More often than not, life looks a little better from other side of twenty miles on the trail.

As folks keeping tabs on me this week likely know, I’ve been having a rough week, mentally and emotionally. Vivid dreams, unsettling nervous anxiety, intermittent malaise. Not my best showing. That said, I’ve been doing my best to muddle through, and one of the things that’s helped me is keeping up the biking routine. I hit a bit of a bump when the rain spoiled it Monday, though the rest of the week’s rides have been a real boon to my mental health, especially rides like yesterday’s: low humidity, mostly empty trail beyond me, the trees, and the animals; plenty of time and space to just let the mind empty and wander. Sometimes, of course, my mind wanders over to unfortunate earworm songs, and sometimes it falls to counting crank revolutions and calculating pedals per mile, but whatever floats in and out of my thought processes, it really does help to purge concerns and give me a bit of a reset. It is, as I’ve semi-jokingly taken to calling it, my “two-wheeled meditation.”

It helps that it’s been a kind of quiet week at work with few emergencies to deal with; my team’s doing their level best to stay on (or often slightly ahead of) schedule, and I’ve largely been left alone to do my job and not deal with weird manufactured crises. That’s always nice.

It appears as if I’ll be busy this weekend, starting tonight with dance recital dress rehearsal (I’m pitching in to help set up and run sound), the recital tomorrow, and riding out Fathers’ Day on Sunday (see this week’s references to my mental state for details). I also need to work in the usual tasks of laundry, groceries, and the like.

Luckily, I think I’ll be able to make some time for some more of that two-wheeled meditation.

Anyway, Friday morning tunes. A neat mix, including a tune I get to play with a friend every now and then, a neat 80s rarity, and in at #3, perhaps the most 90s song ever; or at least the one that kicked off the whole early 90s aesthetic (even if it’s really about the events in late 80s Eastern Europe).

Music. Another kind of meditation, or at the very least, a neat distraction for someone like me.

1. “Daughter” – Pearl Jam
2. “Sunglasses At Night” – Corey Hart
3. “Right Here, Right Now” – Jesus Jones
4. “It’s A Mistake” – Men at Work
5. “One Brown Mouse” – Jethro Tull
6. “Sweet Revenge” – Bangs
7. “Here and Now” – Letters to Cleo
8. “No More Tears” – Ozzy Osborne
9. “From the Beginning (Alt Version)” – Emerson, Lake & Palmer
10. “Oh! You Pretty Things (BBC Radio Version)” – David Bowie
11. “Fascination Street (Extended Mix) – The Cure