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There is that “thing” there, the gradual semi-steep, almost 14 miles of slow leg spinning for 5 hours. Lots of bodies do it, but I wondered if my body was one of those or not. It had been so long since I had ask it to put out at altitude and near cardiac maximum output. I needed my head to do this, but mainly I need to breath in and out-letting anxiousness go.

My Alaskan and Serbian camp mates had encouraged me to look at this pass, the highest we would encounter on the Southern Tier, with curiosity. Can I do it? If so then do it, and come down the other side. If I couldn’t do it then turn and come down–find another route out of there. I was no longer boxed into a do or die situation, I had options. This was a valuable lesson of relaxing into the worst of my fears of this section-failure. Like Dan said for someone use to competing or having things turn out a certain way, it’s hard to “let it go” -relaxing into options, bail points, fail safes, just other ways of envisioning process.

What came after the pass was much worse physically than the pass. I spent nearly 12 hours on the bike that day-a long day. My counter parts, Alaskans and Serb cyclists,had been in camp a while when I got there. The Serbian paid me the biggest complement I could receive. He said, “to come in late and last is a sign of persistence and doggedness”. Dan would even say, “a tough ass bastard”( something to that effect in a good natured way). To me this was a healing time, time to encounter a pass and use something besides “detachment from the pain” and instead breath into it and look at every stroke-one slow stroke after another, like a worm gear going up the side of the mountain.

I’m still here in Silver City, New Mexico, visiting and gearing up for another segment of the ride west, but I’m not the same as before the pass. I’ve tried my repaired knee, my replaces toes, and my old lung capacity-they all said, “o.k., lets try this thing”.

This afternoon in Hillsboro, New Mexico with a dark beer at the only thing open in town-wine bar.

The ride into this town this morning was the hardest metal bike ride I have ever done! The wind was up to 30 plus gusting to whatever, it would blow you sideways for a ways.

I need water and rest. Last night was crazy windy and we were ill prepared for the magnitude of the winds and dust. It came in all the tents hole, the scorpions were seeking cover and the centipedes were crawling very fast!

I’m with some very interesting and experienced folk in camp tonight. The two Alaskans, Dan and Anne, then there is the Serbian cyclist who is raising money for a cause in Croatia. Many of the folk i have met have been in recent, my generation, wars. Many wars.

My legs are getting stronger, tomorrow in 20 miles the earth will rise over 4000 feet to 8200 feet, the air will thin, one pushing a bike will think about stopping, cursing the day he or she was born, say screw it and turn and go down hill, I will dream and think about a small gear ring up front (that waits for me in silver City), then -then-then right before one either vomits or does are the fore mentioned-you breath through your legs and ask-“where am I right now”? ? Then you realize your are where you have to be in your body that is pushing a load of food-water-supplies up and over the mountain.

I

I have been on the road riding across the country on my bicycle, “Anam Cara”, for 32 days, I think. This is my first Starbucks day since I left Bastrop, Tx. , where I sit and phone folk and take a few notes and plan a little.

I’m not blogging this trip in the usual manner of a bicycling man-I’m more doing this for space and life review via encounter and getting away from the familiar. I don’t think this is a necessary adventure for all, and many times I’m not even sure it’s for me, yet-I am doing it this way to encounter the illusion of security one can make up by the time of your 66th birthday.

As good example of the available lessons waiting for me out there came yesterday in a stoplight intersection in Las Cruces, NM. I was stopped in left hand turn lane waiting for the familiar green turn arrow, when low and behold i got a green arrow plus a red light? What and which one do I do-I froze in bewilderment with a fully packed touring recumbent bike with a line of cars behind me. I soon found out which light I should have responded to by a young Mexican man in a truck behind me gave me a tongue lashing in Spanish, then to make sure I understood said, “hey you got to be a ignorant——– –“! I disagreed immediately, I could be a confused ___________ or slow, or other options…anyway, I got my butt and bike to the sidewalk till I could recover from the confusion and the panic brought on by one of my fellow humans. I know which light to follow in New Mexico now–I’m better for it.

On a bicycle in a foreign city folk don’t know your wealth, your family, your work status –they just suspect you are on a mission or adventure of some kind that doesn’t include the normal definition of efficiency.

“And a man or woman must leave his mother and father”.

Jesus

[those things for me that I would project onto so as to avoid the moment given-I graciously get one moment at a time-“Cloud of Unknowing”, 1400’s.]

The times I would have turned and return to the familiar farm I rode off from, I find myself impossibly to far away to turn around. I pedal on tomorrow after the wind forecasts leave the “gail warning” status for a more tolerant wind speed. This is the 2nd time I have been sidelines for wind strength along with blowing sands in “my face direction”.

I always wanted to travel across the USA by the power of my own body. That is all grand and noble when you haven’t ridden off. After you ride off and diarrhea and weakness hit you, the reality of the ride comes home. Then the unexpected comes in the middle of one night somewhere in a dead west Texas community—it’s the deepest of homesickness, the malignant aloneness that comes best when sleeping on the ground near the Void, a place unseen with the mind, but sensed with the body.

So it never seems to fail, when I pedal off in the mornings-things are new….

Thomas Merton wrote, “there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.

I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

And so it was in Junction Texas, a shrinking little West Texas town that I discovered a world language-poetry.

It was a good summer here in 1970, low draft number and all.

The day of the first of many “bathroom” washings of clothes.

The tour of the “souther tier” has started, but I’m not in it yet. I’m sitting here in Fredericksburg, TX. Doing the “get ready part of getting out of Texas, a rather daunting task at this point. Am I all in? That is the part sitting here in a rather projected, detached kinda way. Why in the hell leave comfort for suffer, 2 to 3 weeks of soreness for sure. There will be many scurrying about for camp sites, lost cities and such, but something is calling on.

So, let’s turn these puppies loose and see where we go.

Tomorrow, I choose I-10 route or southern hiway 90 route—, leaning toward I-10 and mix it up with the truckers….

This afternoon I will pack my bike, it has come down to the wire. I will be leaving Saturday if all works out.

The aboriginal believe all evil lives after light is gone, in the dark. Sometimes after spending week or months on the ground having your days follow daylight, many western civilized folk feel the need to face the part of them that may not tolerate the dark.

When the rustling, growling, hisses, or dead silence come near for nights on end-one faces some sort of void that is liberating in a strange way. A “far away God” is of little use in these places, making one wonder if “he” is projected out there just like the “shadow” residing in ourselves we have avoided familiarize ourself with?

“No one likes to admit his own darkness. People who believe their ego represents the whole of their psychic , who neither know or want to know the other qualities that belong to it, are wont to project their unknown ‘soul parts’ into the surrounding world.”

Jolande Jacobi

“Even darkness hide the not from thee……….”

Darby Bible

Ps 139:12

To much is taken for granite when you step on the earth, due to our specie much of it is gone into the ocean: not to be tilled again-besides the fish don’t want it.

I can go buy onions cheaper than I can grow them, but when did price start dictating value? So, recently I gathered plants for my grandkids from Grand Saline to transplant into the garden out of the hotbeds. I thought it would just be a time filler for the “virtual generation”, but low and behold-they got into it and could have gone longer had I not petered out.

Top soil-it’s non-renewable! According to Wes Jackson form the Land Institute, the loss of top soil threatens our food supply more than any other factor. It’s as renewable as oil, like ever million or two years you get yourself a little-just a little!

So, be a hero: skip cheap food, plant something, dump in the woods, compost your garbage, teach your grandkids how to plant a few seeds everyday during a season and watch them progress according to Mystery, do it damn it while stuff still germinates on schedule!

Like a lovely Mexican artist in my seminary class said, ” grandmother says what is wrong with many peoples is they don’t take their shoes off and walk bare footed in the dirt when they feel down.”

There is something centering about burying your hands in the soil and getting your nose .5 inches above the surface, you can smell millions of years of preparation….

Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry are getting up in years, but it seems they have some young folk following in their furrows.

Praise Be

Being rational keeps us from facing our work, our real work. Can I live with uncomfortable till morning? It helps to have a reason to get up, especially if its been an uncomfortable night. The same sun that marked the end of day, marks the beginning of another. Go figure…