A friend in NZ and I were messaging one another on facebook the other day, and as we signed off, his exit line included the phrase, “Enjoy your third summer!”

I hadn’t thought about this…I hashtagged “second summer” until my fingers hurt on instagram for the last 5 months, but somehow this continuation of the season momentarily escaped me.  It’s pretty wild to think about.  I have wanted to chase summer for many years, and to be finally doing that just feels…right.  Granted, skiing is my second love, but it is so weather dependent, I found myself more often frustrated than stoked in recent years.  In a very cerebral sense, it’s weird that my life revolves around revolutions: that of bicycle wheels, and similarly, the Earth around the Sun.  I structure my life around these two cycles, and sometimes I pause…..and laugh because on paper it seems ridiculous.  But then, on a more esoteric level, it makes all the sense in the World, and the prospect of living in any other fashion would be equally as ridiculous.

Sunny and 70, what’s not to like?

Even after riding in the Southern Summer for the Northern Winter, I still felt a great sense of joy and excitement yesterday when I got out on the trails for the first ride of the Northern Summer.  I know it could have just been another day on the bike, but I really reveled in the occasion, because despite the snow that was still residing in the shade, I know that in the immediate future, there is more Summer to be had; to me, that’s the best news.  Summer isn’t just a denotation on a calendar or a season for the weatherman to ruin with bad predictions:  it is play time.  It is the time when all of my friends and I gather in the woods with wheeled steeds, happy-yell a lot, and get dirty.  Pretty excellent, right?
The other elements of warm weather, greenery, hammocks, suns-out-guns-out, blah blah blah SUMMER make me smile and happy.  Winter, it holds these elements too, but I think it really breaks down to the nostalgic and angelic implications of Summer – when we were free to roam and be reckless as kids.  Those were our glory daze, our formidable years come to life, the months of our reckonings for all that was to become of our lives.
Now, at 25, not much has changed; Fighting the rift of unemployment, misdirection, self-doubt, and anything else sitting around thinking too much can conjure up.  But, I’m reveling in it this time around.  I have momentum for the first time in a long time.  I just got home from something amazing.  It’s almost Summer again.  I’m an adult, but I’m going to shirk those duties for as long as possible.  I’m going to keeping riding my bike, taking photos, and writing until something happens.  A lively mind and body, unchained to a desk or some soul-stifling existence is my M.O.  I’m trying to find a way to have a life-long vacation, and make a living doing it.  I’ll probably have to hustle harder than if I’d just sat down in an office and pushed a big red button for 50 years, but that’s not a life worth living, now is it?  We get one go at this, and I don’t want to look back and think about how nice the sun looked through the break-room window on a blue-bird Summer’s day…