black chevrolet

The first thought and question every morning in February is answered by a quick glance out the window above my head. Is it raining or not?

This question will become irrelevant in a month. I slide out of bed and dress deliberately, mentally picking through 6:30 am pre-caffeine wool to determine whether there is Anything I Am Forgetting.

What am I forgetting?

Keys. Have keys. Have phone. Have wallet. Have helmet. Have gloves. Computer is off. I unlock the door and step outside into a cloud of my own breath. I exhale again, testing the air temperature. Cold. Probably 40 degrees. The weather is severe-clear, the neighbors' dogs are barking tinnily in the cold.

The carport is dark and even colder. I swing a leg over and push the motorcycle outside, fumbling in thick ski gloves. The fuel-injected motor doesn't care what temperature it is. I touch the starter, and with its usual quiet composure the v-twin shakes itself awake. The pattering lope echoes from the adjacent apartment walls. Now three dogs are barking across the canal.

I drop it into gear and ease off into the back alley. Round the corner, round the street. Bleary faces wrapped in scarves peer around opened car doors. The headlights of Dial-A-Ride fill the opposing lane and old ladies with canes, mummified in shawls, stump deliberately down the sidewalk. The neighborhood is still really asleep at 7:00 in the morning.

At the corner stopsign, I balance the motorcycle without moving my foot off the peg. I have to keep rolling; haven't acquired the skill to do this while motionless. Children bundled with pink backpacks and earmuffs, swinging water bottles, huddle around the steel lamppost.

Green, swing out into the far lane, clicking up at each 4500 rpm. Frosted, sleepy cars roll out into the broad, crumbled frosty street, white clouds of vapor obscuring the left taillight on each. The suicide lane is filled with left-blinking SUV's and donut trucks. I wing quickly by, unseen, poised to swerve.

The cold breeze accelerates to a wind as I reach a clear stretch of the Boulevard. The steam is blown from the inside of my helmet and the sun flashes blindingly above the neighboring overpass, bathing brick in the intense industrial orange of early morning. The wool is beginning to clear somewhat, but I'm still bleary and in need of coffee and breakfast.

Watch traffic, watch the soccer moms, watch the delivery trucks out of the corner of my eye. A beautiful day, just another beautiful cold freezing day on a cold freezing seat in a cold freezing town in February.

(and the bank thermometer says 41 degrees)