Today was the first day that I felt a drop of rain. As a matter of fact, I felt many drops of rain. Or, more accurately, a fine mist that so slowly and barely perceptibly evolved into rain that I never even bothered putting my rain jacket on.

In honor of being on NY State Route 13 on the 13th of September I attempted to keep my average speed reading on my bike computer at 13 miles per hour. Which, when biking through broad tracts of cornfields and poverty, is easily accomplished: I got into the zone and just biked. Rain is a very good motivator, as it turns out. The only remotely remarkable thing that happened during my first 20 miles was when I stopped to respond to a text message. An elderly man pulled up alongside me and asked, "Do you know where you are?"

"Yes, I have a GPS on my phone."

"You're at the end of the world!" and drove off cackling.

By the time I got into Cortland I was hungry, quite wet, and starting to shiver so I asked a toothless and slightly unhinged-looking fellow in an American flag shirt where I could get a bowl of hot soup. He directed me to a place called the Community Restaurant, which I expected would be a diner, but as it turns out is the sort of wood-paneled, carpeted, mirrored restaurant that elderly people get dressed up to go out to for Sunday dinner. I felt incredibly out of place in my bedraggled pigtails, dirty sneakers, and wet fleece pullover, but the restaurant's warmth and delicious chickeny smell dissuaded me from seeking a more casual joint. Besides, I'm getting used to feeling out of place.

It required a degree of human willpower I did not realize I had to NOT curl up in the booth and go to sleep once I'd polished off a huge plate of pot roast and mashed potatoes. Fortunately, once I got back on the bike the rain had let up, the dark rain clouds had punched out, and fluffy cumulus clouds were coming on for the evening shift. By the time I rode into Ithaca and turned down Forest Home drive to head to my friend Koni's place, sun was streaming through the trees and sparkling off the river.

It was good to catch up with Koni, but it was hard to see him going through a particularly hard time with pretty much everything: work, health, love, and friendships. And when any one of these areas goes awry it affects all the others. I don't really feel right about going into detail here, but suffice it to say it sucks to watch a friend, even a a no longer particularly close friend, suffer.

But it was good to be reminded of how awesome and brilliant Koni is. How many people do you know who can keep you entertained with a discussion of the genetics of rice over dinner? I told him genetics was the one part of biology that I could never quite get my head around, and he said to him it was the one part of biology that makes perfect sense. He got me as far as understanding how DNA codes for protein chains (Ah, messenger RNA. Brings me back to high school biology class.) but there's still a big leap between proten chains and actual cell structures, and between cells and organs. Koni's response was, "That's where you get into development. I don't know shit about development."

Oh, and I have to share this hilarious story about Koni's old college roommate Eric. Eric goes into a Kinko's with a blank sheet of paper and asked the guy at the counter to reduce it by 25 percent and put it on a transparency. The guy looks at him questioningly.

"But it's blank!"

"Well, I need it reduced by 25% and put on a transparency."

The guy comes back with a blank transparency. Eric complains that he cut the edges off.