Greatest Song Ever?

This one has been a long time coming, at least a week or so. I thought if I sat on it awhile the mania would pass and it would come out less hyperbolic. Let's see if that worked.

This is something I experience very rarely, but it happens: a song that has always been around, in the background, in bars, at parties, maybe even department stores, I couldn't possibly estimate how many times I've heard it in almost 20 years, but it's definitely more than a dozen, and somehow in all those times I heard it, it never registered that THIS IS THE GREATEST SONG ON THE PLANET.

Okay, that may be pushing it. But it is definitely a PERFECT SONG.

Scroll down if you want to know which song I'm referring to. Otherwise, stay with me and see if you can guess.

It's a love song, and one thing that makes it a perfect love song is the music. It's ebullient, euphoric, utterly poppy, just three and a half minutes of unbridled joy.

But hey, I had heard the music for years & never realized it was the perfect love song. My theory is twofold: partly that there are other songs by the same band that sound pretty similar, and partly that I never listened to the lyrics.

Now that's just weird for me. I'm all about words. Every song that I ever loved, I loved for the words. Why oh why didn't I just listen to them?

Tell me this isn't a love poem to rival Shakespeare or E. E. Cummings:

when i see you sky as a kite
as high as i might
i can't get that high
the how you move
the way you burst the clouds
it makes me want to try

when i see you sticky as lips
as licky as trips
i can't lick that far
but when you pout
the way you shout out loud
it makes me want to start
and when i see you happy as a girl
that swims in a world of magic show
it makes me bite my fingers through
to think i could've let you go

and when i see you
take the same sweet steps
you used to take
i say i'll keep on holding you
my arms so tight
i'll never let you slip away

and when i see you kitten as a cat
yeah as smitten as that
i can't get that small
the way you fur
the how you purr
it makes me want to paw you all
and when i see you happy as a girl
that lives in a world of make-believe
it makes me pull my hair all out
to think i could've let you leave

and when i see you
take the same sweet steps
you used to take
i know i'll keep on holding you
in arms so tight
they'll never, never let you go

I know, right?

So I've been listening to it over & over & over again. I sing it when I'm riding the bike sometimes, although Poe's "Amazing" is still my favorite for that :)

Here's the best youtube clip I could find of it.

37-Mile Sunday

We've had a number of days that threatened and/or delivered rain lately, so I've been going through a bit of bike withdrawal. Yesterday I definitely got my fix.

This might be the most straightforward route we've followed on one of these long rides. Rode the 5 miles to the ferry, and started out on the other side by skirting Battery Park and setting off on the Hudson River Greenway. There is still one slight detour near the beginning, but we're very used to it by now. We rode the whole thing to the top, but not nonstop; we used the bathrooms at the Pier One Cafe & had a picnic lunch in Riverside Park, then filled up our water containers at the tennis courts. Around the GWB we actually had to do some walking with the bikes because the hills there are practically vertical. If my bike could talk, it would have said, "What are you trying to do, lady? You gotta be kidding me!" (My bike has an old-school Brooklyn accent in this story for some reason.) We rode the Greenway to the top of Fort Tryon Park, where it ends just below Inwood Hill Park.

Then we rode down Dykman Street, and Paul said, "Don't you feel like the bikes have transported us back to 1978?" Dykman led us to Harlem River Drive, which was beautiful and creepy at the same time. We saw a few people here and there out barbecuing with their kids, but compared to the West side it was pretty much deserted.

The HRD bike path got weird at 155th Street, so from there we took St. Nicholas Place, and at 151 St. we got onto St. Nicholas Avenue. This was our second time riding past St. Nicholas Park; everyone there always seems to be having a great time. Took that to 120th Street and rode past gorgeous brownstones to Second Avenue.

We rode Second Avenue all the way down to Houston Street! Ran into some construction along the way, so it got a little hairy, but there was very light traffic and we were able to ride in the bus lanes until the bike lanes appeared on the other side of the street. Cool moment: the Roosevelt Island tram came down right in front of us.

At East Houston we zipped over to Allen Street to get us to South Street and back to the ferry. Again, all that is old hat by now. Unfortunately, there are few worlds left for us to conquer on the island of Manhattan, at least until all the bike paths they're working on are finished.

Discovery of the day: one of Paul's pedals broke! He's noticed it sticking in the last couple of weeks, but it wasn't until we were getting on the boat to go home that he noticed it was severely bent. Hopefully he's finding new ones right now.