Zen and the Art of Speedskating

I am in Northern Italy for a few days, training with a gaggle of Russians & Boris on the high altitude, very cold, fast outdoor ice in Collabo. The lesson I just learned is that you can discover a lot about yourself getting lost walking home in the dark from the rink to the hotel.

Especially if it’s brutally cold, you are extremely tired, sweaty & cranky, the streets are badly marked and twistier/odder/narrower/steeper/older & stranger than staircases at Hogwarts.

I did finally make it home, after turning a 15 minute walk into an hour long frozen shuffle through this tiny mountainside town called “Lengmoos”. You probably won’t find it on a map, but nearby Bolzano is big enough to appear. Even though I am in Italy, they speak German here, as this was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until WWI. European linguistic identity & cultural grudges run quite deep.

It’s beautiful here in the Dolomites. Cold, forbidding, stern, Tyrolian, but beautiful.

I can’t understand how I went 35 years of my life without traveling from Bolzano at sea level, through endless terraced vineyards and 20+ winding switchbacks, to these Dolomite mountain hamlets at 4,000 feet.

The only problem is, now I want to come back in the summer and ride my road bike up the steep switchbacks, when its warm, the vineyards are green, and the sun is brilliant. I want to feel that endless out of the saddle cycling strength I used to have living in Ithaca, where your lungs, heart and legs can hammer an endless, sweaty, excellent, unstoppable, altitude gobbling rhythm.

It is winter, but imagine the vineyards green on this road winding up from Bolzano. Every inch of the hillside on the right is vineyard!

I probably will never come back in the summer, but I am glad I found an excuse to visit here anyway. Why is it in life that this overwhelming urge to be “practical?” is so strong. Speedskating, or following most intense passions, is totally impractical, expensive, crazy, but seeing new places, even if it means being lost in Lengmoos on a freezing evening? Priceless!

Why do I need “excuses” to travel? I never would have come here if not for this odd sport as my excuse.

Quite a few of the Utah speedskating tribe, who were full time skaters through Olympic trials, have ended their seasons and returned to full time jobs or school. I will return to a somewhat more practical/normal life when this season ends as well. I will both welcome it and regret it.

Filed under: on the road