Day Three on the Southern Tier Bicycle Route- Solo

Tonight I am too tired. Too tired to tell you about my day. How I woke before dawn and and left my cozy Scamper camper behind to pedal into the desert and watch the morning come. How I was greeted by big black bulls in the road that still had sleep in their eyes.

I am too tired to tell you how the mountains rose up above me. A lesson in geology onto themselves. Towering peaks worn down thought the ages, some of them have come to resemble old mens crumbling teeth rather than their former majestic selves. If you stop to rest beside one, you can hear their erosion happening, the pebbles falling down the rubbly sides, knocked by a lizard or a mouse. It has been happening for eons-just like that.

I am too tired to tell you how the road from Hillsboro to Emery Peak winds and climbs, taking you first through scrub and yellow grasses, then up among groves of Alligator Juniper with their reptilian, scaly bark and then how the towering pines fill in, thrusting upward just like the peaks. Snow fills in too. But, don’t worry, I didn’t get cold. My inner furnace burned, and so did my hands, knees, neck and back.

For nineteen miles, I climbed, the sky getting bluer with each one. And then finally I was there. The elevation made me light headed-or maybe it was the euphoria. The air seemed thin and shimmery.

Then down. Sluicing through the forests on the cold, northern side, snow and rock and tall pines all in the shadow of the mountain. My hands sore from gripping the breaks, the wind chilling me, and then out, into the desert again. A different desert though. Tall mountains always seem to create separate worlds.

I am definitely too tired to tell you that after all that, I still had 40 miles to go-up and down again and again over the foot hills, nearly bringing myself to tears before I realized that it was way past lunch time. Then sitting on the side of the road and delightedly eating last nights left over Alfredo sauce on bread thins, and apricots-they are like candy-and my first ever energy drink. It worked.

Now finally, I sit in my tent in the courtyard of a closed hostel ready to sleep. This was an exhausting, grueling, most beautiful, fantastic day. Good night.

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