The ride to work was beautiful. I love riding to work, watching the sun rise and enjoying 50F weather. I'm gonna get spoiled by rides like that.

The ride home, though, was kind of a bummer. I ride on the MUP when it's light out. Today, I saw gang graffiti that wasn't there a few days ago. I also saw a mom being very mean to her little 4-year-old (walking away and telling him to catch up while he was sobbing for her about 25 feet back); cigarette butts, roaches, and empty liquor bottles littering the area around the bench where I take my rest stop; a pregnant teenager smoking a cigarette and yelling at someone on her cell phone at the park by my house; those and the other signs of ignorance and poverty I see on my route put me in a bummer mood. Sometimes the MUP uplifts me, sometimes it bums me out.

I came from a poor neighborhood like the one I ride through on the way to my (lower middle class) house. I've lived in apartments where the first of the month was always a party because that's when everyone got their welfare checks. I understand poverty, I understand bad choices, I understand living paycheck to paycheck...but that doesn't mean I'm ever happy to see it. That doesn't mean I'd wish it on anyone.

All the philosophizing and navel-gazing I did was able to distract me from the fact that I had just ridden 3 miles uphill, though.