Biking on Main

Bike in Breezeway

The streetlights were still humming when I pushed off from the curb, the kind of soft electric buzz that belongs only to the early hours. Main Street was empty except for a delivery truck two blocks down and the faint echo of my tires rolling over the brick crosswalks. The air had that cool edge that lasts just a few minutes in the summer, a small gift for anyone awake early enough to catch it.

I’ve been biking to the shop more lately, partly for the simplicity of it and partly because it slows me down in a way walking doesn’t and driving never will. Pedaling through a quiet downtown feels like reading the place before the rest of the city adds its annotations. I notice small things that would otherwise blur past. A storefront light left on overnight. A new crack forming in the sidewalk. The way the vines behind the Yoga Studio seem to climb a little higher each week. These details don’t change the course of a day, but they shift something in me. They remind me that maintenance and attention are forms of care, and that a downtown grows not just through big projects but through the dozens of small moments when someone looks closely enough to act.

As I glided down the gentle slope toward the shop, I thought about how much of my work, at the Literary Depot, at Soluna, and on the Connect Downtown board, comes down to learning the rhythms of this place. Buildings have them. Blocks have them. Even problems have them. And the more familiar I become with those rhythms, the more I understand that stewardship isn’t about running ahead or forcing momentum. It’s about matching pace, adjusting when needed, and trusting that consistency creates its own kind of progress.

I locked my bike to the rack outside the storefront and watched the first hint of sunrise touch the upper windows. For a moment, the whole block seemed to breathe. This quiet, steady downtown that’s still becoming itself. This community of people trying, in their own ways, to make it better. This small stretch of street that teaches me something new every day.

I turned the key in the door and stepped inside, grateful that before anything else happened, I had already moved through the morning slowly enough to notice where I was.