I recently found this photo amongst the hundreds of unused, crappier than most, photos I take while riding my bike. It’s obviously not all that good, yet I find myself liking it. I like it–if for no other reason than–because in the past, every time I have ever crossed over this particularly heavily trafficked intersection (heavy for being out in the middle of Bumfuck, Michiganderburgh) where the North Higgins Snowmobile Trail crosses a Roscommon County seasonal road, I have been forced off my bike to walk. The sand is too soft and the numerous tire ruts from trucks, ATVs and dirt bikes too deep.
I’m sure you can well imagine, it is mentally and physically annoying to come to a complete standstill and trudge through ankle-deep sand, and believe me, there is something particularly heartbreaking about being forced off the bike when–at the time–you are on roughly a 0% grade. Still, the handful of times that I have crossed this intersection heading north or south bound I have had to walk at least five to ten yards until firmer ground has allowed me to remount my bike.
I like this photo because every time I have crossed this intersection in the past I have walked, and this photo reminds me that was all in the past, because I can clearly see where last Tuesday, the Pugsley’s girthly tires allowed me to plow through those deep ruts, remain upright on the bike and float over the sand like a gravity free pig, only stopping on the other side to marvel at what I had just done for the first time and to snap the photo.
I am sure, somewhere in all this, there is some sort of semi-inspirational, hang it on a shit job cubical wall, life metaphor for letting go of the past, staying focused, achieving goals or some such thing, but I’m not so in to that bullshit. It’s just a photo of a sandy trail that I finally rode without dismounting because I was was on a heavy ass bike with tires nearly four inches wide.
Semi-inspirational, potentially metaphor-laced bullshit aside; I like the photo and was pretty stoked that I finally successfully rode my bike over that sandy bitch of an intersection.