Winding through the last streets of the town at the foot of the mountains, before you pull out onto the busy highway that winds up the pass, you stop at one of the countless mineral springs that speckle the mountain village. A hundred years ago wealthy health-seekers would come to the sanatorium here to take the waters, and they swore by their restorative powers. Today there is an earthy new-age community that still thrives in the town. This particular spring is gurgling under a rusted metal sculpture of a kneeling Indian with a jar in his hands. Out of the jar spills a trickle of the ancient waters. You fill your spare bottle with the spring water and take a swig. It tastes heavily of metal. But you put the full bottle into your bottle cage and carry on, leaving behind the expressionless Indian forever kneeling, forever pouring.
It is now 45min into your ride, and you decide to eat one of your energy bars. The sugar is stimulating. You pedal up the ramp and enter the highway, moving precisely up the shoulder. It's not long now before you enter the familiar rhythmic trance of exertion. You used to imagine yourself having lots of time to think during these rides, but this is rarely the case. When your body starts working hard, your mind slows down to a dull churn. The thousands of circles your feet describe are echoed in your mind with thousands of circles of simple thoughts. Your brain begins to loop over one line from the country song you listened to this morning. Cycle. Cycle. Cycle. Then you watch your shadow. You watch your shadow pedaling, pedaling, pedaling beside you for ten minutes, but you don't even realize it, and you certainly don't get bored. In fact, you've wondered whether within this monotonous brain-hum during the hardest parts of your rides your subconscious is actually getting work done. Maybe it sorts and analyzes and imagines, without you being aware of it. Sometimes when you arrive back home, with very little conscious memory of your ride, you have a wholly new idea waiting for you. You continue pedaling up the pass. Miles roll under your wheels. It is not unpleasant for you. It is not pleasant. It isn't anything.
Your reverie is broken at some point by a roaring tractor trailer. You are in the narrowest section of this highway, with about three feet of shoulder. You sense his dangerous closeness as you hear him approach from behind and gently move further away from the white line. Then he roars past you at 50mph, wheels rolling on your side of the white line, only a couple of feet between you. You've learned not to startle and swerve, but your heart rate still jumps towards three beats per second. You catch yourself yelling at his receding trailer, explaining in simple terms his exact standing before God.
You recover and realize that you've almost come to the section where you often exit from the highway and ride a handful of miles along a parallel back road, which climbs through three small towns. You make your exit and breathe in the quiet of this road. People still pass you in their cars, but they all slow down or shift to the opposite side of the road and smile and wave. You pass narrow horse pastures pressed between the steep walls of the pass and a creek that rolls down along the road. The horses stand there, eyes closed in the warm sun, or else necks dropped, lips moving along the surface of the ground. "A horse is the most beautiful animal," you think to yourself. "Or a deer." Snow begins to appear along the edges of the road, which makes for a pleasant sight. You are hot, climbing up the pass, and the sun glinting off the long mounds of gravel-speckled snow makes you feel cooler.
You've been riding now for an hour and a half, and you decide to stop for lunch at the modest pond in the park at the heart of the last town along this road. You lean your bike against a fence and stretch and sit down along the bank of the half-frozen duck pond. The only other person here is an older, stooped fellow walking in slow steps along the edge. It looks to you like he's exercising, making laps around it. Your presence alarms a brotherhood of ducks and three geese who are walking over the surface of the ice, dipping their beaks into little indentations filled with water. As you get out your tuna fish, tub of cream cheese, tortillas, and plastic knife, you watch them. They recover from your arrival and resume their strange exercise. The ducks move about with ease, carelessly padding across the slippery wet ice. When they come to larger indentations, they hinge their legs under their breasts and swim a few feet to the opposite ice bank and climb out. The geese move with much more caution. They sway slowly and stop at intervals to look around and to dip their beaks into the little pools. The biggest goose, a white one, and surely the male, moves with the greatest caution of all. His feet are wide, like those of a novice ice skater. He keeps slipping and catching himself just before his legs fold under him. Usually a goose's neck is curved elegantly, but his is arched into an awkward upside-down 'U', bringing his face down close to his breast. Presumably, he is trying to watch his feet. He is jerkily walking in a random path along the surface, unengaged in the community's work of beak-dipping, merely trying to get his feet steady under him. And he's making the most varied collection of goose noises you have ever heard: honking high and low, squeaking, and even hissing. It reminds you of how a human baby will make noises, oblivious to everyone else in the room, just for the pleasure of hearing its voice.
Finishing half of your lunch food and packing it away for later, you throw a piece of mulch out at the white goose. He slips and recovers and then rocks his head back and forth with crazy intensity, trying to get a look at it. You throw another piece, but then you realize that the old man is now passing behind you. You turn and smile at him. He gives you the same long, scolding stare that you give to teenagers texting in the library.
You get back on your bicycle and make your way back out onto the highway towards the largest town along the pass. In 30min you are pedaling along its main street, and you pass a bank which advertises the time (2:21pm) and the temperature (60DegF). In your head, you calculate your turn-around time, using the rough estimate that you will descend twice as fast as you climb. You figure 4pm is a safe bet, realizing also that this is not going to be enough time to get to your destination. Without much disappointment, you change your route and continue on the main highway out of town towards Wilkerson Pass, instead of North towards Deckers. You'll try again another time.
It is now 45min into your ride, and you decide to eat one of your energy bars. The sugar is stimulating. You pedal up the ramp and enter the highway, moving precisely up the shoulder. It's not long now before you enter the familiar rhythmic trance of exertion. You used to imagine yourself having lots of time to think during these rides, but this is rarely the case. When your body starts working hard, your mind slows down to a dull churn. The thousands of circles your feet describe are echoed in your mind with thousands of circles of simple thoughts. Your brain begins to loop over one line from the country song you listened to this morning. Cycle. Cycle. Cycle. Then you watch your shadow. You watch your shadow pedaling, pedaling, pedaling beside you for ten minutes, but you don't even realize it, and you certainly don't get bored. In fact, you've wondered whether within this monotonous brain-hum during the hardest parts of your rides your subconscious is actually getting work done. Maybe it sorts and analyzes and imagines, without you being aware of it. Sometimes when you arrive back home, with very little conscious memory of your ride, you have a wholly new idea waiting for you. You continue pedaling up the pass. Miles roll under your wheels. It is not unpleasant for you. It is not pleasant. It isn't anything.
Your reverie is broken at some point by a roaring tractor trailer. You are in the narrowest section of this highway, with about three feet of shoulder. You sense his dangerous closeness as you hear him approach from behind and gently move further away from the white line. Then he roars past you at 50mph, wheels rolling on your side of the white line, only a couple of feet between you. You've learned not to startle and swerve, but your heart rate still jumps towards three beats per second. You catch yourself yelling at his receding trailer, explaining in simple terms his exact standing before God.
You recover and realize that you've almost come to the section where you often exit from the highway and ride a handful of miles along a parallel back road, which climbs through three small towns. You make your exit and breathe in the quiet of this road. People still pass you in their cars, but they all slow down or shift to the opposite side of the road and smile and wave. You pass narrow horse pastures pressed between the steep walls of the pass and a creek that rolls down along the road. The horses stand there, eyes closed in the warm sun, or else necks dropped, lips moving along the surface of the ground. "A horse is the most beautiful animal," you think to yourself. "Or a deer." Snow begins to appear along the edges of the road, which makes for a pleasant sight. You are hot, climbing up the pass, and the sun glinting off the long mounds of gravel-speckled snow makes you feel cooler.
You've been riding now for an hour and a half, and you decide to stop for lunch at the modest pond in the park at the heart of the last town along this road. You lean your bike against a fence and stretch and sit down along the bank of the half-frozen duck pond. The only other person here is an older, stooped fellow walking in slow steps along the edge. It looks to you like he's exercising, making laps around it. Your presence alarms a brotherhood of ducks and three geese who are walking over the surface of the ice, dipping their beaks into little indentations filled with water. As you get out your tuna fish, tub of cream cheese, tortillas, and plastic knife, you watch them. They recover from your arrival and resume their strange exercise. The ducks move about with ease, carelessly padding across the slippery wet ice. When they come to larger indentations, they hinge their legs under their breasts and swim a few feet to the opposite ice bank and climb out. The geese move with much more caution. They sway slowly and stop at intervals to look around and to dip their beaks into the little pools. The biggest goose, a white one, and surely the male, moves with the greatest caution of all. His feet are wide, like those of a novice ice skater. He keeps slipping and catching himself just before his legs fold under him. Usually a goose's neck is curved elegantly, but his is arched into an awkward upside-down 'U', bringing his face down close to his breast. Presumably, he is trying to watch his feet. He is jerkily walking in a random path along the surface, unengaged in the community's work of beak-dipping, merely trying to get his feet steady under him. And he's making the most varied collection of goose noises you have ever heard: honking high and low, squeaking, and even hissing. It reminds you of how a human baby will make noises, oblivious to everyone else in the room, just for the pleasure of hearing its voice.
Finishing half of your lunch food and packing it away for later, you throw a piece of mulch out at the white goose. He slips and recovers and then rocks his head back and forth with crazy intensity, trying to get a look at it. You throw another piece, but then you realize that the old man is now passing behind you. You turn and smile at him. He gives you the same long, scolding stare that you give to teenagers texting in the library.
You get back on your bicycle and make your way back out onto the highway towards the largest town along the pass. In 30min you are pedaling along its main street, and you pass a bank which advertises the time (2:21pm) and the temperature (60DegF). In your head, you calculate your turn-around time, using the rough estimate that you will descend twice as fast as you climb. You figure 4pm is a safe bet, realizing also that this is not going to be enough time to get to your destination. Without much disappointment, you change your route and continue on the main highway out of town towards Wilkerson Pass, instead of North towards Deckers. You'll try again another time.
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