So I head out on my training ride at 8:30 last Sunday after the usual three hours of lying awake wondering whether today’s the day I get run over, or fall on my head from not clipping out fast enough, or maybe get chased off Highway One and into Tomales Bay by the Angels storming by on their Harleys.
It’s a gorgeous day and I meet up with my riding buddy in San Geronimo. We head west from the San Geronimo Valley to Olema, where a sudden rain squall puts a dent in the lovely downhill to the town. This was not in the forecast. WTH? It is somehow the first time I have ever biked in the rain since taking up the sport last October. Yes, that would be a lot of rain dodging on my part. But I don’t happen to like the feeling of being soaking wet and shivery while I ride into the headwind. Seasoned riders might call me a rain wimp. I can take it.
The rain stopped and we loaded up on caffeine at the Olema Deli and headed through Point Reyes Station and out to the Nicasio Reservoir. We had decided to add a few miles to our ride by what Emma-Louise terms an “out and back.” This generally means you ride up some crazy hill and get to the other side, only to turn around and ride back up the hill from the other side, all so you can add some miles to your ride. I understand the rationale. I just balk at the double-hill aspect of the whole endeavor.
I am not one of those people who subscribe to the time-weathered philosophy that the climbing of the hill is the main point and getting to the top is really irrelevant. When I am riding up a hill, I really quite desperately want to be at the top so I can freewheel down the other side laughing and shouting “Yes! I did it!” The whole toiling up the grade...not the point of the thing for me. Maybe I’ll never be a philosopher.
Anyway, we’re climbing the hill that leads into the Hick’s Valley and I’m thinking longingly of the stop at the Cheese Factory where I can have a snack, a drink, and maybe even lie in the soft grass for a while listening to the geese. I’m near the top of the hill and there’s a layby. In the layby is a parked SUV, and I can hear aggressive music blasting out from it. Next thing, I see the driver and they are sitting out the driver’s door and they are pointing something black and shiny directly at me. My first thought is: am I about to be shot? My second thought is: why? What have I done? Does he maybe hate cyclists? Does he particularly hate cyclists who cycle up big hills and almost make it to the top?
As I’m having these thoughts, I can hear the person in the SUV yelling, and I have the mad thought that if I am indeed about to be shot for the heinous transgression of cresting a hill, I should at least try to dodge the bullet. After all, I’m the single mom of a 16-year-old daughter who just went to her junior prom last night, and I really need to get home to her so I can hear all about it.
I’m about ten feet from the SUV, feeling like I really might be in the last moments of my life, and still having the idea that I should weave on my bike so as to dodge the life-ending bullet, when I realize the driver is a woman and the gun she is pointing at me has a lens and a shutter. As I ride by, a bit wobbly on my bike at this point, she’s shouting “Yeah! Nearly there! Keep going!” I smile, really weakly, and I even call out apologetically “I thought that was a gun!”
But afterwards, it got me thinking. If I had been riding the backroads of my native Ireland, i NEVER would have assumed that black thing someone was pointing at me was a gun. It just would not have entered my consciousness. I’m not a paranoid person. I’m sort of the antithesis of paranoid. So why did I jump to that? Oh, right, it could have to do with those two words: MASS and SHOOTING.
Has it really come to this? An Irish bicyclist who would be hard pressed to tell you when she last clapped eyes on a gun is riding her bike up a hill in bucolic West Marin and a photographer is taking pictures of her and she thinks she’s about to be shot?
The good news is, I made it to the Cheese Factory. I had a good draught of coconut water and my sandwich. I laughed quietly at myself for making such a crazy assumption, even as I felt a little foolish and quite a bit sad for what it said about the society we are living in. And then I rode another 30 miles with Emma-Louise and when I got home, I got the full skinny on the junior prom.
"The whole toiling up the grade...not the point of the thing for me" and "If I had been riding the backroads of my native Ireland, i NEVER would have assumed that black thing someone was pointing at me was a gun" resonate with me. Perhaps that 'toiling uphill' is a similar aspect of odd US culture? A crazy notion that we ought to fight life and punish ourselves rather than love life and enjoy ourselves?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, as always, nice writing.
The view from the top of any climb worthy of the name is the reward. Biking always returns the favour for effort exerted.
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