I wandered through the Stop and Shop looking for bread and butter pickles for my father and became aware that the Cure were playing over the PA. I paused and considered this chronological and cultural inconsistency.  This was the aberrant punctuation mark to my experiment in turning back time. A little earlier I parked the car at the trailhead for Bear Mountain Reservation in Danbury, Connecticut. I had not been to this small network of trails in many years. I steered my new full suspension bike down a path I had not ridden on since the 1990s. I rode a hardtail GT bike back then. My memory deceived me.  I stopped midway between a root and a rock and walked my bike.  The years had piled on. I was fatter and slower and quicker to panic than so many years prior. Did I ever have ride these trails with any competence? 

I turned around and head back to another trail I remember having some middling adeptness with navigating. It was overrun with mud and rock. That was it. Done. I went back to the car. Things are harder. I am slower.  A little while later I am standing near the exit to the grocery store thinking about Robert Smith and the passing of time. I walk out to the parking lot with pickles and a bag of double-stuffed golden Oreos.

Verdict: If you are over fifty years old and lack sufficient confidence and stamina, and hearing the Cure in a grocery store reminds you of fragility and loss, then don’t ride your bicycle at Bear Mountain reservation in Danbury, Connecticut.