Out There: Nowhere Man

Last weekend saw me put together a pretty decent effort in Arizona Endurance Series, Prescott Monstercross. No camera, minimal stops, no mind games, no looking at my mileage and tripping out on how many more to go. Just soft wind at my back, conifer and oak in green, streams of blue and cool, tacky singletrack.....and solitude in nothingness for 8 hours and 38 minutes. I shared the singletrack with Noel, Jason and Brian at the start....then it was just Jason and I....then it was just me....Nowhere Man....riding alone for the bulk of the race. I rode with Nancy for a bit, until she climbed away from me into nothingness as she always does. I also remember wanting to puke during one climb...but I let it disappear into nothingness without giving it any more thought....and it went away. I came away from that ride feeling as if I'd found the nothingness once again....it's something I seek, but only finds me. To look for it makes it slip away....and yet I felt as if I had the formula for making it happen. I set out to test that theory on a ride on Pass Mountain.

I've always liked this road view on the approach from my house. A road to nothing....ending in dirt at the base of the Superstition Wilderness. Looking east from this view, I imagine that at the end of this road just a few miles ahead...there is nothing....all the way to the New Mexico border....and then, more nothing. Looking into nothing is comforting. Yet, within all that nothingness....is a world of wonder, defined by the present and free from the past and future.

Stopping to adjust my suspension after the road approach, I snap a picture of the recommendation to not ride into nothingness.....

The hillsides in the nothingness are still filled with gold, but the coming summer heat is shrinking the colors away into smaller, yet more refined representations of themselves, much as I am.....

Stopping to shoot some ocotillo blooms, a lone coyote stared back at me....

......"Nowhere Man, doesn't have a point of view, knows not where he's going to, Isn't he a bit like you and me?"

Climbing north on the western face of Pass Mountain, the skyline is dominated by Saguaro's; rivaling any skyline found in a big city; I'll take nowhere over somewhere, any time.....

Prickly Pear, offered a convenient stop before the climb around the north side. The lack of winter rains have left the desert without the blue flowers of spring....my Mach 5's blue anodization offers a supplemental palette.....

Pollen spread thick as nebulae, ring the green core of the universe within........

On the other side of the trail, I spot the home of a recluse doing what a recluse does....."He's a real nowhere man, Sitting in his Nowhere Land, Making all his nowhere plans for nobody".

Climbing around the north side, contouring up above the valley to the west of Bulldog Canyon, I struggle to show the tightness of singletrack carved in granite with such limited field of vision........

.......and yet convey the expansive void of nowhere.........

Cresting the pass, I stop to adjust my suspension yet again, lower my seatpost for the descent and shout songs at the tops of my lungs at the mauve cliffs encrusted with olive drab lichen across the valley. In return, I hear the echo's of a Nowhere Man, heading back and out into nowhere land.....

Almost to the bottom of a speedy and flowy descent over various forms of rounded chunk, chunky chunk, lumpy chunk.......and razor chunk....I'm stopped by the hiss of two sidewall gashes...one in front, one in back. Patching the rear with the fluid within the tire, the air escaping stopped. The front however, was too far gone. Throwing in a tube....I went on my way......"Nowhere Man, don't worry, Take your time, don't hurry, Leave it all till somebody else lends you a hand!"