You don’t have to be a car buff to notice the proliferation of SUVs. Every manufacturer seems to have one. They started years ago with the productions of Lincoln Navigator (undeniably a truck tarted up to be expensive), Cadillac Escalade (the competitor’s answer to absurdity) followed by others with preposterously Freudian names like Pilot, Armada, Tahoe, Land Cruiser and the ubiquitous Land Rover (a designer Jeep for the real cowboy). The German-based vehicles like Audi, BMW and Mercedes and many of the Japanese manufacturers had the dignity to preserve complicated letter codes for identification. Meanwhile the iconic American sedans such as Cadillac and Lincoln have translated their flagships into Chevrolets and Fords respectively, all very nice (and in some instances surprisingly so) but distinctly passé. Even Jaguar, Porsche, Bentley and Rolls-Royce have compromised their once elegant symbols of leather-gloved driving to oversized road warriors for people who drive while sitting sideways with one hand on the wheel and their left elbow on the top of the door panel. The only American sedans of note which will survive are the muscle cars like Camaro and Mustang which never qualified as mere sedans in any event – just toys.

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For reasons I cannot decipher an uncommon sense of bien-être insinuated me upon awakening this morning. Granted I had had a good sleep for the statutory eight hours. The favourable development had begun overnight when I noticed I was able to stretch my limbs and sigh to the pleasure of relieving cracks in the process. When fulfilling my ablutions and preparing my breakfast I was able to stand more easily. It therefore mattered not that the air was cool or that the sky was clouded – I had every intention of enjoying my constitutional bicycle ride.

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Anna Maria Island was our target today.  The plan had been made to lunch there with old friends at Rod and Reel Pier.  As we traveled late this morning from Longboat Key through Bradenton Beach the atmosphere graduated from the gated communities of the Bourgeoisie to the subtropical beach milieu of Anna Maria Island. Suddenly we were surrounded not by secluded vast compounds behind guarded entries but quaint colourful homes with white picket fences overtaken by palm trees and ferns. It forced me to reconsider who in fact is living the caged existence.

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When the erstwhile appetites dwindle – as they surely must – there is no reason not to replace them. Much of the consternation about what to do instead arises from the mistaken belief that the past had it all. The past however quite literally disappears in the present. It is accordingly no indignity to contemplate what else one might do to fulfill whatever ambition of production persists. When I was in prep school in the Upper Sixth Form preparing for final exams in May of 1968 I occupied what little leisure I had by going to the back field behind the tennis courts and lay in the sun to get a tan. Afterwards in June I flew to Europe where my parents, my sister and I spent a month on the Costa Brava near Barcelona.  By the time we subsequently reached Paris en route to Stockholm I was so brown that my friend Ricardo Schmeichler who arranged to meet me on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées didn’t recognize me.

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Though I certainly have been to the beach many times since our arrival on Longboat Key last October today was oddly the first time I feel I spent a day at the beach.  My mission this morning wasn’t as qualified.  I started on my bicycle by going to Lido Key in the same manner as I have done a number of times before. Not long into the cycle however I began to formulate the decision to investigate another part of the beach than the one at the south end to which I usually go.  This modification required some investigation; specifically to see whether there were a rack on which to secure my bicycle.  Almost by accident I found one secluded appropriately enough near the entrance.  There was only one space left on the rack.  I took it.

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It is admittedly a small compliment how readily dissolves my mechanical sense, my motor-driven thoughts and emotions. Competing with this uninspired and soulless performance are the careful but manual stringencies of life. The evident contrast between the two is that of routine staging and spontaneous reaction. Paradoxically I evidently respond more readily to the visceral than the repetitive – to the point nonetheless of exhaustion. More disturbing is that I increasingly tire philosophically of the universe beyond my erstwhile automated world. The similarity is likely nothing more dignified than the complaint of an old dog and new tricks – and just as bleak, just as axiomatic.

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There was no question when I arose from the lair this morning and after I had completed my ablutions and finished my breakfast that today was a day to be dedicated to the sun and the sea.  We’ve lately had a period of cool weather but the temperature was forecast to rise to a reasonable 73°F. There was as well nothing but wall-to-wall sunshine predicted. I got onto my bicycle and triggered my Apple Watch to record the so-called “workout”. Then it was out Sloop Lane to Gulf of Mexico Drive and an immediate left turn southward to Lido Key – into the sun!

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Leap Day has a peculiarly celebratory nature to it. Considering its infrequency – and the few people who happen to have a birthday on Leap Day – its attraction is not entirely without cause. Reputedly it is the one day (or some say the entire year) on which a woman may propose marriage to a man who, if he declines the offer, is bound to buy twelve pairs of gloves for the woman (in order that she might hide her ringless finger and shame from prying eyes). Wearing a red petticoat was presumably to give the beleaguered male ample warning and a chance to flee. A less stimulating tale is that the Salem Witch Trials began on February 29, 1692 when a slave, a beggar and an elderly woman were accused of witchcraft by a group of young girls.

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Another fresh day, cool temperatures below 65ºF, crystal blue sky and a pleasant breeze. It made me think of an early autumn day up north. I was thankfully not delayed long in my enjoyment of the day.  I say this because I had to do some grocery shopping.  I wanted to get it out of the way sooner than later, rather than having it hanging over my head and rather than having to deal with the packing, unpacking, cleaning and storage of the provisions late in the day when I am customarily exhausted and the preparation of dinner is already on the agenda. So I went as soon as I had finished breakfast. In spite of the fact that at the grocery store I ran into and gossiped with a fellow Canadian who had just arrived last evening, it was only slightly past noon that I got onto my bicycle.

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You are now aware (‘you’ being King Gelon) that the “universe” is the name given by most astronomers to the sphere the centre of which is the centre of the earth, while its radius is equal to the straight line between the centre of the sun and the centre of the earth. This is the common account (τά γραφόμενα) as you have heard from astronomers. But Aristarchus has brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses, wherein it appears, as a consequence of the assumptions made, that the universe is many times greater than the “universe” just mentioned. His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the sun remain unmoved, that the earth revolves about the sun on the circumference of a circle, the sun lying in the middle of the orbit, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same centre as the sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes the earth to revolve bears such a proportion to the distance of the fixed stars as the centre of the sphere bears to its surface.