I pulled my Trek hybrid bike off its rack last week for the first time since Daylight Savings Time ended in October and hit the road after work on a pleasant pre-spring day. Winter has passed with hardly a whimper, and spring is busting out beautifully. Azaleas are performing quite well. Redbud trees — apparently named by a colorblind naturalist, since their blooms are purple — vie with white-blossomed dogwoods for attention in the woods lining the farm-to-market road I cycled along.

There's a yellow tinge coating everything — even the sky, it seems. Tree pollen wafts through the air; I can taste it when I forget to shut my mouth. A cool front blew through this morning, bringing only a smidgen of rain but at least dropping the temperatures down to normal for mid-March: low 70s in the day, 50s at night. I'm wearing bike shorts, and the breeze is a bit cool but tolerable. A few more months, and we'll all be pining for 70 degrees at 5 p.m.

It's obvious after a few miles that I have not taken an extended bike ride since late October. My legs and chest are competing to see which can complain the loudest. The shoe clips are hurting my feet, which must adjust to pointing straight instead of their natural penguin-like orientation. The clips unnerve me since, on my maiden voyage last summer, I forgot to unhook from the pedals when stopping and fell over, scraping up my knee, elbow and pride.

Still, I plod into a stiff headwind that forces me to pedal furiously just to reach 13 mph, according to my digital odometer. I force myself to think of other matters; it's depressing to consider there are small children who can ride faster than me. I recall a weird, after-the-alarm-went-off dream I had this morning, during those blessed 10 minutes of snooze-button bliss before I got up to walk. I dreamed I had forgotten how to juggle and was trying to remember in order to teach someone.

Knowing how to juggle is like riding a bike. Once you know the basics, it's impossible to forget, though skills can get rusty without practice. My brother taught me about 25 years ago. If forced to, I can still impress small children for maybe 20 seconds.

When I get home I'm going to make sure I can still juggle, I decided, while dodging a fresh hunk of road kill on the shoulder. Riding on the shoulder is absolutely necessary to survival, but it also means one is constantly on the lookout for animal parts, broken beer bottles, stray pieces of metal and other obstacles that can puncture a thin bike tire in seconds. Worse, I have this fear of daydreaming and not noticing the railroad tie that fell off a truck onto the shoulder, which sends me hurtling over the handlebars, my feet still attached to the pedals by those infernal clips. It just takes so much longer to heal these days.

I've considered buying an I-Pod to listen to music while riding, but have concluded this would be counter-productive to my survival on a bicycle. East Texas is not exactly a bicycle-friendly region as it is. I have been honked and hollered at for no reason than some jerk wants to scare the bejabbers out of me. A fellow cyclist had a beer bottle chunked at him. And then there's the dreaded car door assault, where someone, knowingly or not, opens a door just as you are about to pass on the bike.

Plug me into Talking Heads while pedaling down the road, and I will never hear that dualie coming up from behind, its driver distracted by his cell-phone conversation with a girlfriend, drifting onto the shoulder.

My second wind kicks in about three miles from home on this modest 16-mile ride. I am back on smooth, level pavement, the wind to my back. The odometer says I'm cruising at 22 mph. I pedal into my carport just as the sun sinks down below the pine trees. It's cold out here now in these silly bike shorts. I head inside to find three tennis balls.

Yep, I can still juggle. Not for long, and not well. But I bet there's a 4-year-old somewhere who would be impressed.

Gary Borders is publisher of The Lufkin Daily News. His e-mail address is gborders@coxnews.com.