, but I needed to get home and make spaghetti and meatballs, which I did.

Which was really good, so good in fact that I'm going to have to figure out what I did with the sauce. Of course The Boy didn't like the meatballs, said they tasted like meatloaf. Like hell they do. They aren't as good as I'd have liked, but they were good, great texture, nice firmness, held together really well, all the things you look for in a meatball, or at least several.

But I'm not even talking about that. I somehow felt proud of myself for making it to and from the cigar in the brief time it took me. I'm not sure now, knowing that it's only about a mile, how I feel about it. Perhaps I've google mapped it wrong, but I don't really care anymore. I'm full of spaghetti that, thanks to modern medicine, isn't making me burp pain.