I paused mid-commute home to snap this shot.
There's more to say, much more.
I had to stop, snow melting on the screen of the phone was impeding the sensor recognition, took lots of effort just to post it before taking off on the bike again.
The thoughts riding through the unbroken mounts, the ripples, the "corduroy?" it was an amazing commute home. Yes, I commuted to work when I didn't have to, when work was closed.
I needed the ride more than I realized.
I needed that time on the bike.
The ride in, there was a dusting of snow but it was easy to tell where the lumpy rutted ice was and where the path had gone down to bare pavement between Friday and this morning. I could pick and choose pretty well and find the smooth sections and pedal with relative ease. The ruts were all visible, still there but I could see them and prepare and or avoid them.
The ride home? Despite the fierce wind and the powdery nature of the snow, it had accumulated. It wasn't flat, it was in those rolling but ridged dunes, and it completely obscured the ruts and ice and frozen footfalls beneath.
But struggling to keeping going through it all on the Garbage Truck, with the 35c tires, the 46x19 gearing, all I could think of was "This is a perfect metaphor for life." I'm doing something abjectly impossible for pretty much everyone except my CXy cohort. And even then more than half if not most of them probably would hate it and bail and miss the point. The struggle with the riding on the ruts, the holding the bike up, how do you turn in that, body language, let the bike flow, point and ride. It is like life. I've chosen a general direction. Abjectly not the easiest, and I'm making it sort of work, none of anything I have is new, or in good shape, but I'm doing the best I can with what I have, I'm not trying to impose my will or force it, just react, and stay upright and moving forward.
In light of the weekend's news, that's telling enough. Moving forward, it is work, but the low cadence quad firing feels just right. My legs are responding and different than they ever have been. I'm not any faster but maybe I'm just more in tune and maybe while not faster I'm not slower and being not slower 10 years later isn't terrible? No?
The reaction, the pedaling, the forcing through.
Friday's ride home through the wet snow was brutal. Snow was packing into the one cog and it kept skipping. Litereally how the fuck does a SSCX fuck up? I dunno, couldn't figure it out. So I made a small change yesterday, but the dry snow didn't pack up the way it did on Friday and I had no problems with the bike on the ride home. The handling on the garbage truck is absolutely abysmal but it works well enough and because it isn't easier maybe I work hard and that's just well deserved penance.
I wrote the words above in the instagram because I had the urge to just get home and write, and write and write. And I knew that If I didn't get the basis of the thoughts down I might miss it.
Something about the creativity thing, along the lines of John Prine, the video i posted this weekend. What is it we do. What is it I do. I don't know. It is depressing to look around at everyone else your age as they arise to CEO level shit, or hit major points where salary starts rewarding them for years of work, and I'm still just doing what I did 20+ years ago, struggling with an ever increasing fiscal demon. But, this is my path. Like riding on the bike path instead of the well plowed and salted road... My journey is under my control, as much as I hate myself for it, this is me, I need to own up to that and realize it at some point. I'm not anyone's boss, i have no one working for me, but that's okay. I need to remind myself that. That this is me, and me is okay. Like riding alone in the snow, the hidden ruts, best to just react. Life has prepared me for this, take the lessons learned and apply them, let instinct react, no not instinct, but practice and reaction, reps and skills, acquired life/riding has prepared me well do deal with this. Sometimes it isn't fun but sometimes it is difficult but rewarding and fun. Today was that. Fun. Difficult. Not easy.
But I felt absolutely at home, on the bike, alone.
Emphasis almost on the alone. But then being able to share. I wish I had better tools to share the view, the shots the scene, the colors the lack of colors. I wish I had a fancy Leica Monochrome M or one of the Phase black and white cameras or some just perfect digital way to capture things in black and white.
That is my aesthetic. Scanning electron microscopy, black and white film, contrast, texture, light. But then, adversity and making due is what I do. I don't have the luxury of luxury, but i do what I do with what i have and that has to be okay, even when I doesn't feel like it. Disc brakes and a true SSCX bike would make everything much more reliable and faster/better/stronger, but that's now my plan, plot or path.
And that is okay.
But today was magic on the bike.
Today was not a fast day but it was a perfect magical day that I am incredibly thankful for.
heddwch
G
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