IS THAT RAIN ON YOUR CHEEKS.....

.....or are you just happy for me?

29 December 2002

As I stood in my office, water dripped off of my pants legs and formed little pools on the floor around me. My fingers stuck to the keyboard, as I had just removed my biking gloves and my hands were still wet. Drops of water rolled off of my bangs and into my eyes.

I had been dry ten minutes earlier, standing in the kitchen of my the home of my friends Ellen and Shelly. Shelly had just printed some photos for me and when she called, I said I'd go right over to pick them up.

I checked the sky and saw that it was grey, but it didn't feel like rain. There was a wind, but I hadn't been on the Blue Angel in a long time and I felt that it (and I) needed some street time.

It was rough going. It's only half a mile to their house, but I was battling a headwind that I only learned in the last few minutes got up to 30 mph. I down shifted to 4--unheard of on that bike--and I still was barely moving. My chest was heaving as I breathed heavily--and it wasn't entirely because I had not been on a bike in over a week.

I sat in the kitchen and we looked at the photos--an amazing product. I'll tell ya, printing digital photos has definitely improved. (For Christmas, Olivia made a print of the photo she took of me the day we went out to check out bikes for the first time, last February. The print she made is 8x10 and you would be hard pressed to tell that it's not from a film camera. Her new printer prints at 2400 dpi and even under bright light, giving it careful scrutiny, on that high gloss professional paper, it looks terrific. )

Walt had taken a disk to the local camera shop to have prints made for his mother. They turned out OK, but it was going to cost a fortune to have them printed, so Shelly offered to print them on her photo-quality printer. The results are as astounding as those that Olivia got with her printer.

We spent a lot of time oohing and ahhing over the photo quality, looking at the manual that went with the printer, and discussing where one can get one of the new photo-quality printers for an affordable price.

Then Walt called to ask if I wanted to join him and Jeri in going to see the matinee of Catch Me If You Can, the new Tom Hanks/Leonardo diCaprio movie (excellent film, by the way), so I packed up the photos and prepared to ride my bike home.

It had started raining. Shelly and Ellen offered to drive me home, but I decided I'm tough. Cindy wants us to start riding bikes, come rain or come shine, so I figured that this quick .5 mile ride would be good training for the real thing, should it come to that.

I had left my helmet hanging from the handlebars, though, so it was already wet when I put it on my head (but I figured that was no problem, since it would undoubtedly get wetter on the ride home). By the time I got the bike out onto the street, a squall had arrived. It was pouring. I hadn't gone more than the distance of two houses before my clothes were soaking wet.

The only good thing was that I had the strong wind at my back, and where on the ride over I had struggled to make 7 mph in 4th gear, I was flying down the street at 17 mph in 7th gear. I made it home in record time.

So here I was, standing in my office, hair dripping, clothes dripping, hands wet, and I was checking my e-mail ('cause, of course you always check your e-mail the very first thing you enter the house, no matter how uncomfortable you may be).

But the water on my cheeks was warm, not cold. And it wasn't rain. It was from tears. Tears of joy. Tears of elation. Tears of victory. Tears of pride, even if it wasn't for me personally.

Why was I crying? I suspect I wasn't the only one in the journaling community shedding happy tears today.

This is the reason why.