After a month of travel and bad sleep, the belly fills up the Lycra biker’s shirt a bit more amply than in the heat of summer. Dressing up like a biker in form-fit color is one of the few acceptable spaces for a man of conventional preferences to strike out in just this way. But there are lots of other splashes of yellows and blues on bikers of all ages, many shapes, and both genders on the Monon this afternoon. I’m in good company.

Tooling north on a gentle upward slope at a decent pace, the landscape unfolds before one as though in slow motion while objects and persons closer in pass in a blur. I notice, as I often do, the high percentage of fit people on the Trail, but at speed they pass too quickly to stand out as individuals.

Overtaking is a different matter. You see the bike in front of you and its rider. You study him or her and the foot-, skate-, and bike traffic coming the other way to make sure you can pass without crashing into someone and dramatically decreasing their quality of life. You take the rider in, sometimes drafting long enough before passing to make out the make and quality of his ride.

The man in front of me takes up the space of two normal bikers. Looking like a man who overcame some wasting childhood disease that should have left him sedentary, his legs bow outward as matching curves. His pace is good. He’s clearly put in his miles on a bike. I admire his toughness even as I marvel at the spectacle—not too strong a word—of those bowed legs, churning away.

The image springs to mind of the old school buses that in years past ran the uphill route between Liberia, in Costa Rica’s Guanacaste province, and San José, that country’s capital high up on the Central Valley. Overtaking those rides in my relatively nimble Nissan Sentra, I used to marvel at how a vehicle so badly out of line could drive—most of the time—in a straight line down the highway. Often it was impossible to see one side of the bus while you could read the lettering on the other side from behind the thing.

A man like this pedaling his way north on the Monon looks a lot like that: remarkably odd form, unbendable determination, day-at-a-time ethos. I almost stop to phone my New Jersey-bound friend Kevin Jezequel to savor the memory, but decide to conserve what’s left of my cell phone in case I need it farther out.

In the shady, red-and-yellow Autumnal path north of Carmel, I spy two women walking toward me, each with a dog on a leash. As I approach, their gait looks strong, accustomed to the Trail. Although I can’t make out any features, one could charitably observe that these two friends seem to be enjoying their afternoon in the dawn rather than the dusk of middle age. Probably theirs is a daily ritual of exercise and friendship. Likely they do not know which they value more.

One of the dogs bobs strangely as he goes, though I can’t yet tell why. As I pass, I note that he has just three legs, yet labors on as a happy member of his foursomely pack. It reminds of nothing so much as my fellow biking novice Eddy, who in my absence and at this very moment is suffering on the mountains around Asheville, North Carolina in the company of two-wheeler phenoms Todd Rankin and John Bernard. Eddie and I look a lot like that dog when tooling along in our foursome.

Coming home, my Rhodesian Ridgebacks romp energetically in the front yard in what remains of this beautiful Fall day.

One can imagine better things in all sorts of ways. But on this afternoon, when the midwestern Autumn makes a man feel like Adam taking in his Garden, this day is good, worthy of—as Leonard Cohen or the Canadian Tenors might have it—a ‘broken Hallelujah’.

An economic shattering so profound that it can still be called the Great Depression was using up its second page on a nation’s hungry calendar. Improbably, the land just across 64th Street had been donated by John and Evaline Holliday fourteen years earlier to the State of Indiana on its one hundredth birthday. I reckon the proximity of Holliday Park contributes a third to the value of my home.

I’ve read that it was Jewish families, moderately prosperous, who pushed the city’s boundaries northward along the Monon Railway line. The abundance of Jewish houses of worship even today may bear this out.

I’ll never know who built this old house in 1930. Its run of medium-sized rooms, its strong beams, its cedar shake roof, its New England style, suggest an architect or home-builder unrestrained by convention yet not exactly adventurous. Its mature trees—chock full of birds who noisily voice their appreciation for shade and shelter—conjure up thoughts of tree-loving folk inured to the cheap thrill of expansive, grassy lawns.

The White River meanders its way through the neighborhood, drawing the line that marks the Holliday property to the south. A boy could walk out the front door of my home and have a line in the water in five minutes, a catfish on the end in ten.

This old house, like its neighbors to the east and west, owns only one claim to pretension. It sets upon the high ground, its property stunted in the back but descending with something approaching stateliness to the south.

Evergreens—old, gnarly pines and middle-aged, eclectically-arranged spruce, mark the western boundary. Red bud, magnolia, crab-apple, a venerable maple conspire to draw the northwest corner and the back row.

This old house’s three stories must have told the very story of prosperity in 1930. Was the basement finished or merely a convenient, cool storage against the heat and humidity of a Midwestern summer?

This old house is the junior entry in a neighborhood full of more ambitious building projects. Its 3200 feet, if they were an early entry in the sector’s plan, were soon eclipsed by buildings sporting four and five thousand.

Yet this old house made and makes no apology for its relatively diminutive footprint.

There is no hubris in this old house, but I reckon there’s some pride.

I sense it has not housed many residents who felt any need to apologize.

I mean to tell their story and the tale of the old house that welcomed them each Indiana evening.

The architectural delight hidden among blight, the greenery ensconced in gray, the unanticipated lung—as it is described in Latin American Spanish—of a green space where one least expects it brings a quiet satisfaction to the attentive city-dweller.

So it is that Holliday Park, an enchanting jewel half-rustic, half-refined, just across the street from my home adds such luster to life’s rhythms. There I run my dogs along well-manicured and forested paths. There on a Sunday afternoon hundreds of city-dwellers speaking various languages congregate for family picnics and church pitch-ins in a bodacious display of urban civility. Multiply hewed children play together without marking their differences on a high-quality playground funded in part by local residents who band together as the Friends of Holliday Park.

Though I have lived here for nearly six years, 2010 marks the first time I have donned running shoes to participate in one of the Park’s truly heart-warming festivals of civility. I’m going to estimate that two thousand suitably-lunged souls of all shapes and sizes gathered for this run. I, waking from my middle-aged winter slumbers, registered early, showing up for the proceedings with the number 13 attached to my chest, assuming that I was about to trot through 5 manageable kilometers. First mistake. Those would be miles, Mister. Oops.

Springtime had not yet smiled upon our merry band of Trail Warriors, though her advance guard had thawed the ground into delightfully sucking mud as we made our way along Indy’s White River.

Then this marvel: at a moment where the course had the elite runners double back and share the trail with us Plodders—though in opposite directions—it was the fast dudes who encouraged us less blurred runners along our way. Does it get any better, these little portraits of humanity, these slices of americana, these Hoosier moments?

We panted, we talked, we acquainted ourselves with the strangers who labored or sprang like gazelles for a moment beside us, we raffled, we admired and petted each others’ dogs.

We were Hoosiers. We were Indy. We were all, for a moment, Friends of Holliday Park.

Indianapolis, this adoptive city o’ mine, may be the most self-deprecating large village north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Yet on this chilling morning, this 20th of March, this muddy Springtime, she was golden.

With First Son home from his Seattle university, it seemed just the moment. Our party of four first sought out the somewhat budget-priced Brazilian Grill on the Circle City’s north side. FInding only indications that the Grill had gone out of business, I did what any self-respecting, red-meat-craving male with a car full of passengers would have done in my place: turned the Passat’s nose in the direction of downtown’s Fogo de Chao and pushed the pedal.

As a mid-sized city, Indianapolis is fortunate to figure among the relatively short list of this southern Brazilian chain’s venues. The location is modernistic, nicely lit in a subdued sort of way, staffed by friendly staff who move at a frenetic pace (of this, more anon) while dramatizing things via only occasional brushes with knife-wielding fatalities, and chock full of meat. The latter is, indisputably, the main point.

This gaucho institution is all about the meat.

The wine list is somewhat impressive but over-priced. In such circumstances, a bottle of one of rival Argentina’s Malbecs for me goes almost without saying. Not at the Fogo on this late-March evening. Sticker prices for this modest vintage made me opt for a glass instead while my three dinner guests converted to tea-totalers for the night.

The fun begins with a trip to a well-stocked salad bar. First-time churrascaría visitors often make the mistake of filling up on the good stuff to be found there. Churrrascaría veterans (and now readers of this review) know better. Enjoy the splendors of the salad bar with a light touch. You didn’t come for salad. A line of cows that must stretch—laid out horizontally, nose-to-tail—from here to Muncie awaits your palate’s call.

The traffic light on your dining experience is the two-sided red and green that is found at each table setting. Dare to turn the green side up and you’ll be pounced upon by a bevy of eager young men and women who announce the nature of their offering, slice the cut(s) of your choice onto your plate, and move on to the next person who has—intentionally or unwittingly—left that green side facing up.

Indianapolis’ Fogo de Chao was a busy place on this, my first visit. Yet four of us gathered around a table intended for six were able to converse easily. The wait staff blasts past at full speed, having been trained to keep those knives pointed in a safe direction. It’s a part of the visual entertainment which, if not managed carefully by the diner, leads to a steady acceleration of your eating.

All of which reduces the immodest practice of feasting as only a Brazilian steak joint knows you came to do. Eat slowly, savor every slice, play the field of cuts (not just steak, but chicken, pork, and lamb). Make an evening of it.

The price of all this is equally immodest. Paying the bill for four diners is not for the faint of heart. Diners eat at fixed price just under $50. Drinks and dessert are, of course, extra.

For my tastes, The Fogo de Chao is a welcome opportunity to experience one of Brazil’s wonders on a day when calorie counts can be left at home. The food was consistently good, the service excellent, the ambience well above average, and the entire spectacle about as bona fide Brazilian as one could expect in mid-sized, Midwestern city.

We’ll be back.

Though this live CD provides a glimpse of the energy TAPB brings to live worship, it undersells the bands other strengths. Unimpressively mixed, the album fronts Pelsue’s voice at the expense of the band’s broader sound. This is, of course, an occupational hazard of both live and debut albums. At points on TAPB LIVE, the band seems to have reaped the downside of these twin liabilities.

Not to worry: TAPB has moved on to more refined recorded offerings and those already convinced of the band’s virtues will `hear past’ these limitations and read into their hearing the band’s true capacity.

So what’s to like on this warts-and-all album? Pelsue’s indomitable baritone, for one. One hears in the band’s lead voice hints of Creed, Third Day, and Hootie and the Blowfish. ‘Famous One’ encases that voice within some strong guitar work and begins to show the band’s potential and throws in some respectable harmonizing to boot.

The repeating cycle of phrases in ‘Prepare the Way’ display a remarkable intensity in both form and function. It is a piece of elevated music making and one of the CD’s memorable moments.

Then, in the spirit of closing with a bang, the CD draws its curtain with two studio ‘bonus trax’. ‘To Live’ is everything TAPB can be and has become, though that musical persona is nearly impossible to be captured in a budget-restricted live album.

LIVE was not a bad start because things didn’t stay here. Enjoy it for what it is.

On the list of my tiltings at windmills appears the placement of two owl boxes a pair of years ago. A smaller one awaits Screech Owls in our backyard. A much larger one, placed at risk of life and limb in the mentioned front-yard tree, invites tenants of the Barred Owl variety. Except for quizzical squirrels, these two aviary condos have stood empty, significantly driving down the occupancy stats of my coterie of birdhouses. Only the wrens have kept my numbers from plunging below respectable range.

The fact that this week’s large owl—it was too dark to learn much about its identity save its enormous size—had perched just ten feet from my Barred Owl box gives me hope that there’s some relationship between him and his potential home.

Writing now from Seattle, I have no immediate way to follow up this sighting. But, as neighbors have been telling me for some time, there are indeed owls in the mix in this beguiling, tree-filled Indianapolis neighborhood.

Something about that cool, clear hour of the day brought them into close-order, cartwheeling, exuberant view as they plucked insects from the air and entertained my admiring eyes.

I have always missed the swallows.

Just over two years ago, I read that there is some hope of attracting Purple Martins to a purpose-built house. A mail-order and several hours of assembling the thing ensued. Alas, this year I missed the second consecutive Springtime migration date for getting the house erected in our front yard. Besides, there is not a lot of talk around here about frequent visitors with the surname Martin. I suppose the long-shot nature of the adventure damped my enthusiasm a bit.

So my surprise, last gorgeous evening at 9:00 p.m. or so, returning home from a trip to the YMCA with my son, to see swallows (so I thought, but probably the related Purple Martins) careening over our neighborhood and looking very much like their cousins in Costa Rica two decades ago.

We have them here!

That Purple Martin house is definitely going up in time to greet the Martin scouts of next Spring’s migratory return.!

Squirrels have been the main suspects, so I’ve been consulting the half-hopeless writings of blogs and web pages where strategies against these relentless foes are mounted, critiqued, and abandoned.

Then two weeks ago I had reason to look for a missing tool in the ample drawers of a workshop that forms part of our house but is entered from the garage or the backyard. As I opened one of the drawers, I discovered that it had been filled to its brim by insulation material knicked from our attic, two stories up. Embedded in this soft, carefully constructed bed, were six sleepy-eyed little squirrels who didn’t seem to mind my discovery of them as much as they did the untimely light that it let it into their bedroom.

The dogs, of course, became obsessively interested. I quickly locked them out.

Now that I knew where the things lived, closer inspection revealed that Daddy and Mommy (presumably) Squirrel had eaten through some rain-soaked wood in the celing of this little-used workshop, then made a habit of jumping the foot or so distance down to the top of a ladder I’d leaned against the wall. Then, like latter-day angels ascending and descending Jacob’s ladder, they’d found their thoroughfare from ground floor to ceiling crawl-space and higher to better things (pink insulation) in the attic.

As I gently checked in on the little guys throughout the day, their numbers decreased. Down to two at one point and then, soon, to an entirely empty drawer. Danger had moved them on, which—on balance—is a good thing.

No mysterious chewing has been detected since.

There are, however, some hilariously juvenile squirrels performing new acrobatics in the trees and among the bird feeders of our backyard. I wonder whether they daydream of the soft bed in which they used to repose before that Ugly Big Guy came and started looking in on their tranquility.

The result has been some new visitors:

A Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker has made brief, resplendent visits for seed and peanuts. He’s stayed long enough for this novice birdwatcher to mark the distinction between him and his suspected alternative identity, the Redheaded Woodpecker.

What appears to be a Gray Catbird has also been about, although too briefly. He is rightly described in my bird books by adjectives like ‘handsome’ and ‘slender’.

A hanging wren house has a hyperactive family of renters for the second year running. I’ve still not determined whether they’re Carolina or House Wrens. Momma Wren’s flight was simply too fast to tel when I approached the house two evenings ago. She immediately popped her unmistakably wren-shaped head out of the house and flew to what she regarded as safety. I’m much better with shapes than colors, so it’ll take me some more sightings before I can correctly sort the identity of her clan.

I hadn’t realized that some of our black birds were so enthusiastic about feeder food. But a European Starling has been a bit obsessive about some calcium-heavy suet I put out yesterday. And an American Crow has just now fulfilled an appointment to pick up a whole peanut in the shell.

Last evening, as the pizza warmed and the pre-race (Indy 500) show rambled on at a friend’s house in Fishers, two handsome little gray birds were busy at his feeder. I’ve yet to figure out who and what they were.

My Ruby-Throated Hummer continues to busy himself at a refreshed supply of nectar. I have only remote hopes of a Baltimore Oriole response to the orange-colored feeder that hangs nearby.

Back to wrens: these creatures are so endearing. I bought a second wren house at our Wild Birds Unlimited and hung it on an unused hook very near to the house and to my easy chair. This will be an experience in how close my nesting neighbors are comfortable in making a new home. Or perhaps it’s too late in the season for that. Hope springs from the comment ‘two broods per year’ are normal.

A put up a ‘sock’ full of Nyger Thistle last week to find out whether it was my thistle or my thistle feeder that is responsible for my notorious inability to satisfy the beautiful American Goldfinches that are around. Apparently it was the feeder, for two males and a female have scheduled occasional feasts on the sock this week.

The usual coterie of White-Breasted Nuthatches, House Sparrows, Northern Cardinals, Mourning Doves, and Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers makes for good backyard company. I crawled up on a ladder last weekend to verify that my large owl box in the front yard, poised in promising proximity to Holliday Park just across the street, is entering its third season of underperforming rental space. The same is true of the smaller owl box in the backyard.

I’ve put up a new Bluebird House along a front row of hedges, more to let any local Bluebirds know they’d be welcome to stay than out of any concrete hope of actually hosting a family. I was moved last year to read of the need for ‘bluebird trails’ of houses.

I’ve missed the date for putting up my 80%-assembled Purple Martin house for the second day. The business of finishing the thing and setting it up via the right use of concrete and a big hole is daunting. Perhaps 2009 will be the year for that. Maybe a colony of Martins will join me in watching the 500 at our house(s) next year.

It has been so long since a Saturday at home came down like this one. Sleeping ’til a rested body agrees on its own volition to rise, reading in my easy chair with Tucker and Rosie sprawled on the carpet around me. A conversation, a real, genuine conversation with a family member when we looked at each other and recognized something other than a lunatic tempest in lateral motion to somewhere else.

Then a day in the yard.

A man needs a yard, methinks. I sit there now, in my Nicaraguan rocking chair on a concrete slab overlooking the modest domain I call mine. The grass is freshly cut, left long, lush, and slightly edgy as I like it. Here and there Rosie’s attempts to dig a full-scale trench opening in China—as they say—are now filled in with sticks, leaves, those Maple-tree helicopters that descended more suddenly en masse this year than in any previous one, shredded paper, tokens of last year’s compost rich and black.

The Oriole and hummingbird feeders went up late this year—today in fact—and already the first hummer is at it just yards from my chair, asking little but a bit of sugar water in return for his splendid entertainment.

A hundred nails went into a back fence that needed some tightening after four cycles of seasons. While working my way along its well-guarded periphery, I noted four ridiculously welcoming little holes in the dead branches of a tree I’ve learned to leave rather than prune for the sake of the little denizens who make themselves a contented home measured in square centimeters rather than square feet.

The wren house has had or may still have renters. Having cleaned it last Fall, I see it’s now full of twigs and sticks and other bird-ish versions of furniture.

When I scraped a winter’s worth of accumulated leaves—sodden now from Spring’s rains—off the stairway down to the basement, worm after fat earthworm appeared, not welcoming the sunlight. Almost instantly the robins and another black fellow—how do they do that?—had noticed and were upon them.

The chainsaw quit while trying to make pieces of an enormous branch that’s fallen on the front side and has been patiently awaiting its allotted dismemberment for firewood next winter. It’s cooling now as I write, in the vain hope that simple overheating is the problem. I suspect it’s something more costly.

I’ve set the bird-bath upright, recalibrating after a year’s slow-motion slouch in a northernly direction. Fresh water immediately drew a dragonfly and soon, no doubt, the birds who will frolic and bathe in it.

Tucker is now slowing from the cancer that grows on the right side of his face, every day bigger, smellier, droolier, closer to the evil day when we take him for the euthanasia that a kind veterinary assistant explained for me yesterday over the phone while I cried, overcome by the thought of life without our gentle Labby. Yet he’s with me even now, quietly cleaning up after himself when his bloody drool falls to the floor, slightly embarrassed at the trouble he’s causing but oh so happy just to be around. I caught him lying on his back with his feet thrust wildly towards the sun today as I puttered about and he took advantage of the opportunity to be a friend outdoors.

The year’s first hummer—for me at any rate, one supposes they’ve been around all along—now shuttles the three feet back and forth between the oriole feeder and the one intended for him, deciding which one meets his pleasure. Ah, yes, he prefers the one purpose-built for him, a conventional sort of lad.

I answered no email today, solved no problems for other people, refused to fuss about the wider world and its antics. There will be time for that.

Today, at home, in Indianapolis, with family, dogs, birds, and the earth.

One imagines himself for a moment (is this the so-called lucid moment?) as a lunatic when he is not here. Elsewhere has mattered too much.

Remind me in five weeks what today felt like.