Thursday, December 4, 2014

Battle Mountain

Editor's Note: I had decided to start a new blog, but the rethought and decided to keep the current one. I copied the 7 new articles from there to here - and that's why this article sounds like a new blog is starting!

I have about a million other blogs I have started, lost interest in, and abandoned. I figured it's about time to start another blog to eventually lose interest in. But this time it's going to be a pretty honest representation of who I am, and not a picture portrait of what I'd like to look like to everyone else. Everyone has a self-image, and some pretty much have it nailed. Others, me included, are waaaaay off. When I'm out riding my bicycle, there's a vast difference in what people see - and what I think they see!
What I really look like, prolly
What I think I look like



But it's ok. It is what it is. I'm closing in on 62 years old now, and the realization that I am no longer 20 is a lot easier to swallow than I thought it would be. As old as 62 sounds to some people, to others (including me) it's really not that old. If one takes care of their body, by exercising and eating decently and having good genes and being surrounded by a family, there are a lot of quality years ahead for people my age.

But there are also a lot of creaks and groans in the morning.

Since I was a fresh-faced young teenager, I have enjoyed riding bicycles. From 1971 until 1978 I cycled everywhere and did not own a car. I used cheap bikes I could get for $20 or $30 at the local department stores (remember - it was the early 70s) and just rode them until they became dust under me. In the late 70s I lived in the Tucson and Bisbee Arizona areas, and continued to bike and walk everywhere. Finally in 1978 I moved to El Paso, Texas - my current home town - and bought my very first car.

I really didn't slow down that much as far as cycling, even though I had a car. From El Paso, back to Tuscon, over to Newnan Georgia for a short while, back to Denver, and eventually back here to El Paso, I owned a few cars indeed. But in that 40 year period, I accumulated over 60,000 miles of bicycling. I rode all the major passes in the Colorado Rockies, up all the front range steep canyons (Mt. Vernon was my favorite for some reason), across the naked desert around El Paso, up Mt. Lemmon in Tucson.

I stopped riding seriously in September of 2003, my heart blown to pieces by the tragic death of Ken Kifer. Over the next several years, I slowly got obese - Although I was eating like a cyclist, I was no longer cycling like a cyclist. In the summer of 2011, I realized what was happening and got back on the bike. (My weight loss story is here.)

If you happen to see an elderly gentleman out and about on his bicycle, riding slowly, smelling the roses and waving at the kids - it's probably me. That's what I do now. Every now and again, those fit looking skinny road cyclists pass me like I'm standing still. Occasionally one of them looks over his shoulder at me and sneers - Just an old fart out riding on a cheap bike - but it doesn't bother me. When was the last time he was at the top of Battle Mountain, when the snow was just starting to come down, 50 or so miles into a 75 mile loop that would end at Copper? The peace, the solitude, the feeling of dominance and freedom and silence is beyond description. That's my memory, buddy, and it's real - and I can only hope you get to have that feeling too.

Sneer all you want. You can't take Battle Mountain from my heart.

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