Monthly Archives: June 2005

Droppin’ Bombs

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Posted by Hello

I thought I would ride right to the drop and send it over without hesitation, yet once again I found myself locking brakes as I approached the edge. This drop is so fresh there isn’t a definitive line, and a humpback protrusion half-way down seems to guarantee separation from the Earth in a vertical position. “It’s all in the mind” I tell myself, S’quatch, and Powder. So we stand there, at the brink, shaking our heads. It had been such a nice ride up ’til now. I felt fast, my aching left knee delivering sweet memories of my crash at Munson yesterday. I felt well, kind of hard core. Sleep deprived, hungry, with a belly full of turpentine, I thought today was the day.

Well, it wasn’t.

I tell myself “you’ve done worse”, “sit back, feather the rear brake and hold on”, “the fall wouldn’t be that bad”. The problem is- the fall could possibly be that bad. Who am I kidding, it has been a long time since I dropped a big flight of stairs, and a couple of hits at Razorback left me speechless and puckered. Can my conviction to ride withstand a sustained recovery from injury? Do you people realize the extent of self-medication I would indulge in? I can see the cable man coming back up the street already, to plug me back into the fat suit.

Or is that just one of the more insidious voices of weakness?

Do I really want nothing but happy rides that end in Picklesimer fields before the sun goes down, or do I also need to spend a night on the cold, hard ground, shivering beneath the monolith of Cedar Rock, burning inner tubes and green rhododendron branches sipping on a few teaspoons of Red Bull tainted water?

I just don’t know. I hope it doesn’t take all summer to find out.

Baptism

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healing waters Posted by Hello

Memorial Day has come and gone, marking the true beginning of summer.
Steady rain under dark skies gives me a chance to slow down and breathe after a hectic Spring. Thousands of students are gone until August, and the rest of us are free to meander slowly about town in the heat.

Afternoon showers will roll in continuously over the next couple of months, signaling nap time, driving everyone under shelter to watch and listen to the staccato pelting on the cars, the roads, the roofs, leaving a blinking soggy crowd to wander back into their days.

It’s good for me, this rain.

I will sit on the porch and watch lightening rend the sky, and water fall so hard you can’t hear the person next to you, and we will remain speechless until the last distant rumble signifies the rinsing of another neighborhood, further down the road.

Helmet and shoes will be soggy until the Fall, and trails will soon be thick with green. We will ride through tunnels rather than on trails. The beauty of the south is intimate, not so impressive to the naked eye. No majestic peaks, no panoramic sunsets, but a beauty that you feel with your nose in the root beer scented jasmine and subtle tea olive. Riding under a curtain of banana spider webs, and the promise of a snake on every ride- that is the beauty of a summer down south. Around here we do not gaze upon, but from within, as if viewing a sunflower from the perspective of the seed.

The cable man just cut me off, and I will be permanently tuned to the channel outside.

It won’t always be pretty, and it will never be comfortable, but somewhere in the mix of sand, sweat, snot, and good fresh rain, I hope to become a little bit more of the man I want to be this summer.

See you out there.