Other Matters: Summer

I used an hour and a half of the fifteen-and-a-half hours of daylight on this first day of summer for a morning ride on the Bianchi.The bike took me (with a little help) up a series of hills, past the golf courses and expensive housing developments that are pushing farms farther out from town and up the western slopes of the valley. Never fear, however; there are plenty of orchards left. If what I saw this morning is an indication, the world can expect an abundance of Washington applesnext fall, regardless of competition from China and New Zealand. By the time I got onto the roads out in orchard country, what passes for rush hour traffic around here was down to a car every four or five minutes. It was a peaceful place to start the day.