Monday's Ride

Today was a gorgeous day for cycling in San Diego, much like the 340 other days of the year when it is gorgeous cycling. We have just been through most of the 15 days when it is rainy, making cycling less than gorgeous.

Since I am getting ready for a long trip: Vancouver, BC to San Diego, CA I am riding with my bike loaded down with panniers and sleeping gear as you can see in one of the pictures below. I am not sure how much weight I have added, but the bags have rain gear and lots of bottles of water in them. I figure that whatever I actually end up carrying it will weigh less than water.

The route from BC to SD is not all that hilly, but it is still good to practice. There are lots of hills in SD, it being, after all a series of mesas plopped one upon another. And from my home the first mile is basically all uphill. But I want to ride up Mt. Soledad, which is north of Pacific Beach and is a hefty hill. So I am working on it in bits. It is pictured in one of the pics below --- at least I think that is Soledad.

Today I made it about half way up before I had to head back to get to a later afternoon appointment. I did fairly well and had I more time I would have made it. The overall ride today was 28.4 miles. Not as long as I wanted to go, but as long as I had time for given that I was climbing hills.

From Crown Point I can see the top, I think, of Mt Soledad, the challenge I want to climb with the bike loaded before I head off for the trip

MIssion Beach with the LaJolla hills ahead.

Zooming out of Ocean Beach you might miss the carept of purple in January.

This is my Linear with panniers and sleeping gear

The Mysticism of cycling

I have always loved riding bicycles. They represent a sort of freedom. Not having been a great athlete, cycling was perfect for me because when you get tired you can coast for a bit before thunking on the pedals again. As a kid we spent about half our lives on bicycles. We explored, raced and even played huge community wide games of team freeze tag. Imagine 20 kids on bikes screaming down alleys or over the hills of the school grounds. It must have been awful for adults, but this was the 1950's and we were benign savages for the most part.

Having given up cycling in college, I returned to it a few years later from necessity. I needed to get to a job and we had only 1 car. The bike became my transportation again. And it was great. Since it did not really matter how I looked at work I could ride rain or shine. We moved to a rural area and the bike became a way to drench myself in the beauty of the area. I developed as a distance rider, stretching my stamina by riding further and further for longer and longer periods of time. It was then that cycling became an avenue for that sort of uplift that sages call mystical.

Mysticism is the experience of unity with something greater, usually God. But the mystic experience can ground itself just about anywhere. Mine was in the riding, because at the speed of bike I had the time to notice the world in much greater detail. When my body was pushed by the length of the ride I would suddenly find myself sensually immersed in the surroundings with my consciousness unfocused and just a little outside my body.

I remember the day in Chicago when I was do a 50 mile ride, which was long for me at the time. A thunderstorm came up but I kept riding. People were running for shelters and I would have too, except that I was already soaked to the bone. So I just kept riding. It rained so hard and in some places was so blinding, that I became just a current in the downpour. I could scream and hoot and no one could hear or care. I rode for an hour like that, transported by the thunder and lightning and drenching downpour. It was an incredible feeling and cemented me back to my bicycling.

Welcome to the world at the Speed of Bike

So this is a new thing for me, blogging. But any number of people want to see a blog about my various semi-adventures cycling. There is no big agenda for this effort, just a running commentary on my experiences cycling.

I ride a recumbent biycycle. You can see the style at www.linearrecumbents.com. This will suffice for now to get the blog going.