On the Trail

When I was a child my very vain mother would say, in response to an impertinent child’s query as to her age, "I’m 21-plus!"

For years "21-plus" was a factual age to me, until a middle-aged friend told me on her birthday that she was "Jack Benny’s age again—39." So "Jack Benny’s age again" became the new standard for me.

This is by long way of explanation the excuse I give now for the aching in my knees after encountering some bullish hills on my bicycle rides—the reality of age overtaking the myths woven to camouflage the advance of years. And while I’m yet to perfect a way to slow Time, I’ve discovered that I can take some evasive maneuvers when bicycling to keep those painful reminders in abeyance.

Bicycling has been a form of self-prescribed therapy for me for many years. Whether depressed or in distress due to several chronic health challenges, as long as I can ride my bike I feel alive and therefore invincible. So I often push myself, and only lately have my knees (which were never part of the original pain equation) begun to push back with complaints of their own.

Living and riding on roads in the Santa Monica Mountains, of course, presents few opportunities to not encounter some ridiculous climb. Ego factors into my bicycling; I don’t like to walk my mountain bike (an astonishingly heavyweight old Diamondback) up a hill while all those solicitous guys sporting to-die-for derrieres poised high in the air above their skinny-tired bikes go steaming past with

"Need a hand?"

"Everything okey-dokey?"

"You’ll make it!" echoing in my burning ears. So certain climbs are just no longer worth busting my kneecaps over. I modify routes now or plot loops that provide some options. Or I make concessions. I’ll allow a rest break or two midway through some long monstrous climb—as long as I promise myself to get back on the bike and not beg some passerby to use his cell phone to hail me a cab ride home.

Still, there is something about the human spirit that defies limits being set, even when one is cycling around on Jack Benny’s knees. One of my favorite rides is along Mulholland Highway to Arroyo Sequit Park in the Malibu mountains above Leo Carrillo State Beach. I "cheat" and drive with my bike to the junction of Mulholland with upper Encinal Canyon Road and leave my truck there, thus dodging the climb from my home on Mulholland in Agoura (near the Rock Store) to Kanan-Dume Road in Malibu, which professional bicycle racers often use as training practice.

From Mulholland’s junction with Little Sycamore Canyon Road to the park entrance, it’s what I call "bike-flying," a long unbroken downhill stretch. The wind sings in my ears. There’s little or no traffic so I dare myself not to touch the brakes. My body leans into curves. The zaftig, rattletrap bicycle skims and glides like a soaring bird and I stand up and ride with arms outstretched like wings. There is a smile on my face as wide as the Golden Gate Bridge.

"This is bliss!" I shout, triggering pebble-slides along the road’s rugged rock outcroppings. The ride lasts for minutes, and I never want it to end.

To every downhill there is an uphill. The price paid for this amazing "flight" is initially not bad at all—until I cut over Clark Ranch Road from Mulholland to reach Encinal Canyon Road, at the top of which I have left my truck.

To my knees, Encinal is a take-no-prisoners climb. It is my nemesis. It humbles me. It owns me and it knows it. Even the boys with those fine fannies riding their atrociously costly bicycles inch up it like brightly-colored snails.

Yet sometimes on a cool night, the energy and determination are there—not to conquer Encinal, but to baby-crawl up it on my teetering, thousand-pound, Blue Light Special of a bike. And sometimes I can stay on the bike and make it all the way to the top.

By the time I reach my truck it is almost dark and deeply still, the mountains in silhouette, stars beginning to sparkle, and the air is scented with the mysterious sweet fragrance of various chaparral plants.

There’s an unmistakable twinge and even some stiffness in my knees as I load my bike into the truck’s bed. But more pronounced is the aura of exultation—a wave of immense gratitude for the privilege of feeling so beautifully alive.