andy's candies.

Miles ~70

I spent 17 years, more or less, riding the rolling landscape of southern Connecticut in the maze of old New England roads and patchy spreads of uninhabited dense wood. The bike ruled all, and the season dictated what I did and where I went. Those seasons drove me and kept me fresh, each change more than welcome and with a distinct sensation. The silence of winter, under layers and seemingly alone. The escape of spring - daylight, time and exposure suddenly abundant. The summer came in overbearing,  sweat dripping, salt caking and the sun that would never leave. And finally the ultimate victory of fall- summer broken, every breath of cool air reinvigorating the tired body.  Like some poor feeble minded creature my patterns repeated on for all those years through all those seasons, for I just couldn't stop pedaling.

Almost every day I went across those beloved roads and trails.  From early days, under dressed, often lost, bike maladjusted to the eventuality of pouring over maps for any last road I had never ridden, reduced to horrible exploration of long lost trails, the broken promises of old trail head kiosks. After all this time the original reason I took to the bike was exhausted. I had nothing left here to discover. 

Years of magazines stuffed my drawers, piled in the basement. Type the letter b- an endless list autofilled. Books stuffed away. Old pictures. 'Why don't I live there' echoing like a ghost. People live there. They ride there every day. That's their everyday ride. I had nothing left for my everyday ride. I already longed for a nostalgic ride on my roads. I wanted more than anything to come back and feel that feeling- the intertwined twinge of guilt and relief-that I left. I wanted to stop at that intersection and have to remember the way I thought I could never ever forget. 

When I was young my father always seemed to have Andes candies hidden around the house. Already obsessed with maps, I would sit and eat the delicious chocolate and stare at the wrapper. The simple depiction of that grand mountain range was far more than I needed to set off in a reverie, myself on those peaks forever far away. I would always drift to a very specific place, high up where clouds come to you, the vegetation thins, and the grass is soft as it ribbons down between rocky outcrops. My whole life this place has not lost one detail or its sense of dreamy desire. 

Now in the morning the sun crawls over those peaks to wake me. I stare at them out the window as I eat breakfast. And my every day ride is up them to find that very place I've never been to, but never forgotten. Every ride is a new discovery, and it's hard to turn around again and head home. I might be dressed right, my bike might work, but I'm lost again. This time the scale frightens me, I can't understand the people or the signs and the air gets debilitatingly thin. The terrain is a bit more than rolling, the seasons are gone and I can't predict the weather. But even in all this I can still remember and feel the excitement for my nostalgic ride that's waiting me, on those old roads that are now exactly as far away as the Andes once were.

- andy