Of Tugboats and Crybabies

Holy shit. Holeeeeee shit! I didn't think I had it in me, man. I didn't. But I had to get to the river. Down and up the dirt hills, snow squalls circling the desert, ringing the peaks. A lone light across the gorge, up on the Hondo Mesa like a tugboat calling me, an icebreaker in the caliche. Wind taking off from the west, down the cerros, up the broken hills. A sky of india ink spilled to the northwest, dark blue, then darker still, verging on purple, wanting to drip. I got there, not so bad for the front side of the ride. Alone in the ruts until the edge where an old red truck with a rust stained camper top sat in the depression at the outlet of the Manby trail to the springs. I didn't go there. I didn't look in the window. The bike dropped itself on the lava rocks and I clambered down a few to stare at the river. The water was a camouflage green, the jade overrun by mud, no sun to pick up a sheen. Wind rubberized my ears and I floated off myself with some vertigo, out over the junipers for a time. When I came back I looked to the east and the moon was full riding above the dark clouds. I was confused because last I saw la luna, she was little more than a slushy half. Where was I? On the gorge rim I thought of flying across to the Hondo side and searching for that tugboat, but my knees wobbled and I didn't have a superlight in my backpack. It was darkening and time to get going. I knew those first few hills going back are harder than those two long hills coming in. Steep and windy. I had some energy elixir in the cambelbak and that helped with the piston action on the first rise, but, man, that second one starting kicking my ass before I pushed a quarter way up. And this is the thing. I went from nose breathing to mouth sucking, chest heaving, but the legs were filling up with can-do muscle twitching. Halfway up that long and gnarly second rise I felt the crybaby singing to me. Head bowed, ass off the seat, biceps pulling, hands gripping, wrists twisting, tongue going side-to-side, I swallowed heaps of that solar-plexus drain swirl of lament, the no-no-no-no got....to....fucking....stop...legs not gonna do it...falling, falling, falling, fainting...want to give in, give up, let myself down, drop soft and pliable into the defeat of it...And yet I'm still moving, pumping, swaying shoulders, gaining the second half of that hill, seeing the top, and then...the...tipping...point, and I know I've passed the max torque requirement, it's getting easier, I'm going to top it and get to drift in the flats until those last long curved swales that are easier, much easier than these two fucking roller coasters. I'm sweating under my layers now, and at the same time the westerly blow is cutting through me and snow pellets slap my right cheek. It's almost full dark and the clouds have swallowed the moon. A car a few rises ahead, hovering in the near dark vastness, shows its break lights, two fresh lit cigarettes burning red in the snow. I'm on the decel, knowing that I've slayed the hills and it's all easy into dock from here; and also knowing and still tasting the crybaby who wants to give up, his wail, his willingness to submit, to be dropped off, to crumble knock-kneed to the ground and be picked over by strays because he deserves that fate. But the crybaby didn't have it so easy tonight because there is more, much more inside, and I know it, and I cannot reconcile the crumble, not now. And I've been through it, and I know that once past those hills it's easy, and that energy used on those rises is recycled, sloshing in the tank for a long journey, longer than I ever expected.