Whoa I can feel it tonight. I took a big ride today, the likes of which I haven't been on in a couple of months. I've been getting phyically soft lately, and it's beginning to cramp my psychic style, what with all the mind/body symbiosis I built up in the college.
So twin peaks it was; a little tuning up and then striking out for the foothills, warming up into Noe Valley, starting to really chug on the steep uphill blocks between Castro and Diamond. These are the streets where they post signs reminding drivers to use the e-brake and turn the tires into the curb to prevent runaways, and most are paved with small-grooved concrete. Dropping down to the mightiest mechanical advantage my machine can muster I still slalom to make my way up.
There's a mean headwind too, pouring down the hill from the pacific. This is the same headwind that makes biking home from the Caltrain up Ceasar Chavez such a bitch, but here it's stronger and the street is steeper. I get the idea that this is like that part of the Tour de France that kills people (literally). Luckily for me there are only 5 or 6 serious uphill blocks before I hit Diamond Heights, and then there's a few gentle ups and downs before the final push when you get off the main streets and start the long, sloping curves of the Peaks.
This last part reminds me of the rides I used to do last summer, big long tools up into the hills above Oakland and Berkeley on my old steel horse, the 50-pound swap-meet schwinn I was riding until I took at door (and I mean took it, as in broke it off the hinge) on my way to work coming down Chavez last fall. The best part of those rides was the top, the long shallow uphill curves through above even the fancy-ass houses, pedaling through ecalyptus past that rodeside drinking fountain some saintly person installed, and then breaking out to that great explorer-style bay area panorama. Here it is! Same deal with twin peaks, 'cept I'm looking at it from the other side of things.
It's good up there. A few tourists -- family of very bronze Germans (?) and some homegirls from LA -- and photo people catching what the sunset does. I sit and try to concentrate on nothing, head away from the concrete and stone tourist area up to the top of one of the actual peaks where some guy is chilling and his yappy little miniature terrier goes crazy on my sweaty sweaty legs. By and by he calms down and I watch the sun sink to the Pacific and feel the steady heavy wind sweeping up -- here it's almost strong enough to lean into -- and growing colder as the evening begins to set in.
Feeling jazzed and rested and clean I head down to catch my speed thrills. I set up tunes for the downhill surge; precisely cueing up "Pepito" by Calexico for the begining of Portrola. I wait for the traffic to pass and the light to gate off any more oncomers so I'll have all the lanes to myself for the way down. Portrola is like a little highway coming off the peaks; no intersections or stop signs, road dividers for a lot of it. Unlike the streets I climed to get here it's one long steady concrete power-curve hugging the side of the hill rather than an impossibly steep perpendicular imposition.
I try no hands for a second, but the wind, now coming at me from the side, is still kicking ferice, not to mention I'm going about 30mph and sitting up generates intense wind-drag from my torso. I almost loose it for one sickening moment. I've got a helmet now, but at that speed it wouldnt matter. You leave a lot of skin on the street when you take that fall, usually some teeth too. But I get my hands back on the bars in time to just wobble some and keep them there the rest of the way down, the death-brush adrenaline high kicking in as I hit the slower citified blocks of the Castro.
I start laughing with the high. There's really nothing like boring out and burning that much self-generated kenetic energy so quickly with nothing seperating you from the universe. In the process of climbing -- close to a half-hour's work -- my legs dumped enough total force into the pedals to kill me many times over, as witnessed by what almost happened when I lost control for only a moment. I burned all that in a little over 300 seconds, with many a maneuver attendant. That's a rush. The feeling that comes after is a wave of releif and joy and deep power, like a golden tide rising through your spine. It's a high without shame; a totally selfmade thing.
I stop for good pizza on the way home, thin crust from 16th and Valencia, thinking about the human side of things and how I've been really personally negelgent for a long ass time. My work is important, and I'm once again proud of what I do, but unless I'm also livin' it, what's the point?
A change is going to come. Life is going to return. The process of developing and realizing my philosophical rambles and artistic yearnings will resume. It'll be good. A sea of possibility.
As I finish packing to head back out to New York, still weak with some virus or bacteria, I'm feeling reflective in a way I haven't been in a long time. Nostalgic for past loves, easier times. I find myself more and more estranged from the things that matter to me and starting to really buy those cheap military metaphors for politics. Campaigning is ugly business, and not much fun sits in store for you when you go to be a solder.