Some thoughts about joy

A few seasons ago, racing in the bunch at MGA Proving Grounds in Burlington, Wisconsin, I turned to a fellow next to me. Amid the chain whirr, the buzz of the tires, the sharp relief of shadow and sun on a downhill run, I was experiencing exhilaration in it's purest form, with a sheen of summer sweat, in a race during Super Week, with a group of nearly complete strangers I had been bonding with for several days of racing.

"Man, isn't this fantastic?"

"Huh?"

"Isn't this great, what it's all about?"

"Huh?"

I don't remember who I was talking to, just someone who happened to be next to me. I know I was smiling and the other fellow probably backed away a bit, but it was a moment I had to share with someone, and, like D.T. Suzuki said, in sharing I likely diminished it a bit. But these moments seem to come infrequently in life so sharing seemed like a great idea at the time.

Now a few years later, Super Week racing is about to start again. Postings on some of my friends' racing blogs are filled with variations of doom and gloom and a kind of weltschmerz dread of what is to come. There is a lot to be concerned about, big fields, the upgrade to a higher category, the crappy courses in Chicago, where pale riders with hairy legs mix it up badly in the last lap.

There is an essential reality about bike racing that transcends all of that. It brings us to the moment, the constant now from which the past spins off like a spool of thread. The past was real, the future is not real, only the moment exists and we are brought to this moment in the constant flux of a race. The sprint is essentially the roshi's stick cracking us in the back, the barrage of stimuli, of pain, sweat in the eyes, bumping elbows, grinding gears, offer the chance to live right now, balanced on twenty two millimeter tires, traveling 30 miles per hour, elbow to elbow with one hundred people you met for the first time minutes before.

Isn't this fantastic?