Biking vs walking

I have opened the biking season. I think it is the first time ever I have biked on my own - apart from biking to work. But Staffan has a cold, and I felt I needed to get back in touch with my bike before I started using it daily again. It's a nice sunny day, and rather than walking along the river, I took my two-wheeled friend. Biking has some advantages over walking. The same distance is much shorter when you bike. I went twice as far almost without thinking about it. You feel superior to walkers and especially joggers. (I have never understood the point with jogging; seems an extreme form of masochism.) You feel you have deserved to sit down on a bench and enjoy the sun. I wish I had brought coffee, as I saw other people had done. On the other hand, you see less when you bike. Or at least I do. I am too focused on where I am going. I cannot stop to talk to a chaffinch as I did when I walked last weekend, because I am going too fast to notice a chaffinch. I register swans and ducks with my side sight. I cannot see whether the buds on the trees have become larger. I realize that I have totally missed the snowdrops I saw last week.

Yet both walking and biking feels superior to the gym, where I, after a long break, went last Thursday.