Saturday morning seemed like a nice day for a ride. Sunny and scattered clouds, little wind. Thought I'd check out the trails to the south and west, which I of course I hadn't seen since I backed off the bike in late 2010. Thought I'd go as far as EAGLE school, a ride I recalled as wooded, winding, and cool. When I got to the Belt Line I was pleasantly surprised to find that the overpass bridging the multi-lane roadway was nicer than I recalled, with an easy and long approach, instead of the usual narrow and steep winding climb. Then I was on the long and straight road for quite awhile, moderate traffic, no shade. Shortly after I got into the woods I found an unmarked fork in the trail, and, being without a map, I trusted to my instinct. And, with apologies to Robert Frost, I took the road less traveled, and that made all the difference.
Nice for awhile, then, unexpectedly, I was in an urban setting; not bad, wide roads, little traffic, and on a marked bike route, going away from where I meant to be, but always in a gentle downhill. With no idea where I was. Definitely not where I'd meant to be. I toyed with turning around but decided to see how things played out. Finally I came upon a population sign, "Welcome to Fitchburg." I had to laugh.
Because when we first moved to Madison, more than a dozen years ago, I was still in the Omaha mindset of a gridded street system, streets that run parallel or across each other in predicable ways. Streets that stay put. Once we'd been here for awhile, I decided from time to time to take a shortcut while driving, and invariably got seriously lost, because most of these streets and roads like to do some traveling of their own, wandering every which way, ignoring the compass. The ending to my early shortcuts was always one of two alternatives: I'd find myself behind where I started out (literally, looking ahead toward the intersection I last recalled), or else in Fitchburg, a sprawling expanse of intermixed rural and urban land with a pretense of being a city. So here I was, again.
Not so bad, except the sun was beginning to beat down, and I was soon, Fitchburg or not, right where I did not want to be, on or beside busy concrete, with its familiar sounds of trucks and the sights of scattered debris -- and heat. I circled around a bit, looking for a way back to the wooded bike trails without (because that would be too easy) simply retracing my trail up that incline. And in fact I could see where I wanted to be, across wide roads. Moreover, the bike route signs tended to have "Detour" on them, and to lead away from there. The sensation was like it must be to be lost in a cave -- when one knows, by compass, the way one wants to go, but where the actual path is dictated by the available routes.
As I followed the bike route, I realized something I should have known long ago: when I see the phrase "bike route" I tend to presume that it means a good way to go. But that is not necessarily the case; it can just as often mean "We don't know how or why you ended up out here, and there is no easy way out, but since you are here, this is the least painful way to go." And so I went.
"Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink."
As I circled some more, narrow and shady side streets beckoned me, always seeming to lead downhill, but I saw them for what they were -- saltwater shortcuts. Deadly temptations, like seawater to a sailor dying of thirst, offering the illusion of relief tempered with the guarantee of disappointment and worse. What goes down must come back up, and to go that way would be not only to postpone the inevitable, but to make it far, far worse. So I stuck to the marked path, such as it was.Ultimately I found the road again, just beyond a bike route sign that had nothing on it but a picture of bicycle --no words, no arrow, as though it thought about giving advice but given it up as a bad idea. After a long and threatening pedal across a six-lane divided roadway, it was awhile in the cool of the woods, on a long route as wonderful as I recalled, and, finally, back home, to cold fresh water and, later, lunch.
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