bicyclism

This weekend’s rides to and from Hijiori were some of the most emotionally daunting bike rides I’ve been on yet. Biking alone lends one to experience not just the highest highs but also the lowest lows. I flew the first 35 km to Hijiori. Every other time I’ve biked this route I’ve been with Rachel and she likes to stop and take a break before going up any big hills, which is torturous to me as I find it just pools all my lactic acid and makes the burn 10x worse once we climb the damn thing. Being able to just… go! …felt really free and powerful. Inertia roots me so strongly in all aspects of my life. I feel like there should be a diagnosis in the DSM for Pathological Inertia Disorder. It’s something like laziness… lack of motivation… but there seems to be something more to it… And when I overcome the static stage of the disorder inertia propels me so completely. I hate stopping. I hate standing. Sitting is good, moving is good, but standing is torture. So, riding alone and being able to go at my own pace and take minimal breaks was such a pleasure.

The usual road we take to Hijiori was washed out this spring by rain. If I wanted to take that route, which was definitely still an option, I would have had to walk my bike the last half kilometer down some stairs into the town. I was contemplating which route to take the entire way to the fork. There was a map at the fork which plainly sketched out the detour route as windier, longer, and hillier. I decided to go for it. It’s so much easier for me to ganbaru (yes, Japanese has a single, over-used expression just for “giving it your all”) when there’s new country to behold around every corner. It was hot. The hills were steep. I had no real feel of when the up would end and the down would begin. Alex sent me a text suggesting that, having chosen the detour, I would arrive hours later than our predetermined meeting time. My enthusiasm waned and gave way to bitter despair until I saw a sign, “Hijiori – 10 km”. Well, fuck! I can do ten kilometers of anything! And Hijiori lies in a caldera, so at least a few kms of that had to be downhill. I’m still wrapping my head around just how psychological my body’s physical capability is. I busted ass to the top of the mountain and beat Alex to Hijiori, a full 30 minutes before we’d originally planned to meet. Sheer adrenaline! Yesss!

And then there was my ride home on Monday morning. I feel so inept at trying to communicate what biking feels like for me. I remember having the same feeling about skiing when I was younger. Sure, people can see that I enjoy it but the fact that, at times, it feels downright religious is something that is fairly difficult to convey without sounding hyperbolic. Truly, though, the rapture I sometimes enter on my bike is the closest thing I can imagine to the ecstasy people speak of when they are rolling around the floor crying out in tongues in a church full of like-minded Jesus-lovers or at the pinnacle of a solid state of meditation. When the ride began and I was flying through the forest with a quick, clear, shallow little stream making its way around boulders and trees beside me, I felt so lucky. Blessed, even. Like I’d discovered this amazingly simple and powerful secret, that biking is actually the shortcut to mindfulness, harmony of world and spirit, pure, unadulterated joy. Then the hill started, and at first I was able to grit my teeth and battle upward rather cheerfully. There’s something spooky about not knowing how long you’re going to be pedaling up, though, and I hadn’t mapped out this ride beforehand, merely embarked upon it based on hearsay. My mind, and I do admit that this WAS rather hyperbolic, turned to Denali, Everest, the places in the world where up seems unending. Just imagining the existence of those places while I was on some unknown upward trajectory myself, mountains all around, convinced me of the distinct possibility that my exertion would never end. I got off and walked a few times. 2? 3? I don’t remember, but I do remember how dark my mind was in those moments. That feeling of giving up. Despair. Submission.

I don’t remember the point at which I reached the pinnacle. It was some bit of a way before I saw Gassan, I know, but when? Was it gravel? Paved? (There were sections of each along the whole route.) I am not sure, as I think even after I had reached it I kept doubting that it had come. Seeing Gassan (one of the biggest, most beautiful mountains in this prefecture. It is one of the three holy mountains of Yamagata and apparently represents death) looming through the clouds, enormous and stolid, eerily snow-covered on a hot summer’s day, was almost frightening. It was so massive, its presence so tangible. I am having a hard time referring to Gassan as “it”. When (he?) would disappear behind trees or hills, I’d ache for another glimpse, always straining my eyes and neck in the proper direction until I could see (him?) again. And then, actually, my heart would sing. No wonder so many mythologies have mountains as the home to Gods and oracles.

Again, I had the feeling of great privilege to have been able to sweat and nearly cry my way up Hayama (the mountain I was biking on) so that I could experience Gassan from such a powerful, personal vantage point. And then the privilege of sailing down, down through breezes cool enough to give me goosebumps and around corners blind enough to make my heart thump at the possibility of meeting a two ton hurtling hunk of metal along the way. And all the beauty passing by so quickly on both sides, not being able to shake the feeling that I was missing it, but refusing to put the exhilaration of descent on pause to satisfy my eyes. And then the dismal, abrupt return to civilization and aching humidity and too much concrete throwing the heat and dust of the road into my face and the smell of exhaust and the stomach clenching moments when a truck passed by at 70 km an hour, barely leaving me room in which to twitch an elbow or a knee.

God, though, cycling. What worship of the emotional impact of landscape and the element of elevation. The humbling agony of up, the self-affirming exhilaration of down, the sacred vistas too much for your eyes to take in as you either huff and puff into the sky or coast, flying, faster and faster, descending back into the land of humanity.

What privilege!

<3clea