of reaching that mountain pass, or that border, or just that town when self-doubt nagged and wheedled all the while. We remember blissful freewheels propelled by a raging tailwind and we know too well the vexation of being bullied into roadside dust by the hasty drivers of city and suburbia. Like members of any tribe we have our common enemies – biting headwinds, rampaging and snarling farm dogs, potholeladen roads, careless drivers, and prodigious thorns. And like any tribe we have rituals – the methodical sunset hunt for a place to camp, the meal ingested in less time than it takes to boil water, and the dictum “new day, same pants.” When we wave each other off we say “Happy trails!” and “Keep the rubber side down!” and we offer a disingenuous wish for tailwinds, knowing if they get them it will be headwinds for us. And, when they are just an amorphous blot on the horizon, I am a fraction more content than before because I know a little of their future and they of mine. We are off, deviating yes, but for now on the same thread of the spider’s web. I’m Bunyan Velo 56
still alone but I feel a touch less lonely when I muse that they too will ride the metaphysical peaks and ditches that mark this life on wheels. They will have serene moments of appreciation under wide skies. They will know the brutal satisfaction of a climb and the searing thrill of a descent. They will be chased, probably, by the same dogs. And at the day’s end they may retreat from the road or punch the air in jubilation, only to set up camp and do it all again tomorrow. Right now, some of my tribe are scouting desert scrub for a secluded spot to pitch a tent, dreaming only of pasta. Others are loitering in the liquid gold of a sunrise as they scrutinize maps and imagine what all those dots and lines hold in store. They are star-gazing, they are bartering for bananas, they are missing people, they are cursing another hill, and they are coasting and plummeting and swerving and careening over some chunk of this planet. And right now, somewhere, another one of my tribe is a spindly silhouette mounting the crest of a distant hill, and someone is watching, waiting, pedaling on, and smiling too. BV