Monday, July 19, 2004
Tamburger - Preparing the Meat
So I’ve never told y’all the story of my bad fall from the bicycle? Not the little fall when I broke myself so very badly, but the great big fall that gave me the amazing enormous bruise? Well, what the hell kind of a host am I? You’d think I had a concussion or some damn thing. Let me fix you up right away then: get out of the saddle, unstrap your cleats and helmets, enjoy a nice long burst of stale water from a warm plastic sports bottle and see if you can’t imagine:
Me, with my trail bike. Not the shiny new well-tuned GT hardtail, but the old one. The turkey rider. A Nishiki Colorado, blue, early 90s vintage, from which I’d removed all identifying decals from the right side and all but five decal letters on the left that read “rad” across the top bar and “HI” down the main tube. The cro-mag cromo. 21 gears, no shocks, already by this time (’95 or so) extremely well-used maybe even abused a little. I’d dropped it a few times, and myself in the bargain, but I knew it intimately - geometry and response; I trusted it implictly and explicitly. I knew it would never get me into more trouble than I could get out of. Of course, I knew a lot of other bogus crap too. I just never figured it would let me rack myself up too badly.
I had been given a book of trail rides sometime previously and I’d barely cracked the spine on it. I was feeling one night like I ought to stretch my skills and test my capacities as a velocepidist, so I browsed through the book till I found a cool ride: a long challenging loop through some really beautiful country, some of which I’d already gotten to know - up one side of Mt. Tamalpaias, over the top and down the other side, and back to the start around the perimeter. It would be an all-day trek but I was invincible - if only in my own mind.
I called a few biking buddies to find someone to come along with me but when the search proved fruitless I went on on my own. Yes, “They” say you shouldn’t do that, but “They” say a lot of bogus crap. Who knew that, this time, they knew whereof they spoke?
So, reasonably early one morning, I drove me and the bike out to the Richardson Bay overpass and parked the car. The first part of the ride took me along flat bayside trails north into Mill Valley, where I rode up Blythedale to the Railroad grade firetrail - all the way to the top of the mountain’s easternmost and highest peak. Once I’d summitted that 2,300 foot mountain from sea level I knew I was unstoppable. I might not be fast but I was damn strong and in total control.
I took the ridge road from the peak out to Potrero Meadows and through Laurel Dell, splashing through streams and scaring the deer, feeling more empowered with every turn of the chaincrank. The route sent me past the Pantoll Ranger Station and over into the wild western flank of the mountain - a mountain I was beginning to think of as my very own.
Hmmm. This story goes on for a while. I’m going to take a little breather and finish it off tomorrow. Unless it finishes me first, of course. Have a productive Monday, if you dare!
