This Week's Ride...

So, durring the week I decied I was going to do at least one big ride or hike per week. So my ride for this week was going to be to go up Emigration Canyon. I went yesterday (Saturday), and all the way up to the UofU campus I was wondering if this was a good idea. I thought, maybe I'll take it in steps. Today I'll ride to the top of campus. Next time I'll ride to the mouth of the canyon. Next time I'll bla, bla, bla... You get it. Anyway, that is usual for me, to feel doubtful as I begin. Then I ignore that and say, I'll just go till I can't anymore and see where that gets me.

I continued on up the canyon at a fair clip, but there were people in spandex passing me pretty regularly. "Oh," I thought, "to be a person in spandex. To have slightly less air resistance." Ok, not really, but I was thinking how nice it would be to be on a road bike and have less resistance on the ground. But I carried on.

Eventually my lower back got so sore that I had to stop for a moment and stretch. As I was doing that one of the few people in spandex that I had passed passed me again. When I got back on the bike and started to ride again I approached him relatively quickly and overtook him. As I passed him by and looked at him as I went I began to feel a little sorry for him. He looked about 40, and was well rounded. He was riding a flatbar Trek roadbike, and looked uncomfortable in his spandex. I figured he'd been sold the whole getup and had chosen the flatbar because he wasn't quite sure he could commit himself to a full dropbar road bike self. He was buying the dream of being fit, but probably knew a comfort bike was more his speed. Its the struggle between the desire for the image of fitness and the reality of the need for better health.

I knew from how easily I'd passed him that he probably had felt bad when I had gone around him before and was pushing to get back where he thought he belonged, in front of me. After all, he'd bought spandex, and a relatively expensive bike. He wasn't that old. Being in front of me with my baggy shorts and my fat tired mtn. bike would prove it, would justify the purchase. So when I passed him again I knew I was disheartening him. But it would be just silly to fall back because of this, and I put it out of my head as I went on.

Originally I had planned to ride to the first switchback. I thought it was a reasonable distance for me. But I was running out of juice. I was most of the way through Purple, the second album by Stone Temple Pilots, and I decided I'd ride to the end of the album. So I continued on for three songs, flagging, and when the fourth began I thought, "That's it. I'm done." (I'd misremembered how many songs there were.) So I stopped, and rested for a moment while I fought myself over turning around. Eventually I decided to go on. I rode for about a hundred yards and the trees opened up and I found myself at the switchback. I'd almost turned back when I was about a block away.

I got off there and sat on a concrete guard and drank some water, and thought about my near failure. It made me a little ashamed of myself and raised my ire. At that moment the well rounded 40 year old in spandex passed with a triumphant gloat in his eyes. "Good for him," I thought. "And shame on me." I decided that I would ride on. After a couple of minutes I got back on my bike and started on my way up.

Here the shoulder widened and so did the view. More people in spandex passed me now, most of them spindly tall guys about my age on very expensive bikes. There were a few women too. One of them I thought was a guy, when I saw her arms and shoulders (they were bigger than most of the guys I'd seen riding), then I saw her breasts. She was scary.

The view was really nice at this point in the canyon. All of the sudden you are above the bottom of it and you can see back down toward the valley, and how and high you have come.

I continued on for a couple of miles, and at one point the well rounded fellow passed me coming down, wearing a satisfied smile. Eventually my second wind was running out and I saw a summit, hoping it was the top, and as I rode up and over it, it was. There was a scenic pull off and about twenty five or thirty bikers were standing around smiling and chatting with each other and the other members of their parties. I smiled and looked out at the reservoir below, and then I turned around and rode down.

I ran a couple of errands in town on the way home, and when I put my route into Bikely it came out at about 30 miles. I'd planned on doing 22. It was a very nice way to spend a Saturday morning.