Tag Archives: Freedom

Let’s call it a poem because it has no direction, no meaning, no purpose some rhyme.
Just words on a page (but not a real page) anointed with feelings from time
that no one remembers, or hardly recalls– when life didn’t matter,
especially your life or mine.

Sadness prevailed and cowards were pussies and pussies were cowards alike,
Bombs fell on Baghdad and nobody asked me so I got drunk and I rode my bike.

Now I care more, (still nobody asks)
I ride bikes, but not like I did.

I ride them for pleasure (for glory! for pain!)
While others can’t ride now or walk, or eat breakfast, or kiss, make love, or sweat money-
or die a quick death like their friends.

The smart ones care nothing for the lives of others.
It’s a sucker’s bet once and for all,
The night bombs fell on Baghdad nobody asked me and so I did nothing at all.

Juancho

I knew it was coming. There is nothing worse than getting that message from your rivals friends about their awesome big miles, hardcore ride when you are eating a biscuit sandwich somewhere in Panama City Beach. Those boys, Mystery and Bushy, they unloaded on me from driveway to driveway. I like to think it took both of them, and their collective scheming effort to break me down, but the truth is I was in a desperate state minutes after we departed and it only hurt worse from there.

I didn’t get dropped or anything, it just hurt really bad to keep up.

What are you going to do though? When you sit in the castle forever, lording it up in the manor of champions, you get curious about what goes on down in the village at night and you slip away, not realizing you have locked yourself out of the kingdom, your keys lost somewhere like your dental floss and nasal spray.

At some point on the far-flung pine flats of the Twilight trail, Bushy deep in a trance of agony, me right on his wheel, he locked up the brakes to avoid a mirage of a Diamondback Rattlesnake. In a state of hypoxic delirium he feared the common exposed scrub oak root and caused me to take immediate action. I veered off the trail and laid the bike down softly in the forgiving sand, narrowly avoiding disaster. A quick pain inventory revealed no major injuries and we were back to rolling at my aerobic threshold seconds later. I felt a slight itch in my bibs, and attributed it to sand and pine needles and continued my death grip on Bushy’s wheel.

Only when I returned to the safety of the van, and the adrenalin faded did I assess the continued sting and itch to reveal a near invisible carpet of prickly pear spines embedded in my fatty sidemeat.

The insult, the injury, we have been here before no?

Juancho

I put this photo of a Piliated Woodpecker up today because for the first two hours of Bike Church yesterday this was the lone thing I remember seeing other than my handlebars. Fifty-five miles of riding that included hiking through snarled thickets of briar and muck, a 20 mph peloton for 40 minutes, and one endless hour of sugar sand riding exposed under an 80 degree January sun. All of that was just to get to the entry point for the real ride deep into the Wildlife Refuge to the fabled Pinhook River.

I missed the Pinhook, yet again, happy to escort my old friend Mystery back to town. I promised him a 3 hour excursion that ended behind a dewy pint of ale, and his accusing eyes, so far far from home, made me feel guilty for being the liar that I indeed was at that moment. Besides, I could have gone on, and ridden further into the salt-marsh and possibly even out of it, but at some point I would be left broken and alone and far from a pint myself.

We turned around and bid the other church-goers adieu, and the day immediately brightened into a benevolent place. Lunch by the St. Marks River, a dirt road track to a newly discovered swimming hole, followed by the final soul-crushing miles back to town.

Mystery gave it up after 44 miles, many of which were unfriendly in pace and surface. He sent me ahead with his blessing to get the van and return, but I found I could not do it. A mile on from our parting I called in a rescue, thanks Magnum! I went back to tell him the good news only to find him darting into the grass behind a church and curling up for a nap. While he mewled and moaned, I coaxed him back into the saddle and up the road to a rendezvous point.

Me? I felt fine thank you for asking, and I sampled some Munson single track on the way home just to put a fine point on things, then I ached and creaked across town, arriving at the van 5.5 hours later, with 55 mixed-surface miles that nobody can ever take away from me. That is 68% of the 80 mile total the rest of the group completed, and that is a D+ in any school district.

Juancho

It is sadly predictable to be squeezing into one’s fat jeans in the beginning of January. The holiday bully sits upon our chests and rubs cake in our face for sixty days and before you can slur your way through Auld Lang Syne it is too late. Say what you wish about moderation, but the holiday bully on my block won’t tolerate it.

I ride pretty well as a Clydesdale, in some ways better. More depth to the legs, more assertive, just more of more in general. Still, measures must be taken.

Still monk, not angry now, I have my ways. I am natural-born Spartan, never happier than flexing the self-denial muscles of a true hunger artist.

I have been over the mountain and back, as they say, so this? A smallish hike, a wander on the road. The Skateboard of Great Clarity greets me everyday, reminding me of the hardships that came during the Unraveling of 2010. In this club, the Redemption Gang, you must re-certify on occasion, but you are only initiated once.

Stay raveled-

Juancho