How to almost get up a mountain:
1. Go to the market. Sample all the new things, even if the kombucha tastes like vinegar. Spend too much money on cheese curds and tomatoes because you need something to do.
2. Move rocks and pull weeds at MUD for 2 hours because you need to keep doing things.
3. Stop at a random bakery you’ve seen before because who the hell knows the next time you’ll be biking down West Broadway. Try all the free samples. Buy a bear claw because someone said you had to and you got made fun of for not knowing what one was. (It’s possible I’ve had one, although I can’t say it would be the first thing to catch my eye at a bakery. It was almondy and delicious.)
4. Fail to find pants that fit at REI because all your pants are about to fall apart in embarrassing ways. Buy a small water bottle instead because the 3 full-sized wide-mouth Nalgene’s you have are a pain in the ass to carry around sometimes.
5. Realize that now that you have water, you don’t really have to go home and can bike straight over to Blue Mountain.
6. Continue on with said bike ride. Decide on a whim to keep going up the mountain.
7. Continue up the mountain for several miles, even though you told yourself you’d stop because it was hard or you were tired or that was far enough. Continue because something’s not done until it’s done, and it’s not done until you’ve traveled up the road for 10 miles because you thought that’s how far it went up to some designated stopping point.
8. Stop when a trail crosses the road and you’re really not getting much out of it anymore (and because you’ve looked at a map before and suspected the road could go on forever).
9. Lock your bike to a post and wander up the trail for 20 minutes. Stop when you get tired of stepping around horse poop and snow.
10. Return to your bike and finish your water. By this point, you have an undeniable craving for grape pop. Before you can satisfy this urge, you have to go all the way back down the damn mountain and bike a ways to the nearest convenience store.
11. They don’t have grape pop. Look really hard to make sure. Settle for iced tea instead. Drink it while riding your bike, which looks funny because you’re trying to unscrew the top of the bottle with your mouth and have one hand on the handlebars (because you’re far too uncoordinated to be one of those jerks who rides with no hands).
12. Go home and map your route on gmap-pedometer, because you’re just a little bit obsessive like that. Find out that you were really fucking close to the Blue Mtn. lookout, but aren’t really upset because you were close enough, and you’re not the type to stop and look at things and didn’t have a camera or binoculars anyhow.
Total for the day: 46.1 miles biking. 1+ walking. -whatever downhill. I really hope my knees don’t hurt too much this week. Oh yeah, and I did this all in a cotton t-shirt, wearing socks that are too big and thick, and on my mountain bike that’s certainly not in great condition after the beatings it takes from me riding it around town all year. meh…who needs to be prepared? and I saw a wild turkey meandering by a stream.
Other possible titles:
46mi and I just want grape pop.
I’m not going to win the mountain today.
Cotton is under-rated…who needs spandex?
Who needs cars? Fuck cars.
