It's taken a fat year to learn that it stopped...it's taken a fat year to get fat...and it's taken a fat year to realize what I knew before the strife. When the fear run dry...I ride for no woman, no bottle of whiskey or no bill. I ride for the thrill.....I ride for me....I ride to F**k it up......and I F**k it up good......
Stopping off at Mustache Richards.......I find that his equally hard stance on equal opportunity employment is clearly posted......
.....and as I graded, I reviewed the stock.....glowing from the background light..........
......illuminating the tools of the trade, I hear a chord in my soul which clearly illuminates for me that Steel is Real............
Pedaling on into the Ponderosa......we stop to contemplate the spirit feeding animal within us all. Now, I know that most of us are aware of a spirit animal within us all.....but how about the spirit feeding animal? I, am a deer......Mustache Richard is a Wolf, and tRoy is a squirrel. I am a deer because I will eat what ever is presented to me even though there are signs that state, "Do Not Feed The Deer". Simply put, I will get sick when I eat human food as I am used to my strict diet of bikepacker food...........tRoy is a squirrel in that he brings a sampling of everything with him but will hoard other offerings along the way.......and Mustache Richard will just gorge upon anything he finds........it is clear to us that on a bikepacking adventure......having a wolf in your company is not a good idea.......this thesis was presented to us by the wolf himself......caveat emptor........ignore the convincing grin and offering in hand.......
Rolling up to the site of tRoy's first kill, we replayed the Elk-hunt-Bikepack.......the scout.....the bivy......the Elks last magnificent moments of life....the shot at 50m.....the flee of life.......the confrontation and exchange of life...witnessing the sharp sight of grasses through the eye socket of this animal after eating upon it's meat for the past few months, made me respect it more....how beautiful we all are, how frail........
....it was real......it felt real to hear the story.....to rub the teeth, to feel the ribs and to see the bones. How blessed we all felt to be here....how blessed we felt to be with the one who took this life, who looked it in the eye as it died....and who took the body that we would eat from this night........
Riding on from the kill site, we descended on one of the carviest bits of singetrack through Aspen Forest to be had on the Coco...........here, tRoy leans into a hardscrable corner, notching himself into the halls of Valhalla.....
That night......perhaps it was our hubris or the spirit of the Wapiti.....or both....but we got hammered. It was the worst storm any of us had ever experienced outside.....and we've all gotten to the point outside were we called to the heavens that we'd had enough......and yet, during that night, when the light flashed at the same time you were able to feel the shock wave in your gut.....you no longer were high on the stoke. We all were making light of the situation with typical gallow humor when the flash would come......and a freezing motion would overtake us all, a feeling of humility on that naked ridge we were bivied upon.....as if our slow human reactions would protect us from the physics of the situation. It was positively humbling.......it was exactly what I needed............we all fell asleep to the fading sound of thunder, sleeping in an inch of water, relieved that the storm had passed............
"What the Hell IS THAT??????"..........this is the first thing I hear and understand after the night before...a night of alarm, flash, thunder and alerts as to the flooding within our bivy........As I wake from the sleep of early morning dawn, I look over at tRoy to see him shooing an inch long insect away from him....into my sleeping bag. I shoot up yelling, "MOFO, Don't put that THING IN MY BAG!!!!".......we awake in laughter.....as we play with the clumsy insect as it grapples with the slick nylon covering of my down bag.......
What the bug failed to do, the sun completed. It woke us fully; a clear and awakening day of upright grass and yellowing skies pressing upwards past the canopy of verdant needles into an ink blue atmosphere laden with more rain that promised to press down upon us throughout the day..........
It was also a morning of reckoning with the heinous sidewall slash I'd experienced just before we camped the night before. I'll never know if it was the event that precipitated our campspot, or if my partners ahead of me had decided before me.....it matters not.......here I was, with an inch-long gash, with a third branch opening in an Y-style incision......the boot I had to use was huge.....and I doubted its ability to hold me for another 40 miles......and yet I placed homage in it....it was the same boot that brought me through the Canelo Hills on the AZT......it would hold, I told myself......it will hold......
As I patched my tire....I watched tRoy make coffee with a Press-Bot, made by Canyon Coffee.....they also double as camera tripod's....check them out!
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Before we packed up......tRoy cooked up some ground elk that he had processed recently from the kill we had observed..........the circle here was complete......and yet we had another day of riding to get home......which is fitting......the circle never ends......we now were entrusted to take what the Wapiti gave us and make it our own........
It sounds trite........but it's true..........the circle will never end, as long as your life is as glorious; a life worthy, a life which enriches your own........
