Friday's yoga session left my lower back sore but loosened. I celebrated by running across town to pay the yoga teacher. That night we had an extra-long game of Ultimate on the rain-softened Meadows; the sky was clear. Our pizza-and-beer followup was unusually satisfying.

Next night, potluck dinner. We went up on the roof and got an Edinburgh panorama: Arthur's Seat, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh Castle (lit up and dignified on its rock), the carpet of pink-gray rooftops and chimneys, and a bloody red-orange sunset in the west. We went to the fenceless edge and peered down into people's flats, where they played Wii, knitted, and folded laundry.

I had to run to Diane's Pool Hall, described by one patron as "not a pool hall but a fightin' hall." First game: rubbish. Second game: run. Third game: rubbish. Our hammered Basque friend called someone a postcolonial motherf_cker, to our great amusement. After closing, we set out across the Meadows and turned up in a children's playground, new and sturdy, its resilient rubber sheets holding our feet still. The swingset seats were wide and the chains strong. The zipline held sure and zipped well. Someone fell over; "Basque down!" was the call. A cute young French couple was called to the scene: A swingset is called a balançoir. Jane Birkin speaks perfect French but sings in a crummy English accent to sell records. We surrounded ourselves with wheezes: What would a James Bond villain say if they had their final showdown in a kid's playground? The cops drove by and said nothing.

Bright and early the next day I went mountain biking. My old chum Jamie brewed a huge cup of strong coffee and loaned me a bike. We cycled along the canal, passing the two songs (mother and daughter) I got to know last year on canal trips. We cut over to the Water of Leith, a strangled little trickle coming down out of the suburbs. We got up into the farmland on the edge of the Pentland Hills. Sheep baaed. The pasture was amber and the heather green. The hills rolled.

Up and down the hills we went, along gnarled rocky paths and loose gravel tracks, up and over the first pass into a quiet valley with a reservoir. Blip said the fish and ba said the sheep. There were the gorse bushes with their coconut-smelling flowers. We kept going and going, up and down tracks until the last peak was too high and the mud was too thick and the view was too sweet, then we rolled down the hill and back along the Water of Leith. Near a gaggle of teenagers playing, we roused a heron from the water; he was great and blue and I've never seen a heron at full span from above: terrifically smooth, those wide wings slowly pulsing.

Back in the city, all were out on the town. Among the cyclists on the canal was one riding an ordinary, or penny-farthing. Another graceful thing. I ate a craload of trail mix and went home and slept.