Zen and the Art of Speedskating

After 9 days of feeling weak and sick with moving and driving, I finally feel like an athlete again, I went out for a nice hard ride up one of the canyons, and climbed for an 45 minutes straight at a nice hammerhead pace. The pain was good pain, fast pain, and my mind & body felt cleansed. In this super dry air, one does not feel buckets of sweat like back east, even though you lose more water. Taking the long way back home, I came across this view. It was so heart stopping that I just about went off the road looking at it.

now that is not a satisfying image to see, O gentle reader, so…

Click here and go directly to a larger image, you will have to use the scroll bar on your browser to move to the right and see all of it. You are looking directly south in this view. On the left/east is the 11,000 foot Wasatch Range; all the ski areas are back there, several are still open. Salt lake city fills the Valley edge to edge. You are maybe looking 40+ miles in this view down the valley. To the right is Downtown Salt lake, the 10,000 foot Oquirrh mountains above it (say “ochre”) . On the farthest right you can see a hint of the Great Salt Lake, and Antelope Island in the middle of it. See those 4 weird poles sticking out of the trees; imagine them as an arrow, pointing a half-mile farther down the road at my house. I live on 7th & H in the avenues, this elevation is just above 11th.

And yeah, Jess and I can roughly see this same view from our bedroom window, with trees 70% in the way, but I saw the sunrise on the Oquirrh’s this morning, and the lights of downtown at night. I am blogging to you from the upper floor of the Salt Lake City Public library this morning, and I can see 100% of this view.

Riding home, I felt this weird shiver of recognition, realizing I could live here forever. Family will probably pull me back east someday, so I will mentally pause for every view, and fill my soul with it.

Filed under: sweat