2021 mileage: 646.7
Yesterday I had my first day of 2021 when I was unable to ride. This was because Michelle and I spent the day traveling to, and in, Grand Rapids. She had been told by a colleague about the opportunity to get a COVID vaccine there, since she is a teacher, and she asked me to join her in hopes they could squeeze me in at the end of the day, in case there were any vaccine doses left—and this, in fact, happened.
So, having missed yesterday, and since I never sleep soundly anyway, I went in and rode our stationary bike for 75 minutes this morning, between 1:15 and 2:30 a.m. While riding, I watched the movie Dear John, a treatment of the novel by Nicholas Sparks. I've been reading the book the last 2 days—or actually, rereading it, as it was the first novel by Sparks that I ever read (in February 2007). I was drawn to it when browsing in the library, and when I saw it on the shelf, its title reminded me of the weekly letters I write to my son.😎 However, it led to my becoming a huge fan of his writings—I have read 20 of his books now.
Anyway, I didn't quite finish the movie this morning. Then this afternoon, when I decided to do another ride, I finished up the 25 minutes or so that remained of it, and then watched the 1965 movie production for television of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Cinderella. When I was a boy, this was broadcast annually (like The Wizard of Oz), and I came to love it. But I hadn't seen it over a half century, and was pleased to find how much of the music and how many of the lyrics I still remembered perfectly.
"Ten Minutes Ago" from Cinderella
I was also struck by the way my viewings of Cinderella have bookended a life of amazingly wonderful musical experiences. As a composer and rehabilitating pianist now; as a music educator at Olivet College in the late eighties and early nineties; before that, as a doctoral student at Michigan State University in the mid eighties; before that, as a master's student at University of Michigan in the early eighties; before that, as an undergraduate at St. Olaf College in the late seventies; and before that, as a high school student at the Interlochen Arts Academy in the mid seventies. Before that, as a young boy, I was entranced by this movie, starring Leslie Ann Warren (b. 1946) as Cinderella, Stuart Damon (b. 1937) as the Prince, and Walter Pidgeon (1897-1984) and Ginger Rogers (1911-1995) as the King and Queen.
My split day gave me a total of 40.6 miles in 2 hours 18 minutes of riding.
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