I was chatting with a biking friend this evening, someone who has been riding many more years than me and has also undertaken things that would kill me, such as marathons. She mentioned a hill that is close to us. It happens to be a hill I have to ride up in order to gain access to the vast riding paradise of West Marin. This hill divides East from West Marin and is thus a cultural as well as a topographic landmark. It also happens to be a real bitch to ride up. I vividly remember the first time I was able to ride it without stopping. I thought I would burst a lung.
The road up White’s Hill has numerous twists and turns and even when you know it well, like I do, from driving it fifty thousand times, it’s hard to remember on the bike how many stretches of the hill are left. The only thing I ever know is that the bridge stretch comes last. When you can see the bridge, you are almost there. However, by the time I see the bridge, I am always so exhausted that the sight of it entirely fails to cheer me, because the other feature of the bridge is that it’s about the steepest stretch of the whole hill. So not only am I perilously close to the end of my strength by the time the bridge comes into view, but I now realize I have the very hardest stretch of the hill left to do. The fact that it is also the last stretch generally fails to thrill me at that point, since one or both of my lungs are about to burst.
My friend had a beautifully succinct way of describing her feelings upon riding White’s Hill, specifically the moment when the bridge comes into view: “F**K you!” I know that feeling really well, but had somehow imagined I was the only one who ever feels it, since all the other riders about seem to power fairly gleefully up hills and are always talking about even steeper hills they have ridden than the one that just nearly made me give up and sit on the side of the road with my bike and cry.
There is a hill that starts about an eighth of a mile from my front door and goes all the way up into the stratosphere, and probably beyond. Even when I am driving it (which is the only way I have ever gone up it) I am constantly thinking what an utterly endless hill it would be to ride. Thus, it is a big goal of mine to get on my bike one day and ride it. I know that one day I will be able for it. I just wonder when that day will be. It sort of feels like the day one would choose to give birth. You know, eight months and twenty-nine days pregnant, you wake up one day and go, ok! today I really want to go into labor!
But I can imagine the rush of actually summitting Pine Mountain. Plus there would be the impressively drawn-out reward of riding back down it: part euphoria, part terror, as it is extremely narrow and windy and there are no barriers of any sort. Puh! Barriers! This is the birthplace of mountain-biking we are talking about. This is where repack was invented!
So one weekend day, in the near or distant future, I will get up at first light, have three cups of coffee and maybe some methamphetamines, and then I will ride up Pine Mountain. I’m going to do it on my own, in case I have to get off a few times and cry, or reinflate my lungs. But when I get to the top, you can bet I will be taking a selfie because I take selfies on all my rides, and they uniformally feature big silly grins. My plan is to have them all printed one day and make a ride album. However, this will just be for me, I will not be inflicting it on any of my long-suffering friends. They already have way too many fb posts of my training rides cluttering up their feeds.
And when I have taken the selfie, I will get back on my bike and brave the prolonged rush down Pine Mountain. And then I will go home and have more coffee, maybe even some eggs, or maybe just lie on the couch for a few months. And then it will be time for some other hill: some steeper, longer, more insane climb that makes Pine Mountain look like White’s Hill.
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