Eid Mubarak

I like to think of dates as opportunities to start anew. January 1st. My birthday. The first day of Spring.

Today is not just the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere.

Today is Eid: the Persian New Year. Traditionally celebrated at the very minute the Spring Equinox occurs (in today’s case, at 3:28 AM PST), my family opted to get together for an Eid dinner. There’s something about 3:30 in the morning that just doesn’t quite inspire celebration.

Today I celebrated with the wind on my face, Bontrager spokes spinning. I glided and grunted my way through nature, guided by the paseos in my town. I’ve recently revisited biking as the perfect way to close the rings on my Apple Watch. The Santa Clarita Valley calls to the cyclist in me. I could get anywhere I tend to go on my bike, if only the mileage didn’t spook me. I often watch my Strava Fly-bys after a sub-10 mile ride, having passed at least one person on a 60-mile journey.

I’m not there yet, but I see the beauty in the sport. I push myself to go further, go faster, find new roads (err… bike paths).

I find inspiration in this poem by Robert Frost on every ride:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

There’s something about taking “the road less traveled.” In some cases, this refers to the path I rarely turn down rather than one that is not taken by others.

I rode 7.44 miles today. Not my shortest, not my longest. But I rode up this hill that I’ve been eyeing. Every time we’d drive up, I’d say to myself, and sometimes aloud, that I’d ride up it one day. Today was that day.

It was exhilarating. It was freeing. It was a new road that I hadn’t yet traveled, and I am no longer afraid.

Let Spring begin.