Cathy Nicoli Dancer, Writer, Teacher Extroidinaire!

I think one of the best things about riding a bike is that it allows me to observe multiple events in succession, moments not necessarily connected in any other way but the order of my gaze. In the car, I feel much more separated from the daily life of others and I hate the way it keeps me still for so long. I love walking too but it is too slow to have moments of juxtaposition connected in succession - the time is more realistic than surrealistic. I especially like biking through parks where a diversity of cultures, ages, and activities are happening. Today, the reach of a toddler seemed to be orchestrated with a series of teenage girls posing in nature for what I assume is the ceremony of senior pictures. A pile of shit on the path that I had to ride around seemed poetically connected to having to skirt a couple so entrenched in their argument that they didn't even notice they were blocking the path. And this tree and resting crow in silhouette seemed to ring with the image I saw just a minute earlier of the grandmother on the park bench observing me observing her as I ride by. Biking is a meditation in how images bounce off of one another and make meaning. Biking is poetry just as much as it is a form of transportation and exercise. This is one reason I love to hop on my bike and go!

-Cathy Nicoli, Associate Professor of Dance and Performance Studies at Roger Williams University