BlackDiamond and Snow

What snow?

Thanks Joe P. for the Pic.

Ride On: 09

Seems just like yesterday you were young
So free, and so strong.
Now there's a creak in your knees
And so many people to please.
Caught in the lug-lines of steel and titanium,
You bent low in the stiff breeze.
Come out mechanic, navigator, racer
And ride.

Departed for the fleche after noon
And howled at the moon.
Protected by softshell at night,
Lost salt in daylight.
Knew locations, closing times, of all the services
Slept in the post office.
Mount the saddle recumbent, tandem, fixie
And ride.

No one knows where you are
How near, how far.
Did not make control today, fine!
We are all running out of time.
So go! man-child, no winners, no losers
Just ride.

Note:
Hatsumomo gets new shoes; I have read that women think of shoes as often as men think about s-x. I hardly believe that is true of T-bunny or Obia my 14 going 25 year old. But a Geisha, that might be quite a different story. I planned to ride Hatsu for SIR 09 populaire, she has a third chain ring. So the day before I took her up to the Ranger Station by the Carbon Glacier. The "plan" was to "gain time" in the rain and to "take time" in the snow.
She brought me home safely but the pre-populaire inspection revealed the toll that rough weather riding can exact. (Fairwind usually a fair weather friend got the populaire).
Funny! on East Sammamish, heading north, I thought I heard Hatsu humming; "there must be 50 ways to leave your lover"
Perhaps?
But I think she deserves new shoes.


In admiration of Kole (rode single speed)

U-Turn

Ran into the road closed sign.

He said U-turn.

Back through the eye of the needle.
But the rain helped though, made it slushy and ride-able especially when climbing, a good section of the descent was with one foot unclipped and probably as slow as the climbing.

Second visit to Cumberland, spotted two Rain-birds, riding Amy's Permanent.
I tried to exchange secret control initials with them, but they were on a Bee line to Renton.
Days like today the bike gets the worse of it.

Thanks Eric for work on my new fit.

Chuckanut Redemption

Within drafting distance of the black hole.
Redemption came in the form of;

Joe, Mark and Geoff.
I like to call it the Chuckanut redemption.

Recall the Shawshank Redemption? Where Andy Dufresne crawls through half a mile of sh-t to come out smelling like a rose.
The whole time the sun poured down like Honey on the coves and the bluffs.
Eleven miles left and we turn west towards Elger Bay and rode into the sunset.
Just like a Spaghetti Western;
The Good, The Bad and The..... well as the name (Chuckanut) implies The Simply Crazy!


Thanx Mark for ordering up the weather.

Birds of Appetite

We of the road know;

"Where there is carrion lying, meat-eating birds circle and descend. Life and death are two. The living attack the dead, to their own profit. The dead lose nothing by it. They gain too, by being disposed of. Or they seem to, if you must think in terms of gain and loss. Do you then approach the study of Zen with the idea that there is something to be gained by it? This question is not intended as an implicit accusation. But it is nevertheless a serious question. Where there is a lot of fuss about "spirituality," "enlightenment" or just "turning on" it is often because there are buzzards hovering around a corpse. This hovering, this circling, this descending, this celebration of victory, are not what is meant by the Study of Zen- even though they may be a highly useful exercise in other contexts. And they enrich the birds of appetite.
Zen enriches no one. There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while in the place it is thought to be. But they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the "nothing" the "no-body" that was there suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey."

Thomas Merton