It would be hard to describe what I am doing as being seated. The camp chair that I am flopped in lends itself to being hunched over, but even that doesn’t quite do my state of relaxation justice. It would be best said that someone poured me out of a jug and as my body was the melted, broken down form of metal, I was molded into the chair where I now reside letting its protective canvas sides hold everything that I have to offer. I only move for another sip or for a handful of Doritos (which I have found are legal epo).
Getting one’s self to this level of relaxation is a skill that most will probably never cultivate. It takes some serious dedication to be able to melt into a chair with such abandon that nothing could make you move, unless the chair breaks, of course.
It’s not just tired or fatigued or worn out. You wouldn’t close your eyes even if you could. The level of elation and tranquility that is exuding from your body is so smug that you almost want to kick yourself, but that would require moving and isn’t on the agenda. And to be honest any sense of how smug you are being is completely beyond your level of thought at this point. You are just where you are, feeling euphoric and unconquerable.
It was my riding buddy in Chile, Camilo, who first introduced me to this concept. We would go out into the countryside ripping each other’s legs off in the climbs and hugging corners as diesels past, hauling ass on the descents and when we knew we would probably be limping back to the house, we would turn around. Riding past the Cerveceria just outside of Santiago was our cue that we only had a few kilometers to go. Camilo would suddenly jump out from in front of my front wheel finding himself to the white line between lanes of traffic and using the currents of the semis passing him, drop me at the last minute. (Editor’s note: I do not condone this type of riding. Every time he did it I was sure he would die, but goddammit he would take off like a rocket.)
It was the soft pedal at the end of one of these rides that we began to chat about our after ride rituals. Mine was to more or less collapse into the shower and then try to be just enough productive to not get in trouble with the Mrs. for the rest of the evening. His, grab a 1.5 Liter Crystal on the corner and drink it in the shower and then pass out watching TV.
He said, “Una cerveza.” There is no drug or euphoria better than a hard bike ride, the kind your not sure you will ever recover from, the kind that you are sure if you were any less of a human you would be whimpering from the pain, but no you are out here for the long haul and it was your idea to take the long way up this fucking hill, yum, sweat tastes good. And then follow it up with a beer. You just kind of melt into nothingness and everything is right in the world. Nirvana.
According to the wikipedias that just took my money and if you’ve ever used them as a source you should give them $3 as well, Nirvana is:
Nirvāṇa (Sanskrit: निर्वाण; Pali: निब्बान nibbāna ; Prakrit: णिव्वाण) literally means “blown out”, as in a candle.[2] It is most commonly associated with Buddhism.[web 1][3] In Indian religions, the attainment of nirvana is moksha,[note 1] liberation from the repeating cycle of birth, life and death (reincarnation).[5][6][note 2]
In the Buddhist context nirvana refers to the imperturbable stillness of mind after the fires of desire, aversion, and delusion have been finally extinguished.[2] In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the divine ground of existence Brahman (Supreme Being) and the experience of blissful egolessness
The word nirvāṇa is from the verbal root √vā ‘blow’ in the form of past participle vāna ‘blown’; prefixed with the preverb nis which means ‘out’. Hence the original meaning of the word is ‘blown out, extinguished’. Sandhi changes the spelling: the v of vāna causes nis to become nir, and then the r of nir causes retroflexion of the following n: nis+vāna > nirvāṇa It is used in the sense of ‘dead’ in the Mahābhārata (i.e. life extinguished). [Monier-Williams Sanskrit English Dictionary sv nirvana]
Blown out. I like that. Partially because it fits into this blog post well and it gets bonus points for being a phrase we cyclists use when we are done, finished, ready to collapse into our chairs. I like to think of it more as a Roman Candle. One that was held in the hands of a teenager with too much testosterone who probably should have never been given a lighter let alone explosives, but nonetheless, there is the candle and he is waving it around as it shoots its internals out into the night sky in a display of extravagance. And then he’s just standing there with a cardboard tube in his hand feeling a bit awkward about what just happened.
I am not a racer. I’ve never been a racer and if things continue along these trails, I will never be a racer. I’m a sufferer.
I know it will be looked back upon as a “good” ride when after giving everything I thought I had to give, I find this spark that I didn’t know was there and I go off. The trail drags my legs, my bike and my mind into places I didn’t know were there and the smile on my face is in direct disproportion to the pain that is throbbing through my body. The burn, the lead legs, the feeling that if you are forced to go uphill one more fucking time you are going to sit down in the trail and cry.
Yes, that is who I am.
And I don’t do it because I want to be on the podium next time I pay someone else to be able to ride my bike and so they can time me and tell me who was the fastest. I don’t do it so that next time I pedal I will be able to say on some mobile phone app that I was the KOM on that 1/4 mile stretch of trail. I am also not doing it to get to the trailhead and not see any of the people I started riding with and not be able to share a beer with them.
I do it to suffer, to feel pain, to anguish and enter that place of vacillation that makes you doubt whether you can finish and then blast on through because that’s what you do. I suffer for the pure fact that suffering leads to a camp chair.
You can certainly enjoy a beer in a camp chair at the end of a day on a ridge and enjoy it. Shit, you might enjoy it a lot. It might even be something that you yearn for, but to find Nirvana, to find yourself melted, immobile in that same chair smiling inexplicably while you eat Doritos and drink your favorite adult beverage, that takes some suffering. You have to take that Roman Candle out and wave it in the air with unbounded enthusiasm until there is nothing left.
P. L. and R.
That was some Truth. There’s no better feeling than being so whupped you are completely satisfied just laying there. No want, no what’s next, just laying there.
Yup. That’s what it’s all about.