On my 38th birthday, I needled my husband into joining the weekly mountain bike ride at the local cycle shop. The 6 p.m. start, in summer, ensures plentiful twilight and a forested reprieve from southern Oregon valley heat. However, this was not summer. I was born on Valentine's Day, which is celebrated each and every February. An early evening roll out means hard dark and harder temperatures.
My first night ride. Borrowed lights, not enough layers. Rain the whole time. Forty frigid degrees. Out and back up a remote fire road hill. Lost a rider from the group, briefly, and we considered aloud whether he'd been eaten. My battery faded half way down, and I had to ride uncomfortably close to someone else and borrow his beam. If I didn't keep up, then I was alone in a rolling brown sphere, seeing nothing, with the sensation of going nowhere, and fast. Except maybe off the side and down the canyon. Cold so pronounced my legs were banging against the bike from shivers, and I was grateful for any feeling at all in my brake fingers.
Did I mention how cold it was?
Returned to the bike shop for the free jambalaya, sat around with Doug and our friends and planned car pools to distant races. Best birthday of my whole life. It only took me two days to feel warm again. On the outside at least.
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2 comments:
Happy Birthday Kathryn! I called while you were at the doctor with Zara and then I never called back. Making phone calls is quite difficult these days, except at 6am or 10pm. Anyhow, I am glad to hear that you had a great birthday and have some new friends. You are such a great writer. I miss you!
Oh Kathryn. I remember riding my bike to work at the library at CU in Boulder on a beautiful June morning. When I walked out the door in the afternoon, however, the sky had turned the color of the apocalypse--greens and purples I had never seen in the sky before. I got on my bike and started riding down the hill to my apartment when the wind kicked up and knocked me clean off of my bike. As I picked myself up, I looked and saw a little finger of cloud point down from the sky. Oh holy cow--twister's a comin'! I rode--trying not to get knocked off my bike again (and feeling a lot like a character in the Wizard of Oz)back home. A Californian's first tornado.
Love.
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