Alignment & Balancing

(Day 4 – Aix-en-Provence > Aigues-Mortes – 3 July 2025 – 120 km, 365 m)

Today, I practice balancing: hearing what foods my body needs and when, how many nuts versus fruits versus licorice junkfood; finding the time of day I remove my sweaty windbreaker or respond to work messages; leaning right or left when the wheel slams hard and straight into a large rock; slowing down to do nothing at all and cooling off in super markets; sensing when to speed up, to cross, to wait, to declip; wiggling my toes when I start to lose feeling in my left digitus quartus; forgetting the so-called emergencies; accepting the bag weight to shed and releasing myself of the of the attachment to whatever I leave behind and to whatever I lose; letting the rushing rivers write and erase poems in my mind; holding tight to the shoulder on high-traffic roads; stopping and knowing how often to stop; looking down at my bike computer, up at the road, over at the escarpment, out to the horizon; grabbing my bottle in the face of oncoming winds; balancing the siren song of the blackcap with the undulating flight of the cirl bunting with the calming aroma of lavender fields; balancing the untamed flood of memories of my marriage, now over. I practice balancing.