Category Archives: Uncategorized

Those Thursday night boys are a pack of coyotes, out to steal thunder and glances in the woods. Thirty wild miles of scrubby terrain and where the hell am I? What a magnificent ride on such a magnificent evening. I finished carrying a peanut butter sandwich in my jersey pocket with one bite taken out of it, and I was lucky to get that bite down my gullet. I flatted about 2 hours in, when the sun was almost gone. Aside from one other mechanical earlier in the ride, that would be about all of the stopping available. Coyotes run, they don’t stand around.

The moon rose over us long before we finished and it was huge and amber and it dripped all over the trees, but we had no time for lunar voyeurism, and no time for Jupiter and Mars either. It was all “face!” and “log!” and lay back those shoulder blades and tuck in those knees.

Spring is here, calendar be damned, and if last night is the early benchmark things are going to get scary fast this summer. I rode blind for missing my goggles, and I suppose that slowed me down. Without depth perception I am a two-dimensional man riding into a two-dimensional frame. I just queued up on Dogboy’s wheel and put my trust in the lord.

Juancho

No noisy crowds this time. No lycra army skewing towards the white male 28-45 demographic. No fluorescent tape. Nothing going on at San Felasco except single track burned into the ground by a thousand tires. Future archaeologists will remark on the leisure time available to the middle class during the late twentieth and early 21st centuries. They will shake their leathery heads in shame thinking of all of the misspent kilowatts that could have been diverted towards building the innovative solutions to survive the Great Adjustment period of the 2050’s, like the human gill and the implanted braInpod. These ones enjoyed themselves they will say The two-wheeled Roman Fiddlers Society.

Taking the Redline to the cornering limits, I surfed the grey line through the slippery pine needles and tasted fresh air instead of dust. After losing myself somewhere in the back corners of the Red Bug Run I topped out in the late day sunlight, my mind eased at recognizing the way back as the day grew dark. I should just about make it if I keep this speed and make no mistakes, not that I was ever concerned. I keep that speed and make a couple of mistakes. The sun is gone but the day still glows. A flock of deer blow across an open pasture, eyes flickering as they pass into the trees.

I sit on the tailgate of the van and strap tomorrow back on, the pants and the measurable outcomes. That is the real trail back home, and this one just a skirmish in a much larger campaign.

Juancho

Better than an Easter egg, is a poem in the hopper from Scotty B. I reckon he is lauding the annual ride through Tate’s Hell swamp. Click the title to ask him for details.

Ride west young men
beyond the smell of sunscreen
beyond the single-file smear
of “dayglo above clay”
ride west into the prevailing winter gale

Ride west my friends
past the polluted sinkhole
where the white-flight feeder-highway
turns from two lanes two four
and the “groundwater reclamation” pump
drones on into eternity beside the abandoned gas station

Ride west where there are more hills and
miles and miles of abandonment
taken over by bears and grizzly old fuddy duddys
squealing “whoop-de-doo – de – whoop-de-do!”
getting lost themselves – in their own respective homes
like CeBe Tate so many years ago

Ride west good fellows – into the yaw of the abyss
across the miles and miles of abandoned motorcycle single-track
covered with pine needles and small saplings
feel the whir of the smylak as it takes over your drive train
go and go and go
until you are spit out
at Trout Pond
behind the airport
into the “back-forty” acres of a squalling fuddy duddy with a shot gun
into the giant sand pit
onto Bice Road
onto Wallace Road
past the forgotten homages to Danang and Quan Tri
and rotting City bus tires
until you reach the edge of the wide hurling ooze – the sprawling swamp of the Apalach

then – if you are stupid enough
take that deepest gathering of air into your perception of reality
And pedal westward – into the “great beyond”

“Pennies in a pile make a dollar after a while.” -Dwayne Murray

Eighty-five dollars is a lot of change, accumulated an empty pocket at a time on top of the dryer. We joked about cashing it all in on a weekend getaway months ago, and there we stood on our gulf-side balcony looking out at a stormy, cold sea. Molly Ringwald cooed in the background about Blaine to Harry Dean Stanton, and the four of us were content and happy.

There is a restaurant in Apalachicola called The Owl, and I would like to live there, in some room behind the wine cellar. After the drive down U.S. 98, which is one of the best drives in the country, we set up on a couple of stools at the new Tap Room and enjoyed a perfect bar room moment. A Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale for myself and a working class Yuengling for my beloved. The room feels like a snug berth in a ship, with a tall ceiling and the mingling scents of beer yeast and aged wood. Clinking glass, murmuring conversations, and a cold, light rain splattering the windows. A perfect tavern moment, and rare to be repeated.

We felt it in our knees-

Juancho

Back when I first started riding the Munson Hills trail back in a time I call the early 1990’s, I would put some Dinosaur Jr. in the Discman and roll around those woods like it was the edge of the world. If you ventured off of the main loop onto a forest road or motorcycle trail you were taking a chance of spending the next 3 hours trying to find your way back to town. When it rained the trail was fast, and when it didn’t rain the trail was slow and soft.

We wore Hi-Tec soft hiking boots in toe clips, and carried a backpack full of provisions. Day old bagels for energy and water in any container that could hold water.

Now Munson is an artificial race track, very fun, but no longer of the forest. You are separated from the Prana by 7.5 miles of screaming fast red clay. There is still an entire forest to explore, but I don’t think you are supposed to ride bikes beyond the red line. If you want a little taste of the old ways, and almost nobody does, you go slog it around the Twilight trail, then check it off the list for the year.

These folks in Brooksville better keep their 60+ miles of sand and pine needle trail under wraps. Gentrification will not stand for it. If the sport of mountain biking is going to progress we will need to pave away the slow and make the trails more competitive or fun, I’m not sure which is the goal. I’m stuck on mountain biking as a sport. For me that is like calling prayer a sport. Sure, I like to pray as fast as the next guy if I can, but I always wash my feet before entering the temple and I always say amen when I am done.

Crooms is an old-Florida temple. I only saw about 15 miles of it, and I guess I missed the big quarry pit action, but what I rode today was the cinnamon and sugar of my youth. Silent and smooth, with 17 turkeys and a bull fox squirrel as my witness I prayed for each and every one of your souls.

Juancho