As usual the temperature climbs toward triple digits as I find myself in the foothills of Oregon’s Blue Mountains climbing a paved road with high prairie views that stretch forever.
Aside from an occasional white Ram Umatilla National Forest Service truck heading down, I have this all to myself.
When I’m climbing for an hour my mind searches for distractions from the sweat and rhythm of my breathing.
On this occasion I realize cyclists could hold the key to answer some of life’s greatest mysteries that haunt outdoors folks like me.
For instance, my scientific curiosity gets piqued as I survey the trash littered in the ditch beside me.
Seeing an empty beer bottle, then another and another first prompts me to wonder how one jettisons a glass beer bottle from a moving vehicle — I’m not discounting cyclists for scientific integrity — into a rocky ditch without it smashing to bits?
As I climb farther, I wonder what percentage survive, since these are not isolated incidents! By the summit I find that eight out of 11 lie intact, including one next to a plastic bottle that has been decimated!
From the base on, the roadway has been littered with remnants of a blown tire. Mile after mile it continues. Just how many pieces can a tire blast into?
Early on I see that someone pounded two 19-ounce Michelob Ultras in short order. It took much, much longer to finish the third.
How come the trash increases in intensity the higher we climb? More curious on the descent I find just a fraction of the litter on the ascent! Hmmm
By the time I return to the bottom I have one lingering question answered: Tires explode into infinity.
This week’s question: How do you keep your sanity on a long ride when your mind starts to wander and wonder?
How do I keep my sanity? I don’t. Embrace the chaos and see where it takes you. This varies on every ride. My most recent long ride (3 hrs, 3400′ elevation gain) was on a whole bunch of backcountry Snowshoe trails. Here is a incomplete list of the shit I thought about/did: At least three projects rattled around in my noggin, I reveled in the fury of Dropdead blaring in my Shokz headphones, I found a huge amount of stoke in the fact that my bike was working perfectly and allowing me to go beyond what I would consider safe, I considered in split seconds which of the plethora of bonus lines to take, I thought about my technique and body position as I hit the dozens of tabletops and whether the two kids following me down were hooting and hollering to cheer me on or making fun of me as I launched said table tops. They fist-bumped me at the bottom so I guess it was the former.