eating cake

last saturday biking buddy bob and I rode our bikes to sundance and back.
as we passed through a neighborhood on the southeastern foothills, bob said this is the 'let them eat cake' part of town.  communities set apart with guardhouses, four-story mansions on the hillside, private gated homes . . . this is an area of "haves".  or at the least, "hads."  homes built during the years of bigger is better, of if one is good three is what I'll have.
it's difficult to imagine what I'd do if I had oodles of money.
it's even more difficult to imagine being so out of touch with reality that I didn't know people in my own community were poverty-stricken and starving.

and this all began, today, because I decided to have cake for breakfast.  well, not really for breakfast, because I considered my wheat-toast-with-peanut-butter breakfast.  cake was more like a, um, post-breakfast snack.  then a pre-mid-morning snack.  and now it's my mid-morning snack.  soon it will be a before-lunch-snack.
perhaps it's time to stop eating cake.
I'm not quite sure what's going on for me today, but it's possibly connected to the fact that I'm in taper mode.
last saturday's ride to sundance and back (114 miles, 8 hours of saddle time, 10,300' of elevation gain) was my Big Final Ride of the training season leading up to lotoja.  once that peak is reached, I move into taper mode, where my miles-per-week are lessened, I try to rest more, I do more yoga.  the theory is that after one trains all summer, increasing the challenges to a peak, it's then time to cut back and rest up before the big event.
if I haven't trained hard enough yet, it's not going to happen in the last 10 days.
time to ease off.
relax a bit more.
rest.
and eat cake.
oops..... not sure about that last one, but I can't seem to convince myself that cake isn't part of the plan.
I hit taper time and think it's indulging time.
the right thing to do would be to eat more vegetables, dark leafy green things, protein, some fruit, drink lots of water.....
but I seem to want cake.

I'll never live in a ten-thousand-square-foot home on the hillside;  I'll never be an over-consumer.  I'll never forget that there are people who can't afford bread, let alone cake.

but I fear I'll always love cake just a little bit more than I should.

God's presence on a hell ride

thank God it was beautiful.

I mean that literally; I was thanking God for the beauty surrounding me, primarily because that beauty was the only thing keeping me going.

pedaling up, forever up, american fork canyon, you can take a stretch of road called the Alpine Loop. the base of the canyon is approximately a mile above sea level (5280' for those of you who've forgotten your equivalents), and the summit of the Alpine Loop is just over 8000 feet.

by the time we reached that summit we had about 5o miles in, and I had used up every electrolyte stored anywhere in my body. biking buddy bob (a physician, no less) said, you don't look good.
I didn't feel good.
in fact, I felt awful. I felt worse than I've ever felt on a ride: dizzy, dripping with sweat, pale, a bit nauseated . . . and it kept getting worse as I stood there, straddling my bike, trying to recover. I finally had to sit down, and eventually I could feel stability (and blood) return.

the next 6 miles were downhill, to sundance ski resort, where we split a sandwich and I downed a powerade and found myself returning to life.


the alpine loop is unbelievably beautiful. in fact, I've placed this picture here to save me the proverbial (and woefully insufficient) thousand words.

and the conifers, the aspen, the trickling stream, the steep granite hillsides, the view of stunning mount timpenogos, are what combined to help me survive the ride from hell.


by the time I made it home, 110 miles, 10,800' elevation gain, 8.5 hours riding time behind me, I felt like I'd survived the most intense (possibly the most intensely insane) thing I'd ever done. I'd been craving a chocolate milkshake for the past 20 miles, and settled for icy chocolate milk, feeling it flush my body with cool hope of recovery.


I promise to never, ever, again undertake a ride longer than 30 miles without electrolytes in my bottle.
and I promise to always, always, to bring God with me on every single ride.

envisioning a future life

someday, someday. how many times do we begin a sentence this way, a sentence which conveys an image of what might, possibly, at some future time, be?

I try to live my life as it's happening, being grateful for what is, celebrating the good that surrounds me and re-framing the not-so-good into better-than-it-might-be. I don't spend much time longing for things to be different.
nevertheless, there are times when I think about what might someday be.
what keeps this healthy, though, is that it's more about looking forward to another phase in life than it is wishing this one to be done.
got it?

like this: gosh I love having teenagers; they're so full of dreams and energy and thoughts and plans. but I'm also going to love it when they someday finish high school and college and settle down into their own lives . . .
or this: gosh it's great being an unknown author, because I don't have to deal with critics, reviewers, an unhappy publisher, or an agitated and impatient editor. but someday, when I'm published, I'm certainly going to enjoy the attention and royalty checks and validation.

so back to today.
today I rode my bike (surprise!), but in a manner I don't usually. biking buddy bill and I drove to within a few miles of the base of american fork canyon (5100'), then we parked and saddled up. we rode up the alpine loop, to the 8060' summit, then down to sundance (6100') ski resort. after a pause in the sun alongside the rushing creek, we rode back up and the down, down, down out of the canyon and to the car.
what's so different, you ask?
the difference today is that we simply rode the hills, and didn't tack on 40 or 50 miles around them.
this is rare.
and leads to my someday.

someday---a day I look forward to, without regretting my current days---I think I will ride 20 and 30 and 40 mile rides, and call it good.
I will park at the bottom of big climbs and simply bike up them then back down.
I will ride a loop and cut off the extra part so that it remains under 50 miles, instead of adding to reach 100.
I will ride 38 miles, like today, and be both pleased and satisfied.

although today I am pleased and satisfied, it has something to do with the fact that this weekend I'll be riding 175 miles.

someday, I'll be pleased and satisfied with a 38-miler being my toughest ride of the week.

I can see eyes rolling and words of disbelief forming inside minds, and my response is simply this:

hang around for another 20 years and just see.

loops and hurdles

sunday I had an epic adventure.
as usual, it didn't really start out to be one.
the plan was aggressive; it would be my longest, toughest ride since the fateful crash. but it wasn't a 100-miler, and it wasn't a four-canyon challenge. it was just a significantly challenging ride that I was hoping I'd be able to complete.

bill has this thing about the alpine loop. he loves the topography, he loves the challenge of riding up to the summit, and he especially loves taking a break at sundance resort. if you're not familiar with this area, let me explain. first of all, my eyes are rolling as I type this: it's not a loop. to me, a loop is remarkably similar to a circle, where one ends at the same place one begins.
this loop starts in american fork canyon, and to be honest, I'm not sure where it ends, perhaps at the base of provo canyon? no one in their right mind would begin at the base of american fork canyon, drive (or ride) all the way up and then down provo canyon, then wind their way back through provo and pleasant grove and linden and all those other little places to end up back at the mouth of the canyon where they began; the first half is stunningly beautiful, and the second half would be like sightseeing in your own neighborhood.
no one in their right mind makes a literal loop of the alpine loop.
but I digress.
american fork canyon takes one up past the entrance to timpanogos cave (a national monument, so less) and then up (and I mean up) over a narrow summit and then down past sundance ski resort, down another handful of miles until one reaches provo canyon, which one can then take east toward heber or west toward provo city.
the summit is only 8060 feet, but the base of american fork canyon is 4566 feet, and the ten miles between the two progress upward almost relentlessly.
when one drops into sundance at 6100 feet, one on a journey like ours knows one must turn around and climb those nearly 2000 feet again.


bill said let's ride the alpine loop, and I took a deep breath and said, okay.
I called it an experiment, not knowing if I'd make it, partially because we planned to start in draper, thus climbing the suncrest hill both on the way to and on the way back from the canyon.

sunday morning dawned bright and sunny, and then the clouds moved in and the rain began. it wasn't a serious rain, though, and the clouds seemed to be collecting to the north. we were headed south: out of the rain.
for a while.
it first started raining on us near timpanogos cave, maybe ninety minutes into our ride. it wasn't enough to make us stop, and after a couple miles the sun came out to join the rain, and the whole world around us sparkled and glistened, from the gently rustling tree leaves to the damp and shiny granite walls to our left. soon it dried up and the heat poured back out. It didn't rain on us again until we'd reached the summit and started down toward sundance, as we wound our way through the twisting pavement cut through a seemingly endless aspen grove. this rain was a bit more insistent, and we finally had to take shelter under the eave of a road-hugging pine, and I was shivering in my sleeveless jersey and arm warmers.
when this happens I'm always torn between hurrying to my destination to get out of the weather and warm up, and going slowly so that I won't get too much colder. wet pavement plays into the possible-speed equation as well.
this time we waited until the rain lightened, then moved on down the next four miles.
at sundance we ate, I shivered and shook and finally warmed, we watched a brief but heavy deluge come and go, and eventually hit the road again.

our hour-long climb back up to the summit was dry, and the rain didn't catch us again until about a third of the way down american fork canyon. I had been noticing all the nice cars coming up who had their lights on--how thoughtful--and then I finally realized it was because they had come through a storm, which was just about to sideline me.
this time we huddled in the shelter of an outhouse roof, watching sheets of rain fall earthward.

the rain finally eased, and a tailwind pushed us out the bottom of the canyon, and then it was down to the final climb up over suncrest, a fast cruise down the other side, and then the last, flat leg back to the car.

bottom line: I survived. it was a mental hurdle for me to clear: a tough ride with many hours in the saddle (that would be over 5 and a half).
more important bottom line: my saddle parts hurt! this area is still in its retraining phase, as well.

so, epic. rain, thunder, sunshine, dense and rich forests, a splashing river, a sea of pine, clouds and shade and goosebumps and rest, sweat and exhaustion and no small amount of conquering whatever appeared before us.
epic.