Fixed in My Mind

But you know how it is: we fix people in our minds, and to us, they will always be a certain age. - Greg Garrett in "Cycling."

Day 123. Third day of the rally. I am blue about going home tomorrow. We are seriously thinking about retiring in Tennessee. We passed a lot of homes on the route today with garages in which I could easily imagine my bikes hanging. One of them was Cheryl Crow's. I'm pretty sure that one is out of our price range.

The "business center" of the Embassy Suites in Franklin, TN is presently filled with teenage boys, all of whom are teetering on the cliffs of despair because the hotel computers won't allow access to Face Book. Normally, I am in my element surrounded by teenage boys. When my son's football friends used to come over and hang out in our 1,050 square foot home, it was durn cozy. Most of them were varsity defensive players. To quote the legendargy Traber (the kid has biceps bigger than my thighs, which are not exactly petite since becoming a cyclist), "I am a large man." A large man(child) and a LOUD man(child). Peak experience!! I was just getting ready to write about how hard it is to concentrate on my writing because these kids are even louder than Traber, and danged if we didn't strike up a big ole long conversation about high school football. They play 3A for Page High School in Franklin. You gotta love the universe!

It was a spectacular day of cycling. I am ecstatic over our performance. There is no way I could blog about it without my ego doing grave injustice to my practice of Buddhism. Suffice it to say, we rode with the big guns. My bliss is complete because, even with temperatures in the 90's and no cloud cover, I didn't overheat. My captain is rewarding our success with lofty goals for upcoming races. I plan on basking in the present glory for at least a week. He is basking in the attention our Cannondale received after today's performance (men in his age bracket talk about bike components with the lust previously reserved for the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated). We are the new kids on the block, and I realize that our nine second allotment of fame will fade like a Tenneesse sunset. For now, the moment is exquisitely sweet. I'm grateful to dwell in the here-and-now.

We visited the Arrington Vineyards after the ride. Our new friends Stew and Nancy were there, and we joined them for wine and cycle talk. Only fellow cyclists could endure rehashing in intricate detail a ride we had completed only two hours before. I chose the quote for today from the novel I am currently reading because Stew and Nancy will forever be fixed in my mind as they were today. We spent a couple of hours on the shaded deck of the vineyard, swapping cycling stories and looking out across the rolling hills of Tennessee. It was one of the best afternoons of my life. I will lose it if I talk about it, so I won't write any more. I want to remember today for a long, long time.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc