The Davis Enterprise: Jan. 5, 2009

Davis Bicycles! column #007

Title: In bike heaven, with pachamama
Author: Tom Burton

I am on my bike, my black fixie, on a dirt road made doughy-soft by four days of rain. The front wheel sinking, the rear sliding as I struggle up a steep hill. I continue defying gravity, but with one unexpected slip, one misplaced buried shard of gravel, I will be eating dirt and nursing scrapes. This is heaven.

I am in heaven because I am alive, and it is this time I spend on my iron horse that makes me feel. I know, know, that this Earth, the Earth South American Indians call pachamama (what a word, pachamama!: benevolent mother Earth), will take care of me, and she does. I am now on the other side of the lost hill, on the edge of control as I try to back-pedal (my fixie, two gears and a chain, has no rear brake other than what I can conjure from my tired legs), slipping over and through mud the color and texture of canned chocolate frosting.

I slide to a stop: The road has ended, one bleached, gray barn -- the same color as the clouds beyond -- to my left, receiving protection from a barbed-wire fence. My lungs are desperate for air. In the blanketed silence, a companion would hear my rasping. I hear only -- feel, really -- my heart pounding, slamming my body with every beat, echoed by the occasional thunderclap of a storm getting closer.

I wait; breathing slows, peace descends. Bike still between my legs, I shuffle to face my return trip back to the tarmacked road: what luxury awaits! The experience I gained coming here makes my return trip uneventful and I reach the road ... still lost. I point the handlebars to the right, toward the clouds, the direction I think is home.

The rain and I meet and my faith in pachamama is rewarded: It is a warm rain, benign, purifying. The water darkens the road black like the velvet in one of those old clown paintings hanging in a cheap hotel or grandmother's front room, the perfect backdrop for the bright silver diamonds of water spraying off the top of the front tire. When I traverse the clouds, the sun is blinding. Diamonds turn to rubies, emeralds and sapphires.

The road is straight, it is deserted, but I am not alone. A red-tailed hawk pulls up beside me. We both look ahead, quiet equals. I am not surprised, this happens to me about one in 10 rides, but I am still appreciative. We glide together for a quarter of a mile when the bird pulls off.

The rain stops. The only noise, the zip zip zip of the tires in the water. I come out of my trance: County Road 94B, soon to become California Highway 16. I return to the land of the living, ride the 15 miles to my home and my wife and my work. But, like after so many bike rides, I am not the same person. I come back with a piece of pachamama inside me.

-- Tom Burton, the first employee at Davis' venerable Wheelworks in 1979, and his wife Norma raised their two children in bike trailers. (Their kids tell everyone they are trailer trash.) The family has remained blissfully car-less for three years, and Tom continues to search for enlightenment on two wheels.