I did not heed the call of the 350 alarm this morning; I wanted to sleep. Deprivation training is not on the schedule, and I’ve never been able to do well without sleep. I never pulled an all-nighter in college. I think I did sleep in the library one night, when it was open 24 hrs the week before finals, but that was very deliberately planned.

The body needs food, and sleep is food. I’ve been trying to stay humble this year, not being too aggressive with training, and feeding my trained body as much as it wants. This is one of the great successes of the year. It is also inevitable that training becomes exactly that, and today’s four hours fit the bill. Putting in the hours.

I got off at 0900, pedaling up from Thumb Butte. I made it to 264 in a bit less than an hour, stopping for a good 10 minutes total to help two other riders move various trees off the trails. Last weeks wind is spring cleaning in the pines. 264 is fun, scenic, good variety. It also didn’t feel very easy ever, the legs were not flowing. That combined with route confusion involving the second half of 264 west of Other Spruce Mtn, caused a small loss of heart, and together with the weak legs and impending social obligations gave me reason to retreat back up Spruce and down dirt roads (and 318 and 316 at the end) to the truck. Still some good hours, and invaluable hike with bike training for next month.

Said hike gave me opportunity to reflect on the mind. I’ve made huge gains in control there over the last few years. Descending Milagrosa during SSAZ got old and hot, but I was able to make that not a big deal. So to with traversing Gold Bar, both on foot during the Red Hot and on (beside) bike during the Rim Ride. The clearest moment was pushing up the mud on the king of Sovereign Trail hike-a-bikes. I had already decided that the mud was a passing, amusing nuisance. So I could laugh at myself slipping around. This mind, coupled with training that made carrying the bike physically inconsequential, made an enormous difference. I struggled, but in certainty.

Today was the largest intrusion of uncertainty in quite some time. Eric will be reading this tomorrow after following my tire tracks and wondering where the hell I was going on that lonely dirt road. In my mind, now, the continuation of 264 is obvious. This morning that was far from the most salient fact. Hope you had fun today, and didn’t allow me to lead you astray. I’ll be back later this week to finish that loop.

Now the task is sleep, not one coming easily now. Too much socializing, potato salad and elk burger eating, and black and tan drinking. It’s been a while since that was my mode, and drinking games have for the most part lost their appeal. I believe it’s still hard for me to see my dislike of such social stuff as a deliberate choice, and not a continuation of earlier-in-life social retardation and timidity. Now I am a strong recluse.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up, make breakfast, watch This Week, hang out, and go for a ride in the afternoon. Climbing intervals. If the legs aren’t trashed now, they will be in 24 hours.

There are always things I want to fix in my life, and it’s gratifying to at 26 have achieved a level of mastery that allows me look on such a fact as speaking of possibility and not as an advance guard of mortality. It is both, but I see the full side today.

I work with good people. One of whom, our English teacher, is also a recovering Philosophy major. Recovering from the academy, and assuming the unending work of making the language of a Hegel fit into everyday life. He talked about desiring to live to be 5000 years old, so he could do “everything.” I respect his wish, but for me 90 or so years will I think be enough. Nothing, most of all life itself, makes sense without boundaries cut around it, just as Josh Bell’s playing lacked out of context and frame. In my first summer during college I was climbing in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We were moving on soon, and I had little skin left on my fingers. It became very clear very suddenly, that I had that hour to do the route I wanted, or it would be years in the future. An obvious thing that took me almost two decades to see, and another half to really begin to understand.