Sweet agony

Took two hard laps at the Plum Creek Trail today over lunch. (Something about that sentence sounds ambiguously gross. But I’m going to leave it.) It was a fantastic ride. Such a good time and I’m so blessed to have a trail like that right outside our office door.

It was just such an idyllically beautiful, peaceful day. I really couldn’t imagine conditions being any better. So, when I hit the trailhead and the first song out of my iPod was Weezer’s The Greatest Man That Ever Lived, I was feeling a little cocky.

Gophers? Robins? Make way or taste the aluminum wrath of my whirling spokes of destiny. Dirt flying, pedals cranking, sweat running…

And the thing that made the ride so fantastic was the zen of being so completely in the moment yet apart from the moment. I was a rolling splatter of chaos in an otherwise completely serene painting. And I think the juxtaposition of my frenetic energy sweeping through that pastoral setting was, overall, more relaxing than if I’d just been walking and another soft, gentle element in a soft, gentle tableau. My way was more cleansingly cathartic.

After one lap my blood was pumping, my lungs were complaining and my mind was locked in. So I hit the second lap, flying – twitching corners, gutting out rises and plunging into drops… until I met a particularly obtrusive birch tree.

No bones were broken. No blood was spilled. It was just a pure, clean, solid hit, squarely on the left shoulder. It was the kind that throws you right off the bike and into the trees on the far side of the trail. And the pain was the icing on the cake.

I knew I wasn’t seriously hurt. I knew my bike wasn’t damaged. So I just stood in the middle of the trail, smiling and embracing the moment. I was there. And it was good.

Great ride.

Comments

[Simply Dawn]

Sounds wonderful!