What surprised me most when I first joined the cycling club during the first few weeks of my freshman year — and still surprises me, really — is the multitude of members who started commuting by bike (in addition to the usual throw-on-the-spandex-and-bolt riding) not because they want to perpetually savor the thrill of pedaling, but because they hate the prospect of walking. I simply don't understand this aversion.

Very willingly will I trade the speed of a pedaled commute for the opportunity to think during a nice, long walk.

On my walk home tonight — from the skating rink, so a longer walk than usual — I had a lot of time to think. About dinner, and after-dinner, and my day, and the past week, which was unusual in too many ways. I mulled over some math problems that were, and still are, in my head, and I thought about how much — and how subtly — the persistent construction in Madison has changed the campus, even in my short tenure here. I thought about dinner again, actually.

Despite all of that, I mostly thought about nothing. The traffic din and the cold helped, I think, to just move my mind's focus from everything to nothing.

Golly, I'm tired.