The road less traveled

For human-powered travelers, the road, any road, is the road less traveled.  Regardless of the traffic, the streams of SUV's, buses, big rigs, and Harleys, when it's our legs and lungs that carry us, the way ahead is a different place, both internally and externally.  We feel the wind in our faces, the heat sizzling on our skin, rising up from the blacktop in shimmering waves.  The cold bites and numbs.  The climbs wear us down while the descents recharge our flying spirits.  Each mile requires an investment that no bank account or MasterCard can buy.  We engage in an intimate relationship with the earth and the elements, with our own will to continue, our own straining muscles.  Each ride, every hike leaves us changed in some way.  Can the same be said for sitting in a car?  A boxed-in chair that deposits us, blood pooled in our butts, at the next destination?  Every day I witness the multitudes of the overweight, sick Americans seemingly content to let machines do all the work, content to take the road most traveled, always, and I despair.  I'm not that old, just 51, and I've seen the shape of America morph into its current diseased spread.  What joy of movement, what charge of spirit and soul these bodies are missing!  There is a religious and philosophical point of view that calls the body the temple of the soul.  We need to stop defiling the temple.  When we take the road less traveled, we honor that temple, we reinforce the walls, put up the finest stained glass, and let in the light.

Commute of the Gods!

Zippin' with ol' Zeus, I rolled away from my garage at 5:30AM yesterday for my first run of the semester down to the college.  Thor was kickin' Asgard to the northeast, lightning ripping through a dark wall of clouds.  Hot, humid, I started to sweat right away, over 70 deg. F. at dark thirty.  I pushed on, tipped my wheels over the pass and plunged into the valley.  Ferocious tailwinds kicked in, causing dangerous eddies and swirls as the road twisted down the mountain.  At times I was flying along at over 40 mph, others I had to unclip, hang a foot out just in case, and hold my speed under 20 mph when I would normally be doing close to 40!  Then, on the long, gentle decline at the bottom as the road straightens out, slicing through large orange groves, I maintained a steady 30+ mph with minimal effort--everywhere and all around a deep blue sky and towering thunderheads.  Breathtaking in so many ways.  It's good to be out on the bike sometimes, yeah know?

Persistence

The key to success at hill climbing, rock climbing, career building--virtually anything--is sticking to it.  We get nowhere in life or on our rides unless we persist.  Although often painful at first, like running a piece of barbed wire through our thighs, we find that after a time, the pain recedes and serves as an almost pleasant reminder that we are not suffering but living, tapping into something elemental, essential.   The oak featured above has been at its job for many years, caring not one wit for the strand of wire stapled to its trunk.  If you can't shake something, make it part of your couture!  We hit the road early today, and I finally got the photo of this tree that reminds me of an important philosophy every time I grind by in the low- to mid-single digit speeds.  Persist...

Belladonna

The "beautiful woman" of a different, European variety, a tincture of this plant was used in eye droppers to dilate the pupils of women to make them more seductive.  Oooooh, baby, drop some of that there poison in yer eyes and you'll be sooooo HOT!  Add to that a dose of radium skin whitener, and we can see that the women's liberation movement didn't come a moment too soon. The European belladonna is among the most deadly of all plants, and a single leaf can kill an adult.  The so-called "jimsonweed" pictured above is our home-grown version and blooms in astonishing white trumpets this time of year.  Prepared properly, it can provide a dangerous hallucinogen.  Don't snack on this at home, kids.  

Went out for a walk in the woods at dawn, just good ol' Django and me, cool, even chilly down in "Sherwood Forest" as I call it.  I've seen bob kitties, coyotes and other critters down there.  Early morning is always the best time.  Recently, folks have been running sheep down there, so the grasses are virtually all gone.  It's an area we call the "doggie park" or "bark park," although it's really a long defunct golf course and adjacent land.  Django goes fully off leash and we can walk for an hour or more.  Not bad.