Finding Something you had All Along

 

Let me take you back to my childhood. Hide and Seek was the game. The Garden City Baptist Church was the location. This church had multiple buildings besides the sanctuary and this made for multiple paths back to the base (usually the front steps of the sanctuary). The seeker would check a list of well-known hiding places: behind the church's sign in front, the playground, and the parking lot in the back, but the most special hiding place was a dead-end at the top of a stairwell. If you hid there and the seeker came up, you were easily caught with no where to run. The risk for the seeker however, was by committing to go up the stairs, most other hiders could easily reach base. Hiders rarely hid there, and seekers rarely checked it, but everyone's strategy was based on what might happen at the top of the stairs.

Childhood visit over. Back to the present. Sort of.

My dream the other night was one of those wonderful dreams where you find a new passage in a familiar place. I found a way to open up the dead-end at the top of the stairs. After this discovery, I became a Hide and Seek magician, if only in my dream.

Before there was much wealth to amass, kings would consult wise men to interpret their dreams. Are our dreams no longer worthy? After all, what is the purpose of a dream except to show you what the world could be like?

It's an incredible feeling to solve a problem that has been hounding you for so long, but I still need to consult the wise men. I don't know what real-life puzzle I may have solved by finding a new way to get to the top of the stairs.

One possible dream-connection may be with my cycling. I frequently have the feeling when I ride a bike that I'm finding something I had all along. It's hard to rationalize, but I try none-the-less:

• The bicycle is how I got to the Baptist Church. Maybe the dream is a return to my childhood.
  
• In the decades before the automobile, the bicycle was hugely popular in this country. It is impressive that bikes are still around given the convenience and ubiquity of the automobile today. It's as if bicycles have to be re-discovered.
  
• The bicycle provides a genteel and human face to transportation. Perhaps the bicycle is reminding us that -- whether intentional or not -- avoiding poor weather and covering long distances ends up removing us from one another.
  

I'm no wise man, but the bicycle certainly seems to be wise.

Commute Summary

Round Trip Distance: 17.6
Number of Cyclists seen: 17 (good for December, but it was warm today)
In-bound Route: Goofin' 9.6
Out-bound Route: Edgewood Kroger via Krog Street
Weather: Shorts the week before the Winter Solstice.