Day Twenty Two Tuesday 5th June 2007

Forecast for today: Tuesday
Partly cloudy with a shower or two. Light southerly wind.

Precis: Shower or two.
City: Min 8 Max 15

World Environment Day today

According to the World Environment Day Web Site .

The Earth has warmed by approximately 0.75 °C since pre-industrial times. Eleven of the warmest years in the past 125 years occurred since 1990, with 2005 the warmest on record. There is overwhelming consensus that this is due to emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), from burning fossil fuels.

Examination of ice cores shows that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere than at any time in the past 600,000 years. Between 1960 and 2002, annual anthropogenic global emissions of CO2 approximately tripled. They rose by about 33 per cent since 1987 alone. This information and more can be found in fact sheets on the site. Reading this gives me plenty of motivation to go car free.

The morning is crisp and clear, the sky is blue and the sun is shining. I tentaively choose the bike over the trike today. I want to do the once over, again on the trike before I go out in traffic. Still have that "crash and burn" image going through my head. I am tentative because I think the trike will be better for my back, and the bike might pick up the bumps and be a bit rougher on my tender back.

The bike is okay, my back feels okay, I remind myself to take it easy, so I can live to ride another day! I can really feel the cold today, my normal double glove protection is not keeping the biting cold out. There is a feel about the air on a cold crisp morning that is enlivening, it is not the cold, but something else.

The crispness brings a focus to the air moving in and out of me. The feeling of it at the tip of my nose, cool, clear, pure. Then the clearing of the sinuses, a change from external to internal, as I feel the air move inside my upper cheeks and under my eyes. Then it moves up into my forehead. Next is the cloud that forms as I breath out through my mouth. Then the light fog against my face, warm and moist, clinging to me for a brief moment as I ride through my own breath. I imagine the little cloud behind me forming once again into one mass as it then whisps away, upwards, never to be seen again.

So despite the clear sign of winter the start of the start of the day feels good, appropriate for world environement day! Perhaps the blue sky and sun shining have more to do with lifting the mood than anything else?

The ride in is easy. It seems that there is little traffic at this time on a Tuesday morning. I wonder if the cold has put people off, or is it that usually I am riding the path at 5 am on a Tuesday. It is amazing how mood impacts on what an activity feels like. However, as I am discovering riding also impacts on mood.