Alive

There's one song that I always associate with cycling: Vivace. I don't remember the composer's name, but it's the Vivace with the melody that goes like "pum-pada-pum-pum pada dadadada, pum pada-pum-pum pada da..." (Okay, sorrylah, bad description.)

I'm not a hardcore cyclist; not for me that punishing effort, pushing the frame to the uttermost speed of human flesh. (Unless I'm late for work.) What the tune fits perfectly with is the gentle up-and-down of a ride at crusing speed, breezing down the road on a sunny day. It's a happy song.

What's funny is that although my family was never 'musical' in the official sense - we have about one classical music CD, I went for lessons for a few years and aborted when I decided my teacher was too bossy - we always sang a lot. Especially on car trips. Hymns, the dumb songs you learn in school for Music class, Doughnut Man songs, later Veggie Tales songs, pop songs (which really drove my father crazy), harmonies. I shudder to think that kids now rely on built-in DVD players.

In the deepening dark on the way to the library just now, I thought of 'Taps' (Pa was a Boy Scout; he got all the way up to King's Scout, actually):

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.