I listened to Radiohead for the first time in a very long time last weekend.  I was struggling through a new test; to see how long I could hold up rotating from aerobic exercise machine to machine, every twenty minutes, in an attempt to build a good base for the coming cycling season.

It could have been the exercise, it could have been the onset of long-distance aerobic endorphine buzz, but the somewhat familiar taste of alkali rose in my mouth.

Was it exercise-induced?  Was it the lack of adequate breakfast in order to hasten the lost of extra “winter weight?”  Was it the restless night of sleep in anticipation to breaking a self-percieved exercise time barrier?  Maybe it was simply using a mental yardstick of couting off fifteen steps during a few laps of the track, one of a number of mind games in which to occupy a tiring body.  The sun was out, and it was unseasonably warm – maybe it was the heating of structural steel and aluminum in February, the slight flakes wafting in the rising heat.

Maybe I was dehydrated.

But a metallic, alkali taste rose in my mouth, and the body warmed to the idea of long afternoons spent sweating and reaching past new limits, and Radiohead played in my shiny earbuds…

And, now, Radiohead reminds me of sweat, alkali, and the warm flow of exercise.