It's finally spring. Like, really, truly, spring. Last Wednesday it poured rain all day. When I looked out the window the next morning everything had turned green. Later that day on my ride I saw tulips just starting to blossom. When I rode home from work that evening they were in full bloom. It's amazing what can happen in the space of a day.
I know I've mentioned this before, but the way a place smells is more evocative to me than the sights or sounds. Reno smelled like sage and rabbit brush (which, as a result of my 9 years there, smells like home), riding in the SF bay area smells like eucalyptus trees, Chico smells like oaks, driving down the central valley for a bike race smells like, erm, kind of gross, but evokes so many memories of traveling to Madera and Kern, and all those other central valley events. When there are forest fires and the air is smokey it always brings me back to growing up in Quincy - one particular fall where there were lots of fires and the valley filled with smoke, and I hung out with friends on a railroad bridge out Hwy 70.
I haven't yet determined what Massachusetts smells like. I guess I'm not familiar enough yet with the plant species, and there are probably too many different ones to pick out just one that screams at me. In the fall it smelled like decomposing leaves. Mostly it smells like wet dirt and growing things. It's always wet here. You know, classic east coast humidity. Even when it's dry it's wet. In the summer it smells like mosquitos and midges - there's so many bugs that when you go to take a deep breath you suck them up your nose. I know, pleasant. There's the smell of the marsh, which is pretty quintessentially New England - it smells like ocean, and marsh grass, and mud. It's full of life, though, and not just biting insects.
But winter was devoid of anything but the smell of cold. That smell where everything is frozen, and the air hurts your nose because it's so cold, and everything smells like diesel exhaust from the plows, and the exhaust mingles with the sand and salt in the snow piles on the sides of the road. When you're riding your bike and cars drive by you taste the salt they lay on the roads, and you taste it on your water bottle from the spray of your tires. The snow and ice take so long to melt that you can't remember the last time you saw dirt. Just dirt. Something other than pavement or ice. And then that first patch thaws, and there's this moment of incredible disbelief that you've survived winter. There had been days when you had ceased to believe spring would ever come. Day by day you see more brown earth until you can finally smell it. Wet dirt and decomposing leaves smell so good after a long winter of darkness and cold. And then you wake up one morning and it is really, truly springtime after all. You smell grass and growing things again, and it's amazing.
And now we've made it. Sure it's a little chilly and rainy, but I don't have to disconnect my water every night so it won't freeze, and there isn't a single patch of snow left. The trails are open for business, the roads are, well, still sandy and full of pot holes. But the trails are perfect, and we've been taking full advantage.
Yesterday was the Boston Marathon. Every time I watch a marathon (on TV - the Athens Olympics and now this one) I want to run one. I'm sure it would take me 5 hours. How can anyone not be inspired by that kind of athleticism and determination? How on earth can a human being run 26 miles in 2 hours? It's beautiful. And while they didn't throw down any 4 minute miles, my friends that went out there and put in blazing times totally inspire me, too. Anyway, next year I'm taking work of and going in to watch - something like that just has to be seen.
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