Uphill Battle

I took my bike yesterday on a northern journey up into the pine forests of Cohasset, California. Once you leave the flat valleys of Chico, the road leading to Cohasset (called...Cohasset Road! Go figure.) gradually grows steeper and steeper, until you are forced to shift down to your "Holy Crap!" gear on your bike in order to keep going up. My "Holy Crap!" gear is the next to the last one on my bike. I save the last gear, my "Worst Case Scenario" gear, for those rare moments when the road in front of you suddenly switches into a vertical off-ramp towards the sky. I've had a few of those moments creep up before, and like marathon runners trying to get up Heartbreak Hill in Boston, it is enough to bring you to tears.

There's only one real Heartbreak Hill in Cohasset, and it occurs right before you reach the infamous Fire Station #22. I guess it makes perfect sense to place a fire station at one of the highestest points in Cohasset. Too bad they can't have one of their volunteer firefighters stand on the corner with a large hose and blast me with water every time I pass. With the warm temperatures yesterday, I would have paid dearly for that. But upward I climbed, past the fire station, past the school house and past the church, until I finally reached the nexus where the pavement ends and the gravel begins. I sat down on a nearby stump to take a rest, eat a banana and take in my local surroundings.

The area above Cohasset is just covered in pine forests. You can watch falcons flying about overhead, and in the woods around you, you can hear critters thrashing about. I'm always on guard for something to come out and attack me, like a renegade squirrel or an inebriated hillbilly. There's a sign that you'll pass along the way, saying "Beware of mountain lions!", but I don't know how true that statement really is. Most mountain lions don't hang out where there's traffic and loud noises, and there's enough trucks whizzing by to scare them off for good. And this isn't really mountain lion territory, anyway—I think the locals here just want to be left alone and are trying to scare off people. But I'm still on my guard for mountain lions. Ever since I heard that story years ago of the people that got attacked by a mountain lion/cougar/puma/panther/catamount/big-angry-cat-with-sharp-teeth while riding their mountain bikes in California, I'm ready to take off in a moment's notice.

While sitting on my stump, contemplating life in Cohasset, I noticed a foggy haze in the air about me. I thought at first that it was coming from some illegal trash fires I noticed along the way (which caused the local fire truck to show up), but after a few trucks carrying ATVs and motocross bikes whizzed by me, kicking up dust into the air, I had my answer. Suddenly, Cohasset was not the natural paradise that I had experienced in earlier visits. Even all around me, I could hear chainsaws blazing away, making me feel that deforestation was happening all about me. After the third caravan of moped riders whizzed past me, I had had enough of sucking in dust clouds. So I hopped back on my bike and rode the 20 miles and 3000 vertical feet back down into Chico.

Nothing beats the feeling of coasting downhill a road bike, seeing the world go by within minutes and feeling the air rush though you. As I tell people, when you're on your bike going downhill, it feels like you're dancing in heaven. It's an amazing feeling that makes the uphill climb in the beginning all the more worthwhile.