Beginnings and Endings

Although some days it doesn't seem like it because at times I tend to type all around some idea without ever making my thoughts coalesce so that they flow pleasingly and logically to make a definite discernible point, I often spend quite a bit of time in thinking about what I might write here before starting to crank anything out.  Today's post began with the simple notion that today might have been the last day on which I'll take to the scooter in shorts and a tee shirt.  The more I thought about it, though, it's really about the passing of another season, the changes that always sneak up on me as summer segues into early Fall, the thoughts of the impending season to follow during which my time off the scooter will be measured in weeks rather than days or hours.  But, with more thought I turned up the notion that much of what I write here seems to be about beginnings or endings because the in-betweens are just kind of marking time toward the start or finish of something.

I'm fairly certain that that conclusion came only after I saw this picture that I took this afternoon in anticipation of this post.  There I was atop a hill where one can look down upon a nearby neighborhood like the Grinch surveying his domain from the top of Mt. Crumpet, and as I ran into place in time for the timer on the camera to do its thing I didn't give any conscious thought about smiling or otherwise "arranging" my face for the picture. 

My face rarely "lies" in a photo, and even when it does those well versed in seeing through my facial expressions can't be fooled.  I trotted over to the scooter as the timer counted down and then the shutter snapped to reveal precisely what I seemed to be feeling at the moment.  My face doesn't show thoughts about putting away the tee shirts and shorts.  Its glumness reflects that whole mess of putting away the summer and getting ready, as if one really can get ready, for the in-betweens of winter that won't be far off.

Today was an ending - one of the things that gets written about.  No doubt, unless I croak (as my Daddy said for too many years before he finally did nearly three years ago) before April or May I'll be waiting for that fresh beginning of a new riding season.  Oh, I'll probably get many good rides in before I park the BV under the deck with a sigh of resignation and hook up the trickle charger, but not without the "gearing up" that cooler weather requires.  I'll sorely miss just putting on a pair of shoes and sailing out the door to hop onto my trusty steed clad in the tee shirt and shorts that I sport almost every minute from June through sometime in September every year.

And just in case my misery wasn't apparent enough in the first picture, I just had to shoot another by the colorful gazebo that's been in my pictures many times in the course of writing this blog as a featured prop to herald the coming of a summer or putting it away.  Nope.  I don't look happy.

Even the scooter itself seems to be looking longingly for next summer to get here.  Can you blame it?