When that epic ride is over. When just enough weeks have passed that you don’t remember the pain and wear your body was feeling. That’s when it’s time to revisit. Replay the ride in your mind. Flip through the pictures you snapped along the way. Read your ride summary. Text with your ride partners to share stories.
And then ask the question whose answer will tell you all you need to know about the value of that ride:
There are those rides where when I get done and look at all the photos, the Bono line comes to me, “‘m I buggin’ you? Don’t mean to bug ya.” But then I go ahead and drop all the photos in the ride report anyways. When my camera shutter button is broken, it means I’ve found a truly golden path.
When we left Hwy 2 on the final push for Steven’s Pass, my Garmin showed 67.7 miles & an elevation of 2,224 feet. When we encountered the landslide covering the road, my Garmin showed 72.2 miles and 3,447 feet.
There was zero hesitation. We dismounted and climbed over … to find a second landslide immediately after that one. We climbed over. We saddled up and pedaled on around a bend, to find a third. We went around that tree-covered switchback to find a fourth at the next switchback. Powering through that, there was a fifth that was so large we couldn’t at first determine which way to go to find the road on the other side.
This was the point when started asking, “How many more of these do you think there are?” The answer was, “Well we’re certainly not going back down.” There was no way we were going to repeat another 1,200 feet of climb, on a road that is way more exposed to the noon sun. So we formed a chain over the pile of trees and snow and relayed all the bikes over (we had gotten pretty efficient at getting over landslides at this point).
Landslide #6 was discovered to be a “screen,” concealing from us the largest landslide of them all. There were no questions. There was no pause. We walked towards landslide #7 and started working our way over. We ran into dead end after dead end. Finally, after about fifteen minutes of weaving (and a bonus 20 feet of elevation gain carrying our bikes), we got to the other side of it.
I’d like to think this was a demonstration of sheer determination. In reality, I think it was more about sheer laziness.
“He will die from the sincerest of greetings to the wrongest of people.” Reb, on Aydin
I remember a summer during college, when a group of us were up in NoVa, heading into DC. We stopped at a McDonald’s, where I gave a nod and a “hello” to a boy leaving the bathroom. When we went to go back to our cars, that boy and several of his (older and bigger) friends were approaching us. The one guy said, “Is this him?” pointing at me. The younger boy nodded. He kept approaching me saying, “What’s your problem?” I looked at him confused, then over at the boy. I said, “I just said hi to him.” He responded, “That’s now what I heard.” We kept moving to our cars, and they kept approaching. By the time we are all at our car doors, they right up on us. They had spread out to match up with each of the four of us on different sides of two cars. The group was talking to us, but we were not responding. One of my friends finally said, “He said he just said hi.” At which point the guy closest to him swung at him. It was enough of a connection that everyone stopped, and somehow we all made eye contact in a fraction of second to give a “now” signal and we all opened our doors, jumped in, shut them, and locked them. The guys backed off after punching a couple of car windows and off we went.
“Idle legs are the Devil’s workshop.” Pedalverbs 16:27
“To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven; a time to peloton, a time for asphalt, a time for gravel, a time for dirt, and a time for mapping out the next ride.” Cyclesiastes 3:1-8
