Yesterday didn’t go quite as planned… but it still turned out great.
Sunday started like every other Sunday: alarm at 4 a.m., into work by 6 a.m., unloading frozen groceries from pallets to runners. It’s glamorous work—if your idea of glamorous is wrestling with frozen peas at sunrise. By noon, I clocked out, grabbed a few things for dinner, and triumphantly headed home… except I left my car keys in the back room. Because of course I did.
Next stop: my company’s warehouse, where I also keep personal stuff. Mission: find a new hubcap for Harold—my wife’s Honda Civic. (Yes, Harold Honda. We name our cars around here.) While there, I met some guys loading a storage unit. Other than chatting with customers at work, this was my first random stranger conversation of the day.
Once home, I ditched the groceries, dusted off my bike (it’s been a month—don’t judge), and hit the Schuylkill River Trail. It’s flat, it’s pretty, and it’s Philly—what’s not to love? I pedaled from Conshy to the new endpoint in a neighborhood called Forgotten Bottom. (Sounds like SpongeBob’s “Rock Bottom” to me.)
At the park, I passed a couple of guys grilling chicken. I joked they were making me hungry, and before I knew it, they were offering me chicken, potato salad, and hospitality like we’d known each other forever. This—THIS—is why I always tell people the world isn’t the scary, hateful place the news makes it out to be. Yeah, bad stuff exists, but it’s the tiniest sliver of reality. Most people are awesome if you give them the chance.
We swapped stories, they asked about my biking, I encouraged one of them to get back into running (“start slow, trust me, I’m no Usain Bolt”). Later, I met another cyclist—a recent transplant from Brooklyn—and we bonded over our travels and what cycling means to us.
The moral? Go outside. Talk to people. Eat the chicken. The world’s friendlier than you think, and we’ve got way more in common than not.
