Happiness is riding a bicycle

"It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle."- Ernest Hemingway

This has been an incredible weekend, and I honestly feel happy. Not that "yeah I've having a good day" type of happy, but actual happiness. It all started with a trip up to Yellow Springs to get some breakfast with my friend at the Sunrise Cafe. Though I frequent the ' Springs often, I realized that I usually only eat pizza and ice cream when I go up there. To say that my breakfast was delicious would be an understatement. Everything was cooked from scratch with organic, local products, and you can definitely tell that it's different from the usual "oatmeal from a box" that I eat for breakfast each morning. I will definitely have to make it up there for breakfast again! It was also great to get a chance to hang out with someone I've been fortunate enough to meet at my favorite coffee shop in town. You can't beat great food, an awesome atmosphere, and wonderful company. After breakfast I got a chance to find out some secret spots in Y.S. that I didn't know about before, and have some interesting conversations. I love getting to learn about other people, you can learn so much from other people that you may never learn otherwise.

Saturday was another awesome day that included an awesome bike ride to get tea. Why I had never biked to get my tea before, I don't know, but I think I'm going to try to do it more often. It was great riding down there, got a chance to start re-reading Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer (I forgot how awesome that book is), and of course enjoy some delicious tea. When I travel places, even when its a shorter ride such as my ride to get tea, I feel empowered by what I was able to do (even if its only a total of 20 miles), and it makes me happy. After I showered, I decided to treat myself to a wonderful dinner of BBQ and Virgil's rootbeer (aka the best rootbeer in the world). I also stopped back at the coffee shop on the way to get my food to say goodbye to my friend who is leaving for South Africa for a trip (and pick up a drink for my friend). Saturday was filled with spending time with great people. I truly am blessed to have such wonderful people in my life, and I hope that they know how much I appreciate having them around.

Now we get to Sunday, which has been a day of reflection (and working on homework). Though I spent the first part of the day being lazy at home, I ended up heading to the coffee shop to work on some homework. I managed to get some of it done, but I will probably be spending a good portion of the evening working on the rest. After doing some homework, I came home, and picked up my bike and rode out to a park in Kettering to do some more reading (for pleasure, not homework). The ride was fun, though the way to the park included a very big hill (which I slowly, but steadily climbed up), and hanging out at the park, cooling off with my feet  in the water, and just reading and relaxing was very nice. I've also heard from some friends from the trip, which always makes me happy.

This has been an incredible weekend, and I think its going to help me get through the long week of classes I have ahead. Not only do I have the class that I've been going to for a while now, I am also starting another class this week. I'll be commuting about 45 minutes- an hour from Monday through Thursday this week. My Tuesday Thursday class is three and a half hours long, and I'm not sure how it's going to go yet. I just keep reminding myself that taking these classes now will lead me to graduation in May. Less than a year to go! The finish line is just ahead, but I have to climb a big hill to get there.