Dark moments abound in cycling: Hills that won’t end, champions that are constantly revealed to be doping cheats, that foul, nagging feeling you can’t pedal past, when you’re alone on a rainy day, that no matter how hard you push, how many challenges you set, the end of your life is coming steadily, and in the end you will have nothing to show for it other than shat, ate and fucked less than you maybe wanted to.
These are all things that can reduce even the most hardened cyclist into a bawling idiot, slobbering on the side of the road into the snot strip on his gloves. But there is nothing crueller, meaner, or more demoralizing than a headwind.
A hill you can climb, a new–and sometimes honest–hero can rise, you can get therapy or get over yourself for the rest, but a headwind will wreck you.
And so I found myself barely five miles outside of Montrose, facing a headwind so vicious that going downhill and pedaling, I was barely going 6 miles an hour. It was mean and I was going nowhere. Not nowhere fast. Just straight nowhere, forget the speed.
I had 54 miles left to ride, at least, and I wanted nothing but to find the nearest boulder and sit behind it, out of the wind. Forget riding a bicycle–the wind had whipped all the fun out of it for me, and I knew I was looking forward to nothing but a slog.
My frustration turned to aggression, and then spilled over–I started remembering old slights, things I’d long forgiven, and getting mad about them. I was suddenly furious about getting fired from my job again, angry at everyone involved. I remembered things my parents had said to me, or friends from college I hadn’t spoken to in years had done to me, and I fantasized about calling them up and picking a fight about it.
That’s what a headwind does to you. Turns you into a vicious, petty animal with a memory only for conflict.
Finally, a café appeared. Not a café, though it claimed to be, but one of those general stores with a Kokopelli statue outside, overpriced and tacky jewelry, and some usually bizarre and overpriced attempt at a cup of coffee.
I didn’t care. It was out of the wind, and maybe there was someone I could fight. Maybe I could just shout at someone about Kokopelli. I hate Kokopelli. Even when I’ve had nothing but a tailwind and a downhill and a beautiful, laughing Italian model to share it with, I’d still get off my bike to punch anyone wearing a Kokopelli medallion. Sure, he’s playing a flute, and it’s something you might get for your mom after a trip to New Mexico, or have a poster up to represent what a free and liberal spirit you are.
Well, that flute used to be his penis, before some highly creative P.C. warrior turned it into a flute. His erect penis. Happy you got it for your mom? If you’re lucky, she’s already been through menopause and even some lecherous fertility god won’t be bringing you a sibling to share your trust fund with.
The wind that had turned me into a spandex demon was so famous it even had a name, the Kokopelli-selling, crap coffee-making, but rather nice lady told me. “Cedar Creek Wind”, it blew regularly in the morning, as the colder, heavier air from the mountain came tumbling down. When the Pro Am challenge started a stage in Montrose, they had delayed the start until 11, just to beat the wind.
I waited until 10:30, and then, having recovered from my fury, got back on my bike before getting frustrated with myself for not doing any riding. The wind only stopped halfway up the first four-mile climb, and I was grateful. Only a headwind makes you enjoy climbing at 8% for that long.
I got a decent descent before starting a second four-mile climb, followed by a two-mile climb.
I had some thirty miles left to ride, and I was beat. Exhausted. Strung out by the wind and rocked by the climbs. The landscape had gone back to the brownish peaks and canyons of the desert, and I hated it. I was bored of it, and wanted the green and yellows of the mountain forests back. At least there was shade, then.
I stopped frequently and ate more than I needed, mostly to comfort myself. The miles dropped, and I finally recovered enough to find a decent rhythm.
Gunnison, sitting on the western edge of the continental divide, is regularly the coldest place in the U.S. I had decided, even before this headwind, to reward myself by staying in a hostel for a night.
As I got closer, I got excited. hoping it would be like other hostel experiences, filled with interesting foreigners and capped with a trip to a bar where we’d all buy each other beers and make an amusing night of it.
When I arrived, the hostel–a one-story house in a residential neighborhood–was empty. I called the owner to book a room, and while I was waiting to hear back, I pulled out my map. I hadn’t had a day off since Vegas, two weeks ago, and that, plus three days of climbing and high elevation in Colorado had clearly caught up with me today. My legs needed a rest. I wanted to be out of Colorado in three days, and figured out a way, by adding some miles later in the week, that I could still do that while giving myself only a 30-mile ride the next day. Not even the hosts were there.
I booked a room, and went down to the bar where the owner worked, eager for a beer and a conversation. The bar was just crowded enough that she couldn’t talk, and I had a beer and left. Picking up groceries. When I got back, the only other guy in the dorm room was there. He was trying to move to Gunnison in order to start a “structural integration” practice, some bullshit new-agey thing that dealt with examining people in their underwear in order to re-align their connective tissue and give them a posture better than the one that society and their childood traumas had inflicted on them. He was nice enough, but awkward in conversation–with a habit of listening stone-faced and then bulging his eyes out at odd moments. His posture wasn’t even that good.
In the morning, I chatted with the host a bit, and she offered to let me hang until the afternoon. With a short ride, I had that luxury. But after our intro conversation she ignored me. Other people filtered in, but I felt uncomfortable. It seems the more eager I am to engage people and talk to them, the more quickly disappointed I am when it actually happens.
I took off for a café for a cup of coffee, and then got on the road to Sargents, mindful of the posture the hostel had imprinted on me.
batadam 