The Revolting Cogs

Not Really Nor'Easter Part Two

2022-11-21T14:59:00.051-08:00

Haddam, Connecticut

October 25th, 2021

I had my doubts.

Walking through the loose gravel, tall grass, and wet leaves that constituted the "driveway" behind Ronnie and Arya's barn, I surveyed the slope, plotted the trajectory, and did the math. Short, but steep. Doable... but dicey.

Hopefully.

Because otherwise, I would be camping in their backyard and digging holes or asking to use their bathroom for a few more days. Whether they liked it or not.

I'd had less concerns the day before; descending the abrupt little drop into the field in the glorious dry and sunshine of a later October day. But constant and heavy rain that had rolled in last night was changing the narrative.

I'd been warned, of course. Arya had given my van a wary look and pursed her lips, inquiring if I had four wheel drive. While Ronnie had just given me a dulcet and promising "oh, you'll be fine," waving his hand dismissively, and invoking a name from the past in the form of an "encouraging" anecdote about how her van had "no problem" when she and her new boyfriend had recently visited.

My right eye betrayed only the smallest of twitches.

With my foot, I raked layers of slick, wet leaves out of the way, then once again mentally visualized my course up and out and into the blind turn of the quiet but not un-busy road on which they live.

Then I walked back to the idling van, buckled up, accelerated toward the crux....

and prayed my timing was good.

Then, just over one year later, I abandoned this and started a whole new blog for some reason.

No, YOU read it.

Dirtlotrack.

Lauren Cat West.

Jarrod Bunk of Hope.

Jeff Frane of Wilde.

Many a extralight Rene Herse tire succumbed on this section.

Ron and his dream pool.

This show is literally bonkers.

Ronnie's Murder Barn

Rule of Three: Number Two

2022-06-13T05:01:00.001-07:00

Part Two:

I forget when I first heard about Rule of Three. Likely something on social media. A brand new gravel race in Northwest Arkansas. Teams of three riding 100 miles of three different surfaces: pavement, gravel, and what the region has become synonymous for... singletrack. In the hopes of a free entry and some comp'd expenses, I'd pitched the idea to Tyler: we should put together a team. Him, me... and someone. A pro? Ted King or Yuri Hauswald. Rebecca Rusch. Or how ridiculous would it be to ride with Lance Armstrong? Floyd Landis. The idea kept evolving. What about someone else? Someone who very much wasn't us? Someone who wasn't yet another 40 plus year old white male living their most best mediocre life? Ayesha McGowan. Tara Seplavy. Leo Rodgers. Someone whose presence at a gravel race was a story instead of a privilege. A move forward instead of just more of the same. But like so many ideas, it slowly got overshadowed by other responsibilities and the grind of daily life. Until race day arrived and far from being on my bike, I was just on my phone, watching everyone else's experiences of yet another event I'd hoped to be at.

When I woke up one morning and saw that registration had opened for 2022, I sat down at my laptop and shrugged as I clicked to confirm my entry. Solo category. Hopefully I could make it. If not, then I'd be making a charitable contribution to what I hoped was a new grassroots race amid an overblown circus of shit.

Was it? I'm undecided.

Rule of Three: Number One

2022-06-10T05:01:00.002-07:00

Whether or not I acknowledge it often enough, I have to admit to being relatively fortunate. In that while my mornings may be often distinguished by the slow ascent through a haze of having imbibed more than I should have the night before... rarely do they begin with the troubling immediacy of having to take a desperate emergency shit in the wee hours of rising dawn.

But this was one of those mornings.

Did I mention that it was pouring rain? That I'd pulled into the race venue in the dark of the previous night, and with no real lay of the land, blindly driven across a giant field, and parked at the literal furthest point away from the port-a-potties?

Well I had.

And did I mention that among the many things I overpacked for an eight day road trip, a rain jacket was somehow not among them?

Well it wasn't.

Outside of the white noise of heavy rain on the van and ground, the field was quiet. No bustle of arriving cars or racers getting ready for their long day. If other people were awake, they too were hunkered inside their vehicles and tents. And while it wasn't quite light out, it was no longer dark. I could clearly see the portapotties some football field's length away. So. what? Trudge across the field and accept being drenched before the day had even begun? Sacrificing the few dry clothes I had left? No nearby copses of trees to hide behind or in, either. So that if I acquiesced to my immediate instinct and darted some twenty feet away from the van, if any one of my many neighbors were to peek their heads out of their curtains or tent flaps, my crouched, lonely, and clearly distressed form would be not only visible, but unmistakable in its undertaking.

And what then? Leave it in the field? Whatever the current quiet, it was about to be full of 1000 racers in so many vehicles. So even if deposited at the periphery, I'd still be dropping a veritable land mine. And I have enough Leave No Trace etiquette to know better.

So what? Bag it?

Oh, make no mistake, I've most certainly shit in a bag before. Four times that I can readily think of. Once parked in Joe Freeman's driveway while I waited for him to please wake up and let me in. Twice when camped behind SuperCorsa Cycles on two separate Spring get-the-fuck-out-of-dodge van rambles, unable to make it until Drew walked over to open the shop doors at 9am. (Both of these locales mercifully aided by the fortunate proximity of a bucket.) And once at the finish of my fourth DK200 (now Unbound), being entirely too obliterated and generally heat-distressed to trust myself to successfully make the walk a few blocks to the portapotties. Squatting low in the van in broad daylight while Dorothy stood watch outside. This time without the aid of a bucket. Just crossed fingers that my aim was on point, that I could prevent myself from peeing at the same time, and that these were the good plastic Kroger bags without a tear in the bottom.

And then? Put the bag in one of the few trash cans at the race start/finish? Empty its contents in a portapotty? Leave it next to my van until I could dispose of it reasonably, some 24 hours later?

The logistics were vexing, whatever choice I made. But I was starting to break out in chills.

I was in the process of hastily examining all the grocery bags stuffed in the grocery bag-bag and turning in dire circles like an indecisive dog, when I heard a merciful lessening of the rain... and tore open the van door and sprinted across the field, knowing full well that if I tripped or so much as stepped wrong... it was over.

Thus began RULE OF THREE.

AWWWSSSOOOMMME STOOORRRRYYY!!!

Until two days before I got in the van and started driving west, I was 99% sure that this would be yet another event that I would be unable to attend. Outside of workload, staffing at the shop has been a particular crux for the past few years. Oh, I've got a good crew. But their very part time schedules don't allow for any real continuous coverage that allows me to step away. But Lee St. Clair was available and willing and suddenly things started to fall into place... and I began to throw together the tentative beginnings of a travel bag. Until Tuesday night arrived and I found myself crossing the North Carolina/Tennessee border, feeling all of my lingering fucks blissfully melt away, I didn't really believe it was happening.

I'd managed to snag a late afternoon ride at the Fonta Flora Trail near Morganton, and some dinner at Highland Brewing in Asheville, and slept that first night in the dark quiet parking lot of Big Creek Trailhead. Waking up to the beautiful noisy rush of water over rocks. Coffee. A quick cold swim. And back on the road, headed to Mead's Quarry in Knoxville to ride as much of the Urban Wilderness as I could before moving on.

I spent a couple of hours riding familiar and new (but all fun) trails, and followed it, as always with a swim in the quarry. Wishing for what seemed the millionth time that I'd brought a goddamn floaty of some kind so that I could drift lazily in the sunshine and green water and gaze up at the rock walls.

Next time. And I needed to get moving, anyway.

Halcyon Bike Shop had already closed by the time I pulled into Nashville, so with no real bearings or intel, I chose a brewery called Yee-Haw. And it's not that I regret that decision, so much as I know for a fact that there are better places to go in that town, and wish mightily that I'd found one of them instead.

But... the tacos were ok and the Pilsner was fine. I sat in an Adirondack chair and watched men in cargo shorts pantomime bending their friends over every time they scored at cornhole. Watched jacked beared men in flag t-shirts buy their very tan girlfriends cocktails, constant vape clouds billowing over their heads. And I tried to intentionally feel something other than my usual misanthropic bitterness. And while that didn't come naturally, I did find it. A man leaning in and whispering something to a woman, peals of genuine laughter erupting from her as she spilled her drink and wiped her eyes.

And me, smiling like an idiot across the patio at people I didn't know and some joke I hadn't heard. Like a voyeur creep.

That night I slept at the Wrangler Camp in the Natchez Trace and listened to nearby horses neigh and nicker throughout the night. Strangely happy to get to plug in the small fan that lives in the van's bulkhead, because even if it meant the night was warm... it meant summer was here. Or close.

Rule of Three Number Two

PMBAR '22: "Hey Brother, Have You Heard The Good News?"

2022-06-08T06:03:00.002-07:00

Riding slowly down the trail and looking to our left for signs of life, there was a collective sinking feeling.

The checkpoint wasn't there.

And while I couldn't tell you where "there" even was... Mills River, maybe.... I knew one thing for certain. The checkpoint most certainly was not.

So we backtracked for a minute, panic-meandered down a different trail, then stopped while Rich checked and rechecked the map against the passport. And then he broke the news that I already knew.

This wasn't the right place.

To which I nodded, shrugged, and grunted.... and proceeded to ride in the direction he pointed.

Same as it ever was.

"This way."

"Well, the good news is..." he said as we half-wheeled each other down what I assumed was now the right way, proceeding to think out loud about things I had already zoned out on.

If the rule of a hypothetical drinking game for the day was to take a swig every time Rich said those words over the next however many hours ... I'd be finishing PMBAR in very rough shape.

In most of my life, I would be considered a "top," whether I deserve to be or not. Not strong or dominant, necessarily, but still somehow the captain steering or at the very least barking the orders to steer the wreckage of my life into whatever abysmal crevices I desire. Torpedoes be damned.

But in the case of PMBAR, I admit... I'm a "bottom." Rich's bottom as it happens. Which is particularly funny because as both of us age in our own ways, myself sighing in dismay at the growing bags under my eyes and casting wary glances at my softening pecs and wondering if I'll perhaps need a bra in my golden years...

Rich's bottom is simply disappearing. To ride behind him these days, is to ask "how did this wiry 90 year old woman get in front of me?"

So much like Ren's pecs... I am Rich's bottom. Perhaps we could broker a trade?

(Yes, I just made a Top/Bottom reference to me and Rich. You're welcome.)

The real point is... that even if I suddenly moved to Pisgah and rode those trails every day and understood them intimately... I would still probably just shrug and grunt and ride in whatever direction Rich told me to at PMBAR. Because that's the nature of our relationship there.

I was on the road driving west by 1pm on Friday. I can count on one finger how many times that's happened in my many years of trying to arrive in Pisgah before dark. Torrential rains made for slow going, but it all passed fairly painlessly. And by the time I arrived at The Hub, not only had the rain stopped, but the sun was shining gloriously on my pale neck and arms and shitty DIY mullet...

and on whatever it is Rich is doing with his hair these days.

I seriously don't know.

After much debating between Mexican food and expensive burgers, we agreed to drive to Oscar Blues Brewery rather than ride. Which made me a little sad; something something about rituals, smart or not... But also turned out to be a great decision, as the moment we arrived, the sky opened up. Once finally huddled under the massive patio roof, we saw many a people we knew and supped and drank and laughed and questioned the meaning of double rainbows and live music at a brewery. (Seriously... why?)

Then we headed to the start/finish at Smoker's Cove, just because, and drank a little more. And then we turned in early. Or not. I don't actually know, save that our consumption for the evening for once felt, if not tame, then... manageable?

What does it mean?

Race morning followed suit. Having awoken at 4am from an anxious dream about malfunctioning ATM's, improper bike sizing, and other people's wives, and never really returning to sleep, the 6am alarm I'd set was a breeze. Coffee. Eggs. Bowel movement number one and the realization that we still had over an hour to start. More coffee. Bowel movement number two. So that by the time the race meeting started I was actually 100% ready to start the race.

That never happens. Which begged the question, "what the fuck is about to happen?"

A quick refresher on the format of PMBAR. Five checkpoints in the woods, the locations of which are given to you at race start in the form of a small paper"passport," along with various rules and off limits roads and trails. Get them in whatever order you choose.

A far cry from the crowded mass-start of most races, PMBAR tends to begin with everyone sprawled out in a field looking at maps, and then rolling out sporadically and in no particular order.

"Well, the good news is...."

In the same way that some people pepper their every sentence with some form of "um" or "so" or "you know what I'm saying"... Rich was beginning to stutter. To repeat himself in ways that were losing meaning. Because the good news always seemed just around the corner of another potentially bad decision. And we'd made a few. Which didn't matter much, as I was less worried about our place than I was about our duration. The expectation of podium is meaningless at this race. Anything can and will happen. But the expectation of time spent riding... can crush you. For instance, if you were banking on nine hours, in most cases, that's your "fuck it" point. In that you WILL stop making good decisions past that. Consuming food. Drinking water. Trying. Caring. Which makes the possibility (probability) of two to three more hours less and less palatable.

One of the more discombobulating things to me about PMBAR has always been that even after three hours of constant riding and pushing, rarely do we have even one of the five checkpoints under our belt. And let's be honest... three hours is pretty much the maximum amount of ride-time I'm able to squeeze in these days. And while the hope is that the checkpoints will come in quick succession after that, rarely does that happen. Which is how five checkpoints located approximately ten miles apart as the crow flies, easily turns into a 15 hour day.

As has happened before, our navigational mishap put us behind a train of riders who, by rights, we probably should have been ahead of. And also landed us in direct contact with three other singlespeed teams on pretty much the exact same course. And gearing. Which meant that now, instead of existing in a blissful no-man's land of ignorance and slogging through Pisgah on our own. We were "racing."

God, I fucking hate racing. I hate that feeling of pushing hard only to turn around and see the rider you "dropped" dangling 20 feet behind you. I hate the back and forth of passing and being passed. It does nothing to stimulate my fight or flight reflexes and just makes me want to stop and sit and let everyone ride ahead so that I can be back in the no man's land of a long quiet day.

But the one thing I will say about racing, PMBAR or otherwise... letting those moments define the day is always a mistake. Because if given half a chance, people will explode. For all kinds of reasons. Nutrition. Mechanicals. Fatigue. Will to live. So that while it feels like this jockeying back and forth will last forever... mile 40 is a very different animal than mile 70. Give it time.

Slowly but surely, we pulled away from the other three teams until we were once again in blissful Pisgah limbo. With no idea of proximity to other racers. For all we know, they'd found a better route and were minutes ahead of us. Or not.

Before I really knew it, we were finishing Clawhammer and beginning the final climb on Pressley (I think these are the right words). I had sprained and possibly fractured my wrist over a month ago helping my mom move the world's heaviest and last remaining cathode-ray-tube television and was in a rough place descending Black to the finish line... but we made it. And rolled across the finish line in Second place. Behind Chris Joice and his teammate, which we'd pretty much expected. While once upon a time, Chris was a solid competitor, but I could usually count on finishing ahead of him... these days I audibly curse when I see his name on the start list. And he knows it. Fucker.

Yeah, yeah... laugh it up.

Losers.

Scott Smith and his partner finished behind us, having made the same epic mistake we had very nearly made ourselves... blindly hiking up Laurel to snag the mandatory checkpoint. Mistake, because outside of no actual mandatory checkpoints this year, there also was no checkpoint on Laurel. Even though there's always a checkpoint on Laurel.

The lesson being: read the passport.

I don't remember the order we ended up snagging all the checkpoints in. Or the name of most of the trails and roads, even though I've been on all of them. But I do remember that mistakes aside, this was one of the most enjoyable PMBAR's I've ever had. My fitness still felt lacking and I failed to eat the way I intended to. But I was never in the hole. Never 50 yards behind Rich barely able to turn my legs over. Never feeling like crying as we pushed our bike up yet another unridable mountain.

So much of my perception of Pisgah is based on riding events, with a capital "E." Hard events. Really hard events. So that rarely is riding there a pleasure. There's often the satisfaction at the end of a long day of "being done" and "doing well" (or not.) But the day itself is often spent hunting or hurting or holding on for dear life. It seems like I'm constantly grinding up the same soul-crushing hills or bouncing down the same brutal rutted trails... and never really touching "the fun stuff." Because I know it exists.

While there was still a shit ton of terrible (Bradley Creek cough cough) we actually rode some legitimately fun trails. Squirrel, Spencer. Trace Ridge. The New Black. (I think we rode these trails?) And I felt, if not an affinity, then an affection for Pisgah, for the first time in a long while.

So, the good news is... that next year is going to be absolutely soul-crushing. Watch.

Nutmeg Country: The first part.

2021-11-30T18:34:00.003-08:00

The woman across the room flashed me.

Not a top flash, mind you. A bottom flash. A front bottom flash. Full and pronounced. With no provocation or introduction. I considered flashing her back, as that seemed to be the vernacular, and it seemed rude not to, but instead just walked up and pointed to the worn paperback of Gogol's Dead Souls in her hand, telling her I'd always wanted to read it. "It's okay," she said dismissively through a row of lip piercings. She was seated on the floor with her back against the wall. Her head was shaved and beneath her grey sweats and hoodie, I could see heavy tattoo work on her hands, throat, and scalp. Her face was angles. Sharp and long. She pointed at my stomach and asked, "How did you get those?" Those what? "Abs." I looked down, realizing I was still clutching my t-shirt in a hand and walking around in a state of post-ride undress. I laughed and leaned in against the noise of the room to tell her. She cocked her head to the side and cupped a thoroughly pierced ear. I tried again, but she shook her head. "Write it down. It's way too loud in here," handing me her beaten paperback and a pen. But I was having problems. Numbers and letters looked the same, and I kept mixing them up. I felt drunk. And had vague memories of an edible. What was it? How strong? Too strong? I crossed out the gibberish I'd scrawled on the inside of the back cover and tried again. A nonsense equation when all I needed was a word. "Hey... it's okay," she said, tilting her head to one side and looking at me with jet black eyes. "No, I've got this," crossing through another botched attempt. I heard her sigh loudly as I tried again.

"Hey... nevermind," she said suddenly, brusquely taking her book back and getting to her feet. She towered over me, fantastically tall. "I'm out."

And then she glided away and I tried one more time to tell her where I got my abs, yelling into the suddenly empty room...

"BEACHBODY!"

A truck horn blared nearby.

I opened my eyes slowly and pulled my head out from beneath the blankets, rolling onto my back and looking up at the roof of the van. Stretched my feet to each corner of the mattress and watched the already dwindling threads of story fade away.

What the fuck... was that dream?

Though to be fair, I legitimately do have great abs. They're just currently hiding under too much skin.

I pulled a tattered curtain aside and peered into the relative quiet of the Walmart parking lot. Beneath a turning maple that had done very little last night to hide me from the glare of streetlights. I was substantially less into my jaunt than I'd intended, but as I get older, I like driving at night less and less. Add to that the anxiety that the van's headlights might just (and certainly have) decide to just... stop working...

When it gets dark, it's best to just find somewhere to hunker down.

The intent was to be somewhere north of Hershey, PA, but instead I'd wound up in Winchester, VA. It meant my drive would be longer today, but I was ok with that. Because it also meant I could get my morning coffee at Hopscotch. Years ago, I discovered this strange and startling punk rock oasis of a record store/coffee shop, and it's become a ritual ever since. A fresh red-eye, a sticky bun, a bag of good dark roast, and a moment of cultural and musical reverie, and I was off... alternating bouts of Baxter Dury, 108, and Lightning Bolt with podcasts about NOMEANSNO, Kid Congo Powers, and Penelope Spheeris.

Eight hours later, I pulled into Cold Spring Farm, in Colchester, Connecticut. Site of the Nutmeg Nor'easter version 5.0.

I parked my van in the field and went to find my friends. Whoever they might be.

Well shit... look who I found.

I first officially met Benedict back in 2016 when I was asked by Bikerumor to cover Specialized's relaunch of the Sequoia: their a-bit-late-to-the-party entry into the already shark-jumped category of "gravel." The resulting article (if one could deign to call it that) is the kind of hot mess that chagrins me on a literary and journalistic level, but that I still stand fully behind if only because it pissed off so many fucking people.

We stayed friendos, and would occasionally see, sup, and stay together at various events through the years.

I later met Arya (then Namz) at the Philly Bike Expo during a particularly messy time, and we subsequently bonded at NAHBS in Hartford, swapping t-shirts and doing a deep dive on the pitfalls of polyam, silly hardcore kids, and who even knows what else. I am, (and I quote)... her "favorite emo boi." I accept. Honestly, I'm just glad to be a "boy" and not a "man"... because I feel so very old these days.

I consider myself ridiculously fortunate to know them both, and to have watched what they have done individually and together grow, evolve, and flourish. Substantially. From reluctant poster children for brands that wanted a piece of their burgeoning charisma, to the fiercely independent (and always extremely kind) bastions of... whatever it is that they are. Because tropes aside, they are both wholly unique. And are heavy forces of inspiration to multitudes of new and seasoned riders. Myself included.

This would be the fifth installment of the Nor'Easter, but the first that I'd made it to, despite years of trying. And because I like to ignore emails and fly blind, I wasn't even sure what to expect, save that I was ready to roll with any of it. Even front bottom flashes.

One thing I did expect: a certain dress code. Oh, to be sure, we are all sui generis, with our own myriad and complex lives and tastes. But we are also all stomping up to the barn in our Blundstones and highwater Carharts to fill dangle-mugs with coffee. And while some of that is a bromidic paint by numbers costume... some of it is honestly just finding your crowd. Which was kind of the point. Because while a love of bikes is a common thread for most of us in "the industry" that doesn't mean you feel at home there. As in... while a Tool t-shirt and a soul-patch can at times be more palatable than a wicking Under Armour button-up and a goatee... both are still a far cry from a crooked Los Crudos patch randomly spotted on the street. (In Wilkes-Barre, PA of all places.)

You know?

Another thing I expected: lots of Crust. And I was right.

I'm told that attendance was nearish to 400 people. Out of that, I would wager that at least 200 of those were on Crust bikes. And out of that number, I would guess a nearly fifty/fifty split between Evasions and Bomboras. With a healthy smattering of Lightning Bolts and Romanceurs in the mix. Toss in some Rivendells, Panasonics... Surlys, All Citys... a few Fireflys... and a notable and singular Fast Boy that made my chest hurt.

But you know... I actually really like Crust. I do. I've liked them since they were just a patch on a hat and an oddball fork. An occasional stem. Maybe a handlebar. Rumors of a frame. I like their branding. Their ethos. Their colors. Their videos. Their Onlyfans. Shit, I even like their bikes, despite sometimes struggling to tell them apart. Are they great? I mean... they're fine? My Bombora is literally everything I need it to be. I've ridden it a lot of miles in a lot of different places and you know what?... it's totally fine.

Like all the bikes I own.

Totally fine.

One thing I didn't expect at the Nor'Easter... The level of organization. Things were dialed. Parking made sense. Camping made sense. Food made sense. There were ample porta-potties and wash stations. Talks. Presentations. Rides. Coffee. It's not that I didn't think Ronnie and Arya capable of this level of coordination and structure. It's just that I sometimes forget that just because I struggle wildly to effect any kind of order and peace in my own life, some of my friends are actual adults with their shit together.

That first night, I wandered from fire to fire, introducing myself to strangers in a forced attempt to crack the shell I've been building over the past few years. And perhaps that meant I was messier than I've been in a while. Nothing untoward, mind you. Just butting up against the decorum of suggested quiet hours. Because while some of you perhaps needed sleep... I needed this. Needed to get away. Needed to be anonymously social. Needed to be outside. Needed to ride my bike all day. Needed to stay up late by a fire talking to people I didn't know about cacti and the lime-cycle and about what inspires us to keep moving.

Every so often someone tells me that I'm living their dream: Chasing my passion. Owning my own business. Doing what I love. I literally do not know what they are talking about. Because regardless of what I occasionally broadcast to the world, what I really do, with very few (though occasionally dramatic*) exceptions, is work all day, a minimum of six days a week. And the nature of that work, however romantic it may seem, can be extremely frustrating, thankless, and monetarily fruitless.

And maybe once upon a time, that toil was "rewarded" with trips to races or events that I could never afford myself; energizing respites from the often depressing vacuum of my own market... These days? Like so many of us....

Je suis mort.

Enough so that even driving five hours just to wake up in a Walmart parking lot in Virginia felt like a coup.

BEACHBODY!

*Ummm... I maybe went to Portugal.

PMBAR: Back to Playing the Crying Game

2021-10-15T05:10:00.003-07:00

My butthole was destroyed.

Nearing a paltry seven hours of constant riding, hiking, pushing, fording, falling, and carrying, with too many more to come, I was already raw. And outside of the rivers and creeks and wet trails, the uncommon fall humidity was ensuring that my kit, particularly my bibs, never dry. So that all of the spandex-filtered trail detritus, grit, and salt I'd been slowly accruing in there was now colluding with that moisture to sand down all my sensitive bits. And I was becoming hyper aware of all the places I'd missed during my application of chamois creme. Places outside the normal purview. Enough so that by the time we finished however many hours from now, some blood stains in my post-race boxer briefs were a given.

So you can imagine my mood.

Versigtig, ek's nog steeds fokken giftig.

Yes. I realize that it's been almost two years since I've written a thing here. Or anywhere, really. What can I say? My spark went out. Or rather... I let it. For the past few years, like all too many of us, I've just been sleep walking through the days, and through increasingly destructive patterns of intentional isolation, too much work, not enough travel, an excess of empty bottles, and very sporadic pockets of any real quality time on the bike. All of which leads to a decided lack of spirit, much less any feelings of creativity. And the process of crawling back has been a bit like trying to start a fire with so much wet wood. Doable, but difficult. And yet, well... here I am... watching the exhausted Moleskine notepad I just lit with a match burn in a pile of relatively dry kindling. Who knows? Maybe something will catch.

For the first time in too many weeks, things were actually falling into place. The Van of Constant Sorrow was not only drivable, but capably so. Oil leaks were fixed, wiring issues were solved, wheel noise was gone. (I even had fancy new bumpers and a legitimate hitch rack. Like a big boy.) I had full coverage at the shop for the weekend. Childcare was handled. My bike was ready. And I was getting out of town at a reasonable time. What? The? Shit?

Arriving just prior to dusk, I met up with my other life-partner Rich and we secured our usual primo camping spots at the start/finish. Then we rode to the HUB to pick up our numbers, and missing the beer cut-off, headed on over to Oscar Blues Brewing in the pleasant chill of a mountain evening. Even the shit show of a college homecoming and multitude of drunk white yuppies (yuppies are still a thing, right?) and the cringingly loud band covering Steve Miller's "The Joker" that greeted us couldn't dampen my relatively dry spirits.

Teleportation

"The Face of Chaos"and Dr. Mike. And me.

We drank too much. That's a given. But less in that sad way we've all been drinking too much lately, and more in a pleasant spirit of muted and cautious camaraderie, a thing I've simply not been a part of for a bit. So it felt, if not triumphant, then... totally fine.

The next morning brought only mild headaches and plenty of time to sip coffee and gather our gear for the 8:30 start. Shuffling around in a state of decadent unpreparedness among what seemed to be too many fully kitted racers all ready to go. At which point Rich informed me that he was wrong, and that we actually had less than 15 minutes to get ready. Not 45. Which, if you've ever seen me before any race start, just meant that I was now completely in my element. Let rapid entropy commence.

Five checkpoints, three of them mandatory. A few rules regarding off limit roads and glamour paths, but otherwise, bag them however you see fit. Once again, I left navigation completely up to Rich. Not only does he relish such things, but I just have no clue. I should. But I don't. It's like a mental block with Pisgah. Directionally it's less of a nautical star to me and more of a möbius strip. I can no more point north when I'm there than I can tell you which trail is Buckbeak and which one is Bearbutt. (Pretty sure it's the one with the wet, off-camber roots. Wait...)

After a cursory look at the map and some vocalizing of intent to the ether, (or to me, for all the good it does) Rich folded it away and said "Let's go." And thus began an eleven and a half hour day of occasionally riding, often pushing, sometimes descending, but always struggling. During a podcast one time, I erroneously stated that typical PMBAR mileage is in the range of thirty. I was apparently on crack when I said this. We were looking at a minimum of seventy five, and that included teleportation.

How to Train Your Butthole.

It had rained for over a week in the mountains, so everything was wet. Even the gravel roads had a spicy element of hot, sexy, drag. Soft spots that made you work harder than you wanted to move forward at a snail's pace. Parts of trails were drying, but the roots were still ice-slick with humidity, and staying clipped in and upright on some bench-cuts was proving difficult. For me, anyway. A multitude of micro-crashes and stumbles was getting in my head. During one fast gravel descent, while trying to shove a food in my mouth with one hand, the other slipped off my handlebar. I somehow managed to catch myself and steer my bike into a ditch, thus turning a day-ending and possibly life-changing crash into a minor skirmish. But it did a number. Cuts and bruises on my hip and elbow. My ass. My confidence. And my ego.

"Aren't you, like... @thegravelassassin or something?" Rich asked.

"No. I say you he dead."

Somewhere near hour nine, Rich broke the news to me: ten hours probably wasn't in the cards. "Do you think we'll make it in before dark?" "Hopefully?" he shrugged, offering me a handful of gummy bears. But by now, I was done with gummies, even if I was out of food. I'd gagged twice on the last handful. I think one of the things that makes PMBAR so difficult comparative to other races is nutrition. It seems to be harder to eat and drink in ways that make sense. I don't know. Maybe some of that is the singlespeed. Those times when you can settle in and spin (and eat) just don't exist. Climbs that on a geared bike would be a great place to soft pedal and root around in pockets or open packets are, instead, full body endeavors: Out of the saddle exercises in strength and leverage. Flat sections? They don't exist. This is Pisgah. And descents? Don't do it. (See above). And some of it is just stubbornness. We call it "packless PMBAR" and it basically means carrying as little as possible based entirely on our hubris of self-expectation. For example: Lights? If they hadn't been mandatory, I wouldn't have carried them. And I'd have been a very sad boy for the last hour of riding.

I can't even tell you where we went, save that all of it was familiar. "The wheelchair ramp." The Butthole. Pilot. Clawhammer. Squirrel. Bennet. Some of it was glorious. Some of it terrible. All of it was beautiful. I may not know where we were, but Rich does. And I'm thankful for that. And I'm thankful for him dragging me along when what I want to do is sit in a creek and make cry-y faces. I seriously don't know where he gets his energy. It's not from food, because from a nutrition standpoint, I absolutely consumed more calories than he did, and I was STILL falling apart. I think Pisgah is just one of his happy places. I'm still looking for mine.

Endurance racing is, in too many ways, just a mirror. And mirrors, for all their simplicity, are complicated things. Because you never know what you're going to get, even if it's all just a spectrum of the same fucking thing. There are those days where the angles align, and some trick of good light presents a you that seems, if not close to, then at least pointing in the direction of the who and what and where you want to be. And there are others, where every grizzled line, shadow, and blemish staring back at you are just another sobering reminder that beneath a veneer of time spent on self-improvement and growth, you are still the shit show you expected.

PMBAR, for whatever reason, has always been the equivalent of me in a gas station bathroom, illuminated by dim but glaring fluorescent overheads, and staring in dismay at my increasingly scabrous face. A juxtaposition of simultaneous gaunt and bloat. In that all of the positive habits and actions I try to cultivate in my life vanish in the face of adversity and I'm laid bare. Pouty, it turns out, rather than pensive. Melodramatic, rather than melancholy. Unstable... rather than stoic. I felt useless, because I had nothing to offer. No wisdom regarding route or pacing. No amazing fitness to carry us through. No sagacity regarding nutrition and hydration. I was Rich's old, fat, temperamental dog who he mistakenly thought would be fun to bring on a ride. And currently I was lying in a manure filled mud puddle refusing to budge.

Strong boy.

Somewhere on Maxwell, I realized we were done. The final climb before the descent down Black to the finish, I'd been here many times before. Though now Rich was fading. I suspect most of that was the dawning dread that we were finishing after dark. And the emotional exhaustion of having to haul me around for a day. Even with lights that wouldn't stay in place, (because poor planning) the descent down the new Black was a damned treat. A buff and fast bench cut where there used to be a rutted out chute of rooty horror. I approve. And then we were there, crossing the line to a smattering of applause.

"Fourth," Eric told us. Meh... it didn't matter. We were done. Wait, what? Fourth overall? Second singlespeed? Alright, we accept. A minor victory in the face of our decrepitude, especially considering we had rolled across the line assuming that everyone had already finished. A cursory (and very painful) wet-wipe and bottle water clean up next to my van. Podium shots in the dark. Then drinking lots of Crank Arm beer and eating the simplest, but most delicious post-race burritos in the business. Swapping stories of woe with the mud encrusted husks of people crossing the line over the next few hours.

John Haddock is a bucket.

"Ow. My butthole."

Apparently only 25% of the field finished this year. On a beautiful, clear day in October. That says something. There are longer day-races, to be sure. And harder ones. But not many. And we weren't even "racing." In that while yes, we did ride consistently, we were never in the fight or flight mode that comes from actual competition. Even when we knew that Jarz and Haddock were probably only a few minutes ahead of us. Meanwhile, I've aggressively chased Rich up and down these very same hills in races like the 111k that we're pitted against each other and felt fresher. So I can't quite put my finger on what it is about PMBAR that makes it so challenging. Fuck. I guess I better come back next year to figure it out.

Incidentally, I tried to snap a few pictures of my butthole in the port-a-potty that night so that I could see the extent of the damage, and I even considered including them here. But they were honestly so visually disturbing that I just couldn't. Imagine taking a close up of your 45 year old butthole on a good day. Now, imagine its worst day ever. Imagine it.

Hey... have a great weekend!

I am awaited in Valhalla!

Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk

Van of Constant Sorrow, Part Four: A Nose for Emnity.

2019-10-28T05:20:00.004-07:00

I could feel the thread unraveling. And I was compounding it. Worrying the ends with fractured starts and stops. When a dismissive wave of a hand and a "Ha! Nevermind. I'm drunk" would have sufficed, I was starting to expound. Tripping over an increasingly muddled vocabulary. Dyslexically swapping the order of words to create nonsense sentences. Then repeating iterations of the same theme with decreasing levels of coherence.

All in the name... of an extremely inebriated and bizarrely timed rant regarding "the pathetic and desperate sexuality of men over forty."

Yeah.

Who even knows why. Maybe it was a thing someone said. Or maybe it was the ubiquitous mirror of middle aged men wandering around, not so discreetly checking out the ass of everything that walked by. Or maybe it was just a thing that often and unkindly occurs to me in those times I overexamine my own august and ripe, and likely suffocating, tendency toward romanticism. But what I was ultimately trying to get at was...

... god... men over forty are so fucking gross.

case in point

But I digress.

After forcing Rich to ride with me to Pedaler's Pub for curry fries and beers, we went back to the race start/finish to watch the pros ride their mountain bikes around in circles for the Fat Tire Crit. There we found the beer tent and met up with my friends Thomas and Gabbi, who had recently moved to Bentonville and who were helping out with the event. Incidentally, you might remember Thomas and Gabbi from such films as "That Long-Ass Marriage Proposal at The Dirty Kanza Awards Ceremony One Year." Congrats, you crazy kids.

By the by, check out Thomas' company, Maker and Racer... then buy stuff.

Once the races were over, we jumped in Thomas' "not as cool as mine but maybe it consistently starts" van and headed to a venue called "the Holler" where Gabbi joined us for more drinks. At some point I got up to order more beer and some well-deserved nachos, and returned to find Rich already eating a nearly full plate of them, apparently abandoned by some nearby patrons. FYI, Rich may have a million theories and practicums regarding weight and nutrition and race-performance and recovery... but uneaten-mystery-nachos-left-by-total-strangers-who-might-for-all-we-know-have-the-plague-or-mouth-leprosy is pretty much his go-to once beer four is in his system.

It was somewhere during this time at the Holler that I delivered my soliloquy regarding the grotesque decrepitude of my cis species. The rest is a blur. We apparently made it back to our hotel that night, because we woke up there a few hours later... pulled on our kits... and headed to the race start.
And started.

It wasn't until mile 20 that my hangover began in earnest. Manifesting itself as a crushing headache, exacerbated by dehydration, the stubborn refusal to drink anything from my bottles, and likely precipitated by a good bit of frustration regarding our current predicament.

Not angry frustration, mind you. More... exasperation.

Because...

"Hey Rich... a guy just passed us wearing Peloton sweatpants."

No comment.

"Hey Rich... Peloton. You know, like the...

"Like the indoor bike, I got it."

"Yeah. Like that. Like the indoor bike. Peloton... Sweatpants... "

A groan.

We'd already made the decision not to race. We were just there to fuck around. Stick together. Enjoy a long ride on fun trails. But we'd still kind of fucked up. The start was a long road, greenway, and gravel grind out to the trails of the Back Forty in nearby Bella Vista, where we would work our way back to Bentonville on the very extensive network of amazingly accessible single-track. And I wasn't trying... but a race start is a race start. You just kind of hang on to the train. But Rich wasn't hanging on. He was, if anything, drifting back. Some of it was gearing. I'd opted for the "I'm too lazy to change out my 34x19 and I'm sure it will be fine, whatever, fuck it, I hate everything." While he'd thoughtfully opted for a 32x19. And that's Pisgah gearing. Which is great for climbing, but shite for flat. And this start... was flat. So everyone was passing us as we just putzed along. Including Peloton Sweatpants. At a point, I tried to encourage Rich to step it up. Just because. But...

"I'm pegged," he said (and no, I don't think he knows what that means. Shhhh.). "My heart rate is 170."

"What?! No way. I'm at 136."

"What?!"

Thus began a consistent and nonsense comparison of our heartrates for the next few hours (and days), wherein we discovered that I tend to operate at almost exactly 30 beats a minute less than him, whatever our effort.

And no... I don't know what that means, if anything. Because Rich has destroyed me at more events than I care to remember. But whatever the case... at that moment, I was barely working, while he was already... ummm... "pegged."

So I backed off... and as we casually cruised along, we watched rider after rider pass us. In various states of overdress, involving large flapping jackets and plastic bags protruding from their shoes. And giant backpacks. So many giant backpacks. Which was fine. Because who cares. Not me. See? I don't care. At all. Hardly. Pffft. It just meant that by the time we hit the trail, we were in a really bad place. Like... really bad. Really. Because as is too often the case, a very curious cross-section of people with seemingly very limited handling skills had seemingly worked very hard to get up toward the front... only to then seemingly display very poor trail etiquette by refusing to let other riders pass. We were now somewhere in the middle of a very long conga line of dabbing and dismounting at any and every root and rock in the trail that maybe looked kind of wet. Or you know... dry.

Which was fine. If anything it was... funny? We weren't racing. (Oh, did I mention that?) But riding a single-speed really slowly up a hill is wayyyyyy harder than riding one quickly. And this train was riding up hills really, really, really slowly.

And look... I'm really not trying to be an asshole... but I literally cannot understand what the fuck it was that people were carrying in their hydration packs. This was a fully supported 50 mile race that never passed more than one mile away from "civilization." But throughout the day, as we worked our way on and up, we passed multitudes of riders who looked as if they were doing La Ruta completely unsupported. Daypacks full of picnics and supplies and... what?
It reminded me of this...

Comparatively, Rich and I looked naked.

Maybe it was a practice run? Getting ready for a big event that required carrying lots of gear. Or maybe... they were all just carrying multiple spare tires. Because from the beginning, we saw rider after rider on the side of the trail, repairing flats. I mean... it happens. And you feel bad. But you also feel judgey. Because maybe they should have considered something a little better, right? Maybe something with some sidewall protection, huh? Maybe they should have thought this through? Maybe they should have... fuck.

Rich flatted dramatically on a trail called "the ledges." I saw the rock, just after he hit it... jutting out of the tangled mass of concoidally fractured sandstone and shale. The kind of Paleolithic axe-edge that the thought of accidentally falling on gives you Where the Red Fern Grows shivers. Even with a boot, the aftermath was a mess... a rubber hemorrhoid grotesquely protruding through the sidewall of his tire. It took a while to even patch it.

Fortunately, I was in a good place.

Not long before, we'd turned the corner and found an oasis. The bacon wasn't done yet, but they had these. And more. I was ready to pull up a chair and start heckling for the next hour, but we'd worked our way through A LOT of riders... and the idea of having to pass them all over again... won out. We drank and rolled onward. Until Rich's mishap.

Oh hey there, cowboy.

You pegged?

Rich wasn't the only casualty. The Ledges took out so many riders. From our vantage point on the bluff, we could see people all along the trail dealing with tire issues. And once we were moving, we passed a slew of the people who'd just passed us (and who had likely had the same judgey thoughts about our tire choice that we'd had of theirs). Less than a mile after spending upwards of fifteen minutes taking in the scenery while Rich fixed his tire, I felt the tell-tale wobble of a flat on my Cysco. Damn. I pumped it up and hoped for the best. Fortunately, the Notubes sealant inside did its job and I had no more issues for the rest of the trip.

I haven't verified it, but I heard a rumor about a statistic that at last year's Oz Off Road, only four of the pro-men didn't get flats. Yeah, you read that right. Only four didn't get flats.

To Rich this was unconscionable. There is too much money on the line to allow racers to be taken out by one errant rock on a notoriously dodgy section of trail. But to me... that's just riding. The risk is inherent. And if you're in it to win it, you'd consider just running this section. Or... just carrying a giant expedition hydration pack full of enough gear to spend the next week exploring The Ledges.
Apparently locals don't frequent this particular section of trail. Because that's potentially an easy $80 day.

We hit another aid station less than 15 miles from the finish, and once again, I wanted to just sit in the sun and drink beer and eat meat. Which we did for a little while. But eventually that low-level anxiety of having to pass all the riders we'd just passed got the better of us. And we rolled out. So close.

The not-so-many expressions of Rich.

It was beautiful and sunny, but days of nonstop rain had definitely left their mark. Sections of greenway were still underwater. At least one hub-deep roll through a tunnel that was probably knee deep when the first riders came through hours before.

The trails, which I have to admit were amazing, alternated between being probably too sloppy to ride to "absolute perfection" (ugh) But the beauty of the Bentonville singletrack is that the money and infrastructure is there to fix them. Even if the event caused some damage, there's resources (cough, Waltons, cough) to put into getting them right again. So that events like this can happen, even when they probably shouldn't.

We actually rode with one of the Walton sons for a good part of the morning. I'd had this hunch. A rider decked out in full Rapha keeping pace with us as we worked through the sea of massive hydration packs. Connecting random facts in my head. "Huh. Rapha. You don't see a ton of mountain bikers wearing full Rapha kits.. Maybe the occasional classic jersey, but not this full get up. Huh. Didn't the Waltons just buy Rapha? Huh... didn't I hear this group of riders talking about "local knowledge" a little bit ago. Huh... you know what? I fucking bet this is one of the Walton boys.

And sure enough.
I mean... good to see someone actually put their feet where there money is. (That's a saying, right?)

Though I have complicated feelings about that all. I appreciate what is happening in Bentonville. It makes for an amazing destination and it is inspiring to see wealthy people invest in their community. But... imagine if even just some of that money, instead of being directed at making Northwest Arkansas a mountain bike Mecca, was invested back in communities where Walmart has historically taken a giant shit on the local economy and drained the lifeblood of the community. Helping build a network of trails in, say, some rural South Carolina town where small independent businesses can no longer thrive in the shadow of the Super Center. Helping make these places potential riding destinations where local businesses could take advantage of the sudden flood of entitled white men and their two wheeled mid-life crises. I mean... how hard would it be?

Think about it.

I don't even know what our time was when we finished. Five hours? Six? More? I do know that we were apparently second to last out of the singlespeeds. But I was ok with that. I'm really enjoying this not-racing thing of late. (I forget... Did I mention that?) True Grit. Rooted Vermont. Oz Offroad. I would stop and take pictures. Drink beers wherever they were offered. Not stress about time or place. But still feel a nice tingle in my legs of a long day on the bike. I got nothing to prove these days. I mean... pffft... until I do.
We basked in the sun at the finish line like drunk little cobras. Until it was time to put some food on top of the multiple beers we'd imbibed, lest things start to go south.

I have no real rituals when I travel... and if I do, I try to change them out of spite, because rituals become routines, and god, I fucking hate routines. But there are still places I like to revisit when I'm on the road. And when I'm in Bentonville, much like my curry fries at Pedaler's Pub... if possible, I like to get coffee at Onyx, eat some food at Tusk and Trotter... and get cocktails at 21c. So I dragged Rich to the former for burgers... and then made him sit with me in the roomy gloaming of the 21c bar while I drank damned good Gin and Tonics... wandered around looking at art...
...and tried not to think about the fact that we were now on the downhill slope of our odyssey.
Reality was nigh.

gross

Van of Constant Sorrow, Part 3: Get Down, Posers.

2019-10-24T04:47:00.006-07:00

I was having a moment.

The kind of moment that... catalyzed as it may be by the sudden and persistent creaking of a bike, has nothing to do with anything happening in the myopic now.
The kind of moment.... that if you think about it for even a second, has everything to do with the contained multitudes that you're currently running away from (or towards?)
The kind of moment... that is very much the culmination of your very poor compartmentalization of "life stuffz."
The kind of moment... from which no possible good can come.

The kind of moment... where you pick your bike up over your head and throw it into the woods.

(le sigh)

We were riding Syllamo. And it was actually glorious. Sure, we had discovered at least 1000 different species of spider. Specifically, species of spider that like to build webs across trails. And sure, we'd descended a very long way and were about to pay for that. And sure... my bike really was creaking. Like... a lot.
But the trail was sooooo good. Sometimes tight and claustrophobic. Sometimes exposed bench cuts with views of the Ozarks. Rock slabs.Roots. Gnarly in places. A goddamn pleasure in others.
Rich had a theory. It was my paragon rocker-dropouts. They were just dry after days of riding in dry conditions. I should take them apart and apply a thin layer of grease. My counter-argument that "Yea, but I already done that!" fading on my lips as I reconciled the fact that yeah... I had... but very, very long ago.

My chagrin at the tantrum was minimal. I mean, I wasn't proud. But I had too many other things on my mind to feel embarrassed by this particular outburst. That's forever the beauty and curse of a longish ride. Even as you navigate the crux of some rocky drop, or technical switchback, or grind your way up a loose, gravely climb, you're still always still processing the stupidity of "ugh... money!" or "I'm failing as a parent!" or "shit... did that order get placed?!" or "what am I even doing with my life?!" or "why don't they fucking respond to my text?!"
(Though I admit, I was disappointed to have lost a water bottle to my stupidity)

Hi Rich.

Rich... Hi.

Hey Rich. Hi.

Rich?

We finished up just as the sun was going down. Loaded the bikes. Drank recovery beer. Cleaned up. Consulted the Five Apps.* Plotted progress.
*(soon, I promise)
I jumped into the driver's seat and turned the key... to a familiar wingey chug with no spark. Again. Then again.
Then... again.

This time, I'll admit, I felt a bit deflated. I still had confidence that the van would start. I just didn't know when. And it's one thing when it's just me... but other people were relying on me. Not to mention that the cuteness of this "not starting" phase was (pardon me) starting to wear off.
Also it was starting to rain.
Rich ate Spaghetti-o's and drank a Coors in the back, and incidentally, did a marvelous job of not seeming stressed while I rested my head on the steering wheel and said super intense and broody things like "well, poop."
It was dark now. And the rain was getting worse. And my mood was sinking.

Trying again... for no reason that I can discern, the van fired to life... (that'll do, pig).

Leaving Syllamo, we twisted our way through the dark hills and on to a campground at Bull Shoals. Accustomed, as I am, to simply wet-wiping my taint and sleeping in whatever parking lots look quiet and convenient... being in proximity to a bathroom and a shower was a decadent treat. And I availed myself of both; spending too much time trying to stay warm beneath a very weak stream of not-so-hot water, drinking my not-so-cold beer. Not nearly as satisfying as I'd hoped, but alas...
It was raining in earnest now, and that made for good sleeping. There's something immensely cozy about being warm and dry inside a vehicle when it's pouring out. Although... throughout the night, I kept feeling this occasional drop of water on my face. I attributed it to the rubber seals in the sunroof and side windows of the hightop on the Adventurewagen. The ones I need to replace fairly soon. But as it turns out.... I'd simply left the driverside window wide open, and the wet I felt was just the wind blowing rain everywhere. Like... EVERYWHERE. No wonder we had been so cold in the wee morning hours... Rich disappearing into the cocoon of his sleeping bag, and me piling any and all blankets I could find on top of me.

Admittedly, the wet driver-seat and gear was dampening my already dampened morning spirits, but the van-coffee helped. I sat on a tablecloth that lives in the van for no real reason, Rich navigated the labyrinth that is paying for a campsite, and we drove onward to Bentonville.
As we got closer to our destination, I might have asked Rich to check the weather at least 50 times. Because it was still shit outside. Cold and gray and wet. Really wet. He assured me there would be sun, but I was dubious. Just before pulling up to our hotel, we crossed a threshold in the clouds, and suddenly the sun was out. Gloriously so.

Once in the hotel room, I could tell Rich was in his happy place. He was no longer completely out of control of his destiny. I got it. He bustled about, unloading things and organizing, making us cups of shit coffee... while I just stood in front of my pile of things and stared into space.

Off to the pro-meeting... our first obligation of the day. Though there was some confusion as to why it was an obligation, seeing as we weren't pros, and our designation as "media" was extremely loose at best. I mean... does my internationally ignored blog count as "coverage?" We stood around and did our best to put names to faces of various pros. There's Geoff Kabush. Wait... is it? Where are his chops? Is he bald now? He looks so young. Is he younger than us? Then how has he been racing for longer? Was he just a fucking kid back then? And there's Kate Courtney. No wait.. that's Kate Courtney. Nope. Right the first time. And there's... the guy from Red Bull with the mustache. Lachlan McMustache. No. Payson McMustache. No, wait, that's the guy with the mustache. Shit, there are a lot of mustaches in here. So who's that guy? Does Lachlan even race mtb? There's that guy. Long hair O' Houlihan. Have I met him before? Oh hi, Kaysee. Hi Vicki. There's... Wait, that guys a pro? No way.
Knowing that pros were looking at us and thinking the same thing. "Those guys? No way."
Rich did get a call out from the race promoter, Todd, during the meeting though. "Dicky! I've been trying to get you to come to one of my races for years." Everyone turning around and scratching their heads in confusion. Dicky sinking into himself.

Once out, I demanded we go find food and beer at Pedaler's Pub.

Because I needed some fucking curry fries.

Next up: Part... goddamnit, I can't keep this up. How does Dicky do it?
Part something... featuring the night before and the morning after. Promise.

Van of Constant Sorrow Part 2: Oblivion, Oblivion.

2019-10-22T03:58:00.004-07:00

Even when I can feel every wall of the trash compactor that is my life pressing hopelessly in... I'm actually pretty damned good at falling asleep. Wherever and however.

The danger is and has always been in waking up.

Turning over or getting up to pee... I have to be extremely mindful of remaining mindless. Because if I acknowledge even one of the thoughts that is swarming around my head... it's over. All of the failings and bills and loss and fuck ups that I've been swatting away will find that one little hole in the shelter I built for the night, and come pouring in. And while I can and will (and always do) handle that in the daytime... I really prefer not to knife-fight my existential anxiety at 3am in the morning. Much less from the not-so-high-ground of a blanket on a couch in a friend's grown-up house that already makes me feel like an errant fucking child who will never have any semblance of my shit together. A house complete with non-sagging bathroom floor, windows and doors that actually close all the way, and a kitchen sink that you don't turn on with a screwdriver.

(Yeah... I turn my sink on with a screwdriver. What?)

But while stumbling into walls looking for the bathroom in the early hours, I'd made that accidental eye contact with an anxious thought, so I had a good ol' time dodging and stabbing and blocking and cutting... until Rich and Scott finally woke up.

Hey ice machine.

We weren't moving particularly fast.

Unknown circumstances were muddling my clarity. I remember a brewery. And I remember... a bar. Next to TVB? And beer. And... a midnight hot dog at said bar. And... then a negroni. And then... more negronis? And then... I remember Rich eating a Tupperware full of mystery pasta from Scott's fridge. And charcuterie. And grapes. And a somewhat drunk collaboration on a word-salad that included such staples as "the bike industry" and "love" and "sex rooms" and "married people" and "sleepy cocaine." Until we all retired to our respective rooms and I wrapped myself in a blanket on the couch and audibly told my head to "leave me the fuck alone" for the umpteenth time.

Drinking coffee and eating a healthy breakfast prepared by Scott, we pieced our night together and I consulted the Five Apps* to plot out the day.
*(more on that next time)

I was eyeing Land Between the Lakes, as I knew the camping and riding was good, but decided to save it for the return trip... so a southern route won out. Somewhere near Nashville to ride... then somewhere toward Memphis to sleep.
I was underwhelmed. As per Rich, my exact words regarding what we found were "shit trails in garbage woods."
Allow me to explain.
The trails weren't really shit. They were... fine. They were sinuous and technical. Rocky. Rooty. They just were very much like the trails I ride every day. And that just wasn't the epic amazing I was looking for at that particular moment... in my frenzy of escapism. Limestone or not.
And "garbage woods?" That's harsh... I know. All woods are good. I just mean that this was one of those areas that had obviously been clearcut in the last half-century and what was growing was a tangled mess of briers, invasives, and transition. That dense thicket of suburban forest that seems to lend itself to collecting trash. Appliances, Dasani bottles, diapers, and needles. You know?
After riding the twelve mile loop, we sat in the parking lot, debating our next move. I weighed in: "Man... I'd rather not ride that trail again. It wasn't doing anything for me. There's something down the road just a little. Let's go see what that's like."
So we chamois-drove our way down the road.

When we arrived at the trailhead of Montgomery Bell, I realized I'd actually ridden there before. On one of my previous westward Odysseys.
It had been just as perplexing then.
Lots of intersections to accidentally go the way you just came from. I distinctly remembered the trail known as "Downhill" and how it had seemed... a) not particularly great... nor b) particularly "downhill." Nonetheless, we started to ride it this time. Until I noted the leaf cover, caught my fifth spider web to the face in 50 feet, and remarked on how it seemed very... "underused" compared to anything we'd ridden thus far. So we turned around... and finally found the good stuff. Just in time for it to get dark. We rode everything backwards. In the wrong order, apparently.
I was fine with that.

Baffled or not, we'd enjoyed and successfully managed to exhaust ourselves. The trails were similar to our first stop, with no shortage of roots and rocks... but they had more personality. Creek crossings and climbs. Old growth trees.
Mission accomplished?
Nearby Mexican food and big beers won out over parking lot Coors and Spaghetti-O's... and we headed down the road to sleep at Natchez Trace.

That night, listening to Rich semi-snore next to me, I dreamt about meticulously peeling red grapes and convincing my bank to let me date its recently divorced daughter.
No... I don't know what it means either. Sounds important.

The Scream

Next up: Part... whatever. (Hush. We'll get there. I mean... I'm writing. Aren't you proud of me?)

Van of Constant Sorrow Part One: The Sads and the Fury

2019-10-18T05:11:00.002-07:00

If Rich was panicking, I couldn't tell. But at mile zero of our odyssey, the tone was already set:

"It'll start... it'll start. It just... don't worry... it'll start." Turning the key to a wingey chug with no fire. Backing off and trying again. More wingeing. Giving it a moment and trying once more. Then again. Stressing the starter and eventually just flooding the engine.
"Ok, let's... we just need to let it sit for a while. It'll start."

More like DADventurewagen... amiright?

And it would.
I had full confidence in that. It's... just a cute little phase the van is going through these days.
Not starting sometimes.
It's... cute.

The plan? End up in Bentonville, Arkansas by the weekend. At the very least in time for our event on Saturday.
The course? Errrr....

Despite the ambiguity in our trajectory, I'd actually thought about our potential meandering and where it should take us quite a bit. I just... thought about it in that way that I tend to think about things. Less a linear timeline of sense and sensibility and more an accidental (or intentional?) conflagration in the fireworks store. One thousand points of exploding light. In every direction.

We'd roughly agreed on Knoxville as our first stop, but I'd imposed two very strict caveats on our trip.

One: Avoid rain.
And
Two: Wait for no one.

Number one is a no brainer. If you have fluidity of choice, you seek aridity. If your destination shows unridable wet, but you could find sun and warmth instead... fucking duh!
Knoxville was looking dicey. Potential storms all day. So in my mind was the potential for a chaotic southernly route as well. Head south to ride FATS in Augusta, GA. Then across northern Alabama. Ride Anniston. Ride Oak Mountain. Maybe stop in Oxford, Mississippi for a meal so that I could have a moment of osmotic literary inspiration. Up through Memphis and on to Hot Springs or Syllamo.
Until the moment we got in the van, we didn't know which way we'd even head. Knoxville won out. Lucky.

Caveat number two, btw, is a bit trickier. But... if you grew up with a friend or older sibling who liked to convince you to do things with them, but then, more often than not, couldn't do those things at the time they said, but then said they could maybe do them later, so you waited until they could, but then, as it turns out, they still couldn't... and by then it was too late for you to do fucking anything...
you understand.
Wait... for no one.

Rich had so much stuff.

So much stuff.

It may not look like it... but that's just because I just couldn't get the angle right. That bag... is huge. Rich can fit inside of it. Easily. And I admit, when I saw it, I felt a momentary pang of stress. Yes, more stress than the van not starting. I mean... that's just what vans do. But that bag? It would take up ALL THE ROOM. And there isn't much room in the van. The milk crate got a pass, simply because I could pile my stuff inside of it too. And the chair we never used also gets excused... because you never know. But that bag. That fucking bag.
Meanwhile, while I was stressing about Rich overpacking, Rich was stressing about the bikes. Specifically about my bike maybe kind of touching his bike, and about how, if given a half a chance, it might try to vibra-saw his frame in half as we trundled down the road. I mean... I get it. Finding out at the trailhead that the left ESI grip you were counting on has been sliced in half and you get to ride glove to carbon for the next couple of hours is deflating. But the van don't have no hitch. And I ain't got that hitch money. So trunk rack it is. Eventually he got a system that he was happy with and he was in charge of bikes for the next week.

When we got to Knoxville, without incident, Scott, incidentally, wasn't ready... busy as he was learning how to service an e-bike.
But then, having skipped lunch, neither were we. And we had time. So I gave rule number two a little leeway. And as our friends Gary and Chris had "left the conversation" about riding before we even arrived, there were less balls in the air. Literally. So we ate tamales with Daniel, who had taken the day off to join us. Then piled into the TVB Sprinter and headed to the trails... which are pretty special.
And when we did roll out, even if the pace occasionally hurt so good, and even if Scott kept death-coughing plague into the air ahead of me.... I was very much in my happy place.

Which is to say... riding my bike... somewhere else.

"Make me look bald."

Look for Part 2 wherever you look for things like that. Coming soon.

The Sweaty Bottom Boys

2019-10-07T05:19:00.005-07:00

"Hey Rich... remember this spot?"
From behind me a sad and small "maybe?"
"It's where we almost got arrested."
A sad and small sigh... "i remember."

It was Bill Nye's fault. Or so I tell myself. His eyes had changed. That's how you know. When he stares somewhere past you rather than at you... it means he's about to start arguing with and about things that don't warrant arguing with or about. In this particular case, the cop he'd conveniently crashed his bike in front of.
The cop who had blooped his siren at Rich, Nick and I for riding three abreast down the empty 2am morning road.
"Single file!"
And then... when he sped past us and we saw his cop-lights go on in earnest some quarter mile ahead I turned to Rich and said "How much do you want to fucking bet that's about Bill Nye?" And sure enough, when we rolled up... there he was... standing in front of said cop, doing a completely shit job of defending his thesis, the subject of which appeared to be "This... Is, Like... Bullshit. Or Something." Me going into hyper-reasonable-and-elocutive-to-appear-sober-but-probably-just-making-it-worse mode: "My sincerest apologies, officer, but you'll have to excuse my unruly friend. Our ultimate destination is my humble domicile, which lies just beyond this next traffic light, and once we arrive, you have my word as a gentleman ... we'll... ummm... (shit)... try and... (losing it)... not be... (think, man!)... quite so... umm... (argh!)... drunk? (cringe)
"I could arrest y'all, you know."
Heads hung like chastised children.
"You walk from here. If I see one of you even touch a pedal on those bikes, you're going to jail."
Staring at our feet and nodding.
Shadowed by a police cruiser for the mile long walk back to my house with our bikes.

But wait. That... was literally months ago. Sorry, I got distracted. Let's go back to NOW.

Rich was wearing flip-flops.
Not sandals, mind you, like the usual pocket-tee clad, five-panel-hat doffed, mom-jort, leica-around-the-neck cool-kid-industry-fan-boyz of the now. But flip-flops. Flimsy, shitty department store flip-flops. On SPD pedals.
And while it wasn't a long ride to the first bar... maybe four miles... it was long enough that flip-flops probably weren't the choice. Probably, in fact, they accounted for the mysterious gash on his foot the next morning. But nonetheless... there he was.

Christian had joined us. He's been giving me some much needed help at the shop lately. I admit I felt a little bad subjecting him to the insular old-person dumb-speak that Rich and I tend to communicate in, but Christian shares our common thread of being unable to refuse a late night bike ride to a bar for "one more."
We're all healthy bundles of habits here, in case you were wondering.

Now allow me to attempt some math.
By the time we were even en route to the first bar that night, 130 pounds of Rich had, by my exhaustive calculations, already imbibed seven seven percent beers in relatively short time. Myself just beyond five, each at a rough average of six point five. Which, if I'm not mistaken, the sum total of which is less than or equal to: we probably should have just ridden home and gotten a good night's sleep.
And before you vent your righteous indignation at our failed failings in coping with our various vices and addictive personality traits, imagine, just for a moment, being human. And being confined to the awkwardness of a human body, with all its oddity of elbows, toes, and ears. Testes. Tongues. Labia. Buttocks. Uvulas. And a nose. A FUCKING NOSE. Now imagine another human body approaching your own human body and talking to it. Talking to it with all of its strange anxieties and tics, built layer upon layer of 50 years crawling around on this rock trying to create meaning out of nothing. Now imagine not really knowing what to even say, so in the same way that people crack their knuckles or laugh at their own jokes or run their fingers through their hair, or scratch their neck, or compulsively put on chapstick... you just unwittingly and consistently take another sip of the drink in your hand. And that drink happens to be beer. And in that moment, this simple act happens to help you push past the fact that just behind that nose and beyond those lips, the person talking to you has a skeleton inside their body and is currently pushing air through a voice box somewhere in their throat that makes sound waves that travel through the air into your gnarled, lobed ears where tiny bones tap a message to your brain that translates their honking into some semblance of a thing that kind of makes sense.
So please... fuck you and your righteous sobriety. Because you're just as much a bundle of anxious, shitty coping habits as I am. You just have one less excuse.
(I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. Sobriety is good. It's just that... noses. Right? With nostrils. And we all have them and we act like it isn't the weirdest goddamn thing and some of them are actually quite nice.)

Gads... where even was I?
Oh yes...
Entirely too much to drink the night before a "race." Plus more. Plus midnight fried chicken and cheese fries. Once home, Rich fell asleep on the couch while I sipped rye whiskey and chuckled ruefully to myself about the vast and terrifying emptiness of even the most fulfilled life.

"hey"

The next morning, riding our bikes ten miles to the start of the race, we both had a moment of panic. An effort up a hill that stressed our legs and heart was telling. This was going to hurt. And by panic, I mean... depression. Being sadly resigned to the fact that today was going to be much harder than it should. And that once again in a long line of once agains... it was our fault.

Even though the shop has always been involved as a sponsor, this was my first year getting to actually participate in the JA King and Queen of the Watershed Race. Long has there been the ambition of doing a race that connected all of the trails in Greensboro, but logistically it seemed difficult. Long stretches of greenway. Busy road crossings. Which means the enduro format is perfect. Each trail is a "segment" and you can cruise at your own speed between them.
It also means that you have to ride each segment harder than you probably wanted to.

When I caught Rich on the first trail, after starting 30 seconds behind him, I knew how things would shake out. This would create a cascade of despair that would increase throughout the day, until he was a complete shell of a man... full of regrets and doubts and self-loathing. So... pretty much like any other day, but more, probably. I myself felt ok. A little hungover, but I've been worse. My 40's, while more pervasively melancholy, seem punctuated with less "oh god, oh shit, I'm dying" mornings on the floor tangled up with the toilet than my 30's.

So... winning?

My goal for the day was to ride hard enough to hurt... but not hard enough that I ever felt the panic or pain of "racing." Because I don't know if you got the memo, but that shit is the worst. I was also still nervous about my butt. I'd injured it a month ago... launching entirely too far and high into the air off a jump, somewhere in Tennessee... and it's kind of been an asshole ever since. Pun intended. But that's another story. Suffice to say I wanted to test it, but not too much. I already felt ridiculously squirrely, having been off the mountain bike for almost a month. I crept through and across every loose corner and wet bridge like it was my first time on a bike.

The trails? They were fine. I mean... they were great. But these are my backyard trails, mind you. And it's difficult for me to wax poetic about my backyard. My suburban despair is strong enough that even the word "yard" is triggering.
And I've ridden these trails so many times that I like to make sweeping statements about preferring a staple in the cheek or groin to another day out on them. Is that true? I don't know. It's just that there are people out there who crave routine, and relish in consistency. And I just... don't.
But even through my all consuming melodrama about being in one place too long, I'm aware that we have a good thing with these trails and that it's only getting better.

So... winning?

When we were finally done, Rich was as toasted as I've ever seen him. This from the guy who consistently shames me through eleven hours of Pisgah.

Flip-Flops.

The point is... if you have a calendar that you put races on, you should put the JA King and Queen of the Watershed on there. What's a "JA King" you ask? It's a company that makes measuring equipment, owned by a guy named John King who happens to be a cycling fanatic, and who is a great patron of our local scene, and who I, incidentally, once told to eat a bag of dicks.
It was a long time ago.
(You should ask him about it.)

Tomorrow, Rich and I will be getting in the van and meandering our way to Bentonville, AR for the Oz Trails Off Road, where we will be doing a bang-up job of covering the event as "media." Rich is calling it the Van of Constant Sorrow Tour. I'm calling it Old Brother, Where art We. Neither are very inspired or funny. But that's pretty much who we are these days.
We'll be trying to be active on social media, so follow us at @teamdicky and @revoltingcogs if you don't already. We can't promise anything, but if we were, it would be a whole lot of worn-out mediocrity. So if you're into that...

Great.

There, I wrote a blog. Happy?

PMBAR: This Is Not A Song About Depression.

2019-05-09T06:10:00.002-07:00

"This is bullshit."

It's what I had in me at that point.

So I kept saying it. Over and over. I tried to find some other things, I did. Peeked around all the corners in my head and tried to open doors into other places. Into gratitude. Mindfullness. Perspective. But every direction I looked... was just bullshit.
And horseshit.
I'd given up on the possibility of not ingesting horseshit a long time ago. We'd been riding up a muddy river of water (read: trail) peppered with equestrian landmines for what seemed like hours. If it hadn't already been flung into my gaping mouth-breathing mouth by this point, then I'd long since suckled it off the soulless plastic teat of one of my water bottles.

"This... is bullshit." On repeat. Gaining in vehemence and volume. Until Rich could hear me... jabbering baleful noise to myself some perpetual 50 yards behind him. Occasionally peppering it with elocutive variants of "Fuck you, Pisgah. I hate you and your stupid fucking bullshit fuck face."

I was approaching melt-down. Or already there.

It had started out ok, though.

I mean... kind of.

photo: Icon Media Asheville

If I have one piece of advice to offer to future generations of... whatever... it's to never make plans. Ever.
Unless, of course, your ultimate destination is disappointment. With lengthy detours through frustration and anxiety. What's that famous Robert Burns quote? "Fuck plans....And mice?"
I'd been trying to leave the shop for hours. It wasn't happening. So when my ETA in Brevard moved from "sometime before six" to "almost ten o'clock," I wasn't in my happy place. And I could feel Rich's disappointment through the ether. It was almost as palpable as my own.
I try not to dwell on moments... on recreating the past... but I had really been hoping for a chance to hang out. Have beers at the Hub. Eat so-so Mexican food with giant Negra Modelos. Convince Rich to begrudgingly ride to Oskar Blues. Ride back to the campground and have one or a few more with friends before passing out.
As Rich is want to say... "Meh."

Instead, I pulled up late, sat and stood in a circle with Rich and friends.... sipping bourbon as I fiddled with my bike in the dark. Doing my best to let the day slough off me. Eventually I fell asleep listening to sad songs... and dreamed about endcaps and wheels. Boxes full of them, none of which seemed to fit. Hubs rattling back and forth on thru-axles and QR skewers because everything was the wrong size. Damnit. I wanted to dream about girls and sun and skin. About the desert and hoodoos. Surfing and superpowers. Instead I was dreaming about working on a fucking bike?
Come on, man!

To be fair, it was one of the last things I did that day. Swapping rotors in the dark and trying not to lose the bolts in the grass. And endcaps had been front and center in my mind. In that I didn't have them. In that if the ones Rich had brought with him didn't work, I wouldn't have a front wheel to ride on Saturday.
Because I don't know how y'all like to operate, but apparently I like to Frankenstein a completely new bike together mere hours before riding it for the first time ever... in a race... ideally in the most adverse conditions you could come up with.
(Fucking Pisgah.)

photo: Icon Media Asheville

It was multifacted.

For one...the Cysco was creaking. If I'm doing the math right, it's been creaking since Transylvania Epic. Two years ago. I've overhauled the bottom bracket multiple times. Replaced it twice. Cleaned and regreased everything. Taken the dropouts off and cleaned every surface. Swapped QR skewers. Overhauled the rear hub. And it just. Keeps. Creaking. If not for the backdrop, I might have lost my shit during the Samarathon in Israel. And I won't say that it's why I quit at Bootlegger a few weeks ago, because the not being able to stop shaking or move my hands probably had something to do with it. But it wasn't NOT a factor.
I'm starting to wonder if there might be a crack.

And for two... I thought I wanted a dropper post. I think. I had this distinct memory of going ass over teakettle last year. Hurting my arm (which, incidentally, still hurts) and planting my hand in dogshit. All because I couldn't get my weight far enough back on some nameless and terrible descent. Slamming my pubic bone into the back of the saddle. That telltale "this is the wrongest thing ever" cold numbness that comes with trauma, however mild, to our soft bits.
So I started thinking maybe I'd descend a little better if I could get lower.
Forgetting that regardless of what I'm riding, I will probably always suck at descending.

And for three... I missed my steel single speed. Yeah... sure... I like my custom ti frame. It's fine. But I really, really, really liked my old Niner SIR 9. I couldn't even say why. It just worked. I'd taken it apart one day with the idea of painting it... and a customer asked me how much I wanted for it. And I came up with a number, thinking that this was a good opportunity to just EP another. At which point Niner killed the SIR 9. And then brought it back as a slightly different version of what had been the ROS 9. But I didn't want a fucking ROS 9 renamed a SIR 9. I wanted a SIR 9. With all of its stupid angles and ridiculous eccentric bottom bracket.
That's what I wanted.

And for four... For no reason that I can think of, aside from the fact that single speed is ded, (kilt in large part by Rich, mind you) there was this Kona Unit that's been hanging in the shop for over a year.
And it happens to be routed for an internal dropper.
And thanks to winning a thing one time, I happened to have a dropper.
So, in a moment of ill-conceived inspiration, I decided to build it up as my PMBAR bike. Not ill-conceived in that it wasn't a good bike for the job. Just ill-conceived in that it wasn't so much a good idea. Especially with less than 24 hours until the event.
You know.... When "hey, I'll just change out the wheels" turns into "huh, should I change tires too?" turns into "wait, probably best if I change the brakes" turns into "crap, I need a new rotor" turns into "IDK, should I maybe change the crank while I'm at it?" turns into "fuck, now I need a new bottom bracket" turns into "oh man... do I even have endcaps for these wheels?"

And the answer was no. No I didn't.

"I could do this all day."

photo: Icon Media Asheville

That's honestly what I said. Somewhere in the early hours. Climbing a gravel road in dappled sunlight. Sweat dripping off the bill of my cycling cap. Fogged glasses perched on the end of my nose so I could see where I was going. It was a lovely morning. The dome of Looking Glass was visible through the trees. My legs felt good. Hell... I felt good.

But that was before the rain.
And the hail.
And the lightning.
Hiding for a moment in the non-shelter of a tree and asking Rich, "What do we do now?" A shrug. I didn't even know what I meant myself. Just... aren't you supposed to like... get really low and stand on one leg or something?
"We keep going?"
Yeah... fair enough.
I hadn't minded the descent off Pilot. Yes, at that point the roots were getting slick and I was starting to lose my descending nerve. But I made it. I think. And Cove Creek was an absolute delight, I'll have you know. And Bradley Creek? (lightning be damned...) Well, I never mind Bradley. It is what it is: bushwhacking through an endless insanity and hoisting your bike over trees and through the sometimes waist deep water approximately 1000 times. You can't really ride it. Not much of it, anyway. And you can only go so fast. Sure, it's taxing... but it's not pushing-your-bike-up-Black taxing. Or wet, sloppy Buckhorn taxing.

Fucking Buckhorn.

Rich calls it "the wheelchair ramp." A gentle grade of doubletrack that just goes and goes. It can hurt. Late in the day, usually, when you're already on empty. But in light of that alternatives... it's a goddamn pleasure.
Unless it isn't. Unless it's a river of muddy water and horse feces. A fleck of mud in your eye that you can't get out. A sloppy quagmire that saps all of your waning strength and will to live.

Buckhorn was my breaking point.

I talk (frequently, I know) about dark places during racing. Those moments where your head turns against you and you face inner demos and blah blah blah.
This... was none of those. This was as if every layer of myself had been stripped away, and what was left... was just a toxic shit of a toddler. I felt none of my usual melancholy. None of the crushing weight of introspection. All I felt... was a pouty rage. I wanted to yell and throw things. Hurl myself backwards on the ground in some nonsense protest of not getting my way. I don't even know what "my way" was at that point. Just that this wasn't it. I was getting dangerously close to being that kid in the restaurant that makes you mumble under your breath about how parents don't spank anymore... and they should.

I decided, somewhere in that mud and shit, that I hated Pisgah. That it was stupid. That people who like it are dumb. That garbage trails that never drain properly and just go in a straight line are the alt-right of mountain biking. That a rooty, rutted, unrideable shitshow is just another neckbeard yelling "heritage not hate." That it's not just Pisgah. It's gravel. It's bike-packing. It's flannel shirts on bikes. Fanny packs. Pocket tees. It's sandals. Mom-jeans. Weed pens. Cargo shorts. CBD. 650b. Low trail bikes with caliper brakes. Social media codenames. Youtube channels of incels playing video games. Peace signs. That everything is just an unironic slingshot tucked in the pocket of a jorts clad farce about who we really are. That we're all just a tone-deaf Facebook post about Trader Joe's and how it will complete us, on the same day as a school shooting. That it's all the same thing!
They're the same face! Doesn't anyone notice this! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

(ragged breathing...)

Somewhere on Clawhammer, we came across a family. A dad and his two soaking wet daughters, neither over six years old. Lost. Very. Walking down a gravel road the wrong way and asking how to get back to a place that was many arduous miles away. Very many. The little girls wide-eyed and quiet.
In stark juxtaposition to my seething toddler rage. About something I volunteered for and was damn privileged to get to do.

And I felt shame.

But then I fell face first coming down Black and I was right back to the edge-of-tantrum.
Not even riding. Walking. Stumbling on a root and tripping over the bike. Falling past 90 degrees and sliding down the hill on my knees and shoulder. Which hurt enough that I had to just lie there for a second and listen to Rich laugh at me. Gently, of course.
If I'd been alone, I might have lain there forever. But instead, I had to haul myself up and limp down the hill.

And then... we were done. And we somehow managed third place.
No clue.

No... I have no idea what I'm doing to Dahn in this picture, either.

For the fifth (? sixth?) (fourth?) year... PMBAR had broken me.
I have no clue how far we rode. Or where. Not really. I remember a few trails... But if there was some situation where unless I named at least two of the checkpoints, humanity would be wiped off the face of the planet... I'd have no choice but to sigh and concede that it's probably for the best. That we've had a good run.

No, I leave these details to Rich. And if you want them, you should read HIS blog.
Because the fact is... I am a terrible PMBAR partner.

Imagine dragging a tetherball about twenty feet behind you for 10 hours through Pisgah. Sure, sometimes it would just bounce along behind you without incident. And you'd think... "well, this isn't so bad at all." But all too frequently, it would tangle itself into forever knots around anything and everything it could. And drag you down into an abyss of self-doubt and burnout. I'm a tetherball.
Sometimes Rich will ask me a question about his choice of a route, whether soliciting advice or just using me as a sounding board, I don't know. And inevitably, I will look at him with a blank expression until he just answers it himself. Even when he tries to buck me up with details about what lies ahead, it's just sounds.

"Down Squirrel to Wheelchair Ramp to Pain Cave, then short painful hike-a-bike up Horse Dick to Hot Mess, descend gravel to Hemorrhoid, up Stick in Eye, fall on your ass down Fuck Me Dead and we're done!"

Blink.

I can't pretend I even bring a worthy level of fitness to the table... as for the fourth year in a row, for the final hour, I am a hollow shell unable to even keep Rich in sight. I have no idea how he does it. Maybe he feeds on my anguish.

And the thing is... whatever shitty backhanded things I say about Pisgah have nothing to do with it and everything to do with me. The shame of being a broken shell at 4pm when there are people who aren't going to finish for another 6 hours. The understanding that those rooty fucking shitshow trails are greater than anything I could create in a million lifetimes. That Pisgah wasn't even laughing at me and my bullshit meltdown. It didn't even notice I was there.

And I realize that sitting here typing, I miss it. And it doesn't even know my name.

Yeah, Rich. I'm in for next year.

Teeth

2019-03-29T05:43:00.005-07:00

Confession:

Once upon a time, for almost an entire year...

...I didn't brush my teeth.

Yeah.

That is... I did. But only sometimes. When I would wake up in the middle of the night and feel it. The decay. The sense that something was wrong and I needed to try and make it right. Needed a way to impose some order on a chaos that was getting dangerously close to falling the fuck apart.
Needed a step, however small.

Like taking a shower...
Like drinking some water...
Like changing your clothes...
Like deleting the number of someone who you know deleted yours a long time ago...
Like slapping yourself in the face...
Like putting down the flat-head screwdriver that every ghost in the room is screaming at you to drive into your head...

Like brushing your fucking teeth.

That maybe... this simple step... would be the tipping point toward some modicum of control.

I was fortunate. My teeth didn't rot out of my head. And my breath never became a toxic miasma of neglect. (And let me tell you... even one unsuccessful jab to the head with a screwdriver will put you on the fucking floor.)

It's so bizarre.
That I can force myself to do all kinds of things:
Endure two hours of turned-inside-out intervals on a stationary trainer...
Do pushups until I can barely lift my arms...
Smile and laugh with a customer when every bank account in my name is negative...
Visit family for the holidays and talk about the future as if I haven't already planned where I'll hang myself in a month...
Post something "fun" to social media when there's still blood on my forehead from slamming it against a wall to keep from hurting myself... (the irony?)

...But that there are times that I can't make myself take two fucking minutes to care for basic oral hygiene.

No, it's fine. You're right.

Depression's a motherfucker.

Confession:

Pisgah... is fine.
It's fine.
It's totally fine.

Hey... Y'all... ...It's fine.

But I don't jizz all over myself about it.

Make no mistake... I would rather be in the mountains than the soul-sucking sprawl of the Piedmont, any and every day. The smell of rhododendron. Wet root and rock. The dark pitch and timbre of those hills. Do I really need to tell you how much vastly more moving that is than Greensboro's innumerable telephone poles, garbage creeks, and vape shops?
Pisgah is beautiful. It is. And I appreciate that.
But when I have wet dreams about terrain? When I wake up sweaty and sticky about the swell and press of a landscape...
... It's something spare and stark. Dangerous. With a sky that never ends.
It's confounding. Confusing. A hot breath on my shoulder. An ignored text. Feet touching under a table. Stolen moments in a bar. Sweating in a van.
And for me... that's not Pisgah.

But it's fine.

Confession:

I pee my pants a lot lately. Ok... Maybe not "a lot." But more than I would like. And that's pretty easy math, because even "once" is approximately 1000 times too many. To be fair... I'm not talking a "Oh no! I pee-peed and it's everywhere and I'm a mess and need new pants!" kind of thing. Sheesh, I'm not a toddler. Not completely, anyway. I just mean... that at any given moment, if I were to drop my pants... there's a solid 50/50 chance that there will be a dime to nickel sized dapple of a little leaked pee in my heather-gray Hanes tagless boxer briefs.
Not a big deal.
Totally not a big deal.
Hey! Guys! Not a big deal!

Except that it didn't used to happen.
Goddamnit.

Confession:

I needed this to be real.
I needed it to be real so hard.

But it wasn't.
I swear to god... fuck everything.

Confession:

I drink too much.
I do.
I know.
It's not a source of pride, as much as I make all the jokes. And while it's not a "problem" (yet).. I know it isn't healthy.
I mean... I don't think I went to sleep sober once during the month of January.
Or December.
And let's not even talk about November.
Or October.
Or February.
Fuck... Can we swear right here and now to never even mention February ever again?
Or March?
I tell myself that it's temporary. That it's just a bad spell. That once it stops raining... That once I stop working so much... That once my chest stops hurting... That once I get over it... That once I'm in the van... That once I'm on the road again...
I'll stop. Or at least cut back.
And there is no doubt that I drink less when I travel. Maybe a beer with dinner. Likely at a bar in a town I don't know. Watching strangers shine, burn, and fade. A post ride beer as I look at the map and plot the next destination. To and from... wherever. Sip some bourbon in the dark as I drift off in a random parking lot. Tangled up. Or alone.
Yeah, sure... I passed out on the floor of a campground shower in Florida once. Woke up naked on the cool tiles... still-miraculously-hot water pouring over me... curled around a bottle of whiskey and a drain that had likely seen more human frailty than even I could muster that night...

But that was my birthday.
So...

The point is...
I know.
I'm working on it.

Confession:

Those times when I am traveling in the van... when I'm moving around and unsure where I'll even be from night to night... I like to listen to audiobooks.

Specifically, audiobooks of Lee Child novels.
Specifically, audiobooks of Lee Child novels about Jack Reacher.
Specifically, audiobooks of Lee Child novels about Jack Reacher read by Dick Hill.
Specifically, audiobooks of Lee Child novels about Jack Reacher read by Dick Hill, procured, exclusively, from a rack at a nearby Cracker Barrel.

They're terrible.

The characters. The plots. The voices. The biscuits.

And I love them. Goddamn, I love them.

It's... kind of a mania.
Like having to buy Foster's oilcans whenever I see them.
Like having to ride every section of trail in whatever system it is I'm visiting. Even if it's just a 1/4 mile out and back to a parking lot.
Like having to re-organize the cart corral at a supermarket because someone put one of the small carts in the same line as the big carts and everything literally might explode unless I set this right.

It's bad enough that I've been known to exit off the highway multiple consecutive times in search of the right Cracker Barrel. Asking the cashier if there's, I don't know, maybe some kind of database of who has what in stock? Spinning the rack three times in case maybe I just didn't see it the first two.
Michael Connelly? No. Harlan Coben? Nah. Clive Cussler? Pffft.
It's bad enough that Dorrit and I have gone down the internet rabbit hole of "Dick Hill." Where he lives. How he looks. What he wears.
It's bad enough that sometimes, when I'm alone walking around the house, I talk about myself in third person... in the best fucking Dick Hill impersonation you've never heard.

Yeah.

Now... for extra credit, tell me which of these images that come up when you google "Dick Hill" is correct.

Trick question. The answer is yes.

Confession:

Enya.

What?

Fight me.

Confession:

I went down really hard at Croatan Buck Fifty this year.
My front wheel hit a log hidden on the tall grass in the periphery of Savage Road and sent me flying. I landed on my shoulder and head. Hard.
After about a minute, I picked up the bike and kept moving, knowing that I was probably mildly concussed, but continuing anyway. Because stopping... would just mean sitting at the race track and drinking beer until Dorrit and the kids got back in a few hours. And I was pretty sure that if I was concussed, I wasn't supposed to drink a ton of beer?
I mean... It worked out?

But that doesn't mean it was the right choice.
My concern wasn't so much the short term. I hurt, but whatever. It was the months to follow.
Because my last concussion... did a number on me. Even if I wasn't aware of it at first.
I've always had a proclivity to self-harm. I just... have. But the aftermath of waking up on a trail in Indiana with no memory of how I got there... turned that up to eleven. When I would get depressed... which is, yes, often... it would get bad.

I remember turning to Dorothy one day while we were driving and asking, "Hey... Do you remember me ever punching myself in the face before the concussion?" And after thinking for a minute, she said. "No. You're right. I think that concussion fucked you up."

And in light of how I've felt for the past few years... I didn't need more of that.

Because
Confession:

This winter almost killed me.
Yeah...
Again.

If you know... you know.

And if you don't?
Then maybe I don't know what the fuck to say to you.

If you've never pressed a blade to a vein...
Put a gun to your head...
Nestled a knife into a space between your ribs...
Stepped in front of traffic...
Taken too many pills...
Torn your house apart looking for a length of something, anything to put around your neck...
Unbuckled your seatbelt on the highway and done the math...
Scouted out the bridge or building that you'll step off one day...
.
...then... I just don't know what the fuck to even say to you.

But to those of you who know...

I feel you. Goddamn do I feel you.

So...
Confession:

Hey. It's spring. We made it. Maybe... we're going to actually be alright.
You know?

Love Stabs, Trainers, and Politics: longform with my enemy.

2018-09-28T05:21:00.001-07:00

Q: Wait. Enemy? That's a bit harsh, isn't it?

A: Is it? Name something good you've done for me.

Q: Ummmm... Kept you alive? You're welcome?

A: Ha! You say that. But you've also tried to kill me. Multiple times.

Q: Please. I was trying to help you.

A: By stabbing me with a screwdriver?

Q: That... was a love-stab. God, stop being so dramatic.

A: A love stab?

Q: Whatever. Look...

A: To the head?

Q: Love... is complicated. Sheesh. You know this.

A: I... I don't know shit anymore. I think I need to disappear. I swear... I'm losing my fucking mind.

Q: Awwww. Sounds like someone needs a love-stab.

A: I hate you.

Q: I know. So... where you been, emo-boy? Literally tens of people have been asking. Alright... maybe just one. And no, it's not who you were hoping.

A: Alas. I don't know. I just...

Q: Ok. Full disclosure. No one's asked.

A: (Sigh)
I've been around. Just weathering them brain fires, you know? Just... playing the game. Distracting myself through one day. Then another. Then another. It's all distraction. All about tricks.

Q: Yep. It's all about turning those tricks.

A: Like... this winter. I'm fucking terrified of it. I barely made it through last winter, right? How the fuck am going to make it through this one?

Q: Not to indulge you, psycho... but what's your plan. How'd you do it?

A: Hmmm. Badly. I mean... I drank. (A lot) Rode my bike. (A little) Traveled. (Not enough) Kissed. (A lot) Turned myself inside out on the trainer. (Too much) Counted cracks in the sidewalk. (So many) Read books to my kiddo. ("I am a sick man... a spiteful man...") Drank. (I said that one, right?) Avoided sharp things. (Everything is sharp when your head is bad) Touched bricks in the right order. (1,5,7,2,3,9,5, fuck... start over) Kissed. (Still not enough) And.... Drank. (A lot)
I know that's not a great long-term plan, by any stretch. But it's what got me to today. So...

Q: Cool story. I hate trainers, by the way.

A: So do I. But I'll tell you something... If I only have one hour to ride? And I can either do an unfulfilling loop through garbage suburbs... full of brick and siding and dying azaleas and Bermuda grass and bitter, unhappy couples and white Audis and mulch and bags of dogshit left on the sidewalk because people are too lazy to carry them to a trash can....
OR I can do a workout on the trainer so hard that I literally can't think about anything AND I cry blood?
Which would you choose?

Q: Hmmmm. Yeah... that blood thing sounds pretty good. So are you on Zwift and all that shit?

A: No. Nor do I see that happening. But who knows? Winter makes you do weird shit, right? I have this Kinetic Trainer and this INRIDE app on my iPad. I scroll through the workouts and say "I wonder which one of these will make me sob and shit my bibs?" And choose that one. Then I pedal hard enough to make a yellow line follow a green line. And cry. And shit my bibs.

Q: Hmmm. Delightful. So why aren't you bonkers strong on the bike if you train so hard?

A: Ha! Train? You mean like... with a plan? Like... a goal? Like... peaking and tapering? Like... paying attention to my diet and having rest days and drinking enough water and getting enough sleep and not getting pass-out-drunk every night to desperately try and hide from demons?

Q: I...guess?

A: Hmmm. I don't know. Apathy? Bad genes? And who says I'm not bonkers strong?

Q: Everyone. Is it fair to point out that it's not even close to winter yet? I think it was almost 90 degrees the other day.

A: Pfffft. I start dreading winter in like, mid-April. So...

Q: Fair enough. Wait... weren't you supposed to be at INTERBIKE last week?

A: Sigh... Yeah.

Q: So....?

A: It just didn't happen this year. Ben, who was my right hand at the shop (And also my brain. And gut. And possibly my left kidney. Among other things...) finally decided to go to law school. Rightly so, because he's (kind of) smart(ish.) And come on. pursuing bike retail as a future? You're either insane....Or dumb... Or both.

Q: So which are you?

A: God, I'm so far off the spectrum of being insane and dumb that it almost doesn't even register. Like a wheel spinning so fast it looks like it's going backwards.
Anyway... I just needed to be at the shop lately. So... yeah. No Interbike.
And yeah... I'm bummed.
Because whatever the fuck people say about "Ugh... Interbike is the worst. I'm so traveled and jaded. I'd rather be making coffee outside in a hot spring wearing my bedrock sandals on a gravel road with my fucking $5000 titanium bike"... or whatthefuckever...
...I never didn't have fun at Interbike.

Q: So you don't like Bedrock Sandals? All your buddies love them.

A: Nothing against Bedrock. I'm just not a sandal person. I'm all about tall socks. Tight kits. Top buttons. No sleeves. Mullets. Neck tubes. None of it makes any real sense.
But mostly? It's having a strap between my toes. (shivers dramatically) It's... unpleasant. Like someone touching my wrists. Or having fabric in my mouth.
Plus this is what happened the last time I wore sandals. So....

Q: Gross. Ummm... Fabric in your mouth. Is that a thing? That happens?

A: Thankfully, no. Because I would puke. The other day I was cleaning up around the house, and to free up a hand, put this t-shirt I was holding in my mouth. I gagged so hard. I would be pretty awful at fellatio, I suspect.
And there's probably no S & M on my near horizon.

Q: That you know of.

A: That I know of.

Q: What about travel? Any of that on your horizon?

A: No. Not that I can see. And yes... I'm losing my fucking mind about it.
I know I'm a broken record and all that... but staying in one place fucks me up. Routine is anxiety. Movement is peace.

Q: Oooohhhh that's really deep. So where would you go?

A: Fucking anywhere.
Usually about this time, I get in the van and head... somewhere. I often don't even know until I'm behind the wheel. Last year I went north. Went to Kingdom Trails in Vermont. The year before I went west. Made it to Palo Duro Canyon in Texas. The year before, headed to Madison, WI. This year? I just wanted to see the Aspens. I've never been there when they were turning. All that yellow and blue. How do people ride there and not just jizz their pants all the time?

Not aspens. But pretty alright.

Q: What about events? That's a good way to force travel.

A: You think I don't know that? It's why every year I say YES to so many events. Tell myself that I'll be there. Rebecca's Private Idaho. Shenandoah 100. Mah Daah Hey. Tour Divide. Trans North Georgia. True Grit. Landrun. Sea Otter. Keystone Gravel. UnPAved. Baja Divide. That middle of February fat bike race whose name I forget. Fucking anything. Anywhere.
Grinduro is this coming weekend... and at one point, Giro was even going to give me gas money to drive the van there and be a social media dipshit about it.

Q: What happened?

A: What always happens. Entropy and disorder. Decay. The falling apart of things.

Q: That's... really depressing.

A: Indeed it is.

Q: What if you just close the shop for a week or so and just do it?

A: Yeah. Maybe? I need to figure some shit out.

Q: Wait... Is the van ok? Please tell me the van is ok.

A: The van is fine. I think. I mean... it needs some work. I'm not quite sure that the radiator is operating at 100%. There's an electrical short somewhere that makes the windshield wipers turn off whenever I hit the brakes. Sometimes the lights want to flicker out and the only way to keep them on is to press on the relay a certain way. And there's a rattling noise somewhere around the front right wheel. I'm always driving when I hear it, so can't quite diagnose it. Fun. stuff. But the van is fine. I mean... yeah, the fuel pump shit the bed somewhere in New Mexico on the romp I took with Dorrit and the not-so-younglings... And we spent more than a few hours on the side of the road in 106° heat multiple times as I scrambled to fix shit. But yeah... that van is fine. Everyone's fine here. We're all fine here now, thanks. How... are you?

Q: Meh.
You still writing?

A: Yeah? I mean... I have my ongoing column in Dirt Rag. But otherwise? I've been a in a major rut. Like my muse bailed. I sit down to write just about every night. Sometimes I get something out that I save for later. Some nugget of idea. But mostly I just "select all" and hit "delete."
At some point I just started hating my voice. It became all consuming.

Q: Self-loathing likes to do that.

A: Even now.... This. This absurd little exercise to trick some stupid words out. It just seems like so much self-indulgent bullshit.

Q: Maybe. But no more so than the act of simply having a blog and thinking you have something to say or that people should care.

A: But that's not why I ever write the blog. I write it to try and put thoughts, however poorly formed, into words. Translate energy into matter.

Q: Or just probe your own prodigious mental vomit with a stick to see what the fuck is in there?

A: Yeah.

Q: Shit, I can tell you that. Hot dog. Big unchewed pieces of hot dog.
So I heard you're doing a kit.

A: Yeah. I always wanted to do something that wasn't really tied to REVOLUTION CYCLES. Just because. So I just branded this one REVOLTING COGS.

Q: Oh... because you have a brand?

A: No. I mean....

Q: Do you have any idea how fucking vain that is? Assuming anyone wants to be associated with this shit show of... whatever the fuck it is you do?

A: Ok... Truth? I just wanted a new kit to ride in myself. When I first talked to Stratton at Starlight, I was just going to do a super secret run of like... four kits. Two for me... One for my kiddo. And one for... whoever. He talked me in to doing a "team store."

Q: So what does it mean?

A: What it's always meant... A Revolting Cog. Some part of the machine that isn't in sync. That resists.

Q: So it's political?

A: No. But it isn't NOT political. Because it's me.
It's funny... the other day at the shop some folks were talking about the kit and saying they were probably going to order one. I told them I appreciated that very much. And I do. So much. And the question was posed: Would I be ok with them even wearing my kit? Because we probably don't agree about politics?
And... they're right. We don't.
So the real question is: are they ok wearing my kit?

Because here's some politics:
Fuck every fucking hole in that fucking fuck Kavanaugh's fucking fuck face.
Every.
Fucking.
Hole.

Q: And fuck white male apologists. And men's rights activists. All of them.

A: Exactly. What are you scared of? That you'll suddenly be treated the way you've always treated everyone else? Fuck your fragile and toxic masculinity.
Hmmmm.... you know... maybe calling you my enemy before was hasty. Maybe you're like... a good frenemy. I don't know. It's easy to reduce people to reactions. Take some facet of them and make a narrative of it. It's always more complicated than that, right?

Q: Yeah... What's that stupid word? Sonder? "The idea that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own." That we're all struggling with something.

A: Yeah. But we're also all just ignorant and boring pieces of shit who think more of ourselves than we should.

Q: Indeed we are.

Dirty Kanza: I think of demons

2018-06-15T06:15:00.003-07:00

Somewhere in Kansas: now

My legs aired their grievance. Filed their complaint. Gave me the tell-tale shudder of a cramp. One in my left leg, somewhere behind my knee... in a pocket of sinew I didn't even know had room for things to cramp. And one in my right leg. In exactly the spot I'd torn something earlier in the year. Somewhere near my hip-flexor and groin. Doing plyometrics. Jumping around in my living room, trying to tax my body enough to stave off suicidal winter depression. A strange pop. Then tingling pain and bruising. Too impatient to let it heal the way I should have. Now just a dull and constant little ache. But I was used to that. I stood up on the pedals and pushed through the cramps. Once upon a time I would have stopped. Stretched. Whined. Then I figured out that eventually... my body just says "fine... whatever" and the cramps disappear. At least for a little while.
And pending nutritional meltdown or not... it wasn't my body.
Somewhere around mile 80, my head just started doing its thing. Standing on the pedals to navigate some technical crux of some kind... a steep incline... loose gravel... a deep rut... the past...
...the strength just left me. That strange flood of weakness that accompanies those moments when you remember something... that you didn't want to.
When you scratch off that thin skin of the person you want to be... and expose the person you are.

Somewhere in Florida: before

I woke up to sunshine. Light and heat starting to break through the tattered curtains of the van.
There was bustle now. Voices. Cars pulling in and out of the formerly dark and quiet parking lot I'd found late last night- backing into a spot sometime after midnight... Tentatively setting up the bed and sipping whiskey in the dark... Waiting to see if I got chased off by yet another not-having-it security guard. Until my eyes closed... and I nodded... and drifted.
I peaked out the curtains... noting that I had neighbors: two men sleeping in an SUV parked directly next to me. Seats reclined. Mouths open. I wondered where they were coming from and where they were going.
I turned onto my back and kicked off the sheets. Stretched my feet out and touched the corners of the bed... one of those strange little rituals I've fallen into. Hanging my heels off the end of the mattress.
I could tell I'd slept later than I meant to... but it didn't matter. Things were changing. The winds that had moved me here were shifting. The fog was burning off. New weather.
I liked that. I welcomed it. I needed it.
Whatever plans I'd made were meaningless now. And that... was a good thing.
Because I'd driven down to Florida with a plan to kill myself there.

Wait... What?

Somewhere in Kansas: now

I'd stopped eating. Or drinking, as it were. Which was a problem, as all of my calories were liquid. My ill-conceived plan. But feeling the last mouthful of whatever fluid was in my bottles press back up against the back of my throat... my body said "No. Please. We're... quite done with that. No more." I tried to force the issue, and it ended poorly - a lingering miasma of grape-flavored bile in my mouth and nose. And on the ground. And on my shoe. Nothing but more grape-flavored bile to try and wash it away. Again... ill-conceived. When I pulled up to the final aid-station, Dorrit had more bottles of grape flavored calories for me. "No." I less said than croaked. "Just water." She promptly dumped them out. Refilled them with water and ice. I pushed chews I knew I wouldn't eat into my already stuffed jersey pockets. She poured water on my head... I gave her a bile-flavored kiss... and rolled out. Unrefreshed and unready. But knowing I could do this. It just... wouldn't be pretty.

It's not hubris to say that I always know I can do this. Riding a bike... is just that. If anything... it's the easy part. Sometimes it hurts, yes. And sometimes it's a complete shitshow. And sometimes... I want to quit. More than anything. But not because I can't go on.
Because going on just seems stupid and senseless.
I never doubt that I can do this. I just doubt... if I should.

Somewhere in Georgia: before

When I was young, I could always tell when I was sick. When I was legitimately sick... and not just fending off allergies or some small cold. Somewhere below the fever. Below the aches. Below the coughing... below whatever symptoms I felt...
...there was a shape.
I could see it, but only if I didn't look at it. More than anything... I could feel it. It was round. Jagged. Soft. Sharp. Fluid.
Strange.
It pricked and flared. Bit and pressed.
I can remember lying in bed and trying to find it. Trying to find the place it lived. Somewhere in my jaw. Behind my teeth. Somewhere in my skull.

It's much the same... when my head is bad.
There's a shape.
This one is more difficult. It's soft... and prickling.
Like a cloud. Like a hydra. Like heatstroke. Like nettles.
I can see it in my periphery. In the corners of my eyes. Feel it in that space behind my teeth. It has a sound. Like a quiet roar. Like the din of voices in a crowded room. Unmistakable and unintelligible .
It's harder to qualify... because it's always been there. I just didn't know it. Until one day... I woke up, and for reasons... it was gone. I didn't even know what was different. What had changed. Just that, for the first time in what seemed forever... I didn't feel like killing myself.

These things rarely last, do they?

Somewhere in Kansas: now

On a long barren stretch of gravel... my front tire passed millimeters away from the flattened body of a horny toad. Crushed by a succession of preceding bicycle tires. In the self-absorbed passion play of a day at Kanza... I crave those moments. It's like a pinch. A slap. A hard shake. Something to snap you out of ego. There was no meaning in it. No beauty. Just absurdity. Like a possum carcass on asphalt. Babies still in the pouch. Just trying to cross a thin ribbon of road. Just trying to gather some food. Just trying to live and provide. But ultimately just a body with organs exploded out of its mouth. All because some shithole hairless apes were too distracted by their own meaningless bullshit to pay attention to anyone else's. All because they needed to speed to town to get 50 rolls of toilet paper at Costco. A $5 latte they won't even finish. More caffeine free Diet Coke to drink while they watch Jimmy Fallon make more money lip-syncing to other people's songs than they had made writing them. All because they wanted to ride bikes in a giant circle and wear pants and grow ironic mustaches and say stupid shit about gravel and unlearning and coif their hair and give themselves codenames and share pictures of themselves on some ether plane they barely understand. All because they wanted to pretend like their momentary discomfort was a river... and not just another evaporating puddle that no one ever even knew or cared existed. Some pitiful feint at recapturing the same hungry desperation that the horny toad felt as it crossed a sun-baked patch of gravel in search of some food.
And found its insides on the outside instead.

Somewhere in North Carolina: before

It wasn't until I was physically driving out of Greensboro that I'd even set a tentative destination for that first day. I just got in the van and started moving. Made an impromptu exit. Instead of heading south to Uwharrie and hauling myself up loose, rocky hills.... I'd go to the Whitewater Center in Charlotte. Ride as many miles of trail as I felt necessary. Bask in the sun by a fake river with a beer. Plural. Then later... I could just make more impromptu exits. To wherever. Before ending up on a beach. Listening to waves. Before... making another exit.

I hadn't intended to... but I sent Rich a message. That's... what friends do, right? Visit friends?

Confession: I've never been good at friends. As much as I may let everyone in on some level... Tell total strangers more than they want to know: That I'm suicidal... That I've intentionally smashed a brick into my head until I passed out... That I got hit by a car while out running one morning and shit all over myself (and the car)...
...I don't get close to people.
I have amazing friends all over. Most of whom I don't even really know. And I look forward to any and every chance to laugh and cry and sleep with all of them.
But I'm too selfish. Too strange.
I can count on one hand the people I consider close.

For whatever reason Rich... is one of those people.

Turns out he was around. Just drinking beer in his back yard. And in classic Rich fashion, he convinced me to leave the White Water Center and my dreams of beer in the sunshine by a fake river... and come ride the poison-ivy maze of the Back Yard Trails with him instead. So we did that. Killing an afternoon meandering around the tight and technical dirt of suburban Charlotte. Afterward, as we sat basking in our non-accomplishment, he could tell that I was reluctant to get back on the road. And I was. I had a plan, yes... but that didn't mean I liked it. So without saying more, we just went out and ate food and drank beer. Talked on his porch until I started falling asleep mid-sentence. Then I crawled into my van and passed out.

Successfully distracting myself through another day.

So much of life seems to be... just that. Distraction. Little games and tricks. This strange, jaundiced engagement. Divert our attention with minutia. Bolster it with stories about impact. Myths about significance. Anything to keep us from peaking behind the curtain.
Have you ever been watching a movie... and suddenly you're not? Maybe your vision found the edge of the screen... or someone coughed or farted... and your attention slips. You become hyper-aware that you're sitting still in a darkened room staring at moving colors on a wall. Even the images stop making sense. The audio just becomes noise. And you can't snap yourself back into the fugue. Can't put yourself back in that trance. Like trying to fall back asleep in the wee hours of morning and stop your head from replaying every shitty thing you've ever said or done in your life.
That... ever happen to you?
It happens to me all the time.
For at least half of Dirty Kanza I was just staring at my hands on the hoods of my handlebar... peering into the space between atoms and thinking "What the fucking fuck is even happening right now?" Hyper aware that my perspective was trapped in the narrow confines of a body. That bizarre claustrophobia of peering out of your own eyes.

This means something?

Flawed and fucked as he was as a human and a writer... one of the reasons I've always enjoyed HP Lovecraft was his fixation on the ineffable- with things outside of our understanding or capacity to communicate. Be it a color. Or a shape. Or a malignant and indifferent universe. He was obsessed with trying to convey the terrifying reality of our limitations. That there are things outside our ability to fathom. Maybe bad things. Very bad things.

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but someday the piecing together of disassociated knowledge will open up such vast, terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation, or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

I feel... like humans, alpha species or not... are really just some bizarre middle class of existence. Smart enough to manipulate our surroundings in remarkable ways... but not smart enough to know what that means. Or doesn't. This strange polarized intellect.
We're like that dog who steals everyone's heart with his ability to problem solve his way into the fridge to eat some leftover birthday cake... but then turns around and tears his doggie-bed to shreds. Takes a shit on the sofa and eats it. Barks at a statue in a park.
We can harness the atom and store data in soldered conduit... build bridges that span miles and tunnel through mountains... but we can't get past the absurdity of our own melodrama. Still too stunted to gaze into time without props and abstractions. We have to pretend like we live a narrative. A poem. A thing that has a beginning and an end. A purpose. A reason. One that goes somewhere. Means something....
And doesn't just end with our organs exploded out of our mouths on a road as we set out to try to forage for food one day.

Somewhere in Florida: before

I have this straight razor. Given to me by a customer, for reasons I don't really know.
He dealt in antiques and had just acquired it earlier in the day. Showing it off to me as we finished a transaction. "Oh... look at this. Isn't this a neat piece?" And it was. It is. A polished ivory handle. An elegant and primitive marker of where we've been. Compared to the inelegant sophistication of "Mach 7 swivel blade action! Now with Retsin®!" Folding it up and putting it back in its ornate case. "I tell you what... you keep it. Thanks for all the work. Bike looks great." I hesitated, wanting to tell him... "You shouldn't give this to me. You... don't understand. You really shouldn't." But I accepted. And hid it away.
Sometimes... I pull it out and run a finger along the blade. Press it gently against a pulse. Test the elasticity of my skin.
Most days... I just do my best to ignore it.

It's almost impossible to explain.

It's... like a dull ache. Like the slow rise and fall of a swell. Just something I ride. Like a tide. But sometimes... it picks up. Breaks.

Some friends... had this idea. Boiled down to a hashtag.
#nonsuicidepact
I... wanted so badly to be a part of it. To be able to say "Yes. This." To hold each other accountable for our own head-fuckery. But the reality is... that when that tide rises... when that swell comes... there are no pacts. There's barely reason. There's just... maelstrom. A pull hard enough that even mouthing the words "I think I need help" is impossible. And all of the earnest well-wishing and well-meaning "you reach out when you need me"... is just more noise.
Because when I'm like that... I don't want to reach out. I can't. I don't want you to even talk to me. I don't want attention. Positive. Negative. Anything.
I just want to disappear.

It's a mania.
And you can smile and laugh your way through a day... Have a girl tell you how much you mean to her... Kiss your son goodnight and tell him you love him...
...and still feel it. Strong as ever.

The shape... the one in my jaw... had been building. I could feel it. Like biting something with the soft tissue of my gums. In that space where my wisdom teeth would be. Like a color you can't describe. Like having no brakes. My head going down road after road of just... disappearing. Wanting something sharp and painful to puncture me... whelm me... and just let me go.
Unless you know... unless you've ever felt that... I don't know that I can even describe it.
It's a wave.
And like a wave that eventually breaks on your head... holds you under... Sometimes you get up. And sometimes you don't.

Reaching out to Rich... had helped break that static. Broken a chain of thought that was becoming a narrative.
And now... somewhere on a red dirt road near Tallahassee... in rows of live-oaks older than my bloodline... it was subsiding. Once a beam, now little more than a mote.

For me... it boils down to motion.
For me... movement, however banal, recalibrates. Resets. More so than any drug I've ever taken... any talk I've ever had... any work I've ever done. Sitting still, settling in, rooting down... inverts my survival instinct. Creates a feedback loop that makes the voices in my head, the ones that tell me to disappear, echo. From everywhere.
I'm not tortured. I'm not complex. There's no well of pain inside me any deeper than the gaping hole in everyone else. I'm just... not wired right. Like a faulty circuit. Like a compass that can't find north unless it's actually in motion.

Somewhere in Kansas: now

Which is why I was here. Traveling in the van with Dorrit to some tiny midwestern town to ride my bike. Peeing in Tupperware. Exploring exotic places like Ohio and Missouri. Wading into ice cold lakes as big as oceans. Sitting in crystal clear rivers. Watching sun sets under a big sky.

Playing the age old game of: What about here? Could we live here?

I hate racing. So much. I won't lie and say that I don't enjoy "doing well", or that feeling of standing on or near a podium. Showing the world that I'm a solid C+ specimen.

Yay! We passed!

But damn, do I hate racing. Whether it's against myself, or against others. Something about competition kicks in every "fuck it" synapse I have in my body. Maybe I'll dig a little deeper when some kid passes me at mile 130. Or maybe I'll just back off. It just... doesn't resonate. My favorite moments at Kanza, or any event really... are when the field gets so totally blown apart that you might as well be the only person out there. And the dissolution of self that comes from turning yourself inside out for a little while.

Kanza is a double-edged sword. On some level it gives people a glimpse into the void. Because even the most shallow of riders is going to have a moment out on the prairie where things stop making sense. Where they feel the unsettling quiet of a sky that is ambivalent to their spectacle.
And on the other, it gives them meaning. A thing to do, however tenuous and stupid. Something to move through.

Reflection coupled with distraction.
Something to shake you up... and something to pass a day.

The ones who get it wrong think they've accomplished something amazing.
The ones who get it right know they haven't.
But maybe they all went some places they didn't know existed. In their heads. Their bodies. Their aching and blistered taints.
Maybe... they successfully ignored the pull.
Faced some demons.

And for those who didn't?
I got you covered.

Watts' 13 Precepts for Mega-Happiness

2017-09-08T04:50:00.005-07:00

See how happy?

1. Ride a heavy steel bike:

(Just so we all remember that this is still a "cycling blog" (such as it was) )

Preferably something made of 4130 chromoly. Sure... it can be nicer, if that's within your means. Columbus tubing. Tru Temper. Reynolds 853. It can be handmade in the USofA by Waterford. By Weaver. By Moth Attack. By Rick Hunter. By your friend who fancies himself a "builder."
Or it can be made... wherever. Taiwan. By Surly. By All City. By Ritchey.
It can be an old Bridgestone. A Univega. A Torpado.
Whatever it is, just ride it.

Ride it... all the fucking time.

Who gives a shit if some carbon frame is 2 to 3 pounds lighter? Look at yourself. Seriously... look at yourself. You're concerned about two fucking pounds of frame weight? Are... are you shitting me?
Look, it doesn't matter. Because regardless of where you go in your life... one day you'll realize... that no bike you ever owned rode as well as that heavy ass steel frame.
You'll realize... that no bike was ever that much fun to ride.
You'll realize... that you were never stronger than when you rode the shit out of that bike.
You'll realize... that you were never happier than when you were lost as fuck on that bike.
You'll realize... that no steel frame ever told you you were "full of shit." Ever bailed on you. Ever told you "there was nothing else to talk about." Ever slept with some 30-banana-a-day gobbling idiot after telling you not to come over one night because she "wasn't feeling well."

And you'll wish... you had it back.

2) Ride farther than you think you can:

Because you can. I know... it's a long way. But it really isn't. I mean...yeah, it is. And it's going to hurt. Maybe a lot. Probably. But you've got this shit. I mean it.
You... Me... We've all just all been conditioned to forget that.
No, you might not be the fastest. Who gives a shit? Let the morons duke that shit out up front. You worry about you.
Pack food. Bring money. Bring a phone.
But trust me... you can ride that far. You can. I don't care if you're staring down the barrel of 10, 20, 50, 100, or 300 miles. You've got this shit.
It might not be pretty. It rarely is. I mean... come on... admit it: even at your prettiest, you're a nightmare.
Take breaks. Look around. Look inside. Talk to yourself. Cry.

And when you're done... after you've willingly put yourself through something harder than you thought possible... you'll know. Know that beyond what you just went through, there's real suffering. Suffering the likes of which you will hopefully never know. Real fucking shit... and not just some bike-ride you did one day.
But you'll have gotten a glimpse into a larger world. And hopefully you'll have grown as a result of that. Realized how small you and your stupid bullshit problems are in the scheme of it all.

I mean... unless you're fucking terrible.

3) Travel when you're broke as fuck:

When you can barely make rent. When the power is in danger of being shut off. When you can barely maintain.
When all of your peers are buying boats and renting beach houses in the Outer Banks... and you just got the first NSF notice of the month.

Travel when you're supposed to be putting money in an IRA so that when you're old you can finally see the Rhine River... on a Viking cruise with other old people.
No. Fuck that. Travel now. Because chances are... you're going to die long before you make that happen. Cancer from second hand smoke your parents immersed you in. From the asbestos siding of the house you grew up in. The siding you used to carve your initials (along with the word "fart") into with a knife. From years of not wearing sunscreen. From that cellphone you keep in your pocket... next to your testicles... your uterus.
From some dipshit who was too busy typing "lol" at some other dipshit's rape joke to pay attention while driving... and plowed into you with their Wrangler (complete with a "It's a Jeep thing. You wouldn't understand" sticker.)
And imagine how fucking stupid you're going to feel having put off going to Iceland because "the timing wasn't right."

Flights are expensive, I know. So is one week's worth of shitty, overpriced lattes...
One week of eating $12 white-person bulgogi tacos every day for lunch.

So is a car payment.

If those are the things you want... then by all means, keep on keeping on.
But, to quote the ever-challenging Dead Prez:

"Would you rather have a Lexus or justice?
A dream, or some substance?
A Beamer, a necklace, or freedom?"

Which reminds me....

4) Don't Buy a Car:

See this thing?

I fucking hate it.
Yeah, it gets good gas mileage. Yeah, it has little to no mechanical issues. Yeah, when it has the outdoorsy roof rack on it, it can "Fit" two adults, two kids, three dogs, two bikes, and a cargo box that carries all the gear you need.
But... I just hate it.

Truth be known, I hate all cars.
And not just because they represent our innate laziness as a species. Or how they keep killing us. Or how fuckboys yell "Hey baby girl" at me as they drive by when I'm on a run.
But because they just. Fucking. Bore me.
When I was a kid and we'd play with our Hotwheels... and my friends would all covet the Lamborghinis. The Land Rovers. The Porches. The Mustangs. I could give two shits. As far as I could discern, those cars looked almost exactly like my Mom's beige GM. You know... the one with the seats that faced backward.
The only toy cars I wanted to play with had jet engines or shark fins. Lazer cannons mounted to the top.

I bought the Fit post divorce...When I had this idea that I needed to "adult." To "get my shit together." That somehow, this practical but stylish yuppie hatchback would help galvanize that. Like buying a standing desk at Ikea. Once I had that, I'd have everything I needed to effectively buckle down and work!
This is what adults do, right? Make practical decisions? In impractical ways?

But this car... it just isn't me.
In fact, it's about one-thousand percent less me than the Ford Windstar I had before that. The one I still have, parked behind the shop. The one I bought when I couldn't find the car I was actively lusting after: A Toyota Previa.
Talk about sexy.

"Oh hey, ladies."

The point is... I'm no happier having bought this stupid fucking adult car than I was before.

Don't buy a car.
If you're going to buy anything, buy a bike. Or a van. One you can live in when you intentionally use your house as firewood.
Or just keep driving that stained ass, hubcap missing Toyota Corolla into the fucking ground.

5) Don't get married:

You see them everywhere. Fighting about everything. About who forgot the boppy at the neighborhood cookout. About who doesn't know how to work the clutch in the car. About who doesn't know what size shoes their child wears. About who packed the passports in the wrong pocket of the bag. About who doesn't know how to fold fitted sheets. About who bought the wrong brand of Stevia at Whole Foods. About who's had to deal with their own offspring "all day" and how it's "your turn!"
About anything....

Spouses.

Fucking. Spouses.

Maybe... they really do love each other. In a way.
Maybe...
But they certainly don't like each other. Not anymore. To be quite honest... I'm pretty sure they fucking hate each other.

Marriage... changes everything. Whether you believe it or not. I don't know why. It just does.
Maybe... it creates some sense of ownership. Of entitlement. Makes people into other people.
In any case, it definitely creates resentment. Either from feeling "trapped"... or from feeling let down.

I'm not saying not to fall in love. And I'm not saying not to commit to loving a person with everything you have. I'm just saying... that marriage, as an institution... no longer has any relevance. (Unless you've been denied the privilege all your life... and I get that.)
In too many ways... I feel like it's just a copout. A way of forcing an issue. Creating a reason to stay together...
Instead of just fucking doing it.

Turning best friends... into spouses. Which is a toxic fucking thing to be.

Also... if this is you?
In any way....
Whether it's physical... verbal... or mental...
Fuck you.
Fuck you so fucking hard.

7) Have an Affair:

There are two kinds of people in the world:
Those who've had an affair...

And those who haven't... yet.

Whether because they haven't met that person... or whether because the opportunity hasn't been afforded to them.

The sanctimonious fuckers who judge everyone who has? The ones who stand on some high horse of how they'd never do that. How they'd "never go outside of a marriage that way"...
They're full of shit. I'm not calling them liars... I'm calling them FUCKING liars.

Like homophobic republicans with their male prostitutes.

I assure you... you would. You already have. In too many ways to count. Review your vows... and think about it. Really think about it. All the times you've treated the other person like shit. All the times you've belittled them. Lorded something over them. Manipulated them. Failed to be the person you promised to be.

Crashing into someone else? Yeah... it sucks to be on the wrong end of that. (And I've been on all of them.)
But it's just a part of the equation. You don't get to turn it into more.

I won't pretend to know where you are in your own relationship. Whether everything is golden. Or if it's on the rivet...
But, if the stars aligned such... you would.

And one day... maybe you'll feel dead inside. And you'll hit a breaking point.
Look for ways to sabotage everything.

Or... you'll meet someone. When you don't mean to. Someone amazing. And something will click.
Or for the first time in too long... you'll feel... alive. Dare I even say... happy.

As you should.

And maybe... it will end. You'll realize that's not what you want. Not who you are. You'll realize you just crossed a line you never want to cross again. And you'll end it. Stop responding. Never look back.

But maybe it won't. Maybe it will snap you out of something. Some fugue. And you'll realize... that you want more.

You'll get caught, by the way. (You always do, in case you're wondering.) And you'll hurt people. And likely... you'll get hurt.
But there are two kinds of people in an affair:
Those who don't understand how you could hurt them like this...
And those who want to know what they did wrong. What they did to push you away...
Which one are you?

In any case, I assure you... you will never know true happiness until you're on your knees in the middle of the street... scrubbing the spray paint that spells your name, along with the words "cheat" and "liar" off the asphalt.

Talk about bliss!

8) Get Divorced:

No happy marriage ever ended in divorce.

And if you're unhappy in the marriage... it's worth it.
It is.

If your soon to be ex isn't a shitty, manipulative person who can't see past their own ass...
...the kind who threatens custody for no reason other than to hurt you
...the kind who threatens to make it difficult for no reason other than some misplaced sense of entitlement
... the kind who is so blinded by their own myopic pain that they can't see anyone else's, much less yours... much less their own children's...

...it's worth it.

And even then.

I'm quite fortunate, in that my ex and I are, in many ways, the poster-children for how it can be. How it should be. When it could have gone very differently.
That's not to say it wasn't hard. Or that we weren't both angry. Or sad. Or that we didn't say hurtful things. We did.
But ultimately... we both saw past that. Saw our kid. Saw ourselves. Saw each other.
And realized how it could be. How it should be.

What?
You don't go hang out with your ex-inlaws down in the Florida Keys for Spring Break?

My ex and I are very different. To see us now, you would probably never think that we were once married, much less a couple. We were young. Both bookish. Both introverted in our own ways. I will forever love her for forcing Jane Austen on me. For introducing me to Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. For getting me to truly appreciate Dickens.
We laughed. Danced. Had fun.
But as we grew, our paths... our interests... our expectations of life... just diverged. Quite a bit.
It took too long to realize that.

Post divorce, there's no bitterness. There's still scar tissue, I suppose. But who among you doesn't have scars. Scars... are sexy. heh.
We don't pick at those wounds.

Meanwhile, I watch other people... how they can't even manage the most base level of civility during their split...
How they totally shut down communicating...
How they use their kids as shields and ammunition against each other...
How they try to take things they don't deserve...
How regardless of how badly the other might have fucked up, can't see how badly they've fucked up. Or how badly they're fucking up right now...

Acting like Fucking. Spouses.

Yeah, you'll lose friends. But if you think about it, you'll probably realize that they kind of sucked anyway.

My one word of caution: if you have children, just try to get divorced somewhere you actually want to be. Because otherwise, you might find yourself living in salle d'attente: The waiting room.

9) Reject god:

It's beyond bizarre to me that in spite of how much we've advanced as a species... how much we've learned about the natural world... about the nature of reality...
...how exponentially our understanding and ideas about the world have grown...
our ideas about "god" have not.

I mean... they have... but very slowly. And within a very narrow confine.
As if we're terrified of letting go of certain notions about who we are in the universe. As if... we might find out... that we're really quite insignificant. And that it means nothing.

Our ideas about god... are still very much mired in a time when we were completely, and dare I say, malignantly ignorant about the world and how it worked. When we knew nothing about matter. About atoms. When we had no understanding of illness or germs. Of geology. Biology.
So mired...that in order for us to move forward, I can't help but feel like those ideas... have to just die. Like a controlled burn. One that eliminates all of the strangling brush.
Or maybe a flood. (Wouldn't that be something?)
Then... we can revisit. See how we feel. See if those stories still resonate. See what our heads tell us when they aren't bogged down in the detritus of thousands of years of historically inaccurate bullshit.
So many of us grew up tangled in those webs. In the same way we grew up tangled in the various prejudices of our families. Our social circles.
But once you break free... your world grows. Exponentially.

I hate the fucking word, but religion... needs to be "unlearned."

Now.

10) Oral sex. Lots of it:

This should be a no brainer.
Oral sex... is about giving and receiving. In ways that other sex isn't.
Intercourse, regardless of position, and regardless as to how much you may "give"... is always about taking.
Oral sex is about paying attention... to someone else.

Do that.
Do that a lot.

(Are you doing it? I'm watching.)

11) Talk shit about people:

What's that Eleanor Roosevelt quote?
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss places; small minds discuss people."
She's right. But she didn't take into account that whatever the fuck people think they are... they are, ultimately, just ideas. Whether your own ideas about them... or their own ideas about you... or our own ideas about us.
Tear those fuckers down. Drag them through the mud.
Just understand... that when you do... when you're talking shit about the sycophantic fan-boys... about tyrants and visionless coat-tail riders... about smug little fuckers who can't see past their own duck butts...
...you're just talking about yourself. About some facet of you.
That everyone is just a mirror. And that when you see something inside of them that you despise, it's a reflection of something inside you that you hate.
Whether it's pettiness. Jealousy. A need to be liked. Selfishness. Insincerity.
How they treat people.
It's all you.

Unless you're really so fucking vapid that you can't see that.

12) Have an adult enemy:

It's strange. To know that someone out there hates you. Not only do they not like you.... But they legitimately hate you. Maybe even... as much as you hate them. Or maybe even... as much as you hate you.
To know that someone sees red when your name comes up in conversation. When they see it in a magazine.
That they intentionally avoid looking at you. That when they do... it's daggers. To know that their friends, who have no context with you at all, save someone else's beef... keep tabs on what you're doing.
To know that to someone else... you represent everything fucked up about this world.

Don't shrug that shit off.

Think about it. Really think about it. Think about what they see when they look at you. About why.
And think about whether or not that's who you want to be. Whether or not that's who you are.

13) Try to die:

I can't promise that your head will be any clearer. Or that you'll have any more of an idea how to cope with life. Or that you won't always struggle with that feeling... of wanting to disappear.
But you'll have some perspective.
That's something.

Super Secret Bonus Precept:
Tell people you love them. All the time.

Late addition:

Some of you may have noticed that I omitted #6. It wasn't intentional. Last minute editing gone awry, followed by the absence of proofreading. What? It's a fucking blog... not a thesis.

In any case... here you go. In case you really cared.

6) Punch yourself in the face:

Hard.

Or, as I like to think of it... hit the reset button.

Those times when you feel everything starting to slide out of focus. When you can't get your head right. When you find yourself running down a hallway of slamming doors. When you feel the lightning start to arc in your skull.

Pull your fist back... and let go.

Maybe avoid your nose. It's messy. Lots of blood. The high potential for breakage.

Avoid your temple. It's delicate. The intended "reset" might become a "shutdown."

Mouth is ok. Just try not to knock a tooth out.

Cheek and eye socket are preferable. Just be ready to explain your shiner to people. Be ready to tell a girl that you'd prefer she not touch your tender face for a bit. In the same way... you'd prefer she not touch your wrists.

You know?

And there you have it. #6. Totally worth it.

Be a Blight Unto Yourself

2017-09-01T05:41:00.001-07:00

Or...
Why I Fucking Hate Gravel: A Love Story.

"Why... are you making this about you?" she said.

Wherever I was... lost in my own head... that got my attention. I'd heard it before.

I'd been passively watching her. Unavoidable, honestly, considering how many times she'd walked by my campsite. I was sitting in front of my open van... sipping coffee and poking at my laptop. Trying unsuccessfully to get the stupid words out. She'd flashed me a pretty, if curious, smile on her first pass. Looked back briefly. I'd smiled back. Cocked my head. What... was that?
The next time she passed, she was on the phone. No smile this time. Not even a look. She was somewhere far away. Somewhere she very obviously didn't want to be. Agitated sighs. Hushed talking. The words "you're being so unfair" spilling out as she passed within feet of me.

"Why... are you making this about you?"

Ah, I thought... l'amour. Who hasn't been there?

I tried to feel sympathy toward whoever was at the other end of that line. Couldn't muster it.

I mean... maybe... he was great. A genuinely good guy. Devoted. Loving. Trying to be "fair." Trying to understand.
Perplexed and frustrated by the mercurial temperament of this pretty, leggy girl... but still hopelessly in love with her.

Maybe... he said things like, "Hey... I'm here. Don't push me away." Maybe he asked her what she needed. Maybe... he told her he loved her. Asked her... to let him in.

Maybe...

Or... maybe not. Maybe he hadn't said those things in a long time.

Maybe... lately... he just told her that she was ungrateful. Maybe he threatened. Berated. Seethed. Couldn't see past his own hurt.

Maybe...

Regardless of who he was... I'd chosen my side. The girl... with her curious smile.

With no context, I'd have come to her defense. Fought whoever was on the other end of that line. Told him to love her the way she deserved. Whatever that even meant.

The next time by, her eyes were wet.

Fuck.

"Why are you making this about you?" she whispered into the phone... loud enough for me to hear.

She wasn't talking to me... but I was listening. And I heard.

I think... that on some level... no one can help it. Everything we do and feel is filtered through ourselves. Our very understanding of the world, in too many ways, is just a flawed and subjective take on whatever our limited senses and brainpower can process. In so many ways... we can't NOT make it about us.

Us... is the only context we have.

Which is how I knew... full well... that despite what she was saying and feeling...
... the girl... was really just making it about her.

And that was ok.

Atonement:

I owe some of you an apology.

(Likely many apologies. Regarding many things.)
But focusing on the topic at hand...

If you tend to tune in here with even the slightest semblance of regularity, then, you are:

A) Fucking insane

and

B) Familiar with the concept of disappointment

Nonetheless... I'm sorry. As ever.

I don't know how people do it. Churn out content. Most days... lately, especially... I struggle to put one foot in front of the other. My mantra for the next... however the fuck long... is "fake it till you make it."
Make what, you ask?
The fuck if I know.

Most of you know what's up by now. That there are really two people responsible for content on this blog:

Emo-Watts...

and Super-Fucking-Emo Watts...

Be sure to check out my band:
As I Lay Falling on Fire with Airplane Stars

(emoification by @mustacheransome)

To the rest of you... welcome to the shitshow.

A Body:
I've thrown my phone approximately one million times. Across rooms... against walls... into bushes... All the normal reasons: Shitty news... crossed wires... someone making it about them asking me why I'm making it about me...
But while I've wanted to, too many times to count... I've only thrown my laptop twice. Which, I know... is still a lot. Because... laptop.
I forget the details of the first time. Maybe the words weren't coming out... or maybe someone was telling me to "live the uncertainty"... or some shit equally as dumb.
(It survived, by the way. A small crack in the outer casing being the only visible damage.)
The second time? I'd just read something. And I admit... as silly and arbitrary as it may sound... or of all the myriad other legitimate reasons for one to do so... it made me lose my fucking shit.

I'd just read a... I don't even know what to call it... story? And... it equated participating in a gravel event... with "courage."

Fucking. Courage.

I might have roared. This hoarse bark bursting out of me. The laptop slammed shut and tossed like a frisbee to the corner of the room. Like a naughty little fucker who needed a timeout.
(Or... like a dunce. Because... throwing a laptop... Fuck. I was lucky.)

Whatever fucked headspace I was already in... that word just put me over the edge. "Courage." Because fuck me dead, I can't help but feel like this... is what is wrong with cycling right now. With everything... in too many ways.
This wholesale shitshow of self-congratulation. Celebrating our mediocrity and pretending it means more than it does. Means something it doesn't. Confusing selfish endeavor with accomplishment.

If you know me, even a little... you know that I love riding gravel roads. Fucking love it.
And if you know me, even a little... you know that I love endurance events. Fucking love them. They're how I cope with this world. How I maintain the small and slight grip I have on what is real.
(That and a crippling reliance on alcohol. Judge me all you want... but YOU try being me sometime. Let me know how that goes for you.)
And if you know me, even a little... you know that I like to talk about all of the things we wrestle with while we participate in them. Personal demons. Dark places. Voices that say we're not strong enough to finish. Voices that tell us that the world would be better off if we killed ourselves. And while I'll be the first to admit that dealing with those feelings and overcoming them; pushing past that pain and making it through another event... another day... another year... is difficult in its own way... and exceptional in its own right...
... there is nothing courageous about able bodied white people paying money to ride expensive bikes a long way on gravel roads in somewhat adverse conditions.

There just isn't.

Never forget.

All of the ways we may fall apart during endurance rides... all of the ways we may push ourselves... all of the ways we might potentially grow...
...to use the word courage in relation to this kind of self-serving bullshit... is to misappropriate the term in the most poisonous of ways. In much the same way the word "truth" was misappropriated by evangelical christians to mean approximately fuck all.
There is no courage in what we do... however much it may hurt... and however much it may mean to us. There is just privilege.

Why... are we making this about us?

This... is what happened to Ironman. (Among other things.) How the challenge of a 2.2 mile open water swim followed by a 100+ mile bike ride and a 26.2 mile run... became farce. Became the poster-child for tone-deaf entitlement. Became a way for smug and potentially shitty people to be even less humble about being mediocre.

Gravel road racing... is dangerously close to falling into the same trap... if it hasn't already.

I mean... look at this shit. Look at it! It longs for death!

As if you needed any more proof that "gravel™" is the next triathlon.
"Wait... isn't this your bike, Watts?"
(maybe...)

We do many things on the bike... Most of them positive in their own way.
We suffer. We work through problems. We learn about ourselves. We find our limits.
We might even inspire others to find their own limits. I hope so.
But with notable and obvious exceptions; living with physical or mental limitations... discrimination... poverty... real adversity...
...we absolutely do not manifest "courage" when we toe the line at an event.

Life... is short. Absurd and painful. Do things you want to do. Go places you want to go. Chase things you want to chase. Tell people you love them. You get to do selfish shit. You need to. Fucking sign up for every event you can this year. Fall apart at Land Run. Implode at Bootlegger. Get washed away at Epic. Kill all the nerves in your hands at TransIowa. Get drunk with friends at Shenandoah. Think the world would be a better place if you killed yourself at Kanza.
Just... don't imbue it with a nobility of purpose that it doesn't have. Don't let humility get twisted into hubris.

We all love our belt buckles. Our pint glasses. Our defacto scars. Proof that we've suffered through something transformative.

But the woman with the double mastectomy... the one who hides her all too real scars. Hides all her fear of dying behind a shirt and a scarf. Hides all her pain behind necessity. The overwhelming need to stay alive to care for her children.
No sense of accomplishment. No finish line. No pride. No recognition.
Just desperation.

That's fucking courage.

Not some ride we did.

Why... are we making this about us?

Fin:
Eventually, she just never came back. The conversation was over, and she was done walking. Done talking. Done pacing around the campground. As I pulled on my kit and prepped my bike, I absently wondered where she'd gone. Where she was from. Where she was going. What that was even about. I was piecing together my own story based on tiny, one-sided windows into the narrative. On body language and my own experience. For all I knew... I was dead wrong.
I was going to get lost today. Hopefully find some dirt roads and try to untangle the gnarled threads of my head. Selfishly spend the day trying to find something in remote places.
Probably... just make it about me.

And that was ok.

Dirty Kanza: Party Crasher

2017-06-09T06:01:00.000-07:00

I said it out loud.

"I hope you fucking die."

I looked up from the chunky expanse of road, out over the prairie... a brilliant rolling green... and felt a tightening in my chest.

I said it again.

"I hope... that you fucking die."

I heard a rider approaching. As he passed, I noted his gears, with only a modicum of relief... and made a half-ass effort to get on his wheel. If not to simply try and use his draft for a bit... then at least to motivate myself to pedal harder. If only for a moment or two. To try... just a little. I held on to him for what might have been 15 seconds... and let go.

I was empty.

Not like last year, mind you.

Where I ran out of water and couldn't keep any food down. Where I was so devoid of calories and nutrition that, had I happened upon one... I'd have drank from a puddle. Or a cow trough.

Or just milked the fucking cow.

Where I kept myself going with Cokes and waters scavenged from spectators and their coolers. Stopping at the behest of one couple lounging in their camp-chairs.. Drinking two of their beers in quick succession before rolling on.

No... I had plenty to eat and drink this time. I just... didn't have anything inside me.

Like I said... empty.

And my perspective had... shifted.

In that way it sometimes does.

Often, actually.

Sometimes, I sit back and watch it. Enjoy the show.

Sometimes... I just deal.

Sometimes... not so much.

This was one of those times.

Have you ever looked at something familiar... and seen something foreign?

Listened to your language... and heard nonsense.

Seen time... just fall apart in front of you?

No?

Then nevermind.

But if you have... then maybe you know what I mean. At least a little.

See... there's a reason... I don't really do drugs. Because I'm already fucked up 1000% of the time.

I reached back... touched the bulge in my back-left pocket. Handed to me by another rider. Wrapped in tin-foil. Occasionally giving off a dank but strangely pleasant odor.

I considered eating it right then.

Thought better of it. Maybe just a nibble. Determine its potency.

You never know with this kind of thing.

It might make me put my head down and go. Count pedal strokes. Get into a zone.

It might snap me back into me. Instead of watching myself from a distance. Perplexed by how alien and strange I seemed.

Or... it might make me get off the bike, disrobe, and press my face into the gravel.

I told you. My chemistry... is not your chemistry.

I lifted my head and looked for the sun. Hoping it would peak out and burn off this torpor in me.

"I hope... that you fucking die." I said.

And yeah... by "you"... I meant "me."

My dark place had officially found me.

I wonder if Jason the dog has dark places.

Who am I kidding? Jason is darkness incarnate.

The Way:
Sitting at the bar in Charleston, WV, the man a few stools down looked over.
"Did I hear you say you're from North Carolina? Whereabouts?"
He'd obviously overheard me talking with the bartender. Answering questions about why I was passing through. "Bike racing." "Girls." "Etc."
He was about my age. Streaks of gray in his long beard. Tattooed and slender.
I told him where I was currently anchored, and he gave a slow nod. A shadow of a smile.
"I saw the Squirrel Nut Zippers play in Greensboro back in '95."
"Ha! So did I. I guarantee we were at the same show."
"Yeah... I was dating this girl. She went to..."
"Katie," I said. Just... knowing.
His eyes got wide. And we exchanged looks. That look of knowing that you shared something with the same girl. Likely at right about the same time.
We both started laughing hysterically and got up and gave each other hugs.
More beers were ordered, and we got to it... swapping stories about all the things we had in common... from pretty Katie and her red dreadlocks... to angry calls from other people's husbands... to growing up punk rock in the south (trying to, at least)... to NoMeansNo.
Turns out... he was as much of a superfan as I was. Which is an odd thing to find anywhere... much less West Virginia.
That night... I camped in his driveway and hung out with him and his wife... watching NoMeansno play a live show in his living room.

The next morning, I headed off to find some trails... my legs feeling surprisingly good after five days of not trying at TSE.

Hey guys... we... won?

(Look for my upcoming epic on Bikerumor. TSE: Singlespeeds not Dead... It just Deserves to Die.)
After wet-wiping clean, I made haste to rendevouz with la Dorita, who'd caught a ride to WV with some Greensboro folks headed out to Kanza.
From there we made surprisingly good time crossing the states... winding up in Lawrence, Kansas on Thursday afternoon. We drank beers at Freestate... ate nachos and weighed our options. We could drive another hour and change to Emporia... drink at Mulready's and see the Reverend Horton Heat. Or we could stay here the night. Camp at Clinton Lake. Take much needed showers. Avoid drama. We opted to stay.

As much as I may have wanted to be... there were reasons not to spend too much time in Emporia. Some dramatic and complicated. Some simple and pedestrian.

It seemed impolitic to crash a party... that I wasn't wanted at. And as much "fuck you, I do what I want" swagger as I may seem to have (erroneously, mind you)... I don't have to be in everyone's face.
So we looked at the stars instead.

A word or two about Dorrit.

You totally just peed all over the floor of the van... didn't you?

She's fucking crazy.

Hmmm... I guess that's three words.

She was also my crew. And she nailed it.

Anyways....
We finally rolled into Emporia Friday evening. In time to meet a motley assortment of friends for dinner. My plan to sup at Radius was quickly hijacked, and we walked a half mile to a Mexican restaurant down the road.

Ask Chad about "El Diablo" sometime.

More milk, please.

Last year... I'd stayed up until 2am before Kanza. Drinking at Mulready's. At Radius. At wherever. This desperate frenzy inside. Ready to fight and scrap. Struggle and bleed.

And I did. All those things.
This year... everything was quiet. Myself included. There was no one to fight. And I had no fight in me. I felt... extinguished. I'd felt this way since November. Like my fire had gone out. Whatever that means.

Standing at the bar and ordering a beer, I heard my name.
"I read that guy's blog."
"Now why..." I said, grabbing our beers and walking toward a circle of strangers, "would anyone do something that stupid."
Turns out they weren't strangers. They were friends. We just hadn't met in person yet.

Who is le Pubes?

At this point, I'd been drinking steadily since we arrived... missing the "six after nine" pre-race drinking quota... but definitely hitting the "nine after six" mark. And coming damn close to "12 after 12." But I was also pounding water.
Last year, when I finished Kanza... and eventually peed, at around midnight... it had been the color of Coke. A dark brown that should have prompted a hospital visit, honestly. There might have even been gravel in it. This year it was a light yellow. And the pee-tupperware in the van was getting a solid workout.

The race start was fast. Faster than I wanted. In years past, I'd loved that intensity, and enjoyed taking risks to move my way up to the front. Riding with the lead group for however long I could hang on.

Or at least close to the lead group.

This year the lead group was a shit-show train of around 100+ riders. And making my way up that train just didn't feel fun. So I backed off.
At a point early on, all of the single speeders wound up together... All of us geared almost exactly the same. Except for Addison Zwada, way off the front, apparently.

A secret about me. I hate racing. I love beating people... when it happens... but I fucking HATE racing people. So when everyone kept putting in little attacks... jumping onto trains of riders... I said, "fuck it." I just couldn't.
I had no drive.
I had no motivation.
I had no fitness.

Yes, I know how stupid that sounds. I mean... I was there, riding 200 miles... so I obviously had some level of fitness. But while last year I had a ton of riding under my belt... This year I didn't. I'd spent the past month sick. Coughing my lungs out. Riding once a week, and occasionally doing a race. Which would just make me sick again. But beyond that... I just didn't have anything inside of me. No fire to fuel the chase.
Empty.
So I just put my head down and turned the pedals.
Eventually I began passing people. Either shelled from going too hard early on... or waylaid by mechanicals. Thomas Adams and I spent most of the race jockeying back and forth.
He'd crashed brutally last year. Broken jaw. Concussion. Helicoptered out.
He wanted this race... more than anything. And I wanted him to have it.
It was enlivening to see someone driven like that. In stark juxtaposition to my resignedness. When he pulled away just before the final checkpoint... as vexed as I was that I couldn't hang on... I was happy for him.
I had other shit to contend with, presently.

"I hope... that you fucking die."

I hear people talk about their dark places during races. But... I don't know what that means to them.
I don't know... if their dark places are the same as mine.
I suspect not.
There's no "you got this!" pep talk. Because I don't really care if I've "got this!" or not. I just... don't.
Finishing the actual race, physically... is meaningless to me... as the race is simply a backdrop to my unraveling. A place... to fall apart.
My head isn't telling me that I'm not strong enough to finish... or to win.
My head is telling me... to die. That I should disappear. That my very presence is a blight. And that the only way to truly let the people I love in this world be happy... is to vanish from their lives.

That's my battle. Not some fucking bike ride.

People look from afar at something like Kanza and say "I could never do that." But they could. And should. Everyone should. As cloying as it is, there is something to the rally cry of #findyourlimit.
Me? I look at everyone else from afar... and say "How do you do it?" How... do you live happy lives?How do you smile when you feel broken inside? How do you talk down those voices that never stop? The ones that tell you where to cut yourself?

I know it seems... dramatic. Maudlin, maybe. Absurdly so.
I know...
But for me... events like this... are about going into that place... and emerging from them. Letting that dark place wash over me entirely. And hoping that I come of out it.

And if I don't?

Maybe it's for the best.

Unfortunately for everyone, however. I did.
So now I have to come back again.

We Are All Made of Scars

2017-05-23T20:02:00.003-07:00

While my body may be a narrative of broken skin... a historical latticework of cuts crisscrossing my arms, legs, body and even face...

...I don't scar.

I just... don't. Not really anyway.

I don't know...

I used to think I had a mutant healing factor. Or rather... I used to hope I did. Pretend it was some evidence that I was special in the ways that I wanted to be... and less in the ways I was.

But my broken knuckles and the inordinate amount of time I appear to spend being sick seem to prove otherwise.

Alas... while my body can make a wound disappear in relatively short order... it can't even against some virus brought home from daycare by a kid who came into contact with a kid who came into contact with a kid who knows a kid who sneezed near my kid.

Yeah... in case you're wondering... I'm still sick.

Fuck. I'm over this shit.

To be fair, however, I do have a few notable scars. And no... they're not the ones you'd think. Those are mercifully shadowy things. More thin lines traced with masking ink.

One is on my left hip... less a cut and more a giant scoop of flesh removed by the ill-advised decision to race Cat 5 road in the rain approximately a century ago. A long, gouging slide across wet asphalt.

After that race, I requested an upgrade to Cat 4... got it... and immediately retired.

Because fuck that.

One is the topography of cratered skin on both my temples. A remnant of the kind of soul-crushing teenage acne that makes painfully shy young men hide their faces behind their bangs and write earnest rhyming poetry ("love is like a flame... burning with your name" (kill me)) instead of socializing with their peers.

And the other is on my right shin. A token from the first time I ever raced bikes in Pennsylvania. One hundred and one ill-conceived miles. Rocks and rain. Three stupid, narrow bridges... two of which I successfully traversed (barely)... finally losing both my line and my nerve on the third. A collective gasp from the spectators as I paused... teetered... and fell. Into a creek bed full of PA rocks.

I was up and moving before I could process what happened. Shrugging off the blood and visible bone.

I think Wilderness 101 took me 11. 5 hours that year? Stopping at each aid station to change the bloody bandage I had around my shin. To flush out a wound full of grit and mud. A wound that got infected twice upon returning home. That strange heat and flush that comes only from something being wrong.

After my tumble, I was accompanied for the remainder of that race by one of the few close friends I've ever had in my life.

A person I haven't spoken to in close to six years.

You know... in case you're wondering how me and close friendships tend to go.

Tomorrow I drive back to PA for five consecutive days of racing at the Transylvania Epic.

I've watched from afar for years and talked myself out of it every time. Who knows why. Possibly for good reason?

There's a lot of talk about rocks and breaking butts. I happen to have a healthy fear of both of these things.

But last year my fomo knew no bounds. And Rich just kept talking about it. So when the opportunity arose, I jumped.

Technically, I'll be there on behalf of BikeRumor. For a forthcoming "piece" about the fallacy of consciousness and all the various coping mechanisms we employ to deal, on the most base level, with our mortality and with the absence of meaning.

It might also be a little about TSE.

Then, on Tuesday... I bid adieu to my PA mountainbike frenemies and drive west, to Emporia, Kansas... where I will "race" 200 miles of gravel at the Dirty Kanza.

Yeah... I know. I never wrote anything about last year... even though there was a lot to say.

And instead of doing that now, I'll just post my rejected Yonder Journal Project YV1 submission... as it kind of sort of maybe touches on it.

Barely.

Yikes.... amiright?

Anyway... on the way to Emporia, I'll stop somewhere in WV and pick up a girl... some crazy hoodrat who has agreed (nay, demanded) to "crew for me" By which I mean: fill bottles, pour ice water over my head, and shove pickles (gherkins, really) up my butt when I start to cramp. (that's what people do for cramps, right?)

Guess which one she is?

No... I will not have recovered by the time I get to Kanza.

No... I am in no shape to do much of anything save for fall apart. Again.

No... I suspect this is not my year. Unless whatever meds the doctor gave me yesterday really do knock this shit out.

And no... I have no idea what I'm fucking doing. Save that I'm chasing things. In whatever flawed ways I can.

Whether those things give a damn or not.

Regarding scars... I think it's less that I heal... and more that I just pull it all inside. To where all the other scars live.

Which is less about avoiding them. And more about embracing them.
Maybe even cuddling.

PMBAR: The Saddest Day

2017-05-12T05:22:00.000-07:00

Forgive me... but for the sake of decorum, we're going to start with a little TMI.

It seems like a relatively new thing... a thing that started happening maybe a year or so ago.... roughly the same time I turned 40...
But I woke up having to take a shit.
And not like... "Hmm, you know? I could kind of sort of maybe start my day off with a bowel movement if I wanted to"
But like... "Oh shit oh fuck oh shit oh shit"
A panicked scrambling...
Tearing myself out of the sheets and fumbling with the van door. Almost leaving my shoes behind, because fuck them if they weren't going to cooperate in my moment of need.
A boxer-brief-only clad sprint to the porta-potties.
The knowledge that this was only episode one.

Then, crisis averted, the slow and completely unmethodical gathering of my things. First and foremost stuffing a small sandwich baggie with toilet paper. And throwing it in "the pile." Whatever else I may need out there, I had a feeling I would need this first.

My cough was still there. And whatever I was hacking up was definitely still green. Damn.
I'd been sick for going on three weeks. Finishing a mid-week century with a tiny scratchy feeling in my throat. That blossoming into full blown "kill me" body aches and general malaise. Undeterred I decided to do the Bootlegger 100 anyway. "What's the worst that can happen?" I thought to myself.
At Bootlegger, I barely managed to defend my 1st place Singlespeed title, with a very near loss to the insanely strong, and very Dutch, fixed gear riding Fish...

The sore throat became a cough that wouldn't go away. "Oh right... that's what can happen," I thought to myself.
But... I'd done absolutely nothing for two weeks, and finally felt human again. Just in time to turn myself inside out for PMBAR.

My head hurt. Enough so that I swallowed some Advil.... a thing I never do. Some of it was the lingering sick. And some of it was the amount I'd had to drink the night before. I was at least one novelty size beer up on Rich... and had topped the night off with lonely bourbon in the van... watching Deadpool until I dropped the iPad on my face: the "alarm" telling me that I could finally fall asleep.

Mind you, I didn't feel bad. Nothing like my morning before Kanza last year. (See the most recent issue of Dirt Rag. {and ahem... no, the goal was most definitely not for Stevil and I to emulate each other's styles... Sheesh. Don't neither of us have any clue what Cush is talking about. Who edits the editors? Amiright?})

A little known fact:

I was straight-edge forever.

And not like... "I don't really have any particular interest in drinking or drugs, so I'll just say, 'No, thank you.'"

But like... "I will NEVER poison my body OR my mind! I will never lose my focus or my drive. This world will not defeat me! And I will remain True! Til! DEATH!"

Le sigh...

Like... X's on my hands and wearing running shoes to the hardcore show. Like... reading lyric sheets so I could thrust pointed fingers into the sky and know what the fuck I was screaming when the mic was shoved in my face at the Converge show.
("Wow. That's what he's saying? I srsly never would have guessed that.")

Like... wearing a Tulasi bead choker and pretending like the Srimad Bhagavatam made one fucking bit of sense.

Like... being so uncomfortable in my own skin that I had to embrace something to give me direction and purpose and poise. Trying to convince myself that it was a drum that beat inside me, but always knowing that everything is infinitely more complex and complicated than that, and that all of my posturing about never faltering from some myopic life-style choice was, effectively, just as much bullshit as everything else I saw.

And everything I saw was, indeed, bullshit. That, more than anything, was what I felt. That, more than anything, was the drum that beat inside of me. Not that it was all meaningless... but that every structure of meaning we were trying to give it was just as stupid and flawed as we were.

Like most who "fall from edge," I am, almost assuredly, an alcoholic. A very functioning one, albeit it, and very low on the spectrum. But... yeah.

I'm not being glib about that. Or dismissive. I recognize it. And I deal with it. And I keep it in check. And if, one day, I could no longer drink... I'd just shrug and say "Fuck. Really? Sigh... Ok."
There are things that mean something and things that don't.

Like most who "fall from edge," I am also a maelstrom of all the various conglomerations of addictive personality disorder.

And like my relationship with alcohol, my relationship with the bike is not necessarily a healthy one.
People like me... we like to find a thing... and actively or passively try to find ways to let it destroy us.

This, among a battlefield of others, was one of the prevalent thoughts banging around inside my head as Rich and I slogged our way through close to 10 hours of pretty much constant riding in Pisgah last Saturday.

Wait... were you expecting me to actually talk about the race? Ha! What could I possibly say? If you're looking for route details and such, read Rich's blog. Duh. That's a given if you want to know what gearing to run and what brake pads to use and what tire does stuff and what jacket makes happy. If you're looking for bizarre and sprawling thoughts on everything else... you're in the right place.

I have no idea where the checkpoints were. Honestly, I don't really even know what trails we were on. While I've been on all of them before... that is just not information that sticks with me. I mean... I will forever remember Bradley Creek, only because I honestly love all the river crossings. LOVE.
It never gets old. The part that got old was all of that huge, chunky gravel. That was new. And all I could think of as we rode it was "How?" What an effort that must have been to haul all of that rock into what is some pretty gnarly terrain. And why?
But everything else? Shiiiiiit. Is this Buckhorn Gap or Buckbear Gap or Bear Creek or Buckbeak or Bareback or Bonesaw or Banebutt? I. Don't. Know. But Rich does.

At a point, I started to feel pretty rough.
Yeah, I'd drankded my newfangled beet-jizz and all...

...and true to the label, I was tingling like a motherfucker...

Why?! Why I tingle?!!!

...but like a total dick, I wasn't actually eating. And very quickly that became a problem. I started to fade and flounder.
For pretty much the entire day, Rich stayed 50 to 100 yards ahead of me. Occasionally I'd hear him singing a song or jabbering indistinctly to me.
Meanwhile, I was a sad, sad shell of a man.

A few meandering and indirect words about Rich:
The other day, I was out at a restaurant. It was a mixed crowd. There were a few young people seated at the bar. A youngish couple seated across from us... and behind us a much older crew. The men wore pastel izods and khaki shorts. Gray hair and lined faces. The women wore too much makeup and jewelry and smelled like perfume. They were all in various states of "out of shape."
As I often do, I was passively eavesdropping. As if watching shades of shades of shades of people flux about wasn't engaging enough. Amid talk of golf and jobs, the words "I turned 46 last year..." came out of the mouth of one of the men.

Wait... What the shitbiscuit?!

Do you ever go down the rabbit hole of old peers? Someone you're tangentially connected to from high school shares a link on Facebook, and a name you haven't seen in forever "likes" it? And the next thing you know, you're looking at the profile of some random person you barely knew who was a freshman when you were a senior...
...and they look like your Dad?
Like... your 70 year old Dad?

Micah "@itsnotpoison" was drinking at the shop the other night and was telling me some story about some person doing some thing. I seriously have no clue what. Trying to gauge the situation a little more, I asked the age of the protagonist in his story. "I don't know. He's an older guy. Like... in his 40's."
Ah... You mean like me?
And while, if pressed, I would guess that the twenty-something Micah might put my age close to 40... I knew he was talking about a person a good bit "older" than me. You know... "someone in his 40's."

There is age. And there is age. While I undoubtedly look more haggard now than I did in my twenties... I do not look like the men at the table behind me. Or the people I went to high school with. They are legitimately old. For so many reasons.

Rich is... 46? 47? And while he has a mane of gray hair... And while, at times, I've seen him in various states of slow and mopey... If it was possible to harness even a fraction of his energy, I have no doubt you could power a small country indefinitely.

Throughout our 10 hour day, he was talkative and frenetic. Moving quickly at all times. I never once saw him hurt. As we were rolling down Lower Black, and he was waiting for my blown ass to careen off rocks toward the finish, he was whooping and hollering. Pumping his fists in the air.

I was making crying noises.

The point is... in my own weird world of watching people either burn bright, or dimly glow... Rich is a 'sploding sun. And regardless of what place we would ever come in, he's pretty much the perfect PMBAR partner. And he's a good 'lil buddy. Thanks, man,

Once again, we missed the first step on the podium. A route miscalculation. Part of the beauty and terror of PMBAR. Even with my terrible-day-on-the-bike-falling-apartedness... had we not chosen badly, the chances are pretty high that we'd have been first... or at least had to duke it out with Matt and Andy.
Meh. I honestly care not. We had fun. And I was happy just to tag along.

Afterward we stood around the keg... ate PMBurritos and drank Oskar Blues. Second guessed our routes and relived the glory of trudging through waist deep water and carrying our bikes up unrideable hills. I looked around and took in my fellow riders. All shapes and sizes. And all ages. None of us old.

I noted absent friends. Whose lives had ended too soon. Got a little pensive. Turned in early.

This shit... standing on podiums and racing bikes... In so many ways, it just means fuck all.
But so does everything else we do.
And maybe... it means more than we think...

Awwwwwwww.

Brainfires, Puppet Comedians, and Thievary: Five Longform Questions with my Beta Unit.

2017-04-06T17:39:00.004-07:00

Number One:
Q: Let's just get to it, right? Where the fuck you been? I mean... seriously? Not that you've ever been any thing remotely close to consistent, but it's been a hot minute.

A: Yeah... I know. Honestly... I don't know that you'd believe me if I told you.

Q: Try me.

A: Alright... So... there's this video game in the trailer park I live in, right? And because there isn't that much to do, I've always played it. A lot. And I got really good at it, you know? High score and everything. But it turns out... it's not a video game. It's a recruiting tool. Yeah. And the next thing I know... this bounty hunter tries to kill me... a Beta-Unit replaces me... I'm whisked away to space... and I'm a fucking star-fighter pilot! With my own ship and everything! Fucking nuts, man.

Q: Ah. Yes, I see. Can we... try this again?

A: Fine. But that story's better. You're talking about the blog?

Q: Sure. The blog. Social media. Social life...

A:Yeah. I've been a little MIA. Regarding the blog... it's... just a blog. I appreciate that people read it. I very much do. But I don't have any hubris with regards to its content. It's one big emo fart joke. And it's a place for me to put things out there. Circle around ideas. Refine styles. Purge. It's one of the reasons I tend to be a bit... repetitive at times. I'll keep bumping up against some idea... trying to express it in the right way. What's funny is that some of my favorite "pieces" tend to be the least read. And vice-versa. The metrics confound me. Why some posts have SO MUCH traffic. And others, less. But whatever the reason, can I just say... that I wish people would stop reading the really old stuff. I'll look at the stats occasionally and see that there's a whole bunch of traffic to some post from 2010 or something... and I'll be like, "Fuck... not that post... anything but that post. Who's reading that?... because now I have to hunt them down and kill them."
Like with this new Facebook memories shit... constantly reminding you of how fucking stupid you were on social media five years ago. As if you didn't already know. I guess that's the benefit of always churning out content. Bury that shit... quick!
Regarding social stuff? I guess I've just been... quiet. Dealing with some things in my own way.
This should come as no surprise to anyone... but I'm a man of high highs and low lows.

Q: What? Like... manic depression?

A: Does it matter? And it's "situational Depression," remember? My "manic" isn't really on that spectrum. Think of it less as a series of peaks and valleys.... And more as a flat to rolling plain punctuated with abyssal crevasses. Sure, I have my moments of manic artistic energy... followed often by depressive torpor. And yeah, I deal with my own level of... what would you even call them... hallucinations? But I'm not controlling the tides or anything. I'm just... maintaining or not maintaining.
Imagine... that your brain is on fire... all the time. And that sometimes... that fire just outburns all the other fires inside you. Hollows you out.
That's where I've been. Just... hollowed out for a bit.

Q: Huh. Sounds fun, psycho. Did anything in particular trigger it?

A: Yeah. Probably. Likely a few things. More than a few. Maybe let's not go there? Yet?

Q: Fair enough. So... you're back?

A: Back? Meh. Maybe? I mean... I've been posting stupid shit on Instagram again, so...

Q: Indeed you have. Like this, you mean?

A: That, I'll have you know... is a scathingly witty and incendiary indictment of the bike industry as it currently stands.

Q: Is it, now? How, pray tell?

A: Everything is so... flat. Tired. Vapid. It's all either some unfunny meme about "Road bikers be like... Meanwhile I'm over here like... Braaaaaap." Or it's some insipid faux-earnest acoustic praise song about how bikepacking will make us better fathers. Or some cloyingly shallow deification of gravel. Or a christian kid throwing the devil horns. Or some vacuous frat-party on bikes. Or some barely guised misogyny.
There's... no energy. And the energy that there is? Is just fucking boring.
Fucking puppet-comedians... Everyone.

Q: So what you're saying is that this shitty stick-figure drawing of yours is going to turn the industry on it's head?

A: Oh man... it's already got like... almost 30 likes. So, yeah...

NUMBER TWO:
Anything been going on?

A: That's your question? Because that's like... one million questions pretending to be one.

Q: Whatever. Traveling? Racing?

A: Well... back in January I went traveling down in Florida for a bit. Chasing some sunshine. Riding trails and dirt roads. Writing. Thinking. Getting my fucked up head straight. The usual.
I honestly think that's kind of a part of the depression. I haven't been able to travel much since then. And that kind of thing... It's pretty much what keeps me going. And... I kind of need to. I've talked about this before. Some people love rooting down. I... don't. I don't care if I'm waking up in someone's driveway... or a Walmart parking lot. As long as I'm on the move. That shit is what sustains me.

Q: Nice scoliosis. So why Florida?

A: Well... I don't know if you know this about me or not... but I am a Disney fanatic. Like... cannot get enough. You know those adult couples who go down there without any children... and you wonder what the fuck is wrong with them? That's me. But by myself. I'm the 40 year old tattooed guy riding "It's a Small World" fifteen times. Then eating cotton candy and sitting alone on a bench. Then taking a selfie in front of the castle.

Q: Well... that last sentence checks out at least.

A: Nah. I admit that I'm kind of digging Florida right now. Yeah, it can be a gross mess. But I avoid the shit shows and do my own thing. Stay off the freeway. Take little roads. There's some surprisingly good riding there. And funny little pockets. Some really beautiful places. Clearwater springs. Beaches. Swamps.
That, and it's what's near by. Yeah, I'd rather be exploring Utah and Arizona. But I live in the Southeast. So...

Q: Umm... the mountains?

A: Yeah... but I also have this thing with heat. I'm built for it. I'll explore the mountains in the summer. But in the winter? I'm not ashamed to admit that I want heat and sun.

Q: So where all did you go in Florida?

A: All over, really. I'll usually head straight to Fernandina Beach, right over the FL. GA border. Sometimes I'll stop in Charleston or Savannah, but Fernandina is an easy point of ingress and egress into exploring the region. I'm pretty sure that Chris and Shanna are the ones who told me about that place. There's this park... Peter's Point, that allows boondocking.

Q: Boondocking?

A: Parking your van. Freecamping. Dorrit and I discovered a while back that Florida can be an easy place to do that. If you're on it and flexible. And she's on it. And I'm flexible.
Anyway... I'll pull into Fernandina late, pull the curtains and go to sleep. Wake up next to the beach. I've woken up in that place a ton, actually. From there, I rode a fun little trail at Fort Clinch. Then started heading south. Went down to central Florida and rode all the popular stuff. Santos. Alafia. Balm Boyette. I hit Alafia twice. Same with Santos. Tons of fun. Found some gravel roads outside Ocala. Hung out with my friend Joe in Tampa. Met my spirit animal. Rode Croom. Climbed Panty Hill. Drank trail beers. Went to The Castle, Florida's premier Goth nightclub. Saw "the Senator."

Fact: we almost died getting this picture

Q: Wow. You're fucking hilarious.
Also, I like the way you just managed to sneak your entire Florida blog into this one.
So, is the riding that good?

A: Probably not? But I still love that kind of thing. Finding good trails in other places. I like seeing what everyone else is riding. Not everything can be Sedona, you know? I mean... if I was traveling and stumbled upon our trail system in Greensboro? I'd be pretty stoked. No. It's not epic. But it's fun. I love finding that kind of thing.
I'll write about it soon enough

Q: HA! Yeah right. Ok. Did you eat bath salts while you were there?

A: Not this time. But I did eat someone's face off. So... samesies.

Q: Anything else?

A: Hmmm. I did Six Hours of Warrior Creek last weekend. Great race. But damn, it sucked. I felt like shit from the moment we were rolling. Some days you have it. Some days you don't. I'm sure it doesn't help that I've pretty much woken up with a hangover for the past two months.

Q: Self-medicating with booze. That sounds healthy. It was a stacked field anyway. And you're old and dumb. So...

A: True

Q: Did... I hear you bought a house, recently? What happened to all that feral shit?

A: Ha. Let's save that for another time? Lots of words on that one.

Q: Alright.

NUMBER THREE:
Tell us about the bike. The one that got stolen?

A: God, what a shitshow.
So...During my... hiatus... Rich had reached out. Noticed I'd been kind of quiet and was checking in. I appreciated that. People don't really do that, you know? Most people don't really know what the fuck to do with their falling apart friends. They'll usually take a giant step backward. Say things like "Dude's a mess. I don't even know what to say to him."
Then he started bugging me about going to Tour de Charlotte. I didn't really have a ton of mojo, but thought that maybe forcing myself to be social... riding bikes around Charlotte in a mild but perpetual state of drunk... would be a good kick in the dick. Jolt me out of this funk. So I did.
And it was fun. And I felt a little better. Still wasn't back. But, better.

Until my bike was gone. Then I was lowwwwwwwwww.
And it wasn't even about the bike. You know? It was just... "of fucking course this shit is happening to me right now."

Q: What kind of bike?

A: It's a Cysco. Years ago, I went to this short-lived thing called the Southeast Expo. Or...SEXPO. Anyway, I met this dude, Richie Moore, who used to weld for Litespeed and Lynskey. He was starting to do his own custom building under the name CYSCO. I borrowed Jamie Pilsbury's and had a shit ton of fun. Enough that I wanted to get my own. So I did. At the time, Richie was making a ton of his bikes with the integrated seat-mast. I liked it. I mean... I get the dropper thing. But that's not really how I ride.

Q: Looks schmancy. Is it your favorite bike? Being custom and all?

A: Honestly? It's fine? I mean... yeah... I do love it. But it has it's problems. The clearance in the chain-stays is pretty tight. I can't run anything bigger than a 2.2. And even that depends on the tire. The front fork is stiff as shit... even for a rigid.

A: Why not put a suspension fork on it, dumbass?

A: Singlespeeds don't have suspension forks. They just... don't. I honestly don't think that they have carbon forks either... but... meh.

Q: How'd you end up getting it back?

A: This is the cool part. And is kind of one of the reasons I'm really back on social media shit. Almost immediately, the call went out. Tons of people shared the shit out of my post. Stevil put the word out. Rich put the word out. Fuck. Rich even offered fucking money.

Q: Fucking-money?

A: Mebbe. I didn't ask. In any case, I was floored. (If you're out there, thanks, lil buggy.)
So a day and a half later, I'm at the shop and Rich texts me.

A friend of a friend of a friend was riding his bike around Charlotte and sees another dude ride by. On my bike. Recognizes it immediately because it was all over the inter webs. So he turns around and starts following the guy... trying to figure out how he's going to confront him about it. He loses him through some neighborhoods, then decides to check in at a pawn shop nearby. Walks in on the transaction. Says something like "You probably want to get the fuck out of here. That bike is stolen." Dude bails. Cops show up. Bike is turned over to friend of friend. Rich scrambles to get it. Then cleans it and teabags it. Naturally.

That... is what kind of broke the funk, I think. Not just getting the bike back... because it's just a bike. But the rally and response. That and fucking Spring.

Q: That... and the tea-bagging.

A: And that. Looks like Red Zinger™

Q: Jail time for the thief?

A: I don't know? Doubt it? No one's asked about pressing charges or anything? My kiddo, Milo was asking a lot of questions about that. "I bet you're pretty mad, huh Dad?" And we talked a lot about why someone might take someone else's stuff. About the kind of circumstances that might put someone in a place that they'd do that. Desperation. Poverty. Systematic oppression.
I was bummed. But I wasn't mad. If it had been one of the fuckers who'd done Tour de Charlotte with us? Yeah. I'd have been pissed. But it wasn't. Yeah... maybe duder is just a shitty person who doesn't have a sense of right and wrong. Or... maybe living on the edge and scrapping by every day blurred that line for him. It's all complicated, right?

Q: Yeah. Did you say "duder?"

A: Yeah. Whatever. And look... I'm obviously not condoning or excusing it. I was just trying to explain to Milo that not everyone who does bad shit is bad. Sometimes there's a lot more to it.

Q: Sure.
NUMBER FOUR:
What's next?

A: Gawd. Fuck this. I'm tire of questions. Let me ask YOU something.

Q: Well... since you're me... Why not? It's all the same pretentious garbage.

Will the real Watts Dixon please step forward?

A: Exactly. So... What's ahead?

Q: Seriously? That's the question I just fucking asked YOU. God, you suck.
I have no idea. You mean life? Long term? Short term? Or just like... events?

A: Whatever you want, sunshine.

Q: Alright. So... event-wise... I'll do the Bootlegger 100 in a week or two. It's unsung and awesome. And hard as shit. Everyone jizzes all over themselves for the midwest. But that's such a nauseatingly incestuous scene. And I say that from deep, deep in the south.
Then the biggest events on my nearish horizon are PMBAR with Rich... Transylvania Epic... and Dirty Kanza. In fact, I literally leave TSE and drive straight to Kansas. Pretty smart.

A: Are you doing Dirty Kanza with Yonder Journal?

Q: Nah. I didn't make the cut. Though I appreciate them putting me front and center in their propaganda.
Speaking of which... THAT is an interesting study. Not what Yonder Journal was talking about with the whole Project Y thing. Not "why do we test push ourselves?" etc.
But who applied and how. And why.
And when I was waiting to hear if I was picked or not, I found a few of the submission videos to watch. They were sooooo painful to watch. And sooooo illuminating.

A: How so?

Q: So... One of the more fascinating aspects of social media is that it suddenly gave voice to the voiceless. And I don't mean... empowered the downtrodden. I mean... all of a sudden every dipshit with internet could be the star of their own show. Even if you shouldn't. While before, you were a nobody... now... you could cultivate this... thing. Present yourself however you want. Create your own narrative.

A: Like this blog, you mean?

Q: Probably almost exactly like this blog. I mean... come on... we all know I'm a fucking nobody. I'm some dipshit psychotic shop owner in Greensboro, North Carolina. Why the fuck are you even here, people?
Anyway... you know that line in Fight Club...

"We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

It's like that. But now social media let's us all be shitty movie gods and rock stars of the most boring shows ever.
So all of these people... send in some version of the video they wish someone had made about them. Like... when the Specialized Adventure Dispatch videos came out, they all watched them and in their minds played out some version with them in the lead roles.
And Yonder Journal gave them an excuse to make the actual fucking video. Like applying for some reality show. And they went for it. Slow montages of them riding bikes on gravel. Earnest voiceovers about how they love to test themselves.
Meanwhile, it was like they'd never even read Yonderjournal or had any clue how that crew presents themselves.

A: You too, right?

Q: Nah. I mean... my video was cringeworthy, to be sure... but for other reasons. If people really want to see it, I might put it out there. But... ugh.
Honestly... I think the simple fact that I MADE a video is what's cringeworthy, you know?
Like... why? What did I hope to achieve?...because I definitely didn't want a new Specialized bike or whatever. Did I want to be famous on youtube? Part of some cool-kid cabal? Why? I already know those guys.
And what the fuck am I supposed to do with this thing now?

A: Were you bummed that you weren't picked?

Q: Meh. Sure. Rejection never feels great. I think I was feeling a little stale, and figured being a part of something like that might be an easy jumpstart. And I think that was a part of why I went quiet on social media. When that veil was pulled aside and you saw how stupid everyone's "ME ME ME! SHOW" was... I realized how stupid my own version was. So I cancelled it.

A: But... you're back for another season, it would seem.

Q: Sigh... Yeah. Short memory.
I will say this... One cool thing is that in making that video was that I taught myself how to use editing software to make movies. That was fun. So... you never know... I might put out a ton of shitty cringeworthy videos soon.

A: What else?

Q: Well... I take off later today to go rambling with Milo for a week in the van. His Spring Break. We're going to... surprise!... Florida. Beach it up. Ride trails. I might take him to Universal or something. We'll see. We'll sleep in Walmart parking lots. Campgrounds when we can. Driveways. Eat Crunch Berries. Cheese sandwiches. Oranges. Twinkies. Maybe make it to the Keys and go snorkeling. Listen to Adam and the Ants.

As for what's next in life? I dunno. Can I get back to you?

NUMBER FIVE:
Q: What's your biggest fear?

A: Damn. Go for gusto, huh? So...at the moment, my biggest fear... aside from accidentally grinding up a roach that got into the coffee beans and drinking him... is dying in Greensboro. I'm not afraid of the dying part. But I don't want to die here.

Q: Come on. It can't be that bad.

A: No. It's not. It's like Old Gregg. It's got all things that are good. But it's not where I want to die. Like... when Dorrit and I bought this house... the whole thing was... we're only doing this because it makes sense... financially... kiddo-wise. But this isn't "home." It's a basecamp to come back to, clean our shit, take showers, take dumps... and get moving again. In whatever ways we want and need. We do what we have to to make it comfortable for our kids and ourselves. Paint the walls. Hang pictures. Make sure the toilet works. Plant some vegetables and herbs. But that garden is the only roots we grow here. We don't spend money or time remodeling the fucking bathroom or the kitchen.
We use that money to get the fuck out.

Q: So... where do you want to go?

A: Fucking Everywhere.

Q: Then get moving, you feral asshole.

A: On it.

Get Lost Or Die Trying: chapter dead

2016-12-16T05:03:00.002-08:00

"You ever get blown off?"

I lifted my head and turned his way.

"Sorry?" I said. Unsure if I'd missed some chunk of context... or if I was being very bluntly and awkwardly propositioned.

"You ever have someone... just, like... bail on you?"

I looked at him. Mid 30's. A round ruddy face. Tweed driving cap perched upon curly reddish hair.

"Yeah," I said. "I have."

I'd been fading in and out of the conversation. In that weird limbo of seeking proximity to people but also seeking respite. I wanted to be near them... but didn't really want to engage. He'd been talking to me fairly steadily for the past 15 minutes. I'd been only present for only about three of them, max. The rest of the time I was lost to my own head doing what it does. Watching shades of people move around the room. Watching them shine or quicken. Fade or slow.

Or looking at my phone in the universal gesture of "not really into talking at the moment."

He was undeterred.

"She won't even talk to me. You know? Like... won't answer her phone... won't respond to emails... nothing." Shaking his head.

"That's pretty intense," I said. Watching his ghosts... Wondering only absently what the story was...

Meanwhile catapulted into my own.

Yeah... I'd been blown off before.

Insert topically unrelated picture here to break up word clusters and make reading more palatable for people.
(artwork by Stephen Hayes and ganked from my recent feature in Dirt Rag. Subscribe, fools. )

There was only a very small part of me that momentarily wondered what it is that makes some people open up to total strangers in this way. The rest of me understood.

Maybe some level of anonymity. Maybe the kind of thing he wouldn't, and likely couldn't, admit to friends....whether because of embarrassment or the politics of friendship. The kind of thing he didn't want to pay to tell a shrink... but needed to get out there.

Keeping it inside... was tearing him up.

So why not the stranger on the stool next to him.

Even as the arch-duke of public oversharing, I got that.

And while I just wanted to drink my beer in peace... And didn't really want to play drunk-therapy to a stranger in a Memphis bar... I turned on my stool toward him and asked the question:

"So what happened?"

Meanwhile... Somewhere in Texas...

This...

The rocks in Palo Duro were sun baked and warm. I gingerly placed my bruised face and cheek against the cliff wall; An admittedly bizarre rite that has meaning only for me... but is undoubtedly absurd looking to any casual observers.

But there were no observers. Just me.

There was bustle below, in the base of the canyon. A running race. Oddly enough, almost twenty years ago... in another life...back when I fancied myself an Ultra-Runner... I'd passed through Palo Duro before and encountered the exact same race.

Whatever the movement below... up here there was no one. Just a warm breeze. I sat on the ledge and stared out into the gap. Trying to soak in as much of this as I could. Filling stores that might get me through the next few months.

After my ride yesterday, I'd prepared to leave. To drive roughly an hour or so away to another state park. Part of the same canyon system, but more remote. But sunset was coming. And the chances of my making it to the next park in time to see it were slim. And I didn't want to be somewhere on the road when it happened. So I decided to hang out. Watch it from here. Set off after dark. Pull in late.

Parking near the bathhouse, looking for a shower to clean off the red patina of dust that covered me from head to toe, a man approached me. "You the guy looking for a spot to camp?"

Indeed I was. The campground was full. The footrace. People from all over. Hence my arrangement to camp elsewhere. But someone had overheard me talking in the park office and word had spread.

"You can just park with me, man" he said.

Well damn.

His name was Russell. He was a nurse in Waco. That night we sat by his fire and talked about running. About fatherhood. About the challenges we face and the pride we feel when we watch our children become their own person. He told me about the day his daughter came out as a lesbian. About her trepidation to tell him... afraid of his rejection. About his own complicated and complex feelings about it, and about his overwhelming pride in and love for her.
He turned in early. And I sat by the fire a little longer with some bourbon...and with my own complicated and complex feelings about things. And eventually crawled in my van and slept.

The next morning, after drinking my coffee and eating my O's, I set off to find more sun and rock. Even though some of the trails would be off limits tomorrow, I'd ride the ones that weren't. Climb to the rim of the canyon again and follow the narrow path I'd seen up there.

Those Yonder Journal boyz are pretty damned funny.

You obstinate fucker.

I... am gigantic.
(and, incidentally, very funny)

(and according to sources... a selfie obsessed tween girl)
rightly so...

-----------
Interlude: A brief word on selfies.
It's not vanity. I know it seems absurd, but it really isn't. Vanity implies self-love. There's nothing like that happening here, I assure you.
I'm sure it's partly my mom's fault. Some early lecture when we were kids about how film was expensive and if we were really going to take a million pictures of the backyard, to at least put someone in the picture. And she's not wrong.
I can't imagine a scenario where I ever add to the world's store of great landscape photos. Because real photographer I am not. I'm just a moron riding my bike and snapping brief, shitty pictures with my phone. So I tend to put other shit in the pictures. People. And because I'm a lone-ferret... I often tend to be the only person around to put in the picture.
And I mean... Look at the picture above. Now... remove me. Sure, it's a pretty rock and all... but it's also a pretty fucking boring photo.

Yeah... we all look stupid taking pictures of ourself. And yeah...we all have that one friend. The one whose Instagram feed is a thousand iterations of the same picture. And looks like this...

Yeah, I fully committed to this...
It took almost ten minutes... which was entirely too many.

But that's less vanity and more... a cry for help. Trying, in a very lost way, to figure out who they are. As cringeworthy as that is, I get it.
And come on... even the most self-despising of us still has a morbid fascination with seeing photos of ourselves, whether we admit it or not. A "is that really what I look like?" thing.

Do I look like this?"

"Or like this?"

(Speaking of which.... You know what sucks? When someone looks at a particularly terrible photo and says "Oh! This is a good one of you!")
And you realize... how the rest of the world views you... and that you truly are as unattractive as you feared.

Also, for whatever the reason... selfies tend to get the most likes on Instagram. Who the fuck knows why?

Back to Texas...
-------------

After exploring every nook of the canyon I could, I sat in the sun and drank a beer... and reluctantly... started east. Unsure where I would even end up that night.
Driving down a random street in Oklahoma City, looking for coffee, I spotted a tree full of bikes. The first indication that maybe something beyond my scope was happening here.

Who knows what sets us off? What flicks the switch inside our brains? What starts the unraveling? Sometimes it's circumstance. Absence. Proximity. Sometimes emotion. Sometimes confusion. Sometimes an exploded burrito.
Whatever the case, I was beginning my unraveling.

I hear that epileptics have a thing called an "aura." This thing they see or feel before the onset of a seizure. While I can't say I've ever experienced a seizure... not in any traditional sense, at least... I think I know a little about these auras. I call them "clouds." And I know when they're building. You can feel it. The light in your vision changes. Like there's a filter over it. Your air gets heavy. Thunder rumbles inside you.

And then the lightning arcs through your head.

It's difficult to explain. But if you know, you know. And while most nights I can outdrink it... alcoholic torpor crossing the finish-line before suicidal ardor... some nights you get beat. And tonight... if I didn't surround myself with people, then I'd likely lose sight of my life-lines. Whether I wanted to or not. Storms a comin'.

So I drove past my would-be campground. Into Tulsa. Up to the bar at Prairie Brewing. Where I sat and...thought. Surrounded by, but not engaging people.
From there, I wandered up the busy street... to a bar called the Sound Pony. Noise and chaos. A band. An aggressive woman.

Tulsa. My experience was fleeting, to say the least. A moment in time.
But head-space aside... I liked it. There was bustle and energy. Young people.
Greensboro... sometimes it seems to be the most bizarrely devoid of young people place I've ever seen. At least... young people like me.
(Editor's note: Watts... firstly, you are fucking 40. Whether or not you conduct yourself like a goddamned 16 year old, you are not young. Secondly..."like you?" More people like you is a fucking nightmare. Think "world destruction.")
I admit... The Sound Pony might be my favorite bar in the country right now. That... is a big deal.

The only picture I took at Sound Pony that even kind of turned out.

And this is part of why I get lost. Finding those pins on a map that you'd have never considered. Finding the extraordinary in the mundane. In so many ways, it helps me get a better perspective on my own town. The one I bitch about all the time. Make the comparisons. Why do I like fucking Tulsa, OK more than Greensboro? What did it have that we really don't? Or...is it all really just me? Because here I was, on the road... doing that thing that supposedly makes me happy... and still battling demons. Not to be too terribly trite... but "wherever you go, there you are" has some truth to it.
If you visited me in Greensboro, I could make shit look great. Take you on a great ride. Eat at a great restaurant. Drink at a great bar. Hang out at a great bike shop. (The owner's a psycho, though.)

Still... Tulsa.

I ate some breakfast at Bramble. Bloody Marys and coffee. More coffee at Dilly Diner. Then headed off. To Bentonville, AR. I'd gotten rained out before, but the weather looked quite fine. I pulled into town and having ridden SlaughterPen, went to find the Back 40; one of the newer trails being cut there.
It proved a bit elusive... the first time the MTB Project App has let me down in the least. Taking me to random points in various neighborhoods and saying "you're here!" Here being someone's house. Or a gravel road.
Finally, I figured it out and started riding... immediately coming up on a Westy parked on the side of the road. There I met Dawn... who was doing the same thing I was... tooling around the mid-west, but in reverse. She'd had problems finding the trailhead too... hence parked on the side of the road.
She gave me intel on other places to check out... became my Instafriend... and I set off to ride the Back 40.

Post ride, I walked down to Pedaler's Pub for a beer and curry fries. But was super bummed to discover they were closed. After an early dinner at Tusk and Trotter, I stopped in for a red-eye at the fascinating Onyx, and I saw a stray social media post from Mike Ferrentino that they were at the Pedaler's Pub. Well shit. I'd intended to ninja camp further down the road, but what the hell... I walked down and crashed Bike's private party.

The owner of Pedaler's Pub. Who has a damned good thing going here.

Bryce and the Butcher.
This is not a photograph.

Then I crashed at the Bike house one more time.
The next morning, ordering a coffee at Onyx, the pretty barista smiled and said, "Watts, right?"
Huh. I was already a regular.

Bentonville...
Bentonville is another one of those bizarre, unique pins on the map. And my feelings about it are conflicted. And not just because of the time I got copped. The riding is excellent. A good mix of fast, flow and tech. Take your rigid SS. Take your XC bike. Take your Trail bike (whatever the fuck that even means anymore). The food and drink is superb. Tusk and Trotter. Pedaler's Pub. Pressroom. Onyx. The Hive.

But all of it... is Walmart affluence. And regardless of however much has been invested in making Bentonville the cultural hub that it is... it's all still built on Walmart's aggressive destruction of culture in every other pocket of the country.
So yay for Bentonville and all the trails and food and art and pretty baristas and shit.
But it comes at the expense of worker's rights and cultural identity everywhere else. And that kind of sucks.

Fuck. You. Walmart.

Again... Random picture to break up the words.

From Bentonville to Memphis. To a bar. Where a stranger told me his story.

"So what happened?"

And the answer was... he didn't know. She just... disappeared. Stopped texting. Stopped emailing.
It was already complicated, he said. There were...other people involved. And sometimes...it got messy. "You know?"
Yeah... I knew. I knew pretty fucking well.

"What if... she's just... done with me?" he asked. Not because I had an answer for him, but because he just needed to say it out loud.
I answered anyway. "What if she isn't? What if... she's just dealing with her own shit? Processing in her own way Maybe... that's how she copes with shit. Shuts down for a while. I... I've... known people like that."
"I... Maybe?" He paused. "I just want to talk to her, you know? Figure out where she's at. If she's ok."
"Yeah, man. I know."
"You think... I should keep trying? Or do you think that will just push her away?"
"Fuck... man, that's not really something I can answer. But... for what it's worth... it's what I'd do. Even if it wasn't the right thing. Sometimes... you can't help it."
"What if she... never speaks to me again?"
"What if she does? Man... I don't know you. And you don't know me. But personally? I'd rather feel stupid for chasing the things I want... than feel stupid for not chasing them. And if you want her. You tell her. Even if she can never want you the same way. And even if... you don't know if she can hear you."
He sighed. Stared into his glass. I did the same. Both of us a thousand miles away from some stool in a bar.

Once upon a time... after picking myself up off a bloody bathroom floor... I made a promise. That from that point on, I would chase the things I want and feel... at all costs.

To live any other way... seems tantamount to being dead.

Me? I'm kind of done being dead for a while.

Get Lost or Die Trying (part two-ish)

2016-12-02T05:29:00.003-08:00

I woke up next to water.

The van door flung open to the elements. A warm wind rustled the trees. It felt... almost tropical. Like morning on an island. My head hurt. Possibly from the whiskey that had finally brought me a merciful three hours of sleep. But definitely from the fight I'd gotten into that night. Fisticuffs and shouting. Wrestling on the ground. My tender right hand the evidence. Along with my tender cheekbone. The one that brought on a wave of nausea and made cracking noises when I pushed at it too hard. Who did I fight? Memories of some ugly fucker. Sad, uneven eyes. Exaggerated, cartoonish features. Long in limb and twisted in spine. Belligerent and frothing. Wild and flailing.
Splashing water on my face...I saw him in the mirror.

Fuck.

I need help.

I was at a state park outside of Tulsa. A lake. Muddy brown water tossed into swells by the wind.
I made coffee and sat in the door of my van. Let the warmth blow in. Took in the sky. Bright blue with pink and white clouds. A good sky.

And I did what I do... Stared into space and let my brain go where it does. Watched Oklahoma unfold. Its history. Its people. Its ghosts. Its gravity.
A melodrama of bodies and conflicts far removed from the RV's at my back. This confused feeling of sympathy and sadness at the evolution our wandering ethos has taken. Frontier spirit gone awry. Every inane comfort of home dragged with us wherever we go. Sprawling houses on wheels with showers and toilets and carpet and pets and patio furniture. Cats staring hungrily from the doors of their prisons on wheels. Golfcarts and mobility chairs dragged along to enable our bodily decline. Decline brought on not from the tax of scrapping and scraping and living with some desperate frenzy. The frenzy that I feel every day...
But a decline...of effort. Succumbing to the inertia of content. Defeated by our own tendency toward sloth.
Native people displaced and eradicated from the region so that corpulent white Christians who don't even believe their own lies can drive a motor boat on the water. Like Jesus.

With a long sigh, I pulled my shit together and set off to find some breakfast in town... and ultimately keep moving.
East.

Fuck.

Van-ity. Get it?
(kill me)

While there is undoubtedly a heart buried somewhere beneath the blanket of trees that covers the eastern side of the country. Hidden and dense. One that beats and beckons with wood and green.
It's not mine.
Mine...is somewhere dry and sparse. Exposed and and vulnerable. Red in rock and coarse in temperament.
I've felt its pulse since I first saw those rocks...saw that sky...however long ago. Something inside me beating in time.
That I live so very far away...is a source of much angst.
But then...what fucking isn't for me?

I'd spent the last two nights in Palo Duro Canyon. Soaking up the sun and sky... and riding everything I could, multiple times. It's a good trail system. A mixture of fun and flat. Fast, and challenging. Rocky climbs to the canyon rim. I saw rattlesnakes. Big horn sheep. Tarantulas. Descending one trail, a roadrunner leapt out of a bush behind me, bounded off my helmet and up onto a rock ledge ahead. It was...amazing.
If I could have... I'd have stayed in the Canyon longer. Stayed with the stars and the moon. With the red rocks. The ones I'd set off in search of in the first place. The ones I'd driven 2400 miles for. At least partly. There were other reasons I was out here. But they're complicated. Hard to qualify.
But then...what fucking isn't for me?

This.

When I travel in my van... rarely is my evening still. Rarely do I get to watch the sunset from my settled camp. Rarely do I get to sit by a fire and watch the stars come out...as much as I always promise myself that I will. More often than not, that's when I'm moving. Having spent the day doing whatever it was I wanted to do... riding bikes, wading in water, basking in sun, sitting and watching the ghosts... Once the sun sets... I set off. Driving past evening, into the night. Pulling into my next destination in the dark. Often late. With time to lock up the knives, and drink however much bourbon is required to finally sleep. And as much as I may lament missing a lazy dusk... sitting and reading (something about seafaring, hopefully).... Waking up somewhere new is enlivening in ways I can't describe. Opening the curtains to find out where I am. Wake up to this...

Though if I'm at Switchgrass and Lake Wilson in Kansas, I will likely always try to find this spot.

From rainy Bentonville, I'd driven north... chasing the sun. In that way that I do.

Once... long ago, traveling in Washington State... we picked up some hikers trying to get back to their car. Throwing their bags in the back, we drove them toward wherever they were parked. Winding through lush green hills, we talked about the beauty of the region, and I casually mentioned my love for sunshine and were I to live here, the potentially hard time I might have with the seeming preponderance of cloudy days in the region. One of the hikers, a woman likely about my current age...fit and pretty... said something along the lines of "Well...that's what happens when your sunlight comes from outside rather than inside."
"Fuck you" I said.
I didn't, really. But I wanted to.
Whatever she thought she meant, she was still right. There's no sun inside of me. There's no dawning and dappling light shining from within. No pleasant warmth.
Just split atoms. A blast furnace. A supernova. Maybe even a black hole. Deadly heat and radiation. Crushing gravity.
That's not something you let shine.
So yeah... I shield the outside from my inside... and chase my external sun instead. All the time.
Fuck you.

Hey Tulsa...You Ok.
get it? because...OK?
(...kill me)

As I headed into Kansas... toward Wilson Lake and Switchgrass... and the cloud cover dissipated into the blue I needed, I detoured from the pavement and drove into Emporia on gravel roads. I stopped in and had a beer with fellow heathen, Kristi Mohn of Dirty Kanza at Mulready's Pub. Tim was headed to Lawrence to play a show with his band. And while I considered driving that way... an extra hour in the wrong direction after all of the driving I was already doing was hard to swallow, as badly as I wanted to see them play. After getting a tour of Kristi and Tim's soon-to-open cycling and lifestyle store, I walked over to Radius brewing for a beer and the best fucking Mac and Cheese I have ever fucking had.

I'd considered boon-docking in the van behind Mulready's. Riding Dirty gravel the next day. But I went ahead and drove to Switchgrass. Pulling into a deserted campground at midnight. Somehow into the same spot I'd pulled into late one night last year. The best spot, incidentally.
That night, I froze. Every blanket and sheet and towel I had piled on top of me. Sure, I could have put on clothes, but that was more effort.
In the morning, I sipped my coffee... watched the sky change... and thought about the land. I like Kansas. Particularly this region. I thought about the way places have their own...power. Pull. Magic. I thought about native Americans and what this place must have meant to them when they first found it. The cliffs and bluffs. Rolling hills in a predominantly flat area. I thought about the pull of water. I thought about how I totally fucked up in my Dirt Rag article when I talked about the region...and said "limestone" when I meant "sandstone."

Finally.... I got riding.
Taking a thorn less than a half-mile in, I turned around and ran back to the van. Yeah, I had tubes, but if I'd already hit one thorn, I was going to hit others. Wilson lake isn't like the rest of Kansas. It's practically high desert. There's cactus and wild artichoke. And like in Oklahoma... these fuckers.

Hey Oklahoma... Fuck you!

So I filled my tire with Stan's and put too much pressure in there. Yeah, I got a bunch of android blood in my face for the first couple hundred yards. And yeah, occasionally I'd hear the seal break, and I'd spin the tire until it resealed. And once or twice in the first few miles, I had to pump it back up a few PSI. But after that? It was done. And that seal has held for the past 30 days of riding.

Grade A android blud.

Me and all my friends.

After a few hours of riding loops at Switchgrass, I headed south. Toward Palo Duro. Through the panhandle of Oklahoma. Stopping in some dunes to watch the sun go down. Attacked by spiky death balls and tracking sand into the van.

Is my face swollen and bruised? Or distorted by the camera?
Could be either?

I stopped at a bizarre brewery/steakhouse on the edge of Amarillo. Drank passable beer. Ate salty things. And pulled into the canyon...again at midnight. The next morning, for one of the first times in my life... even the clouds couldn't quell the pleasant warmth I had inside me. I was where I wanted to be. Where I'd set off for. And even with the knowledge that the melancholy would press in soon enough... and I'd face some demons in time... I was happy.

Oh man! Another sweet van pic!
(yawn)

I rode all day. From the moment the sun melted the clouds and peaked over the canyon wall...to the moment it fell below it. And afterward, sitting in door of the van...drinking a beer and ignoring the flies... along with the lovely ache in my legs, I could still feel that warmth inside. I missed people. And wished they were there. But even with the ache of absence, I was happy. The blast furnace at an easy burn.

At least for the moment.

In a day or two it would quicken its pulse and try to consume me.

But then...what the fuck doesn't?

Get Lost or Die Trying: part one(ish)

2016-11-04T05:19:00.003-07:00

I felt a hand on my arm... gentle but firm. Insistent. Confident. I turned to find a woman smiling down at me from her perch on the bar. Her fingers traced their way along my bicep. Then she grabbed my shirt and pulled me toward her... again, gentle but firm... leaned her head in and whispered something in my ear. It was impossible to hear anything. I cocked my head to the side and gave her a quizzical look. She tried again, her lips brushing my ear...still holding my arm. Something that sounded like "you're all ripply." I smiled politely... shook my head in negation of comprehension... shrugged... and turned away...back toward the band.

They were good. And they were having fun. Enjoying themselves. I...was trying to. But my head wasn't in a good place. (surprise!) Which was partly why I was here... in this crowded bar... among strangers. Trying to avoid being alone; a thing that typically...I gravitate towards. Even when my head turns against me. But this was one of those nights... where my reset buttons weren't working. And there was that chance... that if left to my own devices... I would be that body found in a van in the woods. So I was here.. among all the bodies, distracting myself with their chaos and fractal turbulence.

The hand on my arm again... pulling me back toward the body it was attached to. This time as she leaned in and whispered inaudible nonsense in my ear, she planted a soft kiss on my bruised cheek.

Perfume and smoke.

I pulled back... and sized her up, still smiling down at me from her perch. She was about my age. Maybe older. But barely. A white button down shirt open to reveal... a lot. A jaunty fedora perched on her head. Pretty, to be sure. The kind of woman that men pay attention to. But... even if I was interested or available...not my type. Certainly not who I wanted. Not who I was thinking about. Not what I was looking for.

Which begs the fair question: what the fuck was I looking for? Why was I standing in a cycling themed bar in Tulsa, Oklahoma... too many drinks in... desperately avoiding myself... and fending off the very aggressive advances of a drunk woman?

It has something to do with this.

No wait...

This...

By this time, I'd been on the road for over a week...my meandering quest to get as far west as I could before needing to turn back. My white whale being red rocks. My magnetic north fixed by the sun. My fluid course set by what moved me. Even being nearby would make the trip worth it. A moment of orbit... caught in gravity...before being hurled back. Where would it take me?

No. Fucking. Clue.

It's not that I'm anti-plan. It's just...that plans and I have a bad history. Like...broken glass and stitches kind of history...
So I circle them warily. I'll make eye contact... maybe give them a nod... but I won't shake hands, Much less get naked with them.
Ahem... regardless of what you think.

Hence the "plan" to make it to Knoxville that first evening to sup with Greggers somehow transforming into parking my Van in Chris and Shanna's driveway for three days and fucking around in Asheville for the 5 Points Film Festival.
I guess it's kind of what happens when you and your van stumble across a "Van Life" rally less than three hours into your trip.

I wish that I'd gotten some decent photos of the vanlife thing. Something I could share with you that was worth a fuck. That would show you the width and breadth of the vehicles there. But alas... this is what I have...

Amaze!

Hi Edward.

A compelling argument for acid, to be sure.

And there you have it. What?! It was dark and I just wanted to look... invite myself into other people's vans for a drink... not try to add to the world's store of shitty pictures.

And to be honest? Mine was kind of more better anyway.

Afterward, I drove to Chris and Shanna's... parked in the wrong driveway for a bit... reparked... drank whiskey in my van, and passed out...as I tend to do. The next morning, I met up with the venerable Benedict Ultraturboromantic for some breakfast at Sunny Point Cafe, where after being recognized by our waiter ("I know you guys, right?" uhhhh)... we sprawled our talk across quill stems... trolls... straight-edge... past iterations of us... what it means to be genuine... relationships... real love... South Park... technology... bicycle touring... roots... haters... foraging... seafaring... Krishna-core... and friendship, loyalty, and commitment (see real love)...
And then we walked around West Asheville for a while, sat and drank coffee,(too much) macha, (aka: grass)... instafaced, interneted...and then set off to tour the Industry Nine.

Inside this nub of metal is a purple hub, just waiting to be born...

When giant fans...

the way she teases them
it's such a shame
she got all the huboons crying her name
soo pawls... soo pawls...

Bye buddy.
(The briefest of words on Poppi;
the dude is bonafide...farce and all.)

Bene was there because his Specialized Adventurethingy film was on the roster for the film festival and he was supposed to give a little talk afterward. While it would have been cool to stay for that, I needed to get moving. So we parted ways... him to go VIP it up... me to drive more wester.

Though...heh... as it happened... with very little prodding from Chris and Shanna, I acquiesced to hanging out for the first night. Which turned into another night. Which turned into Dorrit asking if she could tag along. Which turned into attending the whole film-festival. You know... as super VIPs. We ubered it to the pre-party, met up with BoltarRomancehead, (oh hai again) Brice Minnigh and Joey Shusler, who were presenting their amazing Trail To Kazbegi... and others... Then piled into our VIP limo to go see some films.

VIP pick-up-truck bed.

The hosts with the mosts.

Cross is coming. Just don't get it in our eyes?

Screen Shotz 4 lyfe.
photocred: Dirty

are you stalking me?

Sunday morning... only the slightest bit hungover, and I was finally moving west, stopping in Knoxville to visit an extremely hungover Greggers. Where we rode bikes and ate dinner, talking about secrets, triumphs and nadirs... and making pinky promises over margaritas. And where unlike the last time we supped together, I didn't tell him I was going to fucking punch him in his fucking face.
(Sorry buddy. I'm...volatile.)

Onward. Waking up somewhere outside of Nashville, where I found trails (and every spider in the world). And on to Little Rock for dinner and sleep. And on to find more trails. Somewhere.
As I tried to make my way toward the WOMBLE trail in Arkansas, a rider I bumped into at a gas station told me to go ride Iron Mountain instead. So I did. It was a fun trail...easy and bermy... fast and flowy... and with more miles than I'd expected. I liked that.

No. You're right. This picture was not worth the time or the effort.

It went nowhere, in case you're wondering.

Made my first Instagram "story."

Got mocked for my first Instagram "story."

I'm NOT a tween girl, Stevil. I'm a tween person!
(love you, homie)

From the beginning, I'd had one fixed position in mind; Palo Duro Canyon in Texas. How I got there was fluid. And where I went from there the same. There was talk (among me and the... you know... ghosts) of making it in to New Mexico. But it depended on... things.
My roughish intent tonight was to make it to Bentonville. I was craving curry fries and a beer at the Pedalers Pub. And a stray social media post told me that the Bike Mag crew was there doing their Bible of Bike Tests. So I asked Mike Ferrentino if I could crash the party for a night.

I remember when Bike Mag first came out. Surfer Magazine had just done a make over... this sort of...paring down. At a time when everything was getting garish. Bike was along the same lines. Pared down. Simple. And I would read stories by guys like Mike and Rob Story and Vernon Felton and think... "that was a fucking legitimately good story."
It was an early realization that bike journalism could be... more than just stupid fucking bikes.

Pretty much.
(photo ganked from Bikemag)

What 'dis?
(photo ganked from bikemag)

Years later...I would write for Bike. Pieces that I'm embarrassed to look at now. (Sorry, Vernon.) That was what? 15 years ago? Aren't we all a little embarrassed by who we were at age 25? Less so than our 25 year old selves are embarrassed by our 40+ year old selves? Or than our 40 year old selves are embarrassed by our 40 year old selves? (Much shame...)

I pulled in late that night. Had a few beers with Bike people. And passed out in the van.
The next morning brought rain. Likely two days of it. And it was cloudy and rainy in Palo Duro. So heading due west didn't make sense. And after sitting around too long debating my course of action... I chased the sun. Which was north. I could head toward Wilson, Kansas. Ride Switchgrass. Then dip down into Amarillo with the sun. And if the sun changed directions. So would I.

For some people...routine is comforting. Riding the same trail every day....or running familiar neighborhood loops... fills and sustains them. It's...enough. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If anything, it's a critical. It's what allows us to root down and create. Grow. That idea of...community. I love that idea. I do. I've just always felt...separate from it. On the periphery. Feral.
Like that cat. The one that wants you to feed it. And will gladly take your pet. And will even nuzzle my head against your leg. But I don't want to live in the house.
A long time ago...I played like I did. But it was farce. Like when we were in college and we pretended at being old. Did grown-up shit...like all have Thanksgiving dinner together. Sweet potato casserole and all. And something inside of me was dying. Or getting sick. Losing it's fucking mind.
The idea...of running the same loop in the same town... or of riding my bike around Hamilton Lakes and down Lake Brandt Rd for another ten years... fills me with the kind of existential dread that makes it hard to function.
But that's less about... things... and more about me. Something wrong with me.
I feel lost when I know what's happening. Like I'm dying.

But when I'm moving...
When I'm... searching...
When I wake up somewhere I don't know. By myself... or next to someone I love...
I don't feel lost at those moments. I feel... right. I feel...alive.

Fuck. I don't know, you...

Live feral or die.

Letting the Light Out

2016-10-07T10:17:00.002-07:00

I was surprised to wake up.
It sounds absurd, I know....given how we live or lives: willingly drifting into oblivion every night, ostensibly with the expectation of always waking up... Of always picking up where we left off the next morning.
But... What if...there was no expectation of picking up where we left off? What if that was it? The last night. The last time you closed your eyes and succumbed to that oblivion. Maybe even embraced it.
How would you drift off?
Kicking and screaming? The way children fight sleep?... Something deep inside revolting at the idea of letting go of this day at all costs?

Or with a resigned sigh? Maybe... even a relieved one?

And later, when your eyes slowly opened... to the bathroom floor... and... to blood... all of it...
...wouldn't you be surprised too?

Once, in highschool,..I wrote a long essay on Existentialism. I say long. What I remember as 20 tight but sprawling pages of incisive analysis was more than likely just five doublespaced and over-margined sheets of poorly written shit. I knew almost nothing about existentialism. (It's French, right?) I'd read Camus' The Stranger, partly because the cover art was so compelling... but mostly because it seemed like such an adult thing to do...so intellectual and cultured...

...but I'd failed to understand any of the real themes in the story... my ability to think critically about literature locked in a losing battle with the biological compulsion to try and get naked with girls...

I'd read The Plague, followed by The Fall... and came a little bit closer... but still failed miserably.
And then... I read The Myth Of Sisyphus. And while there was a metric fuckton that I probably didn't get... and still probably don't... all of a sudden, things made sense... The themes of all his work somehow getting past the omnipresence and omnipotence of "blanket time in the field."
All of this talk of "absurdity" and "void" and "taking our clothes off."
Or...was that me?

Sisyphus, doomed by actions in his past life to push a rock up a hill for eternity...always losing his purchase just before the apex and forced to watch the boulder, his current raison d'etre, tumble back to the bottom. Where he would have to begin all over again.

Subtle.

Fuck Everything Ahead.

But that wasn't what stuck with me. We've all known and felt that story press into our lives since...what? second grade? Making it through one miserable day of doing things we didn't want to do...and being powerless to change it..., only to stare down the barrel of a whole life of them...thinking that it never ends. This is the power of myth that "Mean Joe Campbell" was always jabbering about. A story that has all the power of existence complicatedly encased in its simplicity. Abstractions to manifest the ineffable. Or at least give them rough form. Form that the human mind can try to make sense of.

But what resonated...or at least gave me pause...was his take on the struggle. On coping with the fate of some seemingly endless and terrible existence.
"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
Is it?
Must one?
His take that there were moments in that hell where Sisyphus found solace. Vista and altitude. Placing his face against the rock... feeling its texture and coolness.

Even if I didn't agree with it all at the time... (you know... as an astute and learned 18 year old)... every sentence in that book was and is thought provoking in all the right ways. The ways that stick with you forever, swirling around in your brain every time you ride your bike... stand in a line... wake to sunshine in your eyes... buy almond milk... lose a friend... slog through a gray day... shop for a stupid fucking dining room table... kiss a girl... tell her you love her... feel her hand slip out of yours as she pulls away... cut yourself open to let all the light out...

I knew the blood was my own.
I didn't want to... but I did. In that way we always do. In that way we wake up everyday...with all the weight we hauled through yesterday still there... waiting to be hauled through today. And tomorrow. And the day after that.
As much as we might wish otherwise.

My head...hurt. A long blood crusted knot creased along my scalp, roughly the shape of the edge of a brick.
My entire body was sore. Bruised, it felt, from the inside out. My hand was split open...either from the windows I'd put my fist through... the impact of the car that didn't quite miss me... or from the ground that embraced me...

And my arms... My arms...
They were a mess.

I don't know why I regained consciousness. Maybe something inside clicked back on. Maybe my body decided to make one last ditch effort at survival, to spite my mind.
And...I don't know why I stopped bleeding. There's no reason I should have. Though mostly... I think I simply never finished.
Honestly, I don't like to think about it. Which isn't to say that I don't. All the time. Which isn't to say that every sharp thing I ever hold in my hands doesn't make something inside me tremble. Which isn't to say that sometimes, when people touch my wrists a certain way, that I don't feel a nauseating sting... a sickening tug run up the length of my arm to wrench the insides of my chest.

I'd never seen so much blood.

With the same sudden and impulsive tendency to action that had brought me to the floor... I would pull myself off it... and move toward the door. As quickly and best I could....fighting to stay conscious.
Stumbling in with my arms wrapped in towels...I would tell the nurse that I had tripped over the open dishwasher and cut my wrists on the knives that protruded from the utensil basket. Not caring if she believed me or not. And not caring that I didn't own a dishwasher. She would glue and tape and stitch me together... x-ray my insides and head for internal bleeding... and later, let out a low whistle as she sat across from me and told me that I had "done a real number on myself." And that I was "lucky." She would look at me pointedly and ask if she needed to make a phone-call. I would stare at the floor in silence... until she asked again. And then I would say "No. Please... No. I'm...ok. I am. I just... tripped. I'm ok," offering a teary and tremulous smile as proof. And she would look at me for a long time...her own wheels spinning. She would scribble a name and number on a piece of paper...and tell me that if I promised to call the number, I could go.
It was the number of another doctor...The kind of doctor who handles people who "do a number on themselves."

Later...maybe it was days... maybe it was weeks... I would sit in a room...in a chair...and tell a man barely older than myself... things. Some of it a repetitive litany of things he's likely heard a million times too many... Some of it maybe not so much....
That nothing made sense...that unlike the vanishing scars on my arms, hidden by thick colors, heavy line work and sleeves... there was a hole inside of me that wouldn't close...that it would be better for everyone if I disappeared... that my legacy would always be damage.

I'd tell him... that sometimes... it was too much. Not "it." Not some perceived hardship or circumstance... because let's be honest... as hard as my life can feel... it's a fucking cakewalk. That's never what it's about. No... I meant the other "it." The way "it" diffuses into my life. All the noise and chaos of that much movement and that many voices. I'd tell him... that I couldn't process the ghosts... the first time I'd call them that.

And he would nod... and purse his lips...tap his pencil...make notes...pretend to understand...
...and ultimately...write a prescription.

And for too many months, I would take the pills. For "situational depression." I admit, I laughed at the diagnosis. As if there was any other kind... Situation always being a catalyst to unbalance brain chemistry. Situation always being the impetus for a plunge to nadir...
At the same time feeling a surge of relief at the idea that I was just temporarily out of whack... and not permanently fucked. That maybe ghosts were just one more manifestation of this "situational depression"...even though they've been around forever. And not sure-as-shit proof that I'm out of my fucking mind.

Later...I'd throw all of the pills away. Stop taking them in that way you're never supposed to stop taking pills that affect your brain chemistry. My situational depression depressingly deepened by the situation of those fucking depression pills. An ever present numbness. An apathy that wasn't happiness or unhappiness. Too many apologies to girls for a non-existent libido. ("It's not you... it really is me.")
I would steel myself for the aftermath... and weather it. I'd ride my bike further than before. Throw myself into projects. Do burpees in my living room until even walking up stairs and lifting a spoon hurt. Throw myself into being a father. Know that he was the anchor that was keeping me grounded... know that he was the reason I pulled myself off that floor... know that he was and is the best thing I've ever created in my life. Try to convince myself that my presence in his life was a boon... and not a bane.
And when he was away with his mother...I'd drink myself to sleep and hide the sharp things. Because everyone knows the demons come out at night.

I'd wrestle with a Jekyll and Hyde mentality... focused and committed... reckless and nihilistic. Make it through the days. But I'd still feel... extinguished. Like a light had gone out inside of me.
I'd wrestle with that. What the fuck did I even mean? "A light had gone out?"
Trying to put everything into perspective.

Perspective.

A friend once went on a rant in front of me... about suicide. About how pathetic and selfish it was. He didn't know anything about places I'd been in my life... or maybe he did...but I didn't say anything.
Funnily enough, I'd gone on the same exact rant once...long before. In my own narrow, privileged, selfish and myopic worldview, absolutely failing to understand how anyone could ever want to check out of life.
Until I did.
Until it was all that I thought about.
And until something snapped...and tipped the scales.

And then... I understood too well.

I've always been torn on depression. A part of me knows on a very personal level how real it is. How overpoweringly tangible and substantial a thing it is. And a part of me thinks it's just a symptom of boredom. A self-perpetuating sickness we've inflicted on ourselves with the way we live our lives. Too much of nothing and not enough something. Suburban ennui turned malignant... metastasizing into a cancer of the mind.
When we're engaged in the task of surviving... of truly scrapping to make it through a day...there's no time to be depressed. You're present... thinking critically about how to live from one moment to the next. And when you're doing what you want... chasing what moves you, even when it's hard...there's purpose.
It's in the other moments... the in between times, where we seem to spend most of our lives. Limbo... purgatory... salle d'attente... When you have just enough time to say... "Wait... nothing makes sense. This rock...is my life? How can that be? That's when the tumors start to form.
And in some of us... that cancer is more aggressive than in others. Genetics. Diet. Disposition. (And apparently gut fauna? This world...)

While there was and always is a selfish part of me that wanted to run from all the pain I was feeling and creating...the overwhelming feeling I had as I collapsed in my own blood was that this was for the best... that disappearing, even in a traumatic way, was the best outcome for everyone. That no one would have to watch me fall, pick me up, deal with my mess...and ever be hurt by the damage I would inevitably gouge into their lives. That the scar I was about to cause was better than the blast crater I'd leave if I persisted in living.
Selfishly selfless.

Because this wasn't a movie. No angel was going to earn his wings by convincing me that I'd ever do any good in this life. Some people might miss me... but they'd still be better off without me.

Perspective.

We've all lost it at times. Some moment that leads to this cascade of slamming doors in our heads...the normal outlets and rooms of reasoning suddenly blocked...and the course of action becoming this running full tilt down whichever hallway we're shunted into.

Suicide...is that moment made manifest. Chased by whatever demons we have down that hallway of slamming doors... a hallway that ends in abyss. At least,,, for me.

I can't say... that I won't always struggle with it. But... I've learned...to pause. To reset myself.
You know when you're walking down the street, and for no reason you can think of, you suddenly feel this overwhelming anxiety about that one set of footsteps behind you? Knowing that it's just another hapless moron walking the same direction, but unable to shake some stupid fight or flight panic? So you stop and tie your shoe, or look in a store window, or anything... until the footsteps pass.
It's like that. I let the footsteps chasing me pass. Or I just punch whoever it is in the face. (It's always me, in case you were wondering.) And I've learned...that just because the doors are all slamming shut at that moment, it doesn't mean you have to run full tilt down that hallway. You can stop... sit down. Lean your back against a door, get lost in the grain of the wood on the floor... nod off for a bit... Pass out. Get in bed and pull the sheets over your head for however long you need to. Maybe the doors won't be open when you wake up... but you won't feel that frenzied panic you felt before.
And they might be. One of them at least.

I know... it's infinitely more complicated than that....What goes through our heads as we push our rocks up the mountain. The circumstances... the people... the demons... the damage...
And I know that there is infinitely more to say. But saying this was hard enough.
This...is my moment of abstraction. My telling a story to find the meaning in it.
Hoping I'm smart enough to understand the themes... And hoping they're there... and that it's not just a literal story about some scarred wreck lying in a pool of his own blood for no reason.

Fuck it.... Let's get naked together...