“Recycling” by Geo Davis (Featured in Midlife Crisis Postponed)
Something about the first Sunday of summer is triggering a retrospective vibe for me. Awoke at 4:30am and started editing poems, and then pivoted to Rosslyn Redux. I’m gobsmacked that we first waded into that adventure a dozen years ago. Twelve years! Is it possible? Where did the years go?
My mind drifts to Steinbeck’s reflections on taking a trip vs. a trip taking us. (Did you know that there’s an unabridged audiobook of Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley? You can thank me later.)
So many times I’ve learned and relearned this truism well articulated by Steinbeck. We head out on a journey, an adventure, even just a get-from-point-A-to-point-B excursion overconfident that we can anticipate the scope and purpose of the peregrination. But the journey, the adventure, the excursion inevitably adapts us to its mission rather than the other way around. This has certainly been the case with 40×41, and this evolving, unpredictable, protracted expedition was largely catalyzed during yet another trip, a few days during which I accompanied John Davis on his TrekEast pilgrimage.The illustration above, a visual poem I called “Recycling” remembers that pedaling conversation — dialogue internal and external — which took place while cycling bucolic byways in New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire… (Source: 40×41: Midlife Crisis Postponed)
Joining John Davis on TrekEast (Source: Jerry Jenkins)
In 2011 I had the opportunity to pedal a leg of John Davis’s 7,600 mile, 100% human powered journey between the Everglades and the Gaspé Peninsula. (Learn about it here: “TrekEast: Ground-Truthing the Eastern Wildway“.) I should note that I only joined John for a microscopic segment of his epic adventure, but that brief reintroduction to the open road — and the challenges of hauling 200+ pounds of man up and down and up and down rollercoaster roads — proved momentous for me.
That’s us on the right in Vermont, getting ready to pedal toward New Hampshire. John’s the fit fellow in the foreground. I’m the puffy one behind (puffiness even more evident in the next photo!) and the mushrooming “mamil” in the photo below.
Somewhere I still have a waterlogged notebook I filled with words (and probably a few doodles) during that several day outing. When I find it I’ll attempt to salvage anything useful, but until then a few notes from memory.
Joining John Davis on TrekEast (Source: Jerry Jenkins)
The real story behind TrekEast belongs to John, but the links above will start you down the road to understanding him and his treks. Better yet, you can read Big, Wild, and Connected: Scouting an Eastern Wildway from the Everglades to Quebec if you’d like to take the journey alongside him. You won’t regret it.
Let’s rewind the calendar about seven years to the early autumn 2011. It was that 39th year triggered so much change in my life. It was the beginning of a period of introspection and transition that I set out to chronicle in 40×41, but that snowballed into a collection of poems called 40×41: Midlife Crisis Postponed and into this so-far unending quest to embrace midlife fully, openly, and mindfully that I call Carpe Midlife.
For the better part of a year I had been riding regularly. I’d recycled/upcycled my dust collecting mountain bike and an aging triathlon bike (that I inherited from my brother) into a cyclocross rig that was engineered to be light and nimble enough to feel fast on the roads but rugged enough to handle rough roads, even backcountry trails. I wanted a bike that was “road condition androgynous” — able to chug along on rutted gravel roads and trails just as well as it could on pavement — so that I could head out for wandering loops in the Adirondacks’ Champlain Valley without needing to preplan my routes. John, a seasoned Kona Jake the Snake rider, and the mild mannered mentor at my local-ish bike shop steered me toward the slightly beefier Kona Master Jake.
It was love at first ride.
I rediscovered the joy of pedaling away from home — farther and farther as my midlife muscles and lungs and heart relearned the rhythms of extended exercise — and then back again. Good rides were carefree. Great rides were timeless. It felt as if this recent return to cycling had been directly grafted onto the joyful bike rides of my youth, as if bicycling were a bridge across three decades. Although soreness wan no stranger to me during those early months, biking was bliss.
Legs and lungs began to adapt, and my confidence slingshot forward. When John invited companions to join him for legs of his Florida to Quebec odyssey, I instantly agreed to saddle up for a pair of days. Certainly I was ready for that, right? (To be continued…)