It’s over. We gulped down the Mountain Dew of a two-year presidential campaign, jumped up and down and belched out a new president. I am glad the campaign is over, as it was a long, torturous grind, but I will confess that I am a little distressed that our president elect is being celebrated with KKK parades and that an image search on our new first lady requires a Google safety setting to not get kicked out of the library. It’s in times like these that I use my time on my bike as unprescribed valium, a way to forget email, grabbed p*ssies and other nonsense.

I’ve been riding a lot.

And I’m happy to report that I can pedal my bike, the air has nice crispness to it and the sun still shines. Birds are still a thing and the deer care less and less about the presence of people (seriously, they’ve essentially become tan cows). The flock of turkeys that congregate at the foot of Christmas Hill Road are prospering. They’ve repaved a lot of the roads near Monsey and the last gasps of the fall colors are clinging to the trees, allowing a few waning glimpses of their brilliance before they go.

And all of this is good, because winter is coming, and it’s going to come after us like a bitch.