Nearing the End of Hiking Season

"There are things you should

notice anyway.  To live for some

future goal is shallow.  It's the sides of

the mountain that sustain life, not the top.

Here's where things grow.....but, of course,

without the top you can't have any sides. 

It's the top that defines the sides."

Robert Pirsig 

 

As I have aged, I find that I ride less in winter and hike more.  It is not that I can't ride in winter, or even that I don't ride in winter, but I ride in cold temperatures less frequently, tend to ride shorter distances, and I certainly don't enjoy it as I used to.  It is physically and mentally harder than it used to be.  The wind and cold have not changed, so I must have changed.  I suppose I am nearing the top and it will help define the stages and changes in my life.

 

 

I have often asked myself if it is the loss of the companions that I rode with throughout the winter in the past or creeping weakness and vulnerability.  The winds seem a bit more powerful.  My legs a bit weaker.  My willpower not so steeled.  Perhaps it is just because I know that I can do it, so proving it to myself and others is no longer an issue.  Regardless of the reason, it is what it is.  I no longer have a need to prove myself to anyone but me.  And perhaps it is best to have a multitude of hobbies to choose from.  Perhaps it brings a freshness to older hobbies.  Absence does, conceivably, make the heart a bit fonder, not only of people but of activities.  When spring arrives, I am longing for long, warm unhurried days on the bike and the companionship of those friends I rarely see other than in warm, bicycling weather.  By fall I am longing for the forest trails and the isolation.

 

 Instead, to keep active and not become a total winter blob, over the past few years I have started hiking more frequently in the cold months.   I enjoy the colder months in so many ways when hiking.  Less people are seen on the trail.  Ticks are fewer to non-existent.  Snakes are sleeping.  I quite enjoy plopping down on a log and opening my thermos for lunch, hot soup doing a slow creep, warming me down to my bones. I quite enjoy the starkness of the sepia landscape and how the few splotches of color here and there seem almost cartoon like and unreal.  

 

And the silence.  I enjoy the absence of sound other than crunching of leaves under my feet or the rapping of a woodpecker or the occasional rustle alongside the path by goodness knows what.  Birds will become raucous  and pervasive when spring hits, but for now there is largely a silence here.  Their song as they desperately seek mates will be one way I will know that spring is close along with the awakening of the peepers shrill clamor.  I will know that warmer weather and bicycling approaches.

 

I quite enjoy the way my lungs struggle trudging up a steep climb reminding me of my dependence upon air.  The way my calves ache during a steep climb, muscles straining to meet the demands being placed on them.  Often, particularly early in a hike, I will rush to meet the climb testing myself, knowing that my strength will normally ebb toward the summit or upon the return when the miles have left their mark on my legs.  

Of course, when Jon is with me, which is quite often, there is more sound....mostly my incessant chattering.  But it is just different somehow.  And he is quite tolerant. Usually, silence descends more surely as we get further into the hike.  And when Jon is with me, there are more demands put on these short legs.  Sometimes my shortness is a gift, when a tree has fallen and must be gone under or around, but often it is a hindrance, making me stretch to climb over it or to match my shorter strides to his longer ones, the foot or so difference in height becoming even more apparent.  Of course, we often tease each other about it.  We have been friends long enough that there are jokes between us that others would not understand.  Miles hiking or biking or perchance just time spent together gives birth to such closeness. 

 

Fortunately I live near five trailheads for the Knobstone Trail.  I don't know how long it was after I moved to this area that I became aware of the trail, but it was awhile.  It stretches for 58 miles with the loops I believe.  So many parks have trails that are only a few miles long. How glad I am to have found out about it even though there are times it kicks my butt. 

We decide to do the loop from Oxley Trail Head to Delaney Park with the idea that we can turn around or shorten the hike as needed by cutting out loops.  (This is the only part of the trail that loops). The original plan is to leave from Delaney, but Oxley is closer to my house and so the  hike starts there.  There are numerous cars in the parking lot which surprises me, but we do not run into them on the trail.  A mile or so in, Jon notices tents off to the right of the trail, and we suspect that those belong with the truck.  I don't notice, but Jon said the truck bed was filled with empty beer containers.  So we speculate that they are just camping and not hiking.  Indeed, we never see them on the trail, but their vehicles are gone from the parking lot upon our return.  

As we hike, we talk about the things that friends talk about.  The woods still seem rather dead with the occasional leaf beginning to bud out.  Jon spots and points out a few flowers, but they are not yet fully open.  And the miles pass.  We got a rather late start, so I begin to wonder about finishing before dark.  As so often happens, my imagination takes over and I picture us out there, no light, trying to find our way as not only darkness gathers around us, but the cold descends.  For it has been cold the past few days and night.  Unseasonably so.  But when we reach Delaney for the trek back, it appears all will be well barring injury or getting lost, something that could happen but is unlikely as the Knobstone is, on the whole, extremely well marked.  

 

17.7 miles later, we are back at his truck, preparing to go find nourishment.  Later I think that Mr. Persig is probably wrong in respect to a life metaphor.  Surely the sides, how we approach the top of our life, actuates the end of the long climb.  The top must be somewhat influenced by the path we take to get there and maybe even how long it takes to reach the summit.  But I suppose neither can exist without the other.  I suspect that each has a role in defining the other.  And how terrible it would be to reach the top and realize we had missed the journey, the sides, in  our quest.  Surely it is not shallow to consider the top. Regardless, it was a good day leaving me tired but sated, at least temporarily, and happy knowing that spring approaches along with long days on the bike.  Such blessings. 

Sink and Swim: 2023

"We all have our time machines.

Some take us back, they're called

memories. Some take us forward, 

they're called dreams."

Jeremy Irons

 

It is going to be perfect weather for a century ride despite the tumultuous rain that pounded the area the day before that left roads abandoned and closed in my area and took out power in others. Trees are down everywhere, unable to stand the force of winds that, in places, got up to eighty miles per hour. There is no doubt that the roads will be covered with debris. In fact, today's ride captain, Dee, is without power.  But that weather is gone. This area does not seem to flood as easily as where I live.  So the ride is on. 

 

Today it is crisp  and cool without being cold and with not too much variation in the temperature so that one has to worry about undressing and carrying throughout the day.  The sun is shining. Still, I slip on a light backpack just in case.  Weather is always unpredictable, but perhaps a bit more so this time of year. I heed the lesson learned from an earlier ride this year when I was under-dressed and rather miserable.

I like this century: Sink or Swim.  I think it is, perhaps, that best century that Larry "Gizmo" has ever put together though I am not particularly fond of the lunch spot.  There are, unfortunately, some busy roads, but many of the roads are low traffic and scenic.  There are a couple of long climbs and a couple of steep climbs, but none that will be too painful. Besides, it is time to begin building leg strength for the coming riding season. One does not realize how winter has leached strength so much until encountering a good climb.  Then the legs let you know, whining and complaining as they do every spring, asking if you aren't getting too old for this nonsense, threatening to quit but sucking it up and turning the pedals, however slowly. 

 

 

 I have memories from this century stretching back for years.  Sometime during the ride I will remind Larry of the time John Paul, he, and I rode this century and of our river swim after lunch.  So long ago, it seems like a dream. J.P. had never been in the Ohio River before.  I suspect he has not been in it since.  I KNOW he would not have gotten in without our urging. But he did it.  Oh, the power of peer pressure.  At one point, I think of Dave Combs, who no longer is able to ride, and remember riding with him one year on this exact road.  I remember eating at the gas station with Steve Rice each of us with a slice of terrible gas station pizza but downing it to keep moving.   Odd, the things the mind chooses to remember. 

 

Dee is the ride captain and  has a nice turn out.  About the perfect size group.  Small for a tour stage, but actually perfect for the day. There is Dee, Larry, Glenn, Thomas N, Tom A, Jon W., Samuel, Clint, John P., Chris, Will, and me.   All are strong, capable riders. Well, except perhaps for me.  I am definitely capable of completing the course, but I no longer consider myself strong. But I am out here.  There is that to cling to.  And I am far and away the most senior female.  Indeed, other than Dee, I am the only female.  Distance cycling seems to remain largely a male sport, at least in this area. 

I take off early in hopes of a private place along the first roads to relieve myself since, for some unknown reason, they demolished the bathrooms in the park and I drove quite a ways to get to the ride start.  Since Dee is captaining, I let her know I am taking off a bit early, but I feel certain they will catch me quickly.  Every year it gets harder to maintain a decent average no matter how hard I seem to work, but at least I am out here.  I had started to wonder if I would have to return to riding solo just because of my speed.  I don't like to feel as if I am holding others up and impacting their ride.  I think to myself that this is rather odd because of the number of times I have ridden at the back, sweeping, when I could have gone much faster.  Normally, I didn't mind.  But somehow it still bothers me that it now will be me being swept.  

 

I ride by myself  for quite awhile.  I am glad when the fast group passes and do not notice my tears.  I just found a very good friend from high school passed away and I am grieving the loss.  She was part of the childhood that will never return and enriched my life in so many ways. Her loss triggers memories that I haven't thought about for years, some good, some bad.  Indeed, despite looking forward to the ride prior to that knowledge, I had to press myself to come.  I think of my mom talking to me about how hard it was to be the last of her biological family and among the last of friends she had made.  Experience, perhaps, makes us emphasize in a way that we could not emphasize when younger.   Life is, indeed, about learning.  All too often she rubs our faces in it, recalcitrant students that we are. 

But it is hard to remain glum when the sun is shining and it is spring in the country.  The peepers sing to me.  Flowers are starting to shyly raise their faces toward the sun and bravely open themselves wide.  The grass is showing signs of greening and trees are starting to bud. Color re-enters the world. And I am on a bicycle.  How many times has my bicycle been a friend and a confidant?  How many emotions, tears and smiles and curses and laughter,  have I scattered across various roads leaving them behind.

Larry, Tom, and I ride together for a bit and enter Smithville together.  The road we are to travel is barricaded due to downed power lines.  We cross the barrier to ask about crossing and are accosted by an extremely pissed off line worker who informs us the barricade is there for a reason.  He allows us to pass however.  Tom and I try to placate him telling him how much we appreciate how hard he is working to get power re-established, but it seems to fall on deaf ears.   He mumbles something about the riders ahead of us.  I later learn that it is here that another Mad Dog earns his nickname.  He bunny hops the downed power line without seeing that there is another line that is not on the ground and is low hanging, clipping his helmet.  My understanding is that the lineman said something about him being clothes lined and a new MD nickname is given:  Clothes Line. 

Right before the first store stop, I am riding with Larry and Jon if I remember correctly when Jon's carefully packed lunch falls off the rack of his bike landing in the road. I am able to dodge it and avoid a fall, but behind us are numerous cars.  Somehow, however,  it survives intact.  The joking begins about how Jon "lost his lunch" and Chris comes up with Jon's new Mad Dog name:  Lunchbox.  

At the store stop, the twelve riders regroup.  A truck that looks as if it is held together only by rust passes.  A young man rolls down his window as he passes and yells out, "Faggots."  It makes me sad.   A bicycle would, I think, help this young man.  But of course it will never happen.

When we near the lunch stop, a small group of us decide on the gas station rather than the restaurant.  We sit joking with each other and fueling and before we are even finished, the fast riders arrive from the sit down restaurant.  We take off together.  

As we near the third store stop, I recognize it as well as some of the roads from past Kentucky brevets.  The group re-groups for the last time.  By the end, some of the riders will already have left for home.  Some of those homes will have electricity.  Others will still be without.  I pull off by myself again for awhile, pushing hard at the pedals, enjoying the feeling of my lungs and legs struggling, only to find a small group waiting at the top of the last, short but steep hill.  I debate moving on by myself, but I decide to be sociable.  I am in no rush to finish.

 

 We wait for the last of the group and arrive at the finish together after a short stop by some to reclaim clothes they had hidden along the route after shedding them early in the ride.  There is, of course, laughter and teasing about this, about Dee getting the men to strip and vice versa, and as I laugh I realize I have had a good time today.  This ride has been good for me.  Yes, I have suffered another loss magnified by memories. But this is tempered as I begin to dream of future rides and the laughter that I hope they also contain.  Once again I am forced to accept that I am, in most things, powerless. But I can dream.  There is really nothing in this world quite like a bike ride with friends, nothing.