The next time you see a little bird flying into the wind, think of a cyclist out riding on a day like today. You know, little birdy’s up there flapping really hard but pretty much staying in one spot. I felt that way a couple times this morning, making the ten-mile-plus ride from the Apple Store in Knox-Henderson to our home in Oak Cliff. Southerly winds that were approaching twenty miles an hour had me at times pedaling even downhill, or hardly moving at all. Waiting on the light at a downtown intersection I was almost blown over. It’s okay. Just as you do with little birdy, you can laugh at me.

Still, we’re lucky here in Dallas to have had urban advocates literally pave the way for biking to be a normal part of our daily routines. I wouldn’t so casually set out on a trip like today’s were it not for the Katy Trail that I rode from Knox-Henderson to downtown in less than 10 minutes (sometimes a feat in a car); and a new, dedicated bike lane on the mile-long Jefferson Boulevard bridge that carries you high over the Trinity River parallel to I-35 where it takes off for Austin.

I took this photo on that bridge, in the southbound bike lane. Here the grade is more uphill than you can ever sense in a car. On a hot, windy day it feels like you’re just pedaling into the sky, Oak Farms Dairy is still out of sight over the horizon, and Oak Cliff itself seems like an abstract concept. You start wondering if you made the whole thing up in your head.