We could understand a few concepts of his sermon: Music of Satan, Movies and marijuana. He appeared be genuine, coming close to tears at one point. The bus seemed to be less than half with him, some clapping and singing hymns he led. He wasn’t Catholic, and that may have accounted for the lack of enthusiasm on the part of many. Evangelicals are making big strides in South America, and Catholics aren’t too happy.

First light in the east. A balmy 72 degrees, singlet weather, at 5am. You pump up the tires, retrieve the frozen water bottles from the freezer, pocket some almonds and dates. Click in the pedals and roll off into the warming light. Left on Pantano, no need to wait for the light this time of day. Where’s my cannon? Empty streets. You drop gently into Tanque Verde wash, the temperature drops 10 degrees, and the delicious cold air gives the last chill of what will be a triple digit day.

Bicycle sunrise over Redington Pass on the way to Mount Lemmon

A red sun peeks over the Redington Pass, between saguaros and mesquites. You pick up the pace just a bit on Catalina Highway. The temperature warms again, bringing familiar desert scents with sunrise. Still cool, with a hint of the buildup of humidity before the monsoon. Twenty percent today maybe. Enough to make your heart rate monitor work.

Beginning the Climb of the Catalina Mountains, Mount Lemmon

At milepost one the climbing begins. Shift down. Sit up. Spin. Deep breaths now. Heart rate up just a bit. Look up at the rocky ridges studded with saguaros, washed in amber morning. Ignore the growing warmth in quads and glutes. Keep your shoulders relaxed. This is for fun, not just fitness, not just health.

Life Zones Change to the Music of your Breath

Life zones change as you climb higher

Somewhere below 5,000 feet, you notice the saguaros are gone, replaced by oak grasslands and twenty foot agaves in bloom. Another thousand feet and you enter Bear Canyon and feel the cool from Arizona sycamores and alligator junipers. Further up the canyon, you notice the piney vanilla scent of huge ponderosas, their green crowns spiking the now intense blue sky. Breathe deep. Stand on the pedals. Stretch your back and shoulders. Push a little. Feel the burn, the joy of your body, working as it should. A canyon wren’s liquid descending song cheers you on.

City of Rocks at Windy Point

One big hairpin and you enter a city of rocks, white and pink granite spires rising from a recently burned mountainside. The black spikes have sprouted bright new green at their bases, reminders of the cycle of fire and life. The hoodoos present you with more forms than your imagination can count. They distract you from the tightness creeping into your left hamstring. At Windy Point, an expansive view of the Tucson valley tempts you to rest. A few early climbers gear up and head down to favored climbing spires. Someday. A few miles of steep sweeping curves and even more spectacular hoodoos later, and you pierce the pine woods again. More bird calls. Lots of them. Jays and creepers, a redtail hawk overhead. Now bronze barked manzanita, spindly lodgepole pines and larger oaks. There are new smells as the air warms. You are racing the sun up the mountain, and the sun is winning.

To the World of Aspens and Spruce

You climb another couple of thousand feet in the mixed forest, a mile of downhill and then up again. Turn right before the village of Summerhaven, destroyed by fire a decade ago, now sprouting big new houses and a few business. Your goal is higher, Ski Valley, the most southerly ski slope in the U.S. The last mile is steep. Breathe deep. You stand in your lowest gear, and it’s still hard. Finally you see the grassy ski slopes, devoid of snow for months, ringed by aspens quaking shiny silver-green leaves in the breeze, a breeze that brings you the scent of dark spruce deeper in the forest. At just under 9,000 feet, you have arrived, botanically speaking, in southern Canada.

Descent into Hell’s Furnace

A few minutes rest and it’s time to let gravity work for you for awhile. You fill your water bottles, have a snack. Then it’s a bit of down and a bit of up and you begin the 20 mile downhill you have earned. All the smells your nose remembers from the way up assault your senses again, but at high speed this time, fleeting, reminding you of the work behind you. At 30 miles per hour, you lose elevation quickly and the heat begins to rise to you from the valley. The valley furnace awaits. A light tailwind pushes you through a tight curve at 46 miles per hour, demanding full attention and causing you to forget the rising heat. Or was it the extra sweat from the moment of near panic?

With five miles to go to the base you begin soaking your jersey with water. It’s already well in to the 90′s and you know the eight more miles home from the base will take you over the 100 mark. The sense of becoming one with the heat is intoxicating, a strange thrill. You might as well enjoy it. It’s due to be 1o8 in the afternoon. You are glad to be back before noon.

Your Accomplishment

You’ve ridden your bike 70 miles, from the landscape of Northern Mexico to that of Southern Canada, and back, climbed between 6,000 and 7,000 feet, in six hours or so. Not easy but doable, and oh so rewarding. Those of you who have done it know. The rest of you now have a new goal.

Tibetan Pony

For some reason, in the past week, I have been repeatedly flashing back to this village high in Tibetan Sichuan. I just read a post by a Facebook friend; to paraphrase: “If you want to know where your heart is, look at where your mind goes when it wanders.”

It was the beginning of another physically challenging day, frosty, clear, with wood smoke on the air. But that wasn’t it. The roadhouse we stayed in the night before had a mix of police and interesting locals drinking lots of beer and eating many fascinating dishes. The architecture was beautiful. The temple just before the village seemed to hang, glowing white in the thin air, from a cliff. We almost got lost, nothing new. No. It was something else.

Perhaps it was that we’d been on the road from Chengdu for maybe three weeks,  just Claire and me and Zippy, and of course our little panda, Lucky. This had become our life, pedaling circles all day, spooling out beautiful mountains, exotic people, breathing in the scents of a foreign, but somehow completely welcoming place.

I recently did a monologue about the concept of time, Einstein’s theory, speed of light, that sort of thing, but also how we are all time travelers, every day, traveling into the future. Something about traveling on a bicycle, carrying all you need to live, not knowing exactly where you are going, not knowing where you will sleep, what you will eat, how big the mountain will be, how cold/hot the air, how tired your legs… I of course am failing miserably in this short post to convey the power to infuse me with wonder these journeys gift us. That’s okay. I’ll try again soon.

For now, I just want you to know, that several times a day, I am transported around Earth to a place that infused me with joy, blanketed me with glory, and contributed to a deeply appreciative life. I am so happy, so thankful.

Silly me. The world is falling apart around us, and I am transported, not to escape, but to reaffirm how special a place in the Universe we in habit, and what special properties our bodies and our minds have to allow full appreciation of our brief time here. Into the future we must go, but we can do it with joy and thanksgiving, and the miracle of a multi-dimensional memory.

A footprint in sand. Soon to be erased by the breath of time. A mark. An instant. One step of many. Why make it special? Do you note your marks? Do you listen to the sound your foot makes in sand? Do you feel the pressure, the texture, the cool or the heat? Just a thought.

To read the article and see more of Bob’s photos from China and SE Asia follow the link: The Many Faces of Buddha

Merrill Rovang, our brother-in-law, has Parkinson’s. Like Larry he won’t give up and is an inspiration to us all. Ride with Larry is worth watching whether you know someone with Parkinson’s or not. These two men show us how to live life, one day at a time.

Our idea before traveling there by muscle power, was that various forms of Buddhism was the dominant spiritual force. We spent twelve days in Bangkok in 2000, after our tandem tour around Australia, visiting temples, and missed the complexity of spiritual life in Southeast Asia. In Bangkok, Buddhist is the dominant religion, and the other forms were decidedly muted by the fantastic representations of the Buddha. Outside of the large centers, religious symbolism  is much more complex matter.

The photo above is one of many very large stone statues at Buddha Park a dozen or so kilometers outside of Vientiane, Laos. In the middle of a long hot day on a dirt road, we spent an hour or more wandering this fantastic few acres near the Mekong river. Although called Buddha Park, it contained representations of numerous spiritual beings, figures in a complex mythology of Asian historic spiritual practice.

I post this because Claire is now finishing up her first magazine article, illustrated with both our photos from this tandem trip, The Many Faces of Buddha. We will announce when the article ,and post a link to the magazine’s site.

If anyone has any interest in the complexity of Southeast Asian spirituality, and wishes to share experiences or knowledge about it, we’d love to hear from you. Post a comment below.

There will be more photos in later articles.

Breathless in Tibet

Facebook friend, Sara, an athlete from the Pacific Northwest, posted a great quote today that took me back a few months when we were climbing the seemingly endless mountains of Tibetan Sichuan. She didn’t credit the source, but maybe someone else knows,

Life is measured best not by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away…

Tibet took our breath away in more than one way. We were not over 13,000 feet in elevation when I took this photo of Claire, it was early in the day, early in the climb. We saw this skull beside the road and decided to take a break. We took several pictures with each of us, and Lucky our stuffed panda, replaced the skull and got back to the business of making circles with our legs, circles with our wheels, writing another day on the map of our days.

Our ostensive purpose for this journey across Tibetan China and SE Asia was to search for the real and mythical Shngri-la. But of course we were looking for much more; more breaths, more encounters that would take our breath away, with simple happiness, pleasure at living.

Take note of the moments in your day that make you notice your breathing, such a miracle, and the times that take your breath away. Live in thankfulness.