Solstice

The cold chill of winter is upon us. Freezing to the bone on the way home from work, I longed for those warm days and nights. Summer has always been my favorite season. When I was a child, I never went on any fancy vacations with the family, but that didn’t put a damper on things. Summer still meant freedom and adventure. It meant being able to ride your bike from dawn to dusk, exploring as much of my little corner of the world as my two wheels could take me. For a few short months, there was no responsibility of classes or homework. It was all about where I was going to pedal next and what I was going to discover when I got there. A time where the Verdugo Hills were my Alps.
As I grew older, my primary mode of transportation changed. Internal combustion stretched the boundaries of my world tenfold. It let me cover ground faster, and see and experience more than I ever could have imagined in my post-training wheel days. But the more intricate the form of transport, the more complicated it becomes. Maintenance, insurance and the cost of operation are necessary evils. And that’s when the simplicity of two wheels, two pedals and one chain came calling again.
Combining a bike with a fossil fuel burning vehicle then became an ideal means of escape, and summer was the best time to put responsibilities on hold for a few weeks and hit the road. Loading up the Hyundai/Mitsubishi Precis hatchback, custom built chicken-wire grill built by my father ,praying with Short-stack , hoping the 4-cylinder box with no air conditioning makes it to Mammoth Mountain. Crammed in the back of the truck cab, Talin's gleaming smile as we headed towards Yosemite. She almost burned down Mammoth itself with a marshmellow fire-ball, hence the big smile. The memories I have of those adventures are some of my most valued possessions. A quest for adventure, armed with bikes, in the companionship of friends old enough to know better yet still young to care, gave me enough adventure stories to break down an entire generation of grandchildren to tears of boredom. The roads to singletrack in Washington , races in Arizona, the legendary trails of Utah and a few detours in Oregon are some of the highlights. Different friends bring different memories.
Lately, it seems like another stage of that cycle has hit. A handful of summers have since passed those daysm and it seems like my friends and I find the road trips fewer and farther between. Like riding your way into racing shape, the career, the relationship, the mortgage require time in the saddle, and we all know that theres only so much of that in a given day.
It may have seemed pathetic, but on my last trip to Mammoth Mountain with the team, I visited some of the same places I went on a previous mountain bike journey couple of years ago with three friends. The landmarks were still there – a fresh coat of paint on the greasy spoon, another owner running the same local shop- different yet the same. It made me realize that another summer will be coming soon, and maybe its not too late to get the band back together one more time. Off-key and a few beats behind isn’t an ideal way to spend a summer, so I wouldn’t recommend it, but whatever you do, make it count.