Juancho

Let’s get started with an update to Juancho’s Not Recommended Reading List- I got ambushed byTen Little Indians by Sherman Alexie, the noted Indigenous American author. I have a friend in Alaska who works with the tribes under the Indian Child Welfare Act, and his stories of life on the res got me curious to learn more. Now that I have finished this little book of 10 short stories I can’t tell if I am more inspired than ever to write fiction, or if I am positive that I will never bother trying. This book is amazing, and it goes to the top of my not recommended reading list.

Miami was hell, so I guess we get what we expect. Getting from the tarmac to the airport exit was like having to navigate blindfolded through the airport with periodic stops to solve a Rubik’s Cube and hand out $20 bills. Once you accomplish this series of challenges, congratulations, you are in Miami.

This morning we are loading up for a weekend run to Birmingham, AL and for me that means Oak Mountain, one of the finest mountain bike trails in the country. It never fails to tear me down to a smoldering nub. While M is preparing a young bride’s hair for her wedding day, I will be riding through the trees, a 41 year-old man in tights, and sweating like Rod Blagojevich.

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