Miles: 65
Pedaling time: 6 hours 5 minutes
Elevation max: 9,000ft
Elevation gain: too much
High: 85
Low: 32
5:55am, day 5, we awoke to a posse of deer grazing on a lawn size salad. Just over 300 miles in, we're shedding miles faster than planned. We leisured over coffee and smoothies in a local cafe, where everyone seemed to be in an anxious hurry to get somewhere. But our gang of 5 live in a beautiful world where coffee can take two hours, gas station clerks tell you a history of a town, and we just drift, smiles wiped across our face, along the white painted line of the highway until it turns.
Life is simplistic: sleep, bike, eat. No neverending grade upwards or panniers stocked too full can compare to the diffuculty of life itself. We complicate our lives with the silliest of forms, and when leaving everything at a town back in California, what a freedom it is to forgot, escape, and let go for days on end. Transplanting ourselves into a space where there are no nagging worries, the things we run from fade into a distance and what is left is room for inspiration and freedom.
We have strayed from our route. Deciding to verge off the highlighted loop to see a lake and a scenic backroad, clearly it is not A to B that matters, but how many roses one can smell. Lonely roads, deviod of cars for hours, oxygenated wind, and wide open healthy forests pass us by. Despite the grueling climb,10% grade, 4 miles, our detour was well worth the extra miles, sweat, and all too scenic cruise hugging the quiet lake. We eat hungry kings out here, clif bars sandwiched between bagels. Everything with sugar and carbs tastes good, as we need constant fuel after hauling our weeks life supplies up and over giant mountains.
There are very few things that one feels the need of fear out here, aside from cars with loaded trailers. But suddenly that all changed. O'Reilly, up the road a hundred feet, missed the angry lost cow blocking my white painted line. We stood there staring at each, both terrified, myself gearing up for a race against the largest boy of a bull. To him, Bianchi, Ralph, and I must have looked like some foreign alien from Vegas on acid. He mooed with furry, Ralph growled back at him. It was a good 5 minute hold up out on hwy 72, until some friendly cowboys showed up on horses. Straight out of a western film, these were the real cowboys, dirt dusted collard shirts, leather belts, Levi's jeans, the kind of boots only sold in Texas, and that hat with the angular tilt, wavey slick brown hair fraying from beneath. We smiled at each other, having found their lost stud, Bianchi took off wanting to run with these real boys and their horses.
Day 5, and muscles start to gravitate down to theighs. Dinosauric red boulder forms turn into tall Christmas tree mountains with springtime youth filling in any gaps. Fish Lake is our home tonight nestled in a hill of birch that glisten with an afternoon breeze. Too tired to worry about the bears and moose we fall asleep admist the beautiful silent lost lake hidden in the forest.
