shannon's blog

It's not easy for me to keep a positive outlook through the winter. With ten hours of daylight each day and the majority of those spent inside in front of a computer. Beside creating my own music, I search for ways to keep my mind entertained after I bike home in the dark with eyes seemingly fixed to the illuminated area of my headlight, hoping deer are not suddenly going to appear in it.

At the closing of this year's Interbike Dirt Demo in Bootleg Canyon I wandered over to the Fuji Bicycles compound to pick up my three-day loaner bike, a Fuji Cross RC. Unlike most of the other bikes that were loaned to the Bicycle Times/Dirt Rag staff, mine wasn't strictly a city bike.

Although I enjoy the sound of crickets rubbing their wings together and the trailing off sound of a cicada, hearing and seeing those insects always reminded me as a kid that summer was near over and school was about to begin. Leaves littering the ground still make my stomach sink and these days instead of wondering if I'll be in the same classroom as my friends, I think about the advancing colder temperatures and cheap flights south.

On this beautifully sunny 2009 National Bike to Work Day the weather in Pittsburgh couldn't have been better. (We usually get rained on). With Black Sabbath playing from memory in my head, I pedaled, the long way, over to one of the complimentary breakfast stops that were set up around the city to see how things were going. The stops were designed to encourage more people to pedal to work and to thank those that already do.