Riding Fool

I keep expanding my blog description as I find new things I want to write about. Now it’s “the curious life of a poet novelist hospice nurse and riding fool.” Let’s hope I don’t take up any embarrassing crafts or things will just get out of hand.

In the spirit of writing about what is most up for me, I want to write about my ride today. I’m in training for the Climate Ride (road bikes, 5 days in May, 320+ miles south along the California coast taking in the Avenue of the Giants, Mendocino Coast, and a final day ride over Mount Tamalpais and across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco). Even writing about the ride gets me excited. This is a dream of mine. I’m having to raise $3k for climate action to participate so it combines two of my biggest passions, and it’s becoming a little more of a reality every day.

Today I needed to do 50 miles. I woke at 5 and pre-ride anxieties crowded in. What if I get a flat today? What if I’m just not up for 50 miles? What if some moron in an F150 tangles with my bike?

I was riding with my buddy Michael. As I drove my bike to his place in San Geronimo, the thick fog dispersed and sun broke through. Felt like a metaphor. The moment I got on my bike and clipped in, I felt it again: that clarity of joy and delight at being out on the road in the chill air and crisp sunshine with nothing between me and Marshall but a couple hours of pedalling.

Being on the road allows you a sweet abundance of time to think. There’s no phone, no work emails to check, and you can’t see how badly in need of cleaning your house is. Today as I rode Highway One north from Point Reyes Station, I began to understand what I had read about ‘becoming one with the bike.’ That was just words to me when I first read it. Today I realized I was shifting gears up and down without thinking. Tap, clunk. Tap, clunk. My body was responding to the flow and tilt of the road without having to think: left upper shift is chainring up, right lower shift is cog down, which is harder, for downhill. Today, after months of riding, my hands were just shifting the gears in tune with how I saw the road’s character ahead. This left me free to think and dream and let lines for a new poem form in my head.

As we rode, Michael told me about the Climate Ride he just completed in Death Valley. He described the optical illusions that occurred on the steep hills there: how riding up for a long period, his eyes would start to tell his brain that the road ahead was downhill, so his brain got really confused because he was having to pedal so hard to ride down hill. The reverse was also true on the downhills. I know Death Valley intimately, but have never ridden there, only driven and walked, so this was fascinating to me. I tucked the information away in case I need it on the long hills of the climate ride.

Towards the end of the ride, Michael observed that I was riding faster. I thought I was really slowing down. The long north side of Nicasio Hill, I felt like I was riding through molasses.  “Must be the eggs,” I said. As I get close to the end of a long ride, I always start to plan how I’m going to cook my feast of eggs when I get home. As we spun down the south side of the hill and into the San Geronimo Valley, with Michael’s house and my car in sight, I realized it was more than just the promise of protein: it was that pure heady rush of joy and accomplishment that I feel at the end of a long ride. It was the acknowledgment of how lucky I am to be healthy and strong and able to ride my bike for 5 hours on a Sunday. And it was thankfulness that I live in paradise and that the morons in their F150s gave me a free pass today.