It's important when engaging in proper cycling to be able to ignore the suffering of yourself and others in your riding party. When riding a bike one is transforming himself into the motor of a vehicle, a machine. And machines do not feel pain. But they do break down.
This morning as I listened to Matt Harmon cough with the vigor of an 80-year-old man who had been a coal miner his entire adult life, and then wretch and vomit what appeared to be yellow bile, well that is a suffering that simply cannot be ignored.
"I'm calling it," Harmon said without even looking at me.
Relieved that I wouldn't have to insist his abandonment of this tour, I asked where his rescue party would pick him up. He told me that his suffering had been so great overnight that he had already reached out to family members and determined that he would meet them in Deer Trail, a roughly 11 mile backtrack.
We packed up our campsite and nosed our bikes up and out of the ditch that had been our home for the night . Making our way back West we had the sun at our backs and unlike yesterday the wind that had been against us was now for us and we got to Deer Trail in a satisfactory time of just over 30 minutes.
For some reason Matt Harmon felt bad about abandoning the tour, he kept making apologies and explanations, none of which were necessary. To say that Matthew Harmon carries his nerves in his stomach would be doing the topic an injustice. The man has more nervous tendencies in his gut than an entire herd of Hanoverian warm blood horses. Unlike the horses Matt Harmon cannot outrun his nervous stomach and this touring endeavor at the ripe age of 41 was causing him much unease and consternation.
What we were discovering on this bicycle tour in the first three days is that what the body is capable of doing at the age of 31 is quite different from what the body can do at the age of 41. Too many ho-hum fast food lunches, or late nights with friends and family alike, or any of the countless other health maladies that we Western civilized folk suffer from. They cause us such a rapid decline that it hardly seems fair that we have another 30 years to go, on average, before that sweet release and embrace of the Holy.
When Matt Harmon's sister arrived he smiled the first smile that I had seen him wear in about a day and a half. As I have stated here in this blog, bicycle touring is supposed to be fun. It's not proper cycling. The moment that it ceases to be fun and becomes a sufferfest one should immediately stop, wherever they may be. Sit down even if it's on the side of the road and wait for the fun to catch back up with you. I would encourage my competitive road cyclist friends to embrace this philosophy once in a while also, unless money, prizes, or Glory are on the line. If you are competing for all three then by all means break yourself in half and bathe in the trifecta of awesomeness.
With Matt safely tucked into his sister's pickup truck and headed west back to Denver, I turned around and headed to the east back towards Agate.
I try not to hold too big of a grudge against an entire town or city based on the discourtesy that one citizen paid me. So on my way back through agate I waved in a friendly manner to local church parishioners leaving their service, smiled at the barking dogs, and ducked behind the US postal facility where I made use of their unlocked water spigot to fill four bottles and a camelbak. Freshly off the appropriation of some tasty well water from the good people of Agate Colorado I had a much higher opinion of the windswept 75 person village.
After Agate the road turn to dust
and I found myself climbing a steady diet of rollers as the antelope began to outnumber the people. I saw several majestic and beautiful whitetail deer. And even more friendly fuzzy looking cows. Around 1:00 I broke for lunch and called my wife. We chatted pleasantly for roughly 30 minutes when all of the sudden a tremendous gust of wind viciously attacked me from the Northwest and attempted to knock my bike over.
Sensing danger I quickly said I love yous to my wife and threw a leg over the bike to finish the last 15 miles of the days journey to Limon.
The wind did not slowly ramp up, it just was, and as I looked my left and saw a wall of invisibility sweeping down upon me I pulled my bandana face mask up and prepared for the battle.
Obviously I survived, I'm writing this post event. Research done as I safely sit in a lovely hotel room would reveal that the winds reached up to 46 mph. When I was peddling with the gusts I traveled over 30 mph. When I pedaled against it I barely got up to five miles per hour. In the unfortunate and terrifying event that I was being attacked by crosswinds I was still able to travel at a respectable 12 to 17 miles per hour. The terror lay in the realization that to pedal in the crosswinds I would have to lean into the wind and trust that it would not suddenly die off and leave me off balance.
Thankfully? It never did let up. The front tire of my bicycle began to have a tan coloration to the black rubber on the non-drive side nubs, the drive side nubs were still black. This is on account of all the leaning into the wind, which feels pretty crazy.
I tucked in for the night at a respectable but modestly priced hotel just off of i-70. I reflected on the events of the day. My sense of triumph over the wind was mixed equally with sadness over losing Matt Harmon, as well as relief that he did not have to go into the wind feeling terrible.
From here on out I will be traveling on the roadway by myself, but I won't truly be alone. I won't be alone because I have you, dear reader, and as long as my pedals are still turning and this journey is still going forward then I will still be writing and riding for you.
"dear reader"? that's me!
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