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| Quilcene's Finest Grocery |
I rode the Hood Canal loop on my bicycle a few days ago. It’s
a 120-ish mile loop that is mostly flat with a significant climb just south of
Quilcene. This post isn’t really about the ride, but the ride serves as a nice
backdrop for what this post is actually about. And what is that? Open hands.
Metaphorical hands. I’ll explain below.
I did the ride with a friend of mine. He is the guy who sold
me my first road bike thirteen years ago. We haven’t ridden together much in
the last few years, so the start of the ride was full of the kind of conversation
that you’d expect. Family and work and reminiscing about the past. It was
cloudy and cool, but the traffic was light and the miles flew by.
We cruised down Old Belfair Highway and then onto Highway
106. The highway runs along the south shore of the Hood Canal and is largely flat.
The water was calm, the wind was light, and our moods were high. This was going
to be easy. We made a quick stop at Union for some food and caffeine before
rolling on.
Highway 106 tees into Highway 101 on the Olympic Peninsula. We
turned north, and settled into the pleasant, quiet rhythm of pedaling. The ride
took us roughly nine hours, and the bulk of that would be spent in silence. There
are different kinds of silence. Most silence on a ride is comfortable. You
allow your mind to wander. You feel your body working. You feel the breeze, the
texture of the road, and the smell of the shore. You watch the birds. You exist
in the moment.
And then I started to hurt. Around fifty miles into the
ride, everything started to hurt. My sit bones. My lower back. My hands. My
neck. The road, which was relatively flat up to that point, began to roll.
Short, steep hills one after the next after the next. The silence changed from
comfortable to something else. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was
slipping into that dark cave that everyone who has done enough endurance
activities is aware of.
How do I describe it? Imagine a slowly dimming room. It’s
slow enough that you don’t notice it immediately, but eventually you look
around and realize that everything is colorless and dark. That’s where I was
at. I was in the dim room, but I didn’t know it yet. We pulled off at a state park
that neither of us had been to before to use the restroom. We were probably about
one hundred feet above the water. As we pulled off the road, my friend asked if
we were sure we wanted to stop here. The restrooms might be at the beach.
We were about sixty miles into a one-hundred-and-twenty-mile
ride with six thousand feet of climbing, and we were both concerned about an
extra one hundred feet of climbing. That’s when I knew we were both in that
gray place. We were both suffering. Well, starting to suffer.
A few miles later, we started climbing. And climbing. And climbing.
Normally, I like climbing. It’s fun in a hard to explain way. A good challenge.
I did not like this climb. It was a half an hour slog into gray clouds hanging
between the trees. No water views. No sun. Just damp and climbing and trees and
fog and more climbing. My world was gray.
The climb ends at the trail head for Mount Walker (a
challenging but beautiful hike). I was looking forward to an enjoyable descent,
but that was not to be. The road was wet here, and spray from our wheels coated
us in gritty water. The shoulder was covered in gravel. I clenched my body against
the cold and tried to enjoy not pedaling. I was not successful.
Eventually, we reached Quilcene. Eighty miles into the ride,
and the sun came out again. We ate sandwiches. Drank more caffeine. Sat in the
parking lot and took some Advil. And the gray lifted. The ride continued, but
the hard part was done. The next forty miles went by quickly and as effortlessly
as possible.
Which brings me to what I want to talk about. Open hands. You
see, I knew a thing before that ride started. I knew that I was undertrained and
underprepared for a ride that long. And I knew that I would end up in a dark
place. Actually, that was kind of the point. There is something about doing a
hard thing just to see if you can still do it. I knew I’d end up in the gray
place, the hurt locker, the you’ve-made-a-mistake place. And I knew it would
end. But I wanted to see if I could still ride through it.
I could have held on to the dark place with closed hands. I
could have embraced it as the new normal, but I didn’t. I held onto it with
open hands. It was mine, for the moment, but I was ready to give it away. And
that makes sense, I think. We’re always ready to give up the bad times or the
pain. Because they aren’t ours. Shouldn’t be, anyway. They are a temporary burden. Right?
But what about the good times? What about the sunny ride
along the flat coast with your friend? What about the feeling of the sun on
your arms after a passing rainstorm? What about the hug of your wife or the
praise of your boss or the smile on your child’s face when you walk in the
room? Are those ours? Why do we think that? Why are the good moments ours while
the bad moments forced on us? What happens when disease or calamity takes the
good moments from you?
Can I tell you a secret? None of it is yours. The sun. Your
kids. Your spouse. The sea breeze. It’s all God’s. The blessings you claim are,
at best, on loan to you. They belong to God. He gives them and takes them as He
sees fit, which… is hard. Right? But does grabbing hold harder work?
My wife once described trying to hold on to the blessings God
gives us as trying to hold on to M&Ms with a closed fist. If you reach into
a bowl and close your hand, you can hold a few. But you can hold on to so much
more if you open your hands, put them together, and lift them out. They are
precarious there, your blessings. They can be taken away. But they can also be
shared.
For me, a ride like the Hood Canal loop is a sort of
practice for dealing with the ups and downs of life. We’re going to have bad times
in life. Most of them pass. We’re going to have good times in life. Most of
those pass too. Trying to hold on to them harder doesn’t make them stay.
I’m not advocating for not caring or not working hard to make
the world a better place. What I’m saying is we should be grateful for the good
times and endure the bad times. And we should do both with the knowledge we don’t
really own anything in this world and that this, too, shall pass.
With love,
Me
Ride stats:
Distance: 123.44 miles
Ride time: 8:57:35
Elevation gain: 6,283 feet
Struggles against the consuming gray: One. For like an hour
or so.
Calories spent: 4,066
Red Bulls drank: 3
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