The Exorcism
Vanquishing the darkness by riding up into the mountains on a warm day.
One of those days. I woke up sad. I felt like crying, but for some reason, I didn’t.
I came down for breakfast and Carol was already working. I told her I was sad, and she asked why. A lot of things and nothing. I missed our girls, our friends, I missed how things used to be, pre-virus. My cancer.
Sometimes reasons for sadness are hard to describe. Sometimes, you’re just sad.
I have experienced depression in my life. As anyone who has been depressed knows, it is not a place you want to revisit once you claw your way out of that hole.
I am acutely aware of how easy it could be to tumble back into the abyss, which is a very helpful awareness to have. You smell it, you sense it, you understand it.
“Not today,” I said to myself. “You are not getting me today.”
I finished my breakfast and headed back upstairs to get ready for a ride. Something difficult, I thought. Something challenging. Something so hard that all I will be able to think about will be getting up the next stretch of road or around the bend to the next switchback.
Physically tough efforts have a way of focusing one’s mind on the here and now. The right-now. This second.
It was already warm as I rolled my bike through the gate and rode out onto Cota Street. By the time I had climbed up Laguna Street to the Mission, I was dripping with sweat. I worried that two bottles of water may not be enough to get to the top of Gibraltar Road, another 3,300 feet of ascent from the Mission.
“I can always turn around at the halfway point,” I thought, even though I knew I would never do that. It’s a game I sometimes play with myself. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s a way to ease pressure, especially on a hot day.
When I hit the beginning of Gibraltar Road, 860 feet of climbing, I felt like I didn’t have the legs, cycling parlance for not feeling strong. I took a break in the shade of a large pin oak when I reached 1,300 feet.
After swigging back a couple of mouthfuls of water, I remounted and road off, up and up and up. There is no respite in this climb. It’s just up, some places steeper than others.
It was a quiet day on the mountain. Just a couple of utility trucks, a few workmen in pick-ups, an occasional motorcycle and two other fit cyclists who passed me like I was standing still. I hate skinny people. Not all the time, mind you, just when I’m climbing a mountain on my bike and the fit, skinny people zip past.
I fought my way to the top, turn by turn. And “fought” is the correct verb. It was a struggle. But I never thought about being sad. Not once the entire two hours. I was focused on moving forward, sometimes only inching ahead, but always moving forward.
When I reached the top, I got off the bike and relaxed for a moment. Had a drink of water, wiped the sweat off of my sunglasses and the Garmin mounted in front of my handlebars that was showing 3,560 feet of ascent, and decided… I had not had enough. I needed some more suffering. There at the top of the mountain, I was still thinking about being sad, though I wasn’t sad like I had been at breakfast.
This is not acceptable.
So I got back on the bike and turned up East Camino Cielo Road heading toward the Divide Peak trailhead.
It is a road I had taken only once previously. The pavement ends about seven miles in, as far as I would go on my road bike. Camino Cielo is the ridge road that runs along the top of the front range of the Santa Ynez Mountains. It’s a rolling road that delivers spectacular scenery in every direction.
(Had I ridden the other way from the intersection with Gibraltar Road, I would have been going up to Le Cumbre Peak, a ride I detailed in a piece on April 27.)
I was almost completely alone on the road. The views down to the ocean and into the back country were breathtaking. At six miles in, I opted to turn around because the remaining mile to the end of the pavement was all downhill — meaning I would have to climb that mile back out. My legs were tired. I was well over 4,000 feet of climbing for the day.
As I pedaled back to the Gibraltar Road intersection, I thought of a phrase:
Exorcise by Exercise.
Exorcise the demons in your head by working so hard that all you can do is think about getting to the next turn. That’s what I was doing. And it worked.
By the time I returned to the Camino Cielo/Gibraltar intersection, I felt calm. Tired, but calm. I snapped a selfie in front of the sign pointing toward Divide Peak. I had climbed 4,639 feet.
All that was left was the 11 miles of downhill back to Cota Street.
