I have not gotten out early this year that I can recall. During the week its virtually impossible since I have G in the mornings, and weekends it just hasn’t happened yet. This past week I found myself riding in 110 on a regular basis. The commute back home isn’t so bad since I have a tail wind and its fast. I did the Usery Loop on my roadie on Sunday from 2-3pm because that is when i had time, and the climb up the pass into a headwind seemed never ending. I kept trying to rally telling myself only another 15 minutes til I’m in the pool, but it was just brutal. slow-roasting. Last week I rode up and down National at 5pm. Cruising down the dirt road to the benches at the start of the trail, I had my helmet, pads and gloves all stowed. I just sat there at the trailhead in the heat haze. My pack was a block of ice, and as the ride went on i was drinking faster than it was melting. When i got to BV i sat there with a block of ice on my head, my shoulders, my belly, back to my head. All the while thinking what a stupid way to die in the desert this would be.

I didn’t really feel hot climbing up National, just in a bit of a fog. But for some reason I was climbing everything! Maybe my tires were melting? maybe i became pliable and sticky? The climb just drained me, but somewhere over the last few weeks I have re-evaluated my climbing move and improved some holes in it. On the Heckler, I’ve come to relax lifting up things and letting the Heckler stick and rebound, but i’ve lost some attack somewhere in the process. Starting to put that back, i next realized that you can relax and attack at the same time, and the calmness is helping me see the little moves within the big ones to get my bike onto easier and easier pieces of lines. The skills of descending are coming in sideways to help me climb, help me see things i had not seen.

At moments like this, when there is happiness and advancement for no good gawdamn reason in a sweat-filled cloud, its all about the bike. It makes me happy. It makes chicken salad out of chicken shit. Even my commute, as dull and dangerous and with the crapass roads on the Res, puts me in a better mood at work and upon returning home. The furnace is a way of life here, if I give in and quit riding, I quit trying to be happy.

I have made it to Somo 4 weeks in a row since getting back from Moab & Fruita, and i have commuted a day a week for 3 weeks in a row. Today I rode 30 minutes to the dealer to get the Prius, with no shirt and no socks and the lightest shorts i had and my balls caught a great breeze as long as I was moving. The sun has been awful, but its been great. I’m on my bike. Wednesday I parked at G’s daycare, rode straight down McDowell into work, cooked, rode home into an uphill headwind at the tail end of the first summer storm, which sprayed me and cooled me and gave my soul a boost after a week of 112. And then I picked up my happy little girl. Yesterday Alex and I rode National, we played, we sessioned, we socialized with the other regulars. Pieces of lines and moves, and adjustments within the moves, and jumping and rebounding and flow, slowing down in the heat. I rode the Spine again. It was under 100 and in the shade. The west side of the Valley is burning and the smoke blotted out the sun and sent winds across the Mountain. It was the nicest day in a month.