To big tires and blue jeans, cheap sunglasses and the American West. I live at the intersection of the Rio Grande and old Route 66, the Mainstreet of America. Roll out the door, across the farm, through the gate, down the bike trail, cross the bridge back onto dirt and onto sand – three minutes, no more. The Bosque – a continuous ribbon of cottonwoods and sand and deadfall in the desert, along the floodplain of the diminutive Rio Grande. Stop to let some air out, soft tires smoothing sand into contrails of Larrys and Nates and Knards. Pedaling slowly, hiking by bike over new and old terrain, tires stuck to the contours and eyes to the sky of ghostly cottonwoods on a grey day. The bosque – a local spiderweb of singletrack for group rides and beginners, not a place for real mountain biking or fatbiking they say. I call it all-terrain biking anyway. Old pictures of Pearl Pass and group rides on bullmoose bars, sitting around sucking wind and water bottles and pipes. 1984. Before bettering and besting the next guy into bigger, faster, and further, mountain bikes were fun for everyone. Now, Stumpjumpers and High Sierras by a different name do the same service; this time, called Pugsleys and Moonlanders and Mukluks. The spirit is not in the tires – it never was – but in the rider. Imagining new places and new ways to ride, like a kid sees a broken sidewalk and curved curbs like jumps at driveway ends. Imagine new routes, new campsites, new seasons to ride. You can go new places! Night. Another near-freezing ride after working late – not the right time to ride, either. Turn, lean hard, front tire washes in the sand. Laying on the dirt, torn jacket, down feathers flying. Racing against the dark into a tunnel of light, onto serpentine trails where tight corners are concealed in shadowed periphery. Humping over hummocks of sand and stumps and grass, off-trail through the halloween-dark night near the sounds of the city and probably homeless, houseless people sleeping amidst the trees. Every city has a place like this. Collapse in exhaustion for a minute, then back on the bike and back home. Racing each other in false contest because racing isn’t fun if somebody is winning. Nosing big tires over sandy doubletrack in the dark where no one else ever rides, spinning the pedals like BMX kids on the sidewalk, lightsabre headlights up ahead. Racing ourselves, together. Racing home. Racing heart rates, now three in the morning, another day rising soon. Racing, riding big funny bikes in the dark because we’re not in Baja or Alaska or Argentina, but in real life just riding down by the river in a shit highway town in the desert along Route 66. BV
Bunyan Velo 102