Umami Ride

When I was in first grade, I learned four types of tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter.  This made sense to me as I had experienced all of them.  In recent years, I have read of a fifth taste called umami.  It's supposed to be kind of a full, savory flavor.  Two foods that are described as having a high level of umami are mushrooms and soy sauce.  I have to admit that I don't quite get it.  Sure, mushrooms have a rather distinctive earthy taste, but what's this umami?  And to me, soy sauce is primarily salty.

August is a unique time of year to ride.  It's definitely still summer, but there's an edge of maturity to it.  Although day is still longer than night, the hours of daylight have been decreasing since the summer solstice in June.  The angle of sunlight is increasingly obtuse as I ride in the late afternoon/early evening when I get off work.  The air is pleasantly warm - enough to keep my muscles moving easily but with a cool freshness as I pedal along.

The leaves on all the trees and bushes are deep green, well past the fresh, spring green of several months ago.  Kudzu blooms this time of year.  I always smell it before I see it.  Then, there they are among the lush, thick leaves and vines: long, purple clusters of flowers with a faintly grape aroma.

Crickets chirping in the background seem to have a mellower call than earlier in the summer.  At the same time, they sound different than in the fall, especially that particular sound they have around Halloween before they die out for the winter.  I guess that's because you really can approximate the air temperature from the rate of crickets chirping.  According to The Old Farmer's Almanac, count the number of cricket chirps in 14 seconds and add 40 to get temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

Dragonflies drone above the grasses.  Miscellaneous, unidentified, tiny insects are illuminated in the long shafts of sunlight.  Wild turkeys dart away as I approach on my bicycle, sometimes taking flight into the trees along the side of the road.  A deer stands in the road ahead, watching me until a car approaching from the opposite direction sends it scurrying into the woods.

I may not understand umami as a taste, but I know what an umami ride is.