Tour Divide Letter of Intent

When I came upon this race called the Tour Divide I immediately said to myself, “I must do that.” With a decades-old racing background and an inclination to meandering about, something about racing the Tour Divide was calling me. The simplicity of it. The enormity of it. The community around it.

I’m looking forward to endless miles of riding, unlike the No Trespassing signs I encounter near where I live. I’m looking forward to some un-civilization.

I’ve been riding my bike a lot lately. While riding around in the middle of nowhere I generally come across two kinds of people, yet both kinds immediately recognize me for who I am. And I feel a sense of being from each. With the first group, it’s like looking in a mirror. These are people very much like me: out there, in my karass if we were to find ourselves in the Cat’s Craddle. When I share what I’m up to with that second group, I get puzzled and incredulous looks from their tilted heads, often followed by exclamations of encouragement. This response I take as them seeing and accepting me for who I am even though I’m very much unlike them. I’m on the other side of that looking glass.

So, I’ve been riding my bike a lot lately, encountering my own existence and bumping into my own impermanence, sometimes both at the same time. Like the flying ninja squirrel that hopped down from a boulder in front of me. Could have been a mountain lion for how I screamed (twice). Or, like a field of wild flowers.

I’ve been riding my bike a lot lately. I’ll see you in June.

Lynne