We were terrible at handshakes anyway

We were terrible at handshakes anyway.

When I arrive in the parking lot at Douthat, Ken is already there.  It's winter, not frozen or snowed in, but the trees are bare, their dead leaves piled up around their trunks like the shirts of a bunch of cold swimmers looking out over the lake.  I haven't seen Ken in almost a year, I estimate, but he's the same.  50 now, he muscles out of his truck, bald, lean, maybe 200 pounds of him, the shape of a man you're careful with when you shake his hand.  He will crush you, perhaps.  So when he stretches his hand out, I sort of go for a high five of some kind instead, though I'm not sure what exactly I'm proposing.  To compromise, or perhaps in his confusion, he drops his elbow and shifts his thumb back to point at his huge chest, like maybe we're going to arm wrestle.  I switch to fist bump, but I do so at the same moment he settles into fuck-it-let's-just-hug-mode, and things get away from us fast, and I just barely avoid punching him in the dick.

Nice to see you, buddy, it's been 11 months.  Here's a punch in the softies.  Happy birthday.

-

I think back on that ride with Ken a lot now, a big Douthat shred for his 50th birthday before the Virus hit.  Nearing 5 hours into that ride, and on the verge of physical and emotional collapse, we really settled in and started smiling at each other, at how weird we are, truly bizarre human beings who, for fun, take something they both enjoy immensely and then do it for so long that it's not fun anymore.  We finished right on time.  We drank a beer, ate some chips, and before he left I hugged the absolute shit out him.

In the future, I will...something else.

-

It's Spring now, stuck in my office and it's raining, and it occurs to me that maybe this Virus is our big chance to finally get greeting each other right.  If handshaking is over with - which there's sound epidemiology to support and has been for a long time - then maybe this is the moment we've all been waiting for.  If you've ever been accidental-handshake-slapped in the tits before, this is your chance: pick something.

Certain cultures put their hands together in praise, give a subtle bow.  Namaste.
Others simply raise their eyebrows and smile.
What will we do?

Last week, Ken invited me back to Douthat, another loop into the highs and the lows of it all.  I had to turn him down.  I've been a little sick.  I've got projects to work on with the kids.  I've been...running.  There I said it.  I've been running.  I'VE BEEN RUNNING.

But also, more than anything, I live in fear right now.  I don't know how to greet him when I see him again.

It's a blank slate, friends, or at least it will be someday.  Our good intentions cannot hibernate forever.  How will we express them?

Up, up, up.

We, Viruses

Most rides have a beginning.
There's almost always a moment: your garage door creeps open, slowly, like some kind of huge mouth about to sneeze, and your house coughs you out into the world.  For a little while anyway, you're alive and free to roam the air.  You swing a leg across the way you always do, stomp the pedals, and away you go.  The wind carries you, borne out onto the roads and down trails, like a barrel into a waterfall, fast, and fully alive.

The duration of your toxicity is still a little unclear at this point.  Researchers are staying up late in labs right now, stooping and peering into microscopes with blurry vision while they struggle to breathe through dirty, used masks.  Around the clock they toil in an effort to sort out just when and where and how long you are infectious - this knowledge being a key element to fighting a pandemic.  But as a metaphor, let me be clear: You're the Virus.

We all are.

On March 12th, I went for my last ride with actual human beings.  I met Lee and Andy and Paul at Champion, and we shoved off down Main Street - riding side by side back when people still did that sort of thing.  7 PM on Thursday in early Spring, the streets were lined by crabapples and cherry trees that were just starting to flourish, but the warm asphalt was already nearing a bizarre level of desertion.  There were no people.  We rode west to O-hill, still laughing and spitting and jovial, sweating and breathing right there next to each other.   We turned our lights on and rode it out together, the sublime, shared experience of one last good night ride, before things changed.

Cyclist, we breathe on each other.  We are partaking in human-powered transmission of the soul, from here to there, and it takes oxygen.  Lots of it.  Our bikes are transportation, but so are we.  We both are passengers and have passengers, and we sweat and spit stories back and forth.  We cough and submit ideas.  It settles the mind, of course, but it's hard to imagine us as anything more than pathogens right now.  Carriers.  Big lungs full of, in pursuit of, in fear of transmission.  The perfect ride is out there for us, somewhere, waiting, like a host.  We probe the outer membrane.

In the days since that night ride,  I have lost track of the sequence of events, which day it was, what came first or next or last.  Schools were shuttered.  Work changed.  Group rides ceased.  People died.  We have grappled with these things in intervals, some slower or faster, and in fits and starts, each of us trying to find peace with the decisions we are making.  We are so distant now.

I've noticed something about us, Cyclists: we count on each other.  Roadies rely on each other, trade turns pushing our faces into the spring breeze for the benefit of the group.  Mountain bikers count on each other for tools, safety, for maintaining the trails themselves.  So there's a lack there now, a hole in that place where you used to push your hand square against the base of your buddy's spine and push him back into line.  Now more than ever, into this headwind, we need each other.  We are a broken chain.

Despite our efforts, John Prine died today, along with 1800 other Americans, each of them an entire universe of stories and ideas and friends and places that they had yet intended to see, now gone.  Consider this, folks, before you venture back out and try to re-find that vital thing which we have all lost: We Will Not Get John Prine Back.
You can fix the link, but the chain is never quite the same again.

Most rides have an end.
Back up your driveway and through your garage door,  you are always drawn.  Your house itself drinks you back in.  It will end, someday.  Won't it?

Be smart out there, friends.

Up, up, up.