Bedrock & Paradox

I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.

Pictures and Anecdotes

Orientation for the incoming MSW class began yesterday, and I’ve done a bit to help out. Busy, not as much with actual items on the calender, but with making the shift of mind.
Late this morning I was on the road out by the railroad tracks doing sprint intervals, prep for the MDH in a Day getting into full swing. On the seventh, of seven, a red F-150 passed me shortly after I passed the line on the asphalt and began winding things up. I sat down as the mirror passed my shoulder, and when the cab/bed junction was even with my bars, we held things even for a little more than a second, and as the end line neared on the pavement I gradually pulled up until my bars were not quite even with the mirror before I threw the bike to the line and stopped pedaling.
I was spinning 34×14 pretty well and out, which according to Sheldon Brown puts me close to 30 mph. Not bad (for me) on a mountain bike, and nice to know the truck was going the speed limit.

The backpacking obsession has become fairly serious after so many fun trips. M and I hope to get in one more 3 day, ~60 miler on the Bechler River and Pitchstone Plateau in Yellowstone next month. (Others welcome, count on a Saturday-Monday schedule.) I was cruising the funny content on Backpacker.com the other day, and their modest itineraries led M to comment (radical and lamentable paraphrase): “I want to start hiking more so I backpack longer. Doing seven miles days in pathetic.” Which says less about her being judgmental than it does about the highly altered standards she’s developed learning to backpack from someone with issues like mine.
I’m proud.
Kelly and M and I were socializing this afternoon, and the brutal low-90s weather necessitated a trip to Big Dipper for ice cream. I barely contained myself from doing a happy dance in the parking lot when I saw they had banana.
I love ice cream, have for my whole life.
I love bananas. Have since before I can recall.
I love Big Dipper, they make the best ice cream I’ve ever had.
So this afternoon, I ate the best ice cream I’ve ever eaten, in my many and long years.
C’est la vie. It’s worth noting that a decade ago, exactly, I was settling into Grinnell, Iowa, as a college freshman.

DaveC

One response to “Pictures and Anecdotes”

  1. Meredith Avatar
    Meredith

    And when he says he Almost did a happy dance, he means he jumped up and down and did the first half of a jig before he realized he looked like an idiot and stopped himself…so incredibly funny…and my quote was more about how I already can do two 15 miles days in a row and if I can do that right now, think how many miles a day for how many days I can do if I actually go hiking/backpacking more than once a month… I could do like… more than 15 miles a day for… more than 2 days in a row… and that would like totally blow apart backpacking.com's idea of a standard day and that would rock…hard. Cause I am nobody's definition of a standard day…at least not if I can help it.

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