Headlights

500 miles up and down U.S. Highway 19 and this is only Tuesday. You might think this is a picture of all of the deer we saw along the highway, contemplating a prance into the headlights. It might also be a view from the tree stand, where many of my old riding buddies are spending their days this winter. I might think it resembles the stares of my remaining ride buddies who wonder what happened to the old Juancho, man of a thousand excuses, as they search for a gear to make the pain go away.

It’s just a bunch of deer though, because I don’t truck in excuses and metaphors anymore. I just tell it like it is.

Now that every ride counts, every ride really counts. I take to the bike like a man afire and rack it reluctantly when it has to end. I think I need some bike church to take me down a notch, otherwise I am going to ride to the pole barn in Reddick or maybe To Hell and Back with Bicycle House.

Big talk for a man who ate BBQ in Dixie County twice in three days. I don’t care, come shut me up, that’s what I say if you think you got it.

I hear talk of a race at Munson. I’ve never done an official mountain bike race in my 23 years in the saddle, but then again every ride is a race- against someone, everyone, yourself, even death her own self.

Come and get me

Juancho