Acquiring satellites

The sun is up and I’ve got 50ml of caffelatex in each of my tubulars.  There is no way I’m going to call Janet from the side of the road today.  Last week’s ride to Canon City ended with a flat (and the failure of the spare) just at the top of the last climb with twenty five miles of downhill left and a smart tailwind. 

Today we’re riding north to Castle Rock.  It’s cold, but my gloves aren’t freezing to the bars like last week.  The sun is out and we have a slight tailwind as Byron and I roll to Palmer Lake.  A quick latte and my hands are thawed.  A left on highway 105 and we’re over the rise of the Palmer Divide and my favorite Colorado road stretches out sixteen miles in a gentle downhill.  A turn at Wolfensberger road and we’re climbing four miles up the side of a small mesa.  Byron is sixty pounds lighter than me, and he moves away, a foot here and there, until he crests a couple of minutes ahead.  There’s one other cyclist going our direction and I catch her right before the road descends to Castle Rock.  A good morning to you!

Another latte at Daz Bog.  We’ve gone fifty five miles and I feel pretty good.  Just fifty miles until home.  The wind has picked up.  I look down at the Garmin and we’re going just thirteen miles an hour.  A tap on the computer… 250-300 watts.  That’s a lot.  I can maintain about 300 for an hour, my threshold wattage.  An hour is only thirteen miles away.  I move into Byron’s draft and feel slightly guilty.

Riding into the wind is an emptying experience.  First I lose my expectations about the ride, how fast it will be, what time I’ll get home, how much it will or won’t hurt.  Then, slowly, I lose most of my other thoughts as well, until all that’s left is the white noise of the wind in my ears.  My thought for a few minutes is limited to, ‘What noise do my helmet straps make when I tilt my head?  Hmm, that’s interesting.’ or ‘How close can I get to the northeast quadrant of Byron without hitting his bike?’

Life is simple in the wind.

At two o’clock we return to Palmer Lake feeling much different.  I realize we likely won’t make it back to Manitou with the sun still up and put some of the layers I shed a few hours before when the sun was high and we had a tailwind.  The sun was behind Pikes Peak as passed the Great Monstrosity and descended into Colorado Springs.  ‘Hey, Byron, we just passed one hundred miles.’  A fist bump and I climb the hill back to the house.

Sweating the details

Before the sun warms the red rocks in our canyon, the temps are stuck at twenty two degrees.  A glance south, towards Crystal Park, reveals the snow dusting the dark side of the canyon, but the clear blue backdrop means that the temps will rise.

On the bike an hour later and I’m thinking about my son Johann.  Our annual Individual Educational Plan meeting is tomorrow and, as a I ride, I let the conversations Janet and I have been having bubble up.  For some reason, the movement and external stimuli on the bike have a freeing effect; sweat, breath, toxins, thoughts float up and out and into the cold, dry air.  Soon the clutter of the road, buildings and signs, cars and people, fall back and I’m heading into the high plain country east of Colorado Springs.

Brown and dead grass, rolling hills stretching out with no trees, the wind’s desiccating effect empties my soul of detail. 

What was it Janet said?  my son is on a continuum, moving from mere presence, to tolerance, to pity, to acceptance.  Where is he now?  That is the question for the group tomorrow.

Maybe because it’s cold and I have leggings and a coat on, I’m removed from the immediacy of the climb to Curtis Road from Highway 94.  I move back and forth on the bars, feel the wind on the right side of the tights, soaking through the seams, but it doesn’t seem so real.

What future does my son have?  I think about this and notice the top of the climb is past already.  When Johann was born and the lab in Madison later identified the Down’s syndrome that had distorted one of his chromosomes, I grieved.  A while later I wondered what it was that made the tears flow and I realized that I was grieving for any number of lost futures that would no longer be possible for him. 

The road turns south and the rolling ground is a carpet running all of the way to the foothills.  The granite above the tree line is dusted with snow.  The wind is on my face, but I’m still numb to it.

My insight thirteen years ago, sitting in a hospital in Dubuque, was that my father grieved as well for me.  The test results had simply accelerated the process.  Instead of grieving for my lost future as a basketball player or a manager in the same factory he worked at, when I was much older, I was suddenly in the position of knowing my son would never be a doctor only a week into his life.

Or so I thought thirteen years ago.  What is possible?  And what is it we all need?  Now forty six instead of thirty three, I understand my identity is not my job.  What is necessary is to belong and that is what erases the tears.

I smile as Curtis Road rounds into Powers and there’s a tailwind as I roll north.  Everyone needs a tailwind once in a while.

A winter morning

If the fingers are lined up behind the bend of the handlebar, the index finger is the only one to go numb. 

I think about things like this as Janet and I take a whirl through the Garden of the Gods.  Not deep thoughts, but ideas that have immediacy in the here and now.  It’s 30 degrees and sunny.  A light snow has fallen on the higher slopes, but leaves are still falling along the streets. 

We ride through the Garden, up Mesa’s climb and then descend for a couple of miles to the edge of Old Colorado City.  The climb warms us and then the bright sun makes up at least 15 degrees in temperature and we are all smiles back home to Manitou.  A hour and half of the morning well spent, together and on bikes.

Cold morning

The air in Manitou, warmed against the red rock by the sun, has to be at least fifteen degrees warmer than the air a few hundred feet down slope on Colorado Avenue.  Morning rides are a bit of a trial right now.  It’s not exactly the cold temps at 8am, rather it’s the knowing that in four hours it will be thirty degrees warmer. 

No matter, I pull on my light winter tights (my real winter tights haven’t been used since I rode in the real winter weather of Iowa), dig out the wool socks and pick out my old Wheaton jacket.  That jacket is coming into its own here in Colorado.  As I told Dan, my cycling come-librarian friend from DWC, the jacket makes me sweat like a plastic bag but it doesn’t breathe.  I can wear it with a tank top and be just fine here at altitude and forty degrees.  Iowa wind, cold and humidity would freeze the sleeves to my bear arms. 

I rode up Gold Camp Road, turned around and came home.  It’s about 1200 feet of climbing in sixteen miles and not a bad workout.  My replacement crank is a compact with a 50/34 (the teeth on the big and small rings).  A 34 chainring paired with a 26 cog on the rear cassette now means I can spin up anything.  Nice on a cold day.