A Moment of 'Mental Vacation'

I went for a ride recently using a variation of my typical routes.

That alone isn’t a big deal. It is like throwing a dart at the board and deciding “today I’m riding the bowtie route (bowtie because it is wide at both ends and crosses in the middle. Call it a figure-eight if you like),” or I’ll start on the bowtie and take a left instead of a right.

That is effectively what happened on this ride. I went on a route that is reasonably quiet, traffic was mostly a half-mile away across the grasses and the road was not great but acceptable. It was a nice balance for a breezy start to...