By tomorrow evening I will have ridden around the 10-mile perimeter of Tallil Ali Air Base more than 130 times.
With a varied ten-mile loop, some traffic, the wind, the dust and the other difficulties of my repetitive ride, I hardly think of it as a hamster wheel when I am riding, but when I think about circling the same loop every day and adding up how many times I have ridden this circle--then I start to feel like a rodent way down the food chain. Or a man imitating the rodent.
On the north side of the base where I live and work there are buildings, huge generators, sometimes heavy traffic, pedestrians on sidewalks and the road, and flags snapping in the breeze.
On the east, west and south side of the base, there is mostly nothing. Here are a few views of my daily ride across the south and turning north on the east end of post:
