You ride too much. You quit riding. You come back but don't commit. You start playing music again. You turn fifty and question every decision since the summer of 79. You remember who your friends are and that they will not wait forever. You write a story (you are not sure why or what it meant). It takes a year, and runs off the folks that like to read about how shitty you ride bikes. You are blessed but you struggle.
The calm returns one day on a solo ride, to the coast and back. It is a ride born from anger. You are angry with yourself, for not being able to ride with your people. A dusty switch flips and a rusty machine churns in the wind, on the burning lanes of Capital Circle. You are out of water, food and grinning, at the ride you didn't think you could finish.
You remember that you ride bikes. It's not what you do, it's who you are and not doing it makes you an unbearable, bi polar, fuck face. You start riding more and have a couple small victories: Complete a group ride with the crew. Finish a Chaires ride (thanks to luck and a friend that pulled your carcass home). You get invited to a ride that you normally would have been on the "no call list' for. It starts to come back a little. You get the shit kicked out of you at Munson for the uncountable kabillionth time. It's not supposed to be easy.
The cross bike is aptly named, it is the crucible of truth and the revelatory place where the spirit was waiting. It is the cave where the visions come. The trip you hated that you can't wait to make again. It's "the fucking bike" you are going to ride back to the fold.
I cannot promise I won't start some convoluted story here again (if the ghosts start talking, I must write) but for now, I am back on the bike, and blah blah blogging about it.
Tell your friends.
W.B.Z.N.
