The First Sunburn of 2014

There’s an exquisite pleasure linked to pain. Let’s be honest, as cyclists, we are all masochists. It’s the only logical motivation behind our insanity. There is an inherent suffering required to be a cyclist and you have to learn to love that or you won’t be a cyclist for very long.

My first reaction is to recoil from the pain.

The water is hot. I like my baths that way, but the pain is due to the red spot on the top of my foot that was caused from sitting for a couple of hours in flip flops after Sunday School with the Church of the Holy Alliance of Mooseknucklers. The red on top of my foot coincides with the cherry red hue of my face, neck and arms. My lips look like red caterpillars about to pop from eating too much.

Instead of pulling my foot back I jam it down into the water and wait for the intense sting to settle. After a few moments, it does or at least my brain turns off the sensation. I know my foot is still burning. The water is hot and my skin has already been compromised, but the pain goes away. I lower my body into the water. As soon as the water hits my legs I have to go through the same process of holding still until it fades.

Yesterday, Church was held on the Creek that is Little. We met Kenny and Heather in the parking lot and brought Mr. Ben Crane with us in the Mooseknuckler-mobile. This is his second mountain biking ride in recent history and he’s using it as an excuse to get away from the mo-in-law so there wasn’t much resistance to any suggestion we made, as long as it got him out of the house.

We dragged him around the mesa and like everyone else that experiences SG mesa riding for the first time, the are beat down by it, but at the same time left with the desire to try more. And there’s the views as well.

The first time I went to SBCU I got really drunk. “Sure,” you say, “like that’s any different than any other night.” No, this was a little different.

I woke up in a panic at about 6:13 AM. The panic was caused by not being entirely sure where I was and also the fact that I had no idea where my phone and wallet were. They weren’t attached to my body. I pulled myself out of bed through the haze and found my phone and wallet neatly placed on the night stand next to me. Good thing I’m no amateur.

I manage to take a shower and then head downstairs for some breakfast. I enter the elevator and a man that I have never seen greets me by name and with a snicker asks me how the morning is treating me. I answer that it will probably suck once I sober up and the look on my face gives me away. He tells me that we met in the bar in the lobby the night before and had a few shots together.

Wait. There’s a bar in the lobby?

This happens a couple more times as I make my way through breakfast. And then I retire to my room where I spend the next little bit wishing I could throw up. I can’t. The bus is there and we head to class.

After about 3 minutes, the instructor looks at me and asks me if I’m ok. I reply that I will be…

That night, the guy I was rooming with brings in a few beers and we take it easy while we watch some TV. And he says something I didn’t understand at the time. He said, “Most people don’t know how to truly enjoy a good hangover.” There too caught up on the pain and don’t take the time to appreciate how awesome they feel the next day. No, they only remember the pain.

 

After yesterday’s sunburn, I probably should have spent the day nursing my wounds in bed with the curtains shut and the lights off. But this is my birthday weekend and I wasn’t about to let some little sunburn keep me down. Nope, we loaded up the bikes and headed out. First to the Goose and then to Bill’s Organic.

We rocked out 14 miles by Pulling the Gander. The last mile or so KB got hungry. Seeing that we had two Clif Bars between us, we headed down the mesa into Springdale for lunch at Oscar’s. Veggie burgers were had with the accompanying requisite recovery drink. I only stopped eating when I knew I was so full that I probably wasn’t going to enjoy riding my bike too much after.

Then we drove over to the bottom of the JEM. There were so many people in the parking lot we actually had to wait about 15 minutes before we could change our skivvies. Then we headed up the JEM and the hooked onto the Hurricane Rim to the bathrooms. That’s where we were really headed. Bill’s Organic heads up from the bathroom toward the JEM (It’s what the BLM calls Cryptobionic which happens to be the dumbest name I’ve ever heard. And yes they did ask me what to call it and I told them Bill’s Organic and they didn’t like it. Well, we’ll see about that…) and then across the road and to the mesa where it Ts. We headed left first and road to the water tanks. Then flipped a bitch and rode to the top of the JEM where we then headed downhill and back to the Mooseknuckler-mobile.

Every spring, there is the first sunburn. You have to get burned before you can be tan. Once your tan you can just be in the sun and be fine. I kind of love the first sunburn of the season. It’s an indicator. It marks the beginning of the time when we spend all that we can outside. We change from milky pink to a kind of soft brown. But first we must feel the pain of the red.

P. L. and R.