A Day of Reflection

On this day off in Sun City, retirement oasis for snowbirds who fly north for the summer, indulge me, please, a little introspection. 

Every morning before reaching the Sonoran Desert, I started riding with a jacket and gloves.  On colder mornings I added a bogan, ski mask, thick gloves, tights over my biking shorts, ski mask and rain jacket to act as windbreaker.  But the last two mornings I started with only a shirt and shorts.  I am on the desert now and the season has turned hot.  I will stay on the desert for the rest of the trip, enduring, not cold, but heat.

In less than two weeks I should be home, no longer to glory over my deeds in hiding.  No longer to yell to the desert that I have crossed its worst—that terribly windy West Texas desert—have crossed its mountains in New Mexico—and have only one desert left.  I picture myself at home with all the gang, where in their eyes I am strange and ragged, like a prophet who has walked across the land to bring the dark word.  And the only word I have is “Wow!”  And here I am in Pasadena, proclaiming with a wicked grin of joy that I have stumbled along and have arrived as I said.

Several times the buzzards have thought otherwise.  I’ve seen them circling, waiting on some poor animal to finish its dying.  It’s hard to get a good picture of them in flight, but not hard when they come down to feast.  And once, a half-dozen of them sat, each on a fence post and watched me pass, their patient observant eyes fixed on me with sullen interest.  When I pedaled out of their sight, they flew ahead and found other fence posts from which to spectate and decide how well I was doing.  It was a hot day and I was fighting a headwind; maybe they knew that.  Maybe saliva rose in their beaks as they watched.  What did they know that I don’t know?  

Allow me to introduce my fellow cross-country, self-contained cyclists.  I  met them, all five of them at different times, traveling east, and being kindred oddballs, we stopped to talk.  Two are doing it for a cause they believe in, the rest, like me, for no gain above pleasure.  Allegiance to a cause is a prickly thing.  Put your hand to it just right and get the matchless feeling of being part of something important, something greater than you are capable of on your own.  Grab it the wrong way and it draws blood.  I learned this in Pakistan. 

Anyway, you may be interested in helping Mike Donoff, the guy on the left www.standup2cancer.org 949 290 3651.



The couple on the right, Amy and Victor Cactus, have an interesting story at : http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=1&doc_id=13851&v=8f