bike n bus journey

I've begun a new "thing" of fall. I am bikin' and busin' to and from work. I have several reasons for doing this, but the main reason is to try and take life a little slower than I have been. Even though fall is approaching and the temperatures are wondrously perfect and the bus fare for September is only 25 cents a ride and my carpool has been dismantled, the real thought behind the bike n bus idea is to
s l o w d o w n .

Is it working? Well, kinda. I'm not sure if taking away everyday conveniences make life less busy, it just makes things take longer than before which means in the end you can do less in a day. I still rush out to catch the bus at the last minute in the morning because I can never seem to leave the house on time. And I still somehow seem to fill my schedule in the evenings. But I think biking home has been really good because of the exercise and its de-stressing effect, not to mention the gorgeous scenery on Butter Road with the farms and fields of crops. It allows more time for mind-mulling and breathing fresh air away from cars and highways.

My goal is to make the 12.6 mile ride home at least twice a week and I've kept it up for 3 weeks now! Sometimes I ride with coworkers and sometimes I'm alone. Each time I ride I get to know the route better and feel like I'm less out of shape. Today as I was riding through one of the nicer neighborhoods off of Butter Road I heard someone playing "God Bless America" on bagpipes. It was not an instrument I expected to hear.

I'll end with a quote and a verse that someone from my church posted on our yahoo group that I printed and now have hanging above my desk.

"Busyness rapes relationships. It substitutes shallow frenzy for deep friendship. It promises satisfying dreams but delivers hollow nightmares. It feeds the ego but starves the inner man. It fills a calendar but fractures a family."

What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? ~Ecc 2:22,26