A Portrait of an Amateur: Part IV

In the parking lot of Starky's General Store, you slowly get back on your bike and begin pedaling. But it's a slow, miserable pedal stroke, even in your lowest gear. You climb like this, in a daze, for perhaps 20min before you pass a gas station. It's open. You stop, lean your bike against the side of the building, push on the door with all your strength, and take two steps inside. An AM radio station is scratching in the background. An old timer is at the counter checking out a case of beer for a man in suspenders. The old timer takes a long look at your shorts, and then at your face, and goes back to pushing buttons on the cash register. The two of them are talking in cryptic mountain mumbles. You pick up that it's about the forest fire. Standing there still, by the door, you ask something about the fire, and the man in suspenders says it's moving fast. High winds. A woman in the back keeps asking about a phone number. She's trying to call someone who's house is near the fire. You ask if the old timer will take a credit card for a candy bar. He mumbles something of which you only catch, "...$10." You consider buying $10 worth of Snickers Bars and cramming them into your already full backpack. You look at him for a long time, and then say, "Well, thanks anyway," and start turning back toward the door. The he tells you there's an ATM in the corner, and he points in that direction. You withdraw $20 and buy a Snickers, which right now seems to be a stomach-turning edible. In fact the thought of anything edible increasingly turns your stomach. You ask to fill up your water bottle, and the woman, having given up on the telephone, walks you into the back and shows you a sink full of dishes. You fill up your bottle, thank them, and then step slowly out towards your bike.

There is no doubt now; You have felt this before: eight hours into your adventure race last spring, nine hours into your ring-the-peak ride last fall, and now five hours into your Tuesday ride (this must be old age), you are crashing. This is not a sugar crash, which a candy bar would fix. It's not a mental low-spot. It's a whole body shut-down, which you've experienced before, and which you know won't go away until you're done riding. You think about calling a friend, or hitching a ride with a passing motorist. You even darkly fantasize about pulling off the road and lying down in the woods. But you know this body shut-down isn't the end. It's not going to incapacitate you. Like all the times before, you'll be able to ride home, however slowly. It's just that ride (40mi? 50mi?) is going to be exceedingly unpleasant. Even though you don't want to, you get to work on your body maintenance. You start breathing audibly, just to let yourself know you're breathing. You open the Snickers, but you can only swallow one bite before you feel ill. You put chapstick on your lips just for the hell of it. And you pedal.

The wind is now at your tail, gently tugging you back up the Western slope of the pass. But you don't notice this. You are miserable, and the things that would normally delight you are now invisible or worse. You pass a stream you hadn't noticed on your way out, dammed by beavers. You see their huts and long low dams, and they seem muddy and shoddy to you. You are now passing through the smoke of the forest fire, and it maddens your eyes and is sour in your throat. Again, thankfully, your enraged and despairing mind begins to go blank as you push up toward the summit of the pass.

After a little more than an hour of riding upward, and a little dulling out of your extreme mental state, you raise your head and see in the distance a pleasing sight. The road climbs to a familiar high point and then disappears: the summit of the pass. Some thankfulness returns to you and you increase your pedaling strength by small increments. The low sun is exactly at your back and your shadow is lengthened in front of you. The silhouette of your legs is 20ft long, stroking up and down, up and down like a Masai warrior running. You pedal after the Masai, chasing him up towards the summit, and roll over the top like it was the easiest of things. You have before you, you realize, at least 25 more miles before you are home. But it is almost entirely descent.

The aches of your body are now gone, even the illness of your stomach. They have been eclipsed by a heavy tiredness. You eat your apple, but you just want to get home. You pedal in the manner of a man who wants to get home: grim-faced, steadily, in your largest chainring. After some time, you whiz through the narrow concrete-walled section of the highway and enter the large town at the top of the steep section of the pass. You pass the bank again and read the temperature (50DegF) and the time (5:36pm). You do a double take. It's only 5:30pm! You don't even bother to take out your phone to verify this. You know that an hour and a half back, either your phone malfunctioned, or you did, but you had actually turned around at your scheduled time, 4pm. This is a small discovery, unimportant now that you are on your way home, but it somehow changes everything. You stop and put on your lights (it is almost dusk.) You also put on your mittens and windbreaker. You continue to descend.

When you get to the duck pond off the main highway you decide to stop again and eat the rest of your food and see the funny white goose. You lean your bike against the same fence and sit this time at a picnic table. There are no ducks or geese on your side of the pond now. They are all on the far side, swimming sluggishly in a large, melted section. And the white goose is now walking along the shore, now wading into the water, making a steady, almost panicked honk. You look for the other two geese and cannot find them. There is something very sad in all of this. The white goose walks and wades and honks ceaselessly, while you finish your cream cheese, tuna fish, and tortillas. You say goodbye to the goose, and almost form an apology of sorts, but you're soon on your bike and on your way. As dessert, you decide to try the rest of your stomach-turning Snickers Bar. This time it is life-giving. You finish it and, though you are tired, you are increasingly happy about being on your bicycle.

You begin to warm as you descend, and your lights flash forward and backward in a bright pattern. The wind at times is descending at exactly the same speed as yourself, giving you the strange experience of moving fast in the startling quiet. You descend the pass faster than you have ever dared, in perfect control of your bicycle and your body. Cars pass you, but slowly, you are moving so fast. You watch the faces of their passengers as they move by. Descending the last bit into the village at the foot of the mountains, you are greeted by a town fully alive. A few cars are moving slowly along the main street. Families are walking along the sidewalks. You see a bearded man in a flannel shirt walking beside a girl in a simple dress.

It is dark now as you enter the side streets. Warm lights shine from windows, and the clinking of dishes and the smells of cooking float through the alleyway. You smell olive oil and yeast. The smell of marijuana briefly mingles with the rest and then fades. Now in the residential area, you pass an open garage door, and you can see two massive American flags hanging behind the garage detritus. You pass very near a parked, brightly-lit family van inside of which a little girl is dancing and singing shrilly. You come into the downtown of the bigger city, your own town, and the streetlights look like Christmas. People wave at you and smile. You watch a man walking five dogs on five leashes. And finally, at long last, you pull up to the front lawn of your apartment. You have just enough energy to carry your bike up the stairs to the landing, far more energy than you had thought you'd have. You check the time; it's 7pm exactly.

Inside you put away a few of your things and hang up your bicycle. You recall some advice that you read somewhere that for optimal recovery after an endurance workout you should consume 20-30g of protein. You stand in front of your open refrigerator. You look inside your pantry. Then you wave your hand in a dismissive gesture and lie down on your bedroom floor and fall to sleep.