At the edge of The Delta, in Dixon, California

I'm sitting in suite 203 at the Comfort Inn in Dixon, California, having slept last night three, maybe four hours.

It's 6 a.m., June 18, 2014.

I watched the sun rise and then made the coffee they provide in the room. Both were free but of unequal merit.

What am I doing here?

I don't like places like this, usually, so I have to watch carefully.

The sun rises in Dixon like it's the absolute czar of the world and, knowing everything depends on it, can behave any way it chooses.

And because the world is flat the sun is extra hard on it, merciless, partial to sunflowers and other hardy crops that don't ask what they're doing here.

I'm riding my bike for the third straight day, training for a bike ride I'm soon to take from St. Petersburg, Russia to Bratislava, Slovakia, countries ruled, or once ruled, by absolute czars. The ride will take at least 4 hours--out from El Rio and back--in the long, flat world of the Sacramento Delta.

It's 6:20 a.m., now I mean.

From the time I began writing this to the time it is now, the temperature outside has increased 2 degrees. It's expected to reach a high of 93 later today.

The air conditioner in my room is already working as hard as the day laborer I saw yesterday as I was riding on the outskirts of Winters

He was chopping weeds with a shovel at the base of a peach tree in a grove of peach trees. It was morning but it was already quite warm.

As I said, there was a grove of peach trees.

He could have been saying, what am I doing here?

I don't think he was saying that, but he could have been.