1st Days...

1st days of vacation are always transition days, especially when the first day is a Friday, a day which would normally be filled with all the minutiae of a busy work day. Instead, I'm cruising across Wyoming on a beautiful July day with cotton ball clouds hanging in a gloriously blue sky. I-80 out of Laramie is not very busy as we steer west headed for Utah, then Idaho and our night's destination, a tiny spot on the map called Mtn. Home. Some people find the drive across Wyoming dull and boring as the sage brush blends into a 360 degree horizon, which by noon will itself disappear into a shimmering haze of heat. But I love it, absolutely mesmerized by the wide open spaces. For a cubicle cowboy, which seems to be my current fate, getting out where I can see for 20, 50, sometimes even a hundred miles or more is a blessing.

This year my wife Sophie and I are bound for Oregon to bicycle down the coast on highway 101. One of my coworkers, Karla, had planted the seed for this trip on a cold and snowy Denver day. She had returned from a business trip where she had taken a couple of extra days to drive the California portion. From her description it sounded like heaven as I stared out the window at work watching the snow blowing sideways and anticipating yet another brutal commute home in a blizzard.

Zipping along at highway speeds I notice the occasional group of antelope grazing on the still lush prarrie grasses, waving luxuriously in a stiff southwest breeze thanks to an abundant winter snowfall. Way out on the distance the peaks still show snow up high. For the antelope life is good right now, though they seem completely oblivious to the roar of the endless parade of trucks and cars whizzing  by.

We've already passed our first pair of cross-country cyclists hugging the still generous shoulder of the highway heading towards Rawlins. I honk twice as we go by. The leader looks up, sees the bikes on top of our car and recognizes the friendly toot and raises his arm in a wave. Given the wind speed and direction they are in for a long and challenging day of cycling. I'm reasonably certain they wouldn't wish for it to be any other way. Like the majestic pronghorn, the world of the bicycle tourist shrinks to what immediately surrounds them. Unlike me, steering 2,000 pounds of steel and covering more than a mile a minute, the cyclist sees in perfect focus and clarity everything around them. For me the landscape flys by in a too-quickly gone blur. For them, moments last longer. For them the tar-filled cracks I don't even notice are a sensory adventure. They don't just see them, they experience them, not just by sight but also by smell, and by feel as their steed's twin tires squish through the heat-softened black goo. I envy them the connection with their surroundings, the rush of the increasingly hot wind that still provides a touch of coolness as it evaporates the sweat from the back of their jersey.  Not just the smell, but the taste of the air as they labor up one hill after another pulling oxygen into their labored lungs like kids slurping an ice cream at the county fair. Soon enough I'll set aside my metal behemoth and join them.