Life's Little Landmarks

Today's Ride:
27.4 miles
Bryce – out and back
1 hour 40 minutes
Clear, 70° F.



Reay Lane runs roughly north and south through the Gila Valley and is part of a route I frequently ride, as I did this morning. When I say "runs roughly," I mean both ways: approximately and not smoothly.

Until this week.

County crews have just finished resurfacing about two miles of Reay Lane on the south side of Thatcher. It's now a strip of asphalt: smooth, clean, and quiet as electrical tape.

It's a pleasure to ride on.

But I miss something about the old, pockmarked, pothole-repaired and rough surface. I miss the landmarks or, in this case, the roadmarks.

You see, after a few dozen rides, a cyclist gets to know a stretch of road quite well. He notices and remembers unique designs etched on the road by the thermal cracking of its surface. There are pothole repairs, some done well producing nary a bump when ridden over and others that have either disintegrated with time or were not done well to begin with. There's the occasional survey paint, man-hole cover, broken center line reflectors, graffiti and the ever-present tar-filled fissures.

All of these surface features form a sort of road map that comprise the clues informing the cyclist exactly where she is on the road; how far to the top of the hill; how much more time before reaching the next intersection. They define a road, give it character.

And now, for this new stretch of Reay Lane, that character has been paved over with a uniformly smooth and featureless ribbon of asphalt. I've lost my bearings.

I was thinking today while riding that life is a bit like the rough version of Reay Lane. We all have our cracks and fissures, our covered over potholes, the imperfections of life that we try to smooth over with time, experience and repentance. Our personal roads are mostly very much rideable and usually pleasantly so.

But the marks in our life's road provide the context and dimension that give us the bearings and cues we need to continue to move forward toward our destination. We know just when and how much to swerve to miss a crack or crevice because we recognize the features of our life's highway.

We want smooth travels but we don't want to cover our past and take away our personal landmarks that keep us going in the right direction and at the right pace.

Happy trails.