Crossing Paths

            Our ride day came with a slight break in the heat wave of the week; instead of temperatures in the mid to upper 90s, temperatures were in the low 90s, around 91 for our ride.  The sun was out, but there were towering clouds in the sky, so I was hoping for some cloud cover to provide some relief; the relief never came.  The whole ride was hot despite the little bit of cool air in the slight breeze.  Hot rides like today’s provide me understanding for people who choose to ride in their t-shirts and shorts.  However, all it would take is one tumble for me to appreciate sweating in the safety gear.

            For this ride besides keeping cool thoughts, I worked on looking ahead and around for potential issues.  Sometimes I let myself rely too much on Bill for watching the road.  I am working on not letting that become a habit, so while I enjoyed the still lush foliage thanks to all the recent rain, I forced myself to pay attention to the road and the traffic as though Bill wasn’t ahead of me.  Luckily, there wasn’t anything weird or funky in today’s ride; the only squirrel that crossed our path did so well out ahead of us.

            The ride was one of movement to keep the air flowing over us.  I didn’t mind because we zoomed past some softly sweet-smelling crape myrtles.  I had my helmet visor up slightly to let in air and those soft summer smells.

            With the heat I wasn’t sure about spotting any butterflies.  I thought I’d see a few cabbage whites around, but we had been cruising for over half the ride, and I hadn’t spotted a single butterfly.  As I rode past the gravel lot, I looked around for last week’s kamikaze pipevine swallowtail, but it wasn’t until we were heading back to the garage that a black butterfly crossed right in front of my helmet.  A mile more down the road and a cabbage white seemingly appeared out of thin air crossing in front of me causing me to laugh out loud.  I think what makes crossing paths with butterflies while riding a motorcycle is the chance of contact.  I’m not riding fast enough to hurt the butterflies, yet the motion of the motorcycle doesn’t set up a good landing platform for the butterflies.  The two butterflies did distract me from the heat of the ride and made me even happier that I was out riding even on such a hot day.