I wonder if I've got it all as figured out as I like to think I do. It's so easy to get into a groove of doin stuff and then suddenly realize that it's been three weeks since a flood of awe at the ludicrous and violent beauty of the fact that things exist last overtook me.
Three weeks is way too long to go without falling to my knees. It should be more like three hours, tops. I'm not doing as good a job as I want at remembering on a day to day basis that I'm made out of stardust. Workaholism, or, no, rather, doin-stuff-as-if-any-of-it-matters-ism, is stuck on to me like a shadow. I'm better than I was ten years ago, but how much longer till it's gone for good? What's a guy gotta do to permanently unhinge his brain from the double whammy of implicit societal programming and oh-so-pedestrian death salience coping mechanisms?
I borrowed the truck yesterday to go help a neighbor with some computer stuff. I'm the de facto community IT expert because my birth date is after the Eisenhower administration. On the ten mile dirt road to their place the evening light made the rocks with the snowdusted Sierra crest behind glow in such a way that mmph. Even the now for me novel experience of driving an internal combustion vehicle - I'm piloting a ton and a half steel and glass machine that runs on exploding million year old algae muck sucked from the bowels of the earth by people who live in Bakersfield! - was enough to make my throat tighten up. The world is magic and fire.
I'm overdue for getting out. I'm plotting my first real outing on the Long Haul Trucker, the steel touring bike I traded for with a friend. Scoping routes. Thinking through gear. Wondering how far my legs will take me. I haven't been on a bike since 2019, when I ran Moab's Whole Enchilada with a stuck dropper post and blown rear shock. Nights are long, now, and cold, but maybe it'll be worth it. Maybe the sunrise will be worth the night.