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Crew 750 Santos Trails Pre-Bike Group Picture

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Walter Colbath (tall) and Boyd Allen (not tall) with the students of Crew 750 warming up before a day of great trail-biking. Go Crew and go OCC. The Dutch ovens were fired up all weekend – Hawaiin breakfast and tortilla soup and pineapple upside down cake. (Gluten free.)

A New World

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A New World
Boyd C Allen
OCC

Walking a trail on cool Sunday of sun lit breezes, trail bikers pass both ways, and some hikers too, but just two and only heading south. I remark to myself that it’s easier to commit to these trails after you have purchased an expensive, light weight, and fully equipped trail bike with a car-rack system.
I bought boots.

On sale.

Two years ago.

Riding a bike requires quick decisions and reflexive reactions to strange terrain. Bike noise scares snakes and lizards early, keeps the raccoons in hiding. And biking is often done in groups and clubs.
Many of the women on these bikes are beautiful and fit. Bike pants pump above taut legs and special yellow shoes. The lit shoes fly on the pedals like insects.

America has changed in 30 years. The women work and earn and are fabulously educated. They run and bike and sweat and stay young. Children squeal and stand up on the pedals trying to keep up. Some husbands pedal along too.

On Saturdays, the masculine half of America sits down to watch sports while the women run half marathons in bight shoes. Some wear costumes.

Insane.

I am called to slow America.

Khakis and a walking stick take me off the straight path to follow blue blazes on a winding trail to see the snakes and lizards and opossums and raccoons and to take one knee and watch a hawk down a meal.

So much more open and truthful and uncostumed. Still the country leaves half the population behind, locked in urban areas with no access to the outdoors, locked in poor schools that lock the next generation into the same decaying neighborhood, and locked into prisons for smoking the same weed that half of these mothers will smoke tonight on their screened patios.

The wind kicks up and shakes the saw palmetto into raucous noise. Sawing bones.
Off the main trail following the blue blazes, I see a fox slink between two oaks in the middle distance. No one here, no people till I get back to the trailhead where families load their bikes, rub their calves and squeeze their water bottles empty.