It rained in Ogden for the first time in many weeks the past couple of days. The temperature took a sharp dive from the high nineties and low hundreds to the mid-seventies and the clouds rolled over the mountains in dark waves. For the first time in months, it was not sunny and clear. When the rain finally stopped but the grey and the moisture in air remained, I decided it was time to climb back on the mountain bike after a road-oriented couple of weeks, and enjoy some of the best hero-dirt I could hope for. I packed my camelback with the sundries I would need for a long day spent in the mountains without any pit-stops or bailouts. Today I needed perpetual motion and the silence of some backcountry.
I would start on some familiar trail, leaving my house and spinning through the suburban landscape, the houses getting nicer, and the lawns getting bigger, the higher I climbed up the slope to the trailhead. But I also knew that I needed something new, some adventure, a source of renewed enthusiasm. Sometimes the pace of day-to-day life can get pretty overwhelming- email, phone call, update social media, email, phone call, email. From the moment we wake up to the moment I go to bed I'm fielding emails about sponsors, equipment, travel, race plans...the works. This is the stuff that makes up life as medium-grade pro cyclist. And this is the stuff that when your season is going well, and spirits are high is easy...but when things are flat, and the results are hard to come by, and the race-reports no longer write themselves...well this is when it becomes a job. All of which might sound like a complaint, but there is no reward without work and sacrifice and my parents instilled far to strong a work ethic in me to linger on the belief that work should somehow always be easy. But still, there comes a time when you need to press the reset button and remember where the beginning of everything was.
And so, I rolled out the door on a day that felt far more Maplecrest NY, than Ogden UT. The plants and rocks glossy with moisture. By the time I climbed the trail to the top of the North Ogden Divide, the temp was only just seventy degrees and I crossed from the parking lot onto the road and then headed up the trail towards Ben Lomond, which for me was the unknown. The weathered wooden sign said the summit was 8.5 miles, there was nowhere to go but up.
The climb was maybe an hour and a half all told, but the journey felt more transformative than that number can relate. Each turn of the trail took me higher and higher on a ribbon of damp, dark, loamy soil. The dampness in the air became a fine mist somewhere along the way, and then became a dense fog until all that there was was me, my breathing, the smell of pine needles and rain and a quiet sphere of visibility all around me. The time melted away and I became less concerned with my speed and my heart-rate than I was with breathing in the wet cool air...the temperature falling steadily with each mile.
I love riding my mountain bike. Even when things are going poorly in a race, and some of the fun has gone out of it, you can always find the appreciation of small victories- a turn well railed, a technical section navigated smoothly. But there are very few days on the bike where everything is quiet and there is only flow. For the two hours or so it took me to climb to the top of Ben Lomond and descend back down, I was there. The climb could have been 20 miles and I don't think I would have cared, lost as I was in a sort of cathartic trance. I thought about other rides in the rain-winning the final stage of the Tour of Ohio in a torrential downpour, circling around the abandoned roads of the Quabbin Reservoir seeing both a moose and a bobcat on the same ride, and just straight riding as hard as I could on the endless rollers of Cty Rt. 10 as a teenager- attacking without purpose or fear of failure. I thought back to sitting backwards on the couch as a little kid, staring out the windows of our living room with my father, the power out, and the lightning painting the mountains in stark and sudden silhouette- followed almost instantly with the echoing smash of thunder. In that two hours I was completely reminded of why I love riding my bike, and the things that are most fun in this life.
In my imagination, from childhood till now, magical places have looked like and felt like this. Cool air, damp mist, fog, craggy mountains and lush greenery. Whether this ideal was formed from my geography growing up, or too many C.S. Lewis and Tolkien tales, I can't say-but it is enough to know that the feeling of being somewhere like that can remind me what the feeling of wonder and amazement is, and let me drift free of the rest for a little while. So next time you have the chance go ride in the rain, take an adventure...remember the fun.
LOVE!
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