{"id":2931,"date":"2020-08-24T11:17:59","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T11:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/08\/24\/the-pleasures-of-the-mountain-bike\/"},"modified":"2020-08-24T11:17:59","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T11:17:59","slug":"the-pleasures-of-the-mountain-bike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/08\/24\/the-pleasures-of-the-mountain-bike\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pleasures of the Mountain Bike"},"content":{"rendered":"

What follows is from my first weblog, and is dated 4 May 2004. The photo was taken this morning by Dennis Murray, fellow aficionado of strenuous pursuits.<\/span><\/p>\n

…………………<\/span><\/p>\n

Time was, when running was my exercise, the daily bread of my cardiovascular system. But then the injuries came: chondromalacia patellae in both knees, shin splints, plantar fasciitis, you name it. So I took up the bike, and eventually the mountain bike. Now I run just once a week, on Sunday mornings, for about 75 minutes. The other days I either hike or ride the mountain bike, mostly the latter. I like to be on the road before sunrise, and catch old Sol as he rises over the magnificent and mysterious Superstition Mountains. There is nothing like greeting the sun as he greets the mountains, bathing them in the serene light of daybreak. It is an appropriate moment for gratitude, gratitude for another day on which to bang my head against the riddle of existence. Riding into the rising sun, I sometimes recall Nietzsche\u2019s words from Thus Spoke Zarathustra<\/em>: \u201cO you overrich star, what would you be except for those for whom you shine?\u201d<\/span>

The beauty of the mountain bike is that you can get off the roads, away from cars and people, and onto trails and jeep tracks. I\u2019d rather dodge rattlesnakes than cars any day. I have even been known to strike out cross-country across open desert. I\u2019ve got kevlar-reinforced tires, with thick tubes, and a strip of plastic betwixt tube and tire as prophylaxis against cactus spines and other impregnators. No need for slime, and no flats for going on two years. My bike is an old Trek 930, a modest mid-range hard-tail \u2013 having been called a hard-ass, I suppose this is appropriate \u2013 <\/span>with front-end suspension. As every Thoreauvian knows, one doesn\u2019t have to spend a lot of money to have fun and live well.<\/span>

Still, nothing in my experience beats running for the endorphin kick. \u2018Endorphin\u2019 is a contraction of \u2018endogenous morphine.\u2019 The adjective means originating from within, in this case, from within the brain. You know what morphine is. The brain of a body under athletic stress seems to produce these endorphins the existence of which, I understand, is more scientific postulation than verified fact. Endorphins manifest themselves at the level of consciousness in rather delightful sensations. When conditions are auspicious, and I am about 45-50 minutes into a run, I enter a phase wherein I apperceive myself as merely riding in my body as a pure spectator of a pure spectacle. I become a transcendental onlooker, and the world becomes George Santayana\u2019s realm of essence. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI become a transparent eyeball: I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.\u201d (Ralph Waldo Emerson, \u201cNature.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"BVMTBike24Aug2020\"<\/a>
<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What follows is from my first weblog, and is dated 4 May 2004. The photo was taken this morning by Dennis Murray, fellow aficionado of strenuous pursuits. ………………… Time was, when running was my exercise, the daily bread of my cardiovascular system. But then the injuries came: chondromalacia patellae in both knees, shin splints, plantar … Continue reading “The Pleasures of the Mountain Bike”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[415,34,599,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emerson-thoreau-and-friends","category-health-and-fitness","category-santayana","category-varia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}