Now that darkness is falling on our city a little later, I can get away with not bringing my headlamp to work to ride my bike home at night.  On Wednesday night, I decided to take a leisurely bike ride into Fairhaven to check out the new shipment of Marcia Bloom Skirts at my favorite store: Fun To Shop.  I hopped on the Interurban only a few blocks from work, and meandered on the gravel trail.  Along the way I was joined by many, many people out to enjoy exercise and the beatiful sunset along the water.  People of all ages, classes and interests were out and about, either walking, riding, biking, or even skateboarding.  I kept saying to myself how lucky I was to have found such a great place to live.  I love it here. 

I dropped into Fairhaven and since the boardwalk along the water was so crowded with people - a great thing in my mind - I took the quieter road to the center of town.  Once there, Miguel met me and I started trying on a few skirts when our friends Adam and Lenore just happened to walk into the indoor courtyard on their way to dinner.  So lucky for me, I then had 3 critics to tell me what they thought of the different skirts I was trying on.  In the end, I walked out of the store without any new Marcia Blooms to add to my small collection, but with even more of an appreciation of this lovely town of ours.  

Today, to strengthen my love of Bellingham, I took the dogs on a 10-minute drive to one of the several biking trailheads in town about 10:00 in the morning.  Miguel, Sean and Adam were off on a 20-mile training run for the upcoming 50K, so I decided to go on a nice bikeride instead.  It was a cold, foggy morning and the air was brisk against my skin on the way in.  It didn't take long to get warmed up, and then we got high enough to be above the fog.  Up there, the sky was blue as blue can be, and the glare on the clouds below was so bright I couldn't even look directly at them.  The city was nestled beneath the fog and as far as I could see were just trees and clouds below.  We cruised around the trails for about 2.5 hours and hardly saw anyone else for the entire trip.  Mt. Baker was beaming with light and a beautiful sight in the background.  Again, I just kep thinking to myself "How lucky am I to live here?"  I know there are probably countless places in the world where people love to live, and for different reasons.  For me, there is no place I'd rather be.