Arc

Coming down from the full effect of a week off is never easy....especially if one spends it eating and drinking their way through Paris over New Years.

From the colorful flower shops on the street corner selling spring buds.....

.....the locks above the river Seine symbolizing a love locked away.....

....the luthier shop passed every night on our way out into the city, lit brightly from within just off the metro stop next to our appartment...

....to the Pont Neuf bridging all of Paris history.

The milky brown waters of the Seine flow rapidly through this city carrying with it an arc of human history.

The vertical and palatial stature in every building, from the Louvre at sunset....

....the domes of Sacre Coeur on New Years Day...

...to the arching structures of Notre Dame and its flying buttresses at night; all contain a physical and metaphorical arc.

You can see this arc in the everday......Parisians taking communion at noon inside Notre Dame.....

....bathed in the colored hues from stained glass windows framed in an arch of stone.  

An angels shadow even rests upon an arch....set in stone and light as much as it is in darkness.

Written in stone, standing at the spot the guillotine served its capitol purpose; the 3200 yr old Luxor obelisk explains a past that most can't read....

....reminder that history here as in all places is constantly arcing from one pivotal event to another.  But unlike most places in the states...the human history arcs deep from the time of Pharaohs, the Roman Empire, the birth of Democracy and the exile of self proclaimed Emperors....the last of which is entombed beneath an arcing dome of gold at Les Invalides...spotlighted against the first sunset of 2013.

Everything in this city seemed to arc to something else, creating a focus on what came before and after; what was underneath and what was supported above.  Sometimes it seemed it was the very clouds that were hoisted above the city...pierced by the sparkling Eiffel Tower and adding a glow to the otherwise dark mist above.

From atop the Arc de Triomphe, the lights below in the streets create 12 radial swaths that pierce the darkness and create the city of light....red and white course through the city breathing life into her as I stayed focused on trying to capture the scene.

It was here I felt her hand press upon the small of my back and whisper in my ear, reminding me to aim a little higher this time to capture the yellow glow from the tower lights.....a glow that projected a whirling dervish above the Paris skyline....deep purple of the setting sky exposed for seconds at a time in the spaces the clouds had yet to fill.  The satisfying click-thunk of a 3 second exposure filled my ears...she liked this shot.  Click-thud, Click-thud.....small variations in F-Stop and film speed were tweaked providing for what was a growing conundrum....so many shots, so few words....her so beautiful.

I saw a dozen more shots from my perch there....but I walked away from my spot along the railing and turned towards her, looking into her smiling eyes. This was not the movie moment you see on the Eiffel....but it was our own, here on the Arc, in the cold winter mist of a lowering sky.  All I could see beyond the radial sprawl of brake lights and taxi cabs making their way up and down the Champs, were those eyes from the city of lights....bridging the gap between darkness and light.

Eyes that looked on as Parisians came to honor it's fallen at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier....an eternal flame protected by the arc above...

After a stroll down the Champs Elysées, we look back at the Arc to see the reflective glow of traffic and lights projected onto the smooth stone and rain...

A growing hunger began to gnaw at me.....how can I possibly tell this story, I asked myself....we had done our best to cover Hemingway's visible feast.....a veritable 'how to guide' for living....but well said and best left alone....

....watching the traffic go by at a cafe off of Bastille with drinks in hand; bikes and cars fly by early on New Years Eve.

We had walked all over the neo-gothic concepts of the city growing on top of the ruins of itself...Hugo's Paris has been so well-tread upon, I don't dare walk in his footsteps.  The Louvre with it's garish Pyramid hoisted onto the courtyard of the Palace...itself built atop the ruins of a fortress....it's laughable to think I can compete.

Should I say nothing and let the pictures speak?

It seemed trite at best and ignorantly futile at worst to even try to spill words on paper when so much has been said by so many exemplars of the written word.  Can't I just say Bonne année....happy 2013?

Perhaps my thinking about this conundrum of sorts, my struggle to explain the metaphorical arc of optimism growing in us as we initially threw our plates and senses to the city to fill....the culmination of New Years......followed by the patient and cultured descent towards our last day here....perhaps this IS the story!

As I descend from flight level 33 into Chicago O'Hare, I'm left with the feeling that I don't want to come down....I want to go back...I want to stay there on the arch, on that night, with those balmy clouds confining the rays of light in radial patterns which only converge on us.  High above Paris on an arch, bathed in the nexus of light and arc...my memory lives.

Don't play no game I can't win.....

I've flown a tight flight path these past two years based on sanity rules......and now..I'm doing what I want to do........

As I review this past year......it's a rebirth of sorts....a re-sorting of what I wanted vs. what I did to myself because I felt I had to......I ran long and solo because of the past....but I've found...I still want to run.....I want to run far and long.....but for different reasons.  Have I always wanted to run....will I always want to run??????

During this time of questioning.....I slowed down....I stopped driving at multi-day excursions in solitude....I was tired of talking to myself, in the midst of cholla and antelope squirrels ....I was tired of the ruse....I sought something tangible......

....I found a reflection that repeated back the same thing I asked....and thus I realized I had found the end of what I had sought.....the culmination of all the questions I had asked.....found, in the spot where I began questioning it all......a perfect mirror of the strife I fought to counter.  All this time....I was looking in the mirror trying to counter what I saw as my life....when all I had to do was look within at my own image to find the truth.

A truth that was too ugly to view or comprehend, I sought out a reflection of the truth.....an optical illusion....but the truth, none the same.  And yet, I became detached from it.....living now in a parallel universe.....a universe that came crashing down.....when my heart was confronted with the dichotomy of life.....one that is seen here......the soft focus of the grass on the horizon is countered by the near focus and sharpness of the grasses......and in the motion of the rider, a smooth violence floats above it....a narrow track of bare earth pierces it all...

Once I accepted this realization....that I was the same.....that my horror was temporary and my reality the same, I opened my eyes to what was invisible before.....beauty in love.....

It's a possibility that I had ruled out, completely......I did not, was not, willing to face it....and yet it came....

In spite of this.....I kept on riding off into solitude.....I laid down in the desert, looking up at the sky for the same epiphany that had met me every ride in the past year......and I heard nothing.....the sky held the same beauty....but no message....I begged the monsoon to roll over me as it had done before....and it obliged but this time; only with a cold and wet drenching......

Every canyon I turned up into and sat down and pondered....I found beauty.....but the wisdom I once found flowing was now dry......it was frustrating to find the roaring spring now dry.......

For a time I became angry......after 2 years, the insight that flowed seamlessly everytime I ventured into the wilderness now was absent......I grew furious at the fact that wherever I looked....I found nothingness......where I focused my attention.....I only found what I already knew......

So I threw this thought out of my mind and embraced the new spirit that surrounded me....

I hunkered down with old friends and ventured outside of riding to experience the music that encircles all of us.....

.....but I still fought the stillness.....I kept throwing myself at the silence....even harder......and the harder I threw myself at it, the more silent the void became....here I find myself, completely shelled after riding 40 miles where I, in the past, should have felt fine......I had another 30 miles to go.....my reasons for being here started to crack.......this was the omega of the past and the alpha of the new.....

Moving on......I embraced the alpha......and followed my heart.....and it's taken me away from the bike and back into the kitchen......

....surrounded by folks that want to eat, eat and talk about wonderfull things......why should this not be part of the wholistic experience?

I long ago learned to stop questioning why.  Why things happened....why life sucked....why someone had to die....why others lived.....why is the question you ask when you're unable to find a reason to live.....and live, I did.  I don't know why I don't feel the muse as I once did.....why I don't feel the need to drive towards the horizon as I once did.....but I know that I smile, and find smiles along my path....just the same.....

......and yet as I sit in Terminal B at Dulles Airport......my mind boils over with the thought that I should be out there on a bike....or ski...........peeling back the fog of a snowy day and embracing the first rays of sun to angle down from the eastern ridge above me........

I don't play no game I can't win.....this is just a tactical pause.......

The Frosty End

I long for the swollen feel of fresh powder crunching beneath the base of my skis....a stacatto release of crystalline-induced failure and compression transmitted upwards past my bindings, boot and femur, entering my sensory system, reminding me that this is the only truth.....the path up the ridge that blows snow across the cornice into eternity somewhere over the mauve-peach-vermilion sunrise of the painted desert, melts all worries and gripes born inside walls....walls preferred by people who do not live but through vicarious inclinations, exploitative meanderings and armchair pontifications found in Entertainment TV and Facebook.

At this moment, nothing matters more...this stochastic analysis which has occurred since mankind became self-aware. Nothing will ever be as important than this feel and thought....a sharp run-down of risks vs. consequence....benefit begrudgingly relegated to third place.

I dream of the sharp end where I feel only the risk...and manage to find a path forward. I struggle with a world in which I see only benefits and force myself to temper my decisions....and I envision an outcome where the paradox is balanced...but it is just a dream...for any balance we may find is hoisted upon gossamer hopes and happenstance. We are all victims before the rules are fully explained...I was dead the day I was born and I'm a victim of my own prejudices......but when will the two become one?

I don't have a say in this final question...it is one of many things I can not control. My only hold on this process is that I might push out the inevitable until I am long worn from the struggle on the frosty end.

You're doing it all wrong

I did it all wrong on Saturday.  Muscle memory only goes so far...and mine just ran out.  I was solidly out of endurance shape after a 5 month eschewment (if there were ever a word) of solo riding for days on end.  I'm glad I spent the last 5 months doing what I wanted....but as the first AES event of the season proved....you're only as good as your last ride....and mine sucked.

I knew starting out that I was in for some form of self-flagellation, and I never batted an eyelash at the implication.  I can suck up just about any form of punishment and keep laughing...but do I really want to?  These thoughts were swept into the recesses of my mind as I drove north on I-17 under an awakening sky of peach, vermilion and baby blue.....

Arriving at the start...I was blown away at the parking lot...it was full with racers.  I knew from the night before that this event had hit its max of 74 riders...but it took a while for this to sink in.....just 2 years ago...this event had about 15 folks showing up....another sign of my spanking, just a warm glow on the horizon which represents my peachy and tilted optimism.....

Off the bat, this ride gives you 1,000 vertical feet of spankdown in the first 7 miles....tack on another 13 miles and you've gained 3,000 vertical feet.  As I contemplated this fact against what types of rides I do better at...I started awakening to the fact that it doesn't really matter.....I was sucking because of my gluttony.   Contrasting this were many of the folks that put some good time in since the AZT in the spring....J-Bake all smiles mid-way through the climb....

Topping out at the entrance to Antelope Canyon singletrack....I wanted to puke...and I'm not a puker.  I'm quite certain that it was because I was drinking from a 4-month old bottle of Carbo Rocket Half-Evil which I had left in the back of my fridge....it looked ok to me in the morning when I left.  Too bad I neglected to notice the black slime growing in it until I was deep in the climb....lightheadedness pursued through the rest of the ride....here I was only halfway into the event....and I was doing it all wrong.....lucky for me, the landscape provided a palliative course of action....

...and in this remedy, others shared in the joy of a hard earned descent.....

....a descent that turned former frowns, upside down.....

Many hours later....my upside down frown got turned over again as I found myself in the pain cave....cramping, light-headed, knee aching and bonking.....until I found this gem.  I had been doing math in my head since Bumble Bee Rd....figuring out bail points, mileage, time, elevation gained....all against remaining mileage, water and stats on route.  I hate the term DNF.... because it rhymes with quitter....but I was feeling the sweet relief in the possibility my suffering could end...until I found this.  I quickly bucked up and remembered why I was here.....life sucks....some moments more vidid than others.  The sweet relief and relish comes sometimes in the memory of the beautiful moments; moments which share only a flash within our consciousness as we labor to make it through the day.

The labor is what gets us to memory lane...and as I sit here remembering the ride....the views....the epic descents....and yes, the hell I inflicted upon myself to avoid three letters.....I see clearly in the usual suspects below, the reason we all do it.  Thanks to all my fellow riders for reminding me that joy in the greater things comes in the struggle.  In the vacuum of my nightmare, I had sought the struggle merely out of a sense of purpose.....I had long ago become numb to it and needed a break.  This ride has reminded me that my nightmare is over and that I now seek the struggle for all the right reasons....I want it.....