Sunday May 24, 2009 – Little Ride to the Hill Country

[snoof]

I didn’t get to ride yesterday because we had a 40 something person graduation party for my son Luke. It was nice and I didn’t embarrass myself or Luke too badly so I’ll count the affair a success.

But I’ve been feeling really stressed and antsy. I haven’t ridden since the ninth of the month and that’s too long. Plus, between work and last weekend’s graduation I’ve been around too many people. I need the space and privacy. Although I had some ambitious plans for a good 400-500 mile Sister Ride in the Hill Country, exhaustion cut it short. Still I rode from:

Austin to Dripping Springs to Fredericksburg to Kerrville to Comfort to Sisterdale to Kendalia almost to Blanco to Fischer to Wimberley to Home. 246 miles.

I didn’t sleep well last night. My dreams alternated between me pissing kerosene that ignited fires and me being chased by Tommy Lee Jones who pissed fire-starting kerosene on me. All night long this went on. And so realistic.

When I got up this morning I was still tired and I almost went back to bed, but more encounters with Tommy Lee Jones were unacceptable. Besides, I really wanted and needed to ride.

The weather was strange today. It had rained a lot Saturday and the evening was a cool fifty-nine degrees. But this morning, as I checked out RK’s oil, tires, etc., it felt almost sauna-like. Hot and humid. I was sweating while I took a shower. When I returned to the bike the morning had gotten dark, rain-like, and a little cool. I put on a leather jacket and took off.

I was glad for the jacket and for being able to enjoy the road. Sixty miles out I got a nose full of the pleasant skunk aroma I love so much and I began to relax. The tension of the last couple of weeks brought on by work, the flight to California, all of the graduation stuff, all of the people, yada yada yada, began to melt away.

Sometimes I don’t realize how tense I am, until I start to let it go. Although it feels good for the neck and head and back to loosen up, there is often left soreness; even a pain from the tightening the muscles have been subjected to. It’s insidious that we have to learn to live with the stress and tension and it is what no doubt kills countless Americans through the heart attacks and strokes that it spins.

Since I ride RK pretty regularly, I’ve gotten accustomed to a weekly release of the stress. Missing a week as I did put me in the bad position of accepting the tension as normal again. It an evil thing and one that I try to not participate in anymore. But it still happens.

The skunk’s perfume hit the primitive and powerful olfactory sense mechanism that resides in the lower brain stem. It’s why aromatherapy can be effective in relaxation. Lavender for some, skunk for me. Along with the Harley rumble I felt better than I have in a few weeks.

Unfortunately, by Fredericksburg I was feeling exhausted. I wanted to ride but I was fading fast. That’s rare and a testament to how tired I must have been. Instead of continuing on to Harper then IH 10 and down to 41 which would take me to the fine Sisters roads I decided to travel the twenty or so miles to Kerrville and cut the day short.

It not what I wanted, but I’ve ridden tired before and although nothing terrible happened, it almost did. So I listen to my body. I actually considered finding a motel in Fredericksburg and sleeping until morning but my boy heads back to California for a job next Saturday and I wanted to spend as much time as I could with him. So I continued on.

For the second time today I almost hit a buzzard. Coming around a turn the big bird lifted off his carcass buffet flying but a few feet in front of me. I could smell the venison on his breath. It’s a pretty bird really. You can really see it when you get that close.

On the way to Kerrville I reflected on why I was so tired. It could have been allergies, including that to the molds brought on by recent rain. It could have been my body’s reaction to the colon cancer which will be detected in a few weeks when I finally get the colonoscopy I’ve avoided for going on six years.

I decided instead that it was my allergy to all the people I’ve been around lately who have robbed me of precious alone time. The allergy has another name: introversion. Most people think of extroverts as the gregarious, outgoing, life of the party types while introverts are shy, quiet, wallflowers. My definition is different. I believe that extroverts recharge and get their energy from being around others. A psychic vampire kind of thing.

Introverts like me, however, need to be alone to get our supply of energy. Being around others is draining (partially because the extroverts are sucking it from me) over time and I require more alone time after interaction with others. I’ve been running short on that alone time and today I paid for it.

I cruised through downtown Kerrville and as I was heading out my thoughts turned to how I had nary a bug splat on my windshield. So different from the forest ride of two weeks a go when the fuckbugs almost did me in. As that thought rolled around in my brain - bam! a barrage of bugs hit me. It was like I drove through a wall of them. My windshield was covered with their guts, as were my glasses and helmet. And they were large, big grasshopper sized, not small like the lovebugs.

I don’t know it I hit a caravan of them or what, but I decided that when I got to Comfort I’d pull out the BugSlide and clean them off the bike. That’s how bad their carnage was.

The trip to Centerpoint was brief with just the good sound of RK and very little traffic. I hit no more bugs after the Kerrville massacre. But the physical exhaustion seemed to be increasing.

I pulled into a parking space in Comfort and cleaned the nasty insect innards off my RK. I sat on the curb and pushed three Diet Cokes worth of caffeine into my bloodstream to no avail. I walked down the main street hoping to kick in my reserves, but I fell asleep on my feet and sleepwalked into a bed and breakfast sign opening a small cut on my eyebrow.

As I was considering checking into the bed and breakfast with the offensive sign I remembered that JJ had a ranch somewhere around here. I didn’t know if she and her partner Tara were at the ranch for the Memorial Day holiday but it was worth driving there to find out, if I could locate the place. They’d let me nap for a while. If they weren’t there I could either break in or just find a nice shady spot to crash on for an hour or so. Any of these beat the exhaustion that was threatening nausea.

I’d met JJ in Montreal in September 2004. She was a 19 year old ball girl for the Expos and I was sitting near the dugout ogling her as she bent over to shag foul balls. When DeWayne Wise sent his broken bat hurtling toward her in the bottom of the fifth I gasped. But when the sharply pointed Louisville Slugger turned spear entered JJ’s neck and exited behind blood and splintered bone through her upper back I went into crisis mode.

I jumped the gate and was on the scene along with the team doctor and a bunch of uniformed players before I realized I wasn’t supposed to be there. The beautiful young woman turned deadly white with bluing lips. The grass was red with her blood. He was gasping and blood gurgled from the wound surrounding the projectile that had penetrated her throat. I grabbed her hand which seemed to comfort her and which the doc seemed to encourage.

As they worked on her she slipped further and further away. I squeezed her hand and kissed her gently on the lips resulting in a slap on the back of my head from Manager Frank Robinson. But her breathing came stronger. When they loaded her on the gurney I got to support her head and neck since she couldn’t lie completely on the flat with the two feet of wood impaling her.

The paramedics took over when we got her to the ambulance. I kissed her again and headed to St. Joseph’s Oratory. Besides housing Brother Andre’s embalmed heart the basilica is a place of healing. Inside, thousands of lit votive candles raise the temperature and illuminate the crutches, wheelchairs, and braces left behind by the pilgrims who arrived crippled but left healed.

On that cool September night I acted as a pilgrim for JJ. On my knees I prayed on each of the one hundred middle steps that lead up the hill to the huge, sacred structure. By step sixty, my legs were screaming, but I persevered. I had to for this young woman who four hours prior I did not know existed.

When I reached the top it took me a half of an hour to straighten up. I walked into the basilica, through one of the larger of the many sanctuaries and into the dark corridor of healing. I was alone and even though this was a holy and miraculous place, the flickering candles, tomb of a buried priest (I think it was. Could have been a saint.), embalmed heart, and cast-off leather and metal orthopedic appliances created an eerie atmosphere. But I focused on JJ.

Spirits of all sort surrounded me. Some brushed into me. Some whisked around me as breezes. Some pushed me. I heard their whispers. My footsteps echoed off the marble floor as I walked the length of the long hall. I turned and walked back though the gauntlet of ghosts. Although I never actually felt threatened, I sensed that had I not been a man of faith, I would not have survived this test.

Halfway back I climbed the stairs on my right to reach a group of unlit votives near the ceiling. I emptied my wallet of the silly Canadian money and began lighting candles and praying. I bargained with God to spare this special girl’s life.

From my view near the ceiling the parade of specters was frightening and impressive. Had I been aware of the vast number of them, I am uncertain whether I would have undertaken the pilgrimage. And I still had a good football field of distance to cover.

As my feet hit the marble I began to feel slashes on my face and hands. I heard the ripping of my clothing and the eruption of pain over all of my body. I began to weaken under the flogging the spirits were inflicting. I was on my knees and then pulling myself along on my belly under the brutal spiritual attacks.

I saw the huge wooden door opening to the cool night and knew I would make it. At fourteen minutes after one in the morning according to the blue-green glow of my Casio G-Shock watch I breathed the crisp and clean air like I used to guzzle booze. It was delicious and reinvigorating.

On the trip back to my accommodations, bus and subway passengers eyed me with fear and kept their distance. I looked like shit I later discovered.

The mirror in my motel room revealed someone I didn’t know. But it was me. Cut and bruised. Dried blood. Dark circles under bloodshot eyes. Wearing ragged clothes that were later thrown in the trash. Stiff and sore even after a long hot shower I was startled by my ringing phone. It was the hospital. I’d left my hotel number with them.

The chief trauma surgeon herself was calling me. When the operating team had dislodged the bat from the heavily anesthetized JJ’s neck, she had gone into cardiac arrest. Despite all heroic efforts she had died. In the hospital basement morgue the attendant tried to contact her next of kin.

At 1:14 A.M. back from the dead, JJ pulled the sheet from her face, sat up and began weeping uncontrollably. She wanted to see me.

So I went to the hospital. JJ didn’t even know me by appearance, but when I held her hand, her panic subsided and she leaned into me and went into a peaceful sleep. Holding her close to me, I did too.

JJ and I have remained in touch. She underwent many painful surgeries to repair the devastation created by the fouled pitch that broke the bat that severed her arteries. She healed remarkably well from a psychological perspective. Undeterred by the long scar that the plastic surgeons cannot completely fix and that grounded her dreams of modeling, JJ has become a very successful fashion designer. She lives in New York with her lover of the past three years, Tara. A couple of hot Lesbos, if you ask me. They beat me, sometimes not gently, when I call them Lesbos.

And today I needed to crash for a brief respite at their place. I rode Harley on the long tree lined and tree canopied drive to the sprawling home they built on this beautiful land not sixty miles from San Antonio. The girls were home and they greeted me; naked at the front door. The big scar in no way detracts from JJ’s beauty. Especially when she is naked. No mystery as to what those two had been up to when I rode up.

We spoke a few words and then we all laid down on the huge round bed in their master suite for a nap. I was sleeping before my head hit the soft, expensive pillow; too tired to even get an erection. Not that it would do me any good. I had been down that road before with those two.

They are completely dedicated to one another and although they say that if they were hetero they’d love to roll with me, I respect their boundaries. Not that it made any difference today. I was dead to the world. Not as dead as JJ had been on that cold Montreal slab but dead asleep.

I awoke a couple of hours later feeling better but still tired. I kissed the ladies bye and off I went back to Comfort and on a path the reverse of my usual to Sisterdale, then Kendalia. I turned on a new for me interesting looking road before I got to Blanco. It eventually took me to Fischer, a place I’d seen signs for but never met. Actually it just seemed to be a general store.

The rain then started and came down heavy. I rode the Devil’s Backbone and through Wimberley in the wet stuff. It made me cold, but I reveled in it. Big drops bopped my head and helmet. They made loud noises on the windshield. The downpour had been long and heavy enough to wipe the biggest part of the oil and grease off the roads. I remained vigilant and cautious but enjoyed it. I felt the most awake I had all day.

Soon the rain had ended and I was at the neighborhood Shell station feeding RK. The mess had dirtied her up so I gave her another thorough bath. Which made me tired again.

The ride made the burgers we took graduate boy out for taste especially good. I slept really well this night before Memorial Day, with visions of naked lesbians and road miles dancing in my head.