A beautiful distraction

When you focus on a goal for so long you can develop what experts call "target fixation". Blindly focusing in on a single object, all other things around that object fade out of existence until the goal is reached, or failure.....with failure being the most likely endstate. Tunnel vision takes over....all dangers and concerns are ignored save for the single object of fixation. The past few weeks saw me starting a new job which brought a new operational tempo to my ride. A necessity which pulled my attentions away from the old horizon and onto a new one. No longer feeling a need to wander the landscape in search of long mental miles, I've defocused and have found a beautiful distraction....the fun ride.

The beautiful distraction is the ride where I don't look at the clock. How many eons did it take for the patina to develop on this piece of weathered rock....lichens taking hold of it's exterior and bleaching the surface a cold grey....yet when fractured, she shows her heart....a rosy hue which tells the real story of how this became, why it is and who it will always be.....

....and like that....she slices open the sidewall of BGR....it's been a long time my friend...it seems like just last season when I listened to the Navajo radio station in your snow cave......

During this down time, I focus on the other rose colored hues around me....following the tangent that presents itself to me when I wander down that rabbit hole I enjoy so much.  This picture makes me long for a fisheye lens...but I wind up creating a ghetto fisheye shot for myself.....

As I wait for the sidewall slice to be remedied, I focus on the layers of history around me....and I see strain hardening.  Under certain conditions, rocks like materials become stronger than their original selves.  Where the rock breaks through a fracturing process, it sometimes become harder....so much so, that when it weathers and erodes out....it's the original rock that disapears, leaving only one thing behind....a fin of hardened material that incorporates the original rock along with the thing that hardened it......  

Growing within these fracture zones, I see plants backlit in the shallow sun of morning.  The roots exploit the fracture zone in search of easy resources....pulling it upwards into the light.  I eat, I ride and I love.  I use what is available to me to do this and to keep it all going.....so does this plant....veins exhibiting an order that is not unlike ourselves.....

Breaks are taken, conversations are had, laughter is shared.....gut shattering laughter...the forest takes us in.  Smiles are the norm...we are happy and we are in a beautiful place....should there ever be another way?

Descending into Kelly Pocket....I am once again transfixed by the woman in the green dress....she wears it well in the early summer.....and Gitty provides the action.....

Swoopy turns, up and down, banking left and right between trees and slabs of rock.....we travel through this lush microclimate....

More breaks are taken....snacks are shared....I pass out Twizzlers bought at the QT.....I hear they're taking over Arizona.....

tRoy shows us the skinny......but winds up just being hokey.....thanks for the video my friend and for organizing this ride.....

The next morning, I go ride with Dara and Agnes.  Riding in front of Dara....I hear a commotion behind me.  Narrowly avoiding running over a Horny Toad, she almost wrecked.  As I take pictures.....Agnes tells me that if you pet it's neck, according to the Navajo, it will rain....I pet it's neck a lot.....we need it.......

Having fun just past the overlook....a log roll is tried......

This one has always had my number since I missed the exit, augured in and went over the bar; hurting my shoulder so bad it took weeks to recover....you gotta trust the branch is there on the backside and aim for it without seeing it.....

As I try.....I fail to trust this time as I've so often found myself....I see it when I'm at the top, stalled and contemplating, but need to trust it on the approach and just go for it.  The fact that I'm trying it again is not lost on me....I've found a beautiful distraction once again....the long solo ride is a beautiful transformational thing....but so is a short ride with friends.

Resonance

I met up with J-Bake for a ride up on Mt. Lemmon...reminiscing of failed attempts at the 300 and fun rides in the past.  J-Bake tore it up and provided a good subject for my lens....me, learning new things that resonate from the past...stronger than before, doubling in effect and propelling me forward into a new world.

This ride all feels so familiar....as if it has happened before, and it will happen again....again is now.

Climbing obstacles bested in past years, I find myself hesitating at them once again......

Coming in waves which I no longer should have to think about; my hesitation is usurped by the jump and satisfying feeling of reliving thoughts and feelings I had so long ago......the nervousness, anticipation, fear and excitement all part of a process I'd long lost touch with....

Her green dress took my breath away that day....a symbol of the glory of spring and early summer....I can't get the image out of my mind.... 

The ride was, as rides go, a great one but a bit awkward at first....a first ride on non-flowy trails with a new bike.  The constant change combined with a newly developing skillset to bond with  my new ride frustrates me at times.  Try as I may to make it roll like my previous bike, I'm at least cognizant of the need to just flow with it....stop thinking....stay centered and present.  This is not your old bike....the rules are different now....

Let the obstacles present themselves to you through the present situation instead of future-tripping on what might happen based on past experiences.......

The past no longer matters.....stop trying to anticipate what will happen...your memory is stained of the old....this is the new.......relax, breathe in, enjoy the moment for what it is...a beautiful moment....

Some moments are easier than others....live for them, but don't rest on them either....keep moving.....

Old habits are hard to break....but some of them are rituals found in the resonance of the ride.....feelings of euphoria amplified by the swell of current events......

Monkey business has returned to my rides after a long winter of disciplined structure.....

....and so does the 3-man wolfpack which howls for the past, but always looks towards the future.....

Walk Beside Me

For all the rides I do, I remember the summer rides on the Coco the most.  After a solid month of working with no time off but to interview, I was sorely in need of some head space.  Combine that with a healthy recovery from endurance riding over the winter....I was itching.  Setting out from the command center off of west Route 66....I set out with a singular plan....ride without a plan, without a destination and without a purpose but one:  Ride until out of resources.  To quote Tim O'Brian, "I don't know just where I'm goin', but I'm gonna get there anyhow...."

That came a bit sooner than expected.....the low snowpack from the winter of my discontent left pottery shards in place of water holes....the elk I found along my way supported this observation....I encountered 4 different heard of cows and a few bulls on my 6 hour ride....all grubbing around watering holes nearly dry....lets hope the rains come soon.....

Rounding A-1 Mountain, I sat and watched some cowboys rounding up a heard of beef in a beautiful park; open in its expanse and offering a cool view of the peaks; peaks which hold the spirit of the old ones as well as the new.....

Burn areas from last season gave my ride a smell of neutral charcoal and acrid pitch warming in the sun....the sight of mule ears spread out before me in a soft, shag-like carpet were a sign that the black hulks reaching skyward were tall reminders of the past....the green and soft forms below, the future.

Moving on, a different kind of destruction was encountered.....tornado damage.  2 years ago, a rare tornado cut a swath across the fall air leaving sticks 30 feet tall, robbed of their verdant foliage.  I stand in this place in awe of the power....anyone at this spot would have died.  I've shaken in my tent during powerful storms wondering if the end was near...this confirms that if it is, you'll never know....best to ride like it's your last......

After a few hours moving north, skirting the path of the tornado, I decide to link up with little spring for a water refuel.  Making an error, I wind up exploring the trails of the to be determined Bear Jaw Groove race.....my water begins to run low.....

Climbing into the alpine meadows below the peaks, the flowers born of crystalline winter tears come into focus.....

I've stared at the star like glow of the Rocky Mountain Iris petal for hours over the past few seasons; mesmerized at the amorphous transition from pearl white to royal blue and purple.  The heart of her form holds a dusting of gold along the spine....each speckle unique and never to be repeated...just like the snowflake that fell last year; transformed into a new form equally beautiful yet unique, I introduce myself once again.....

As I take in the beauty, I became aware of my thirst....I was out of water.  I still had 15 miles of riding ahead of me....but it was downhill for the most part on perhaps, the most beautiful section of AZT in the entire state......a flowy, curvy, banked section of single track from Aspen Corner all the way to Flagstaff.....I could ditch my ride to find water at snowbowl.....or.....well......the dude abides.....

The next day, I went riding again, this time on a ride around Elden...the first time I've been on some of the trails since the fire 2 summers ago. The last time I was here was with splitchimp...and so we were here again....splitchimps like Nut Butter......

We stopped for a while before descending Sunset trail to talk about skunks, beer volcanos and investment capitol.....a perfect business meeting conducted in the best of board rooms......a room that smells of conifers still breaking out of winters grasp; needles born new and soft like puppy ears.....

Stopping beneath Elden Spring, we spy something hung up on a bush.....a dead baby owl still fresh from the sky.  As we marveled in the beauty of its form, we handled it with the utmost respect.  This was perfection in function....perfection not realized....a fact of life.  As we sat it down at the base of the tree, I placed it facing west towards the setting sun, wings folded across its body.  We each silently wished it a good journey hoping that when ours end ,we too will have kind people marveling in the beauty we left behind.

A barkeep named Hope

Hope served me a few beers the other day after an interview in which I found myself contemplating my future. Having just flown out to DC from PHX the day before, I was dressed in my favorite dark-blue pinstripe; post-interview tie loosened and askew about my firmly starched collar. As I stared up at the large screen TV filled with images of baseball, I longed for the view from the cockpit of my Pivot 429....banking through a sinuous series of loamy turns in the aspen up high. I was certain I had tanked the interview....it went far too short in my estimation. I told myself that this was just yet another occasion where they knew exactly who they wanted to hire, and it was not me. A perfunctory examination which required my full effort, wasted time and emotional headspace. I felt a pang of regret at burning 3 days of my time off on this folly when instead, I could have gone on a bikepack....pedaling across the canyons and mountains I love so much. Reveling in the sunshine of morning, exploring the country and photographing the sunset above my bivy before I fall asleep beneath the infinite complexities of the cosmos....this is how I should spend my time, not flying from coast to coast in search of a phantom.

Conscious of my morose nature, I sparked up a conversation with a stranger. Feeling the need to get out of the negative conversation I was having with myself, I found a man next to me who shared in the same trials I've experienced. We talked of choosing the rockier path in our careers in the quest for the principled and elusive quest for a job which fueled our passions. He had been in the corporate world and had designed and managed corporate welfare programs. Having found this an obstacle to his love of coaching, he quit and had lost his home. In and out of substitute teaching jobs for the past 2 years, he had been on as many interviews as I had. Both of us, sitting there with half filled beers dripping with the condensation of early summer in Virginia; we swapped tales of worthless interviews and ambiguous job postings. As I sat there half engaged in conversation, the other half of my brain was engaged in a distracted game of imagination; dreaming of hero soil turns on the Arizona Trail between FR418 and Snowbowl Road.

Just as we started on a roll he received a call and as polite people do in Virgina, he excused himself and walked outside of the bar. As much as I despised this place for the sheer mass of humanity and infrastructure that delays all attempts to get away from it all...it is the humanity, decorum and politeness in "The New South" that I hold above all others. As he took his leave, I checked up on my phone for a text I had received on vibrate as we were chatting. I had to read it twice, three times....four times. An offer was on the table and would be forthcoming. Just as my brain froze, the man I had been talking with walked in with an ear to ear smile....he had just received a job offer as well. We bumped fists as the bartender, sensing the occasion, automaticlly poured us beers. As she placed them in front of us, I asked her what her name was.

 "Hope", she replied.