Dukkha

I fell through a trap door of my own creation.

I had seven consecutive days of riding where I made good time, blessed by tailwinds and favorable terrain (i.e., more descending than climbing). The slow-going, grinding work of earlier in the trek had become a distant memory. I became so used to the miles sliding by relatively easily until I hit a wall on Saturday the 14th, and, in doing so, pulled the lever that dropped the terra firma I thought my feet were standing on. And so I fell, collapsing right onto my all-too human limitations.

We were camped in Ainsworth, Nebraska for our day off on Thursday the 12th. Fortuitously, I found a massage therapist in Ainsworth and arranged for a 30-minute evening massage. (It turns out that the masseuse had just returned from Tokyo where he was working as a massage therapist for the US Olympic team.) I felt I was in good hands; perhaps, too good. I rode back to the campsite and was overwhelmed by exhaustion. I felt better after eating dinner but immediately felt worse after eating 2 cookies for dessert. Went to bed. Woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat.

The next morning, Friday the 13th, I felt off; not sick but not well. I took my time getting the day going as I was only going to ride 65 miles to a town called O’Neill (the Irish Capitol of Nebraska). I wasn’t feeing my strongest but the roads were mostly flat and the tailwind made me feel as strong as Apollo. My average speed for the ride was my highest yet for the trek (16.4 mph). After dinner, I felt good enough to join Joanie on a short bike ride to get some soft ice cream. Ate the ice cream and felt miserable. I went to bed. Woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, again.

I woke up on Saturday the 14th feeling weak. I wondered if the weakness was the result of the massage. I took my time getting ready and did not feel my greatest when I left. Had I known what awaited me maybe I would have crawled back into bed. The winds had shifted. No longer were they guided by Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, who smiles benignly, waves her wand and makes the tailwind steady and true. No, on Saturday, the Wicked Witch of the West, cackling madly, threw the headwinds at me. For the entire day.

 What a world.

In my weakened state, it would have been rough going if the air were still. With the winds, I felt as if I were moving backwards. After 10 miles, I took a break in the shade and felt a little dizzy. After 20 miles, I sat in on a bench in the shade in the small farming town of Clearwater, eating my two sandwiches, unsure of what to do. I was experiencing mild vertigo. I lay down and dozed for a bit. I woke up, not feeling any better. I then did the only thing I knew how to do, which was to get on the bike and keep on pedaling.

Then two things happened. Even though the winds were relentless, the more I rode the better I felt. By mile 30, I made the decision that I would ride the entire 76 miles to Norfolk, Nebraska, a small city in the eastern part of the state. But as I recuperated physically, I began to curse the winds. No longer in physical distress, I put myself into a state of emotional duress because of the winds. And that’s when I yanked open the trap door.

I didn’t realize this until the next day (with the Wicked Witch and her headwinds still blowing), but I was upset because I was holding on to something that had changed. Didn’t I just post the other day about the different categories of Dukkha? Yet, for all my intellectual understanding about the causes of suffering, for all my neat words about how fickle the wind can be, the very next time the weather was uncooperative, my stress levels increased and I was miserable. All because of the wind, an atmospheric phenomenon that no human can control.

No waking up in a bathed in sweat the next night. Whatever was ailing me had passed. But as I rode away from Norfolk, up into the rolling hills that run north to south between Norfolk and the Missouri River, I picked myself up off the floor under the trap door, changed my approach to the entire endeavor of riding, and did not curse the winds. Nor the climbs, which came on, one after the other, like waves on the ocean.

No rest for the weary.