WHAT I AM GOING TO BE

Actually, it should say, “What am I going to be?”

On what felt like the first real day of my retirement, I decided to stop worrying and wondering about time and took a little spin down to the trails at Tuscazoar. A long time ago, I’d take off by myself and drive to WV or Virginia or Pennsylvania and go riding. Seems like a good time to take up that habit again.

It’s been years since the last time I was at Tuscazoar,. I remember getting dropped by Gus Michaels and Mike Colonna when we stopped on the way back from an AOA event. It was Supai’s last run as a trail dog; she was diagnosed with Lyme disease soon after.

The Kocareks, Knobby Side Down people, and Stark County Parks have done an amazing job of transforming what used to be a grinding set of hiking trails into a fun little trail network. Honestly, the jump line reminded me of a couple of places at Copper Harbor MI. I rode everything and got my bearings, and I will be back soon.

Just enough machine-built flow trail interspersed among old-school singletrack, with some chunk mixed in. Pre-Appalachian.

Since I was making it a day, I decided to drive up to Vulture’s Knob and try to spend the remaining 75% of my battery. After a lap or so at VK, I had used up my time, but not my battery – still 50% left. I love that bike. I’ve been told I should be ashamed (half-jokingly) to ride an e-bike, and a friend said he “won’t be ready for one for quite a while.” To that I say, I’m sorry. I’m having the time of my life.

On the drive through the Amish countryside, I listened to an Outside podcast featuring Bill McKibben, the author of The End of Nature, which I had read as a grad student. Back then, I thought he was a self-promoting anthropomorph: his thesis in the book was that in destroying that part of the natural world that sustains our species, we are in fact destroying all of “nature.” Something tells me that if we don’t get the carbon emissions thing under control, we might end of causing the extinction of our species, but there still will be plenty of “nature” left – just no humans and the thousands of species that accompany us to our demise.

Well, he’s still a self-promoter and humble bragger, but in the podcast he certainly cites some interesting facts about the reality of global warming – and looking at the haze blanketing the surrounding hillsides from Canadian wildfires, it wasn’t too hard to believe what he was preaching.

Lastly, it seems that the Amish have fully embraced e-bikes. I saw more of them in in Tuscarawas, Stark and Wayne county than I did horse and buggies. And the Amish seem to be thriving.