Pleasant Plum #1

“I love my boyfriend, I love my boyfriend, I will not break up with him!" I had to tell myself over and over again, as I drove his unconscious form home from the butt-fuck no where of western Colorado. It was somewhere between two and three am- I couldn’t tell because my vision was going. It had been a very long day-as pulling a tick off your body at 3 in morning would seemingly foreshadow. I had choosen to ignore my unpleasant visitor and hope for the best. I was wrong.

Going to Clark College was one of the best decisions of my life. Beautiful mountains, lakes and an awesome Anthropology program. There I met “Mike”. My Mid-West sensibilities said no. The nascent Coloradoan said yes. Mike was grungy, always a had a fresh cut somewhere, and honestly smelled sometimes; but Mike was the smartest, most amazing person I knew.

To cement our new found relationship, Mike wanted to show me why he was always returning from the weekends openly bleeding or in stitches. He wanted me to go with a him to a “Mountain Bike Ride”. Sure why not? I fondly remembered the rides my granddaddy and I went for in Iowa.

The only catch was that he wanted me to ride too. I could do that I guess?!

Camping really wasn’t an issue, after all-I had survived my share of Girl Scout camp outs. The tick was a quiet reminder of why I was no longer a Biology major. Mike liked endurance rides, so he’d be tackling the 60 miles course. I’d entered the women’s beginner race, 20 miles of what was billed in the pamphlet as “easy terrain”.

Grabbing my Schwinn and my tennis shoes, I shook off my disturbing night’s sleep and soaked in the beautiful mountain side. Gorgeous. The stillness and pristine silence were poetic. Light danced by the near by lake, and you could here the faint rustle of the creatures.

The women’s race was the last to start, so I saw my honey enter his other personality.

Seemingly feral men with gnarly facial hair were lined up in tight jagged lines. Black, tight bicycle shorts with a psycadelic jerseys-showed of their tone butts. Gear that seemed to come straight out of a Star-Trek episode were strapped to themselves and their bike frames. It was a mass of raw humanity, hyped up by Gatorade, Red Bull, and perhaps the occasional illicit drug. On the Go! horn, a stampede of gears, wheels and men took off down hill.

More than slightly shaken by this experience, I waited until my turn. I grouped up with the other women. They were hippies-unshaved legs, bicycle shorts and the distinct smell of sunscreen mixed with last night’s flavor of incense. My group was significantly less, so I didn’t have to be worried about the start of the stampede. At the Go! Horn, I told myself: you don’t have to win this, just do it and soon you’ll be back.

Um... I wasn’t a cyclist. Mile five -my calves hurting. Mile ten,-my calves were screeching for me to stop. The scene went by too slowly and yet too fast for me to take everything in. The fresh mountain air I was so enamored with this morning seemed like mace in my lungs. Did I mention I wasn’t used to the altitude?

After a while my body moved into a vague sort of numbness. It was a relief; and it seemed I saw the mountain for the first time, the active, moving, changing dynamic that was the trees and the creatures who call the mountainside home. I was no longer the objective observer I was this morning. I was a part of it, struggling against the mountain grade, trying to survive for one more petal stroke. A living creature, striving.

I finished finally, last, with an abysmal time. Waiting for Mike to complete his circuits, I could vaguely see his blurry “Greatful Dead” Jersey as he whizzed by. I sat down with one of the other ladies who had waved as she past me during the race. We split some of the most excellent mirco-brews between us. I definitely wasn’t in Iowa.

Mike finished exhausted, two hours after everybody else. He had gotten lost when he followed what he thought was a “trail”. I dragged his sorry ass, bleeding from multiple scratches to the truck and had to pack up by myself, as he whimpered for his favorite beer.

Driving home there was stone silence. Mike seemed to be catatonic after the mixture of exhaustion and too many beers. As the loyal girlfriend, I drove us home.

At least, I was the loyal girlfriend until we got back.

After then was another matter.

But I was definitely going to purchase some Lycra bike shorts.