I'm planning on making this bike thing a series for May (bike commute month) -- and writing something every day or almost every day about biking and/or alternative commuting.

Yesterday, as I hit a lovely downhill stretch coming home, I made a connection between the visceral feeling of biking -- those moments when you hit a perfect cadence and it's just you and the air, zipping along -- and something from my childhood.

I didn't learn how to ride a bike until I was almost 30 years old, which I've probably written about before here, and if not here, then on my personal site. Sometimes I've felt sad and almost jealous about it, because I didn't have that experience of freedom through biking when I was a kid or a teenager.

But as I said, yesterday it clicked with something that was very special to me when I was younger: the swings. I have always loved swings, even up into my adulthood. One of the more (few!) lovely memories of my teen years is sneaking into an elementary school playground late at night with a group of friends and sitting on the swings for hours. It's the same exhilarating/dizzying feeling of just you, hurtling through space, and the rush of the air, and everything is just a little bit precarious but for the moment, perfectly balanced.

::sigh::