Oh, raspberries

If there was ever anyone to make the most and the best of his only day off in months, it's me. It began after we closed the shop on Sunday afternoon and five of us guys rode our bikes to Five Guys Burgers and Fries. We took our cruisers and fixies for the 12 mile round trip from Morristown, through downtown Madison and into Chatham. The place is awesome and the burgers were killer. It's the second burger joint I've ever visited that offered grilled onions as a topping. Nice. The ride back was slower since our bellies were full of greasy goodness. Since I was continuing on northward the next day, I decided to spend the night in my van again and leave for my friend's house in the morning.

I met Laura and Howie for a bike ride through Harriman State Park in NY which, upon its inception, was only to be around two hours long. That sounded fine to me, but even still had me wondering how I'd hold up against a couple of A+ riders after not only doing a 30mi group ride the day before where I got dropped, but also the burger cruise where I filled my guts with crap. When we arrived and finally discussed our loop, the two hour ride grew to 4 hours. I was excited to be able to ride in such a beautiful place I'd only heard about, but I was dreading being dropped by someone I look up to and hold in such high regard as a cyclist and an athlete and someone I'd met only an hour ago. Fifteen minutes into the ride, I was convinced that I was going to die. I debated with myself, "Should I speak up and ask them to slow down a bit?" "Fuck no!! Keep pedaling and shut up!" The last thing I wanted to do was tell Laura that I couldn't hang. The feeling can be equated to an embarrasing sexual performance and being told, "It's okay, that happens to lots of men." It would have been the worst thing for my self esteem and it wasn't gonna happen. The good news is that the further into the ride we got, the better I felt and soon the notion of dropping out was as far from my mind as returning to work the next day.


With my body now in tune with my mind, I was able to start really enjoying the ride. I had never experienced such sustained climbs and long, twisty descents and I found myself swerving unintentionally as I marveled at the scenery. This one road climbed up from the Hudson River valley on a shelf carved into the mountain, twisting along up and up. It was two lanes wide and had a stone wall to keep travelers from falling over the edge. The view was breathtaking and so was the climb itself. I felt like I was in another country, somewhere where I've seen those mountainous routes in cycling magazines and was thrilled to be experiencing something like this so close to home. The ride down the other side was equally as exhilarating. We reached speeds topping 40mph as we yipped and carved our way through the corners. I couldn't discern whether the huge smile on my face was from pure joy or the direct result of the effects of the wind from riding so fast, but I'll take it either way. When we reached the bottom and our bikes lost momentum, we had the chance to glance back through a clearing to see what we had just ridden down. I wished I had a camera to capture it, but the image has been permanently etched into my memory.


Later on in the ride while crawling up Bear Mountain, Laura pulled off suddenly. I don't usually like to stop on rides, especially one such as this, because it can be very hard or even impossible to start again. But in this case, there absolutely could not have been a better reason to pull over. All along the hill beside the road were wild raspberry bushes! I was grabbing at them with two hands and began shoving them in my mouth until my cheeks bulged. I am salivating as I'm typing this just thinking of that tangy sweetness exploding on my tongue. It was a true pleasure to enjoy one of nature's many wonderful gifts, right there on the side of the road, free for the taking. Free for anyone who happened upon them and had the time to stop and enjoy them. I feel fortunate to be one of those. I could have spent an hour there, gorging myself on those wild raspberries, but it was necessary to keep moving. I had felt the pang of hunger a little earlier in the ride and with only my vitamin-enriched water (which I happened to be temporarily out of), just the knowledge of putting solid food in my sytem did wonders for my spirits.


The last portion of the ride was a long winding descent and was the perfect way to complete the loop. Pedaling wasn't necessary, but I just wanted to go as fast as possible. I was amazed that I still had energy to hammer as well as enough wind in my lungs to whoop it up around the many tight turns. Once back at our vehicles, we stripped off our cycing gear and dove into our recovery drinks. On the ride back, rather than taking big scooping handfulls of trail mix, I noticed Laura was selectively picking through it. It was a homemade blend that I threw together and I knew exactly what she was doing. She was eating only the Reese's Pieces. When I called her out on it, she threw a great analogy at me relating trail mix to what life has to offer us. There is something in it for everyone and it's up to us to pick and choose what we want to get out of it. Some people like walnuts while others like dates. She likes Reese's Pieces. But I do too and was left with only coconut shavings and nut fragments thank you very much! Laura is right, though. We do have the choice to create the kind of lives we want to live for ourselves and thus take from those experiences what we will. So my next batch of trail mix will consist of nothing but Reese's Pieces.


It was difficult to drag myself into work today and I will submit that I did EVERYTHING I could to put it off as long as possible. When days off only come about once a month, it's a pleasure to spend them in the company of good people doing the things we love. Best day off ever. And, oh, I wouldn't be myself if I didn't say this, too: Sunday I had the best ride of my life.