A Ride Through the Mountains

I've been going home to Cache Valley to help my parents out for a few days a week. They've been watching my sister Miriam's four boys while Miriam, Nathan, and the girls move from Florida to Alabama. It's been a little rough on Mom and Dad. If they could institute a mandatory four hour nap for the boys I think they'd have done it on the second or third day. It doesn't have to be as hard as it has been, (Abe, you know who you are), but it has, and I end up running interference.

Anyway, I got this brilliant idea that I'd ride my bike there and back to keep from paying $4+ a gallon. I wasn't about to try riding all the way, at least not on my first time, so I planned rather to ride the Frontrunner to Ogden then ride up one of the canyons and go through Liberty, over the mountain and down to Avon where I'd have someone come pick me up. Well it so happened that Mike Forsberg was going up the day I intended so I hitched a ride with him and spent the 3rd (yea USU fireworks show, ((not really, (((fireworks don't appeal to me like they did when I was a kid))) )) ) and the fourth (yea getting second degree burns from a blow torch ((not really, (((burns don't appeal to me like they did when I was a kid, ((((reference posterior of right hand)))) ))) )) ) (too many parentheses?) up there.

So at 3:30 in the afternoon on the 5th, Dad dropped me off in Avon. I took my bike out of the trunk and started to ride up state road 162. I'd ridden it once when I was a little kid on a road bike, which seems insane to me now. Maybe it was graded then, but even on a mountain bike, with cantilever brakes and a front shock I was sometimes worried a little.

One of my goals this summer, since I don't have a whole lot to do for school, is to ride my bike and hike a lot, and to take a lot of pictures that I can post of Panoramio for Google Earth. Anyway, by the time I got to the top of the pass, which is by far the most senic part of the ride, I was too tired and sunburnned to really care about photos. Anyway the top is really nice, and you should give the ride a try sometime. The wild flowers were just starting to wilt, and there are these long rolling meadows full of them. It looks like Switzerland. Its really very beautiful.

The descent was kind of scary. It goes down into Liberty pretty quickly. The terrifying part was how people in ATV's race up it. That sucks too because if you didn't bring enough water, as I didn't, the inside of your throat gets coated in dust. It's two or three inches deep in a couple of places. Also there were a couple partial washouts on the switchbacks on the road. There were several 4-wheel drive vehicles on the road on both sides, and strangely enough I saw about three or four passenger cars. I pity their parts.

I rode through Liberty and Eden, around Pineview Reservoir, and down Ogden Canyon. Even though I've been riding around town a fair amount, it hasn't built up that much tolerance to the effects of spending hours straddling a bike seat. By this time my crotch hurt. Alot. Anyway, I foolishly followed the map on Google rather than the address of the train station and common sense. When I hit North Ogden I knew something fishy was happening. I stopped and asked a guy spraying weeds in his driveway. The station was something more than 24 blocks the other way. I think Google was going by county road numbers or something.

The guy was super nice. When I asked him if I could fill my water bottle from his hose he went in and got me a bottled water. Looking like one of those bums who ride around on thriftstore mt. bikes with a Colt 45 oz. I rode the last couple miles to the station. I was very tired and covered in dust and grime. I boarded the train, strapped my bike in and plugged my earphones into my head. I was pretty much done for the day.

The worst part came afterward though. We were about to pull into the Salt Lake station when this girl came down the aisle and sat across from me. She looked at me and I kind of tried to smile. She started talking to me but I was too tired to want to take my earphones out, and I couldn't really make out what she was saying. So I just nodded a little, smiled and said, "Umm." Then she kept talking and from her tone I could tell she was asking me something. I'd have to take my earphones out.

When I did she started telling me about her troubles. She said she was so stressed out she felt like she was going to lose her baby, (she looked about 18, rundown and dressed poorly). Her husband had got hurt at work and had burns from his fingers to his bicep, and he couldn't work anymore, so they were moving in with her parents. The way she said it made it obvious it was the last thing she wanted to do. What was worse was that her husband was super depressed now because he didn't feel like he was helping his family. There seemed to be the implication the way she said it that he felt like they'd be better off without him. So she was starting to cry, wiping tears and holding her stomach with one hand, and I knew it was my turn to speak, to make her feel better.

And I couldn't. I was so tired that I decided not to muster up the courage to offer anything real by way of advice, or simply commiserating or sharing her feeling like a good human would do. Instead I said in a bland voice, "Things will work out." And then I looked away uncomfortably, in a way that would make her feel that I was embarrassed by her tears and her forwardness in telling me about her problems. It worked. She left me alone after that and a moment later I got my bike and I transferred over to the Trax.

The whole way home, riding the Trax then walking my past the reflecting pond and all the fountains at Temple Square and up 2nd Ave, I was thinking of the things I should have said to her, the experiences I should have shared, and feeling bad about it all. What bothers me is that this is becoming a pattern with me. Somewhere along the line I was offered some human contact and I said no. The next time it was easier to ignore, and the next, and the next. And now I've become one of those people who are shut off from everyone. I was thinking about my picture on my profile. The older one was monochromatic. No color. This newer one is even more honest. I look a little like a ghost.

So anyway, I've been trying a little to change that. A little at a time. I hope one day to be the type of person who would give that girl whatever she needed, the type that would make her feel better.