I'm tired. Really tired. This is stupidity. If I keep this up I'm going to make a mistake, do something stupid, and then I'll be in a whole world of trouble. I need to stop, call it quits and get some rest, but I cant, not here. I've been on this bike all day and my head is shot, I've stopped concentrating and now it's starting to get downright dangerous. The unfamiliar mountain road twists and turns its way into the blackness and I do my utmost to follow it. Riding late into the night has taken its toll, I'm physically and mentally exhausted and my riding has lost all its fluidity, it's become erratic, cumbersome, clumsy. I need to stop. The mountain drops away to my right as a constant reminder of why a mistake here could have serious consequences.
My mind to drifts to thinking about my leg, i can't help it. Falling off a bike is not a nice thought at the best of times, but falling off with a leg in this state fills me full of dread. I can walk for about ten minutes before the sharp ache creeps up my shin and forces my limp to increase. Walking down to the shops is mission and yet, for some inexplicable reason, I've chosen to ride all the way to Spain. Not that it's a problem on the bike, the leg just rests redundantly on the foot peg, but it wouldn't be so happy if I came off. And the chances of that seem to increase as the night, and the miles, and the tiredness wear on. I lose count of how many times I misjudge a bend and have to dip the bike further in to stop myself drifting out to edge of the road. The only protection between the road and the black nothingness of the mountain drop-off is a series of concrete blocks, about a foot high, placed at intervals on each bend. This may offer a passing comfort to those in a car, but for a biker they serve as nothing more than a launch pad into the abyss, ensuring maximum punishment for those foolish enough to run wide. You'll be in freefall before you can even wonder why the hell the radius of that bend suddenly tightened up. Not for the first time I start to question what on earth I'm doing here. As usual I'm pushing myself that little bit too far.
I've read all manner of motoring adventure stories and there's one theme that connects them all - it's the desire to push on, to go further and faster and longer than you really need to. Why? The destination is of no consequence, nor is the country, the culture, the sights, the language, the road, or possibly lack of it. Nothing matters, just this all consuming desire to push yourself further. I read a book by Alan Sillitoe in which he describes a drive from St Petersburg to Moscow, a distance of some five hundred miles. He has booked a hotel about half way so he can complete the journey in two stages, but as he sets out in the morning his mind turns to doing it in one go, despite having all the time in the world. By the time he's fifty miles in he has convinced himself he can do it. Along the way he's overtaken by a convoy of German registered cars and, not being a fan of being overtaken, particularly not by Germans (this was 1967), a race ensues. He completes his five hundred miles and he wins the race, but at the expense of missing out on the sights and culture along the way. Sillitoe describes this sense of irrational urgency as the tormented looking for a tranquil place to die. An impossible quest of course. I'm not convinced by that, but I can offer no alternative theory. All I know is that whenever I ride I set myself a target, then I reach that target but can't help wanting to keep going. And here I am, keeping going, making stupid mistakes on the edge of a mountain. You're an idiot. One of these bloody bends will spit you out and you'll go cartwheeling down the mountainside. Then you'll see, then you'll learn.
I ride about twelve hundred miles in two days. I ride until every muscle, every bone screams it's objections. My arse is sore, my back, neck and wrists ache like hell, my head throbs, my eyes feel like sandpaper, but finally I make it. Valencia. I spend a day recovering but then have to think about my ride back to Calais. I've got a boat to catch.....in two days.
Oh bugger
Sillitoe's comment, "The tormented looking for a tranquil place to die," is probably a very accurate description. Whilst you may not entirely recognise the metaphor, the underlying concept is a very real truth. It is the dissatisfaction with life, the compartmentalised, rationalisation of everything we experience. Work forcing demands on our leisure time, which all seems to be boxed up, neatly packaged and marketed for our consumption. Everything whiffs of some sort of homogenised mundanity. Technology allows us access to the same information, which flows at a fierce speed, creating this world to seem a much smaller place. Culture is suffering as we all participate in this subtle homogenising process. The result is that we feel compelled to look beyond our familiar environment and, indeed, the familiarity of what we think we know of ourselves, in search of a unique experience. We endeavour to extend ourselves beyond the possibilities of the physical realm, and this usually takes the form of something like extreme sports. If we go beyond the physical, the likely result is we'll find something spiritual and not necessarily in the form of death. In Jesus' teaching tradition He made no distinction between life and spirit, the two are connected, one intrinsically linked to the other, John 6:63 I think we yearn for this spiritual connection. Sillitoe maybe doesn't know he his thinking about it like that. Maybe he isn't, I've not read his stuff. Maybe he is simply searching for a perfect death, but that seems a pointless waste of life, which is certain to end there anyway.
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