An ode to gravel

All smiles on a gravel-centric ride in Ouachita National Forest

(Perryville, AR-- right outside of Little Rock)

I must admit to a somewhat surreptitious love affair: I adore gravel. In the realm of mountain biking, this is a minority position and a polarizing declaration, to say the least. I know many, many riders that will do whatever is in their power to avoid setting wheel on these backwoods roads. They speak of gravel with a head shake, and a facial expression conveying enough distaste and revulsion that I know it is advisable to keep my enthusiasm under wraps. And when the inevitable bashing following an ab-clenching gravel climb occurs (a requisite debriefing in my experience), I try to dim the wattage on my manic smile and nod, head down. But the truth is: I love gravel. And lest you brand me a repressed roadie or a training zealot (gotta get the miles, man), allow me to illumine my gravel-loving worldview.

1. Gravel, at its essence, is the chillest medium of mountain biking. On a long ride interspersed with single track, it provides the chance to unclench, spin, and zone out to the prettiness of the day. You can (possibly) recover. You can chat with friends. Or you can just shut up and get into a really direct rhythm. I love its straightforwardness. 

2. Gravel climbing is fun. Unlike technical single track climbs (which I also enjoy) you can dig in, set a pace, and just move. In most cases (exception: we've all been on gnarly, rutted, pot-hole studded gravel roads-- or, ones with ridiculously large rocks) technique and bike handling are not on the forefront-- rather, just pedaling in a sustainable way is. I find the satisfaction of approaching what appears to be a really steep, demanding climb and grinding to its conclusion to be exhilarating. Its simplicity is rewarding.

3. Gravel flats are fun. Even if I'm exhausted, gravel flats perk me up. Again, the simplicity of the process is enlivening and rejuvenating. If you're with a friend (or a few), it's soo fun to throwback to the childhood years and crank and race each other. Who hasn't done this? It's awesome!

4. Gravel descending is fun. Long lines of sight? Check. Easily attainable high speeds? Check. Sunshine and wind in your face? Maybe a butt-clinching, life-affirming spin out here and there on some loose corners? Check and check. I love hauling ass down gravel! Sure, it's essential to ride in control and defensively, anticipating cars around every corner. Stay on the right side. Don't ride on your buddy's wheel. Corner competently or you'll have a bad time. But if you're obeying the basics and not riding like a dingus, gravel descents are amazing. I would also argue that approaching gravel descents with more confidence and speed has made me a stronger rider, improving my cornering, balance, coordination, and stopping ability. There is something just so literally sweet feeling about dropping down thousands of feet on a fast, curvy, gravel road with the wind in your face and your stomach close to your throat.

5. Gravel rides are fun. Okay, this is where the real heresy is committed. But I love gravel so much-- all its parts-- that I am unopposed to and welcome solely gravel rides. Now, I would never choose gravel over single track. But, when the trails are in shitty condition, the weather's dicey, time is tight, or injuries are being nursed, gravel is a good friend. You're outside, in the woods getting an infusion of that which all of us mountain biking weirdos are obsessed with: sweaty, sunny time on two wheels. 

All of this build up is to say: I love gravel. And yesterday, I went on an amazing gravel ride with my new friend Cliff, of the local bike shop Spokes. I am recovering from a really impressive crash sustained on the Wednesday group ride out of the shop and was wanting to get in a solid ride despite not being ready to tackle trails. Cliff suggested a 30 mile loop out in the Lake Sylvia area of Ouachita National Forest. So, we drove the half hour outside of Little Rock and sampled a rolling, glorious cornucopia of gravelly loveliness.

A beautiful day! (Not a shabby view, either)

I will be competing in this race in mere weeks. 

Over and out to dive into another gorgeous day.

excavation.

I get anxious when unexpected people tell me they have seen or, more jarringly, read this blog.

It is the most public artifact of myself.

But-- it is not purposefully, articulately curated. It is an amalgam of randomness.

I am insecure with the incompleteness of the picture. The aesthetics. The subjectivity. The consumption and conclusions of others who land here, and presume this to be a proudly presented product- an accurate avatar for my person, my writing, me.

I am a private person. Protective of unpolluted inner space. I have been working to reconcile my desire to productively harness blogging and other useful forms of social media with my reticence to invite others into my orbit, or catapult myself into theirs-- in a torrent of trivial, delusional self-mythologizing. Compounding my terror of appearing self-important and egomaniacal, I find the whole selfie-culture with its unrelenting duckfaced self-documentation odious, corrupting, and falsifying.

But I am an artist. I am inherently arrogant, self-promoting, and self-aggrandizing. I am obsessed with myself foremost, and the exquisiteness of my own suffering, identity, appearance, and separateness. It is this identity as Creator, Curator, and Other that is challenged by the glut of self-promotional, self-documenting outlets available to everyone. The sacred pool of self-mythologizing-- once accessed only by those pathologically propelled there by some artistic necessity-- has become dilute, trivialized. Pithy thoughts can be blasted to millions. Photos can assume mysterious, possibly important shades of psychological nuance with the application of a filter. Anybody with an internet connection can blog.

This is the tension, encapsulated. The impasse.

If I blog, it has to be special somehow.

If I go on the record and join the cacophony of voices, how do I convey in this casual internet medium the intensity and specialness of my experience? How do I do it consistently, in a way I can be secretly proud of when people tell me they have stumbled across it? And how do I not sound like a total jackass?


I don't know.



But I don't think being quiet is working for me anymore. I think possibly coming across like a nut job or a megalomaniac is better than not coming across at all.

I say strange things.

And this inconsistent, convoluted attempt at honesty-- this is the most public artifact of who I am.

I'm glad you're reading.

the virtues of early mornings

So, I did it.

I pulled myself out of my malaise and treated myself to the most luscious Sunday I have enjoyed, well, since my move.

I loaded my bike onto my car and drove 25 minutes to Pinnacle Mountain. My expectations following my excursions in Allsopp, the urban park downtown, were minimal: while you can't be ungrateful for any trail-enriched green space in a city, I just hadn't been inspired by the offerings. Allsopp is a cobweb of criss-crossing, spindly trail that darts off into abrupt thickets and overgrowth, littered with broken beer bottles and the detritus of low-grade teenage hooliganism. The Allsopp system rides like the manic dream of an ADHD addled doodler, with the aforementioned incomplete offshoots and no comprehensible sense of order. I am a spoiled Pisgahn citizen, who has grown fetishistically attached to maps, multi-hour excursions, route planning. Allsopp is nice. It's convenient; an easy roll down the street. But it doesn't satisfy my need to open up, to invest completely and totally in a moment- in my breath, my cadence-- in blowing the shit out of my legs, my lungs, and coming back exhausted, sweaty, and floating.

When I arrived at Pinnacle, it was a mob scene of families with alarming quantities of toddlers, walking sticks, and knee-high white socks. I unloaded the bike, changed clothes, and eyed the paved path emblazoned "Mountain Bike Trail" with an arrogant chuckle. However, within ten feet, the path gave way to the glorious assemblage of natural materials that most brings joy to my heart: rocks, roots, and mud, all in twisty double- and singletrack. I rode for 7.5 wonderful, fast miles.

My thoughts quelled. The black torrents of irrationality gave way to being. I was not in my head or pacing, miles removed from both my body, the moment. I breathed deeply, heavily; I pulled myself up and over rocks, kept my balance in muddy slicks, and felt the sun on my skin. 

That's what I love. I love the quiet and calm I am when I ride. It's not even a feeling-- which implies an interpretation, a dissociation from the directness. It is literally what I am. I am such an assemblage of adjectives and states as to be almost embarrassingly hyperbolic to put out there. 

And, if I am frank with myself, that's where much of the negativity and fear I related in my last entry rooted from. This is an exciting transition. I am so happy, but it has come at the cost of an environment and activity that was my connection to something so much greater than exercise or riding bikes. The bike is just the medium. But what I get and access from it is something that is, honestly, sacred.

************

This morning, I pulled myself out of bed at 6.

I put the bike on the car, myself in the front seat, and drove to the park.

It was still grey. I ducked and dove, sprinted. Remembered the fast sections, the climbs. Delighted in the soaring of my heart, the meditation of moderating my breath. I came up around a corner, crested a modest hill, where the sun rose in a brash pink burst and a family of deer, startled, sprang towards dawn's stippling. These ecstatic silhouettes merged into the brightening horizon, and I kept pedaling.

 

Some Endearing Late Night Blog Stylings

I have torn myself away from a Netflix binge session, troubled by a realization that has disrupted my usual post-work dissipation into mindlessness. Succinctly stated, it is this: I feel riven by the intense energies my mind and body both exert, their apparent competition for controlling dominion. Who will win: my hyperactive physical body; a twitching accumulation of motor-driven flesh that demands the blood-tribute of suffering, sweat, and bordering-on-brutality exertion? Or, perhaps, the victor is the pale, withered, Gollum-like lord that unceasingly narrates from my skull (riffing on topics as diverse as the universal idiocy of every other motorist to the virtues of Nutella to how ecstatically beautiful well-written essays on WalMarts of Mississippi can be). 

Must one win by submitting the other into oblivion? And really, is it a fair fight-- pitting the merciless, tan muscle of my flesh against the misshapen shadow creature of my brain? No, I don't think so. I don't.  Of course, I must tell myself this at this particular moment, to keep myself buoyed above a breakdown. But, when I sincerely check that internal compass that has literally never, ever been wrong (predicting with an eerie accuracy who I will be seated next to, of my fellow gate-mates, on the plane as well as more weighty life decisions, such as landing this internship) I know both can thrive. But these sides must be reconciled, equally strong. They must nourish each other rather than tussle. And, all metaphors aside, I am their master. It must not be otherwise attributed.

But, it is hard. I feel, always, an extreme: too little or too much. And now, I feel very much. I am seeing, more clearly and less abstractly than ever before, Becoming. I feel I am being presented some very concrete opportunities and choices regarding the accomplishment of diverse goals I have set for myself. I must make some choices. I must seek to define myself and what values I truly cherish and weigh above others.

This blog has been a public exercise of the private mantra. I have said before, and will say again, that I am a writer, will be a writer, want to be a writer. But saying is not doing. I sight the thing in the distance-- the intention, the idea, the pretty phrase. I just have to go for it. And, I always catch myself the second before leaping off, right as my feet leave the ground-- I abort, force a crash land, blame some obscure phobia of heights or the weather being shitty or my blood sugar is low. I am a stylist, a liar, a bullshitter, a faker. I can always concoct some veil over the truth. But I know, and you know too.

If you have goals, they require leaps. This is a cliche, a sad tired plucked over chicken carcass of a cliche, but I am using it nonetheless. Because I am ready to stop the bullshit. I am ready to stop throwing a web of the language (which I should be using otherwise) over my fears, my laziness, my reticence. Oh? So you're athletic and into being outside and also a pretty good writer and documenter of other humans and expresser of your own slice of the human experience? It's terrible, isn't it? Being so burdened with opportunities, blessings, education, and arbitrarily handed out talent that you don't know what to do with it? 

I'm over it. I am reconciling my forces. Concentrating my powers. Nothing inside me or within me has to die (so absurd to even type this) for me to do anything. Compromises are one thing. Give and take, sure. But I am going to figure it out.

To that end, please stay tuned for details on upcoming projects. I am planning on using my time in Arkansas to initiate some creative nonfiction essay pieces exploring my new surroundings. My camera died, which is a colossal bummer, but if I can't fix it this weekend I will buy a new one, and then I will be able to share with you guys (the 3 people that I think regularly read this thing) where I am and what I'm up to.

Until then, take a look at the Oxford American Tumblr page and see what is one of my specific duties at the OA: curating the bejesus out of this sucker.

I'm a little sleep deprived, and feel I am a few steps away from the resolution (or, as -- God help me-- Oprah would say, the Aha moment) that I was seeking when I began this meandering post, but I feel sufficiently lulled to return to gorging myself on the magnificence of House of Cards and my absolute, unceasing, perfect-for-writing solitude.

Morning time.

I have landed in Little Rock.

Following the two day cleaning spectacular that was a prerequisite to unpacking, my place has at last assumed a pleasingly homey atmosphere. I disparaged at the gluttonous overload of STUFF I had hauled to this temporary interlude but finally, a semblance of order has been instated and I feel downright cozy. The past week-plus since returning from the hedonistic shores of Miami has been a manic montage of errands, tasks, to-do lists, deadlines, and procuring of necessities. Nest properly fluffed, I have been free at last to indulge in my most treasured of past times: a snail's pace morning of breakfast, reading, letter writing, and ever increasing caffeination.

Unable to ever divorce from hyper-thinking, there is A Lot On My Mind. I am ruminating, plotting, ordering, writing. Darlings are being arranged and annihilated. Hoarded preciouses of the literary persuasion, discarded. I am striving for leanness. Fighting weight. Sloughing off of the encumberment of previous selves, styles, intentions, yada yada yada. I am new flesh.

Homesickness has prickled my eyes. I have gasped at the realization that my mountains are hours away, and I am in a region that is somewhere between Southern and Midwestern. Accents are exciting new linguistic labyrinths, and I feel strange, other, and foreign. I feel blank somehow. 

And I am delighted.

Miami.

Insomnia and Unsavory Internet Prowling

As much as I loathe "the internet" (with the obligatory quotation marks, as this is a concept that --I know, eye-roll inducing-- is a huge one that I cannot succinctly wrap up without sounding like the Unabomber's successor and a gigantic hypocrite- yes, this is a blog, I know) I have become one of its late night drifters. I imagine it in alternating metaphors: it is a lonely diner, with flickering lights and bitter coffee, populated by sallow waitresses and society's flannel-clad detritus; now, the recesses of the ocean, where only grim-faced predators stir. Or perhaps a dark stretch of road, where the only light to be glimpsed is the stark twin beams of your own headlights, consistently illuminating nothing. 

And yet, here I am. Moment after moment. Cradling my computer. Staring into its screen, laid out on my bed, blank-eyed and possibly drooling. As if I may, sifting through the endless, exclamatory shit, divine something inspiring, sensational, transcendent. What am I looking for? I am looking for diversion, sure. News, sometimes. Interaction, ehh, perhaps. But really, I am looking for reassurance. Direction. Answers.

Big concepts, these. Which is why I, and so many others, believe we may pry them from their ethereal, abstract vapor and conjure them into real-ness. Actuality. We have become obsessed with ourselves, of course, but also with others. If we scroll through enough photos of others' events, others' self-documentation, we will find ourselves to be creative enough, exciting enough, unique enough, inspiring enough, beautiful enough but also- normal enough. What arithmetic this is, what complex calculus of self-inventory and projection divided by another's avatar. 

It is a big lie. I am a freak, and so are you. We are all uncompromisingly, relentlessly weird. Nobody can relieve you from your you-ness, the burden of your own odd bundle of preferences, revulsions, desires, aspirations, and terrors. We seek relief from our own internal freakshow by staring at the habits, projections, facades-- the composed realities-- of others. A mosaic of mutually confirmed prosaic normalcy. 

Somebody recently told me I needed to be okay with being weird. I don't think this person had any idea how profoundly their statement, said as an aside, impacted me. It was a matter-of-fact statement. A command to stop the burlesque of being something I'm not. It was relieving, to be called out summarily and without any to-do at all, and instructed to desist in the smoke-and-mirrors act of being bland.

What does any of this have to do with the internet? Simple: I stare at it trying to find myself somewhere. Because all the forces I feel, everything I conduct, my million aspirations-- I am striving to find the blueprint without taking risks. The route without the action. I am trying to find, in the crystal ball of today, my calling, my future, myself. 

Here's where I am: in my parents' plush guest bedroom, with a swollen face, posted up following a long overdue removal of my wisdom teeth. I can feel the congealing atop the four caverns in my mouth, and my tongue is tempted to explore them, to push the healing clots aside and bleed. I am, rationally, resisting this urge. I am shouting into the diner, the ocean, the dark road.

I am, always, hoping for something to materialize from these depths. Something to relieve my insomnia and my doubt. To rise up from all the disparate metaphors and take shape, to be real.