Day 31 - May 25 - A Higher Level

"Get your kicks on route 66"

The Thing About Hills

It's a bit masochistic to be saying this, but I prefer going up hills than going down hills. When you go up a hill, you feel like you are getting somewhere. You feel like you are moving, and you really feel the motion in every muscle of your body. You work hard, and the bike moves. That little patch of asphalt that you climbed, you climbed, and it was not done for you. You have made progress, and you are getting stronger. The bike ride takes up a million effort tokens, and you just earned one.

When you go down a hill, it's just neutral. You are waiting for it to be over, so that you can start the next climb. It's like being driven to your next challenge. Biking down a hill really is a lot like driving. You're fast, unmoving, and not exerting any effort to get yourself from point A to point B, other than leaving your foot on the pedal.

Then there's the peak. The peak of the hill is where you get the best views, and you can take a break, knowing that you've made strong progress in the day.

Challenges, Frustration, and the Adrenaline Rush

In Florida, I learned to deal with heat. In Texas, I've learned to handle large stretches of nothing. Hills don't bother me. But when all of these come together, with the constant 30km/h winds in my face, that's just a recipe for frustration.

See, you thought that I can't complain about wind for three days in a row, but I've got some fresh hatred towards it today. It's trash. I hate wind. What I hate the most about the wind is that I was never warned about it, and did not expect it. I hate that after fighting the wind for an hour, and if the wind dies down, all you have to show for it is the stretch of road you've crossed. In a sense, the wind is not fair. There's a lesson to be learned here about racism, sexism, and privilege, but today is not the day for that lesson.

Today I learned a different lesson. After passing 2km above sea level, and seeing more and more hills, with the winds just increasing in intensity, I started losing it. I cursed at the winds, and tried playing more pump-up music, as gust after gust would tire me more and more, and make an already steep climb a simple misery trek. What's there to do at this point? Three days of wind, and a forecast that looks equally windy. It's angering, enraging, and exhausting, and there's no one to complain to.

Well, there is my poor mom, who called me, who may have heard the curses of helplessness through the strong winds on my microphone. I started making ultimatums, that if the wind doesn't stop in two days, I'm out. I don't need this bullshit in my life. I wanted to bike across the US. I didn't want to get tossed around endlessly by desert farts. All of the bikers I saw, by the Doppler effect, were going in the opposite direction. It turns out that the winds here are almost always favourable to those. It's true, it's something to do with the gulf stream. Why me? Why did this week have to be especially windy by local standards?

So I let out a cry. A battle cry. I yelled at the top of my lungs, at the fucking hills, at the fucking sun, at the fucking wind, at the fucking trucks that pass too close, bringing huge gusts of wind throwing me off balance. In that moment, I felt the adrenaline rush through my body in a way I had only once felt before. The pain in my muscles was gone, and for a few minutes, until I reached the top of the hill, I felt as if my body could do anything I wanted of it. Winds were blowing as hard as ever, and I made them my bitch. I wanted the gusts to come, just so that they can see how invincible I was.

Coming Down

I reached the highest point of the day, at Clines Corners, where I planned to stop. But there was no food there, and I decided to push for another two hours. The winds were strong, but as the evening dragged on, they weakened. Most of this ride was downhill.

And I had a chance to think. As the sun was getting lower and lower, I took off my shirt to cool down, and put on some piano music. I thought about my anger from before, and my overall mileage of the day. I had done more than I needed to do today in terms of kilometers, and all of it was hills and wind. I then noticed that my muscles, my brain, my body, were about as tired as they were after the first day of biking in Miami.

The thought hit me in the dumbest way: I'm moving up levels. Today was difficult, but I just proved that it was not impossible. The wind was hard, but I just proved that it wasn't impenetrable. Today was a challenge that I had overcome, but that I could not have overcome a few weeks ago. It's because of my experience with heat in Florida, my tolerance of hills from the Dallas area, my know-how of dealing with empty stretches from Texas, and my four weeks of daily intense exercise and mental preparedness that I was able to do what I did today.

I think about this a lot when I think about setting goals. My goals should always be just out of reach, and just before I can touch them, I move them forward some more. This is what happened to me today.

So in a sense, I should stop thinking of the past. I will never have another day like those calm, 100km by lunch, eating watermelon by the roadside, days like I had in Florida. I will no longer have days where I can just fill water at the next gas station like I had in Louisiana. The ride just went into a higher gear.

I just entered a higher level, and I'm ready for it.

The Image Gallery

So today I biked along interstate highway 40, which used to be a section of Route 66, made famous by some songs, and the thousands of gift shops along the way selling Route 66 related tchotchkes.

Snow-covered mountains in the distance. I will not be going in that direction, but damn it's cool!

Another picture, this time with trees.

So after climbing and climbing for about 900m, I suddenly noticed a change in landscape. I was very surprised to see what looks like a forest in the middle of what I thought is a desert.

Sunset, and the billboard signs, which signal that an habited town is coming up.

The Map

Today I biked about 130km over the course of nine hours and nine seconds. My total uphill was 972m and total downhill was 474m. If you are curious about the inner tube problems I had yesterday, I just took the inner tube that was of too small diameter, stretched it out, tucked it in, and pumped it. So far, it's been working just fine.

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