But I couldn’t help thinking about a patient I saw today who had been unable to get out of bed for the first time. Could I really be feeling sorry for myself? Before I could talk myself out of it, I rolled out my bike, put on the gear, and clipped in at the top of my road. I like to think I was doing it for her, but actually it quickly became clear I was doing it for me. How did she benefit? The joy was all mine. As soon as I coasted down Frustuck towards Bolinas, I knew it had been a good idea. For one thing, I wasn’t curled up in a big pool of self pity on the couch. For another, I had figured out how to attach the phone mount I bought a few weeks ago to my handlebars, which meant that for the first time ever, since starting to ride last October, I was riding with music. This is BIG.
Music is the soundtrack to my life. I have a playlist called Lookie Here (cannot explain) that has 200+ songs. I play it over and over. That’s really all I have played for the last year or more. Yes, it’s a little obsessive, though I keep adding to it so I rationalize it’s not really all that obsessive. But I figured out ages ago that it’s really okay to listen to the same two hundred songs all the time. Because at least I’m not blowing up bridges or jumping from them. Music gets me over the humps. It turns around the day. I can be starting out morose and blue, a certain song comes on and instantly I’m smiling idiotically and loving my life.
Every song is a nest of memories. As I started up Pine Mountain, shuffle played Nathaniel Rateliff’s “Tearing At The Seams.” This was a song I listened to, ritualistically, every single time I drove to a certain patient’s house. She lived down a beautiful shady, tree-lined street very close to where I live. I would turn onto the street and line up Tearing At The Seams. It sort of strengthened me for the visit ahead. She was young, and dying of ALS. When that song comes on, I still feel the precise shades of sadness and grief that her death stirred up.
As I summited Pine Mountain at the Deer Valley golf course, I saw the pale nine-tenths moon that would accompany me on my ride. At almost every turn, it was there, and as the light faded, it just got brighter. Funny how the moon does that.
On the downhills, the wind was loud in my ears and I couldn’t hear my music so well. On the climbs, I could hear it perfectly. So on tonight’s ride, I suddenly got a new appreciation for climbing uphill. Usually I climb so I can spin down. Tonight I appreciated the richness of riding uphill: not just because I could hear my music really well, but because it is no longer a significant strain on my body to ride up hills. I mean, it’s not fun exactly, but it doesn’t hurt. And I had Gregory Alan Isakov and Joe Purdy to make it hurt even less. So I realized tonight that I actually enjoy riding up hills. Who knew that would happen?!
By the time I was riding back down Pine Mountain on the last stretch into Fairfax, the sunset was in full flow. It’s a subtly active process, sunset. The sky changes at every turn, the gold washing across the very tops of the hills get richer, then the pinks start, and deepen, and everything turns diffuse and sort of hazy, and gets richer and darker and more beautiful every moment. I kept turning corners and sucking my breath in because it had got even more stunning and I couldn’t hope to capture it with my phone. Just with my memory and these few words. On the downhills, I would lean down into the bike so I could cut the wind noise and hear my music and also feel closer to the road, to the flow of the ride. Very few cars tonight. Moon all to myself. Mad sunset over the Bay Area. Maybe my patient will have a better day tomorrow and be able to get out of bed. And if not, I’ll roll out again in her honor. And again. And again.
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