Commuting With A Dinosaur

As I was riding to work this morning I saw a bird lazily soaring along in the sky above me. His wings were spread out wide. He was just coasting along with the wind. It was beautiful. He maintained a speed that was almost as fast as the traffic below him. And as he was gliding along, his motions appeared to be almost effortless to him. I don't think he was a hawk, he wasn't big enough. I don't know that much about birds, so I am unsure exactly what he was. I wished that I could suspend having to look for traffic bogeys and just watch him for awhile. I just know that I was a bit jealous of his ability and opportunity to soar in the sky. What a marvelous feeling it must be. Riding is fun and the experience is so much more than driving a car, but not exactly the same as flight. I admire the freedom a bird must have. You could go in any direction you want to unimpeded by roadways and the limits they impose. You could join friends on a telephone wire and discuss the state of the world. You could also maybe dive bomb a cat or two if the mood suited you. Many scientists maintain that present day birds are the direct descendants of the great dinosaurs that once roamed our planet. They have discovered many similarities in bone structures and other features. It now seems that whatever potentially cataclysmic planetary event that caused the great dinosaurs to disappear may not have caused the demise for all of them. When I think about it, I realize that this is absolutely amazing. I am not really a big bird watcher, but birds do fascinate me. Over the millenia, they seemed to have adapted to many different conditions on this planet. Some have amazing intelligence. I am sure that life as a bird is challenging at times, but they are amazing as survivors on the evolutionary scale. It actually made me feel quite "small" and "humble" as I watched him fly. There was only a few moments that I had the pleasure of watching him as he eventually ended up taking a new course in the sky and I could not follow him any farther. I thought later that I probably would not have even noticed him if I had been driving the car to work that morning. Aahh, the benefits of riding!