well it’s late in the summer again, and the internet’s been less of a wonder.

instead i’ve been slow-rolling the slow-rolled hills of my hometown, pushing bicycles through the late June heat and then late July heat and most of all in the late August heat. it’s that sort of fever that makes you look different at your own overworked eyes in the mirror; the kiln of late august that makes you start to feel a little more prideful about the quirks of your repaired-not-replaced, built-not-bought vintage personality, kintsugi cracks gleaming gold under a big desert sun.

the kerouac-tongued streets of denver widen, lazily spilling out before handlebars. you can take virginia ave over to the shade of cool franklin, north to the teen avenues, and maybe you can take sixteenth over to east high — it’s that big farmer’s market every saturday morning, overflowing with parents shipping their young children by cargo bike, and folks that look just like their dogs and queers that look just like each other, and a four-deep line of older men walking like much younger men, dressed impeccably and wielding canvas totes full of western slope peaches. they open dry punchlines for each other like the corks of crisp Muscadet wines, and you smile along with them even though you can’t hear exactly what they’re laughing about.

you can ride out from the market with the spoils of that war of cold brew queues and nervous birkenstocks, your hard-fought Saturn peaches, your moody Black Krim heirloom tomatoes, those great bulbs of Killarney Red garlic and those fistfuls of basil. the sun will be high up the ladder of the day now, and it feels good and free to squint and sweat and languish in the dry air. 

you keep riding — the scent of the air is a ballroom, crowded with those paired dancers construction site diesel and asphalt, the mown St. Augustine grass of fascist lawns and the butterfly bushes and lilacs of liberated ones, hot rod exhaust and motor oil, golden pine resin and white sage. when the sun dives past the peaks on the horizon, the acrid and aperitive scent of block party barbecue smoke becomes tobacco and backyard bonfire. the sounds of the day fade, the sighing twilight decrescendo, until it’s just you in the cooling air under the full moon, and the consonant pulse of bicycle tires on the road.