PUEBLO — Coming around a corner, a swath of deep cerulean greeted me after pedaling through miles of sandy-brown scrub. I’d been catching glimpses of an inlet I’d been riding alongside at , but now, 11 miles out, I had a grand view of the lake proper.
One glance at my rosy bare arms told me they were burning under the February sun. What a day: I was mountain biking in winter in Colorado in short sleeves and shorts, on winding, zippy trails. Peaks rose on the horizon from ranges I wasn’t familiar with, and a heady breeze whipped along the trail’s higher points, on the flatlands above those dips into the ribbons of scrubby side canyons. And now, I’d rolled up to the blue enormity of this overlook.
Bliss, right?
Not quite.
I was running out of energy. Fast. I ate more, but it wasn’t just a lack of food that was hitting me — I was out of shape for 20-plus miles on trails. Though I’d kept pace with my pal Kate for the first 8 miles or so, I had fallen behind and wasn’t going to catch up. I was sinking, I knew from previous experience, into that state of zero energy known as a bonk. Eleven miles from the . And I couldn’t remember where we’d parked the car.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, and it won’t be the last. When you play in the outdoors, things don’t always go the way you’d planned. Or, you head out with friends and realize, “Wait, I didn’t participate in the planning. I am completely unprepared for this.”
Tearing into an energy bar, I started thinking of other times when I didn’t ask enough questions before embarking on an adventure. For example:
While visiting friends in Hamburg, our pals took me and my husband to the lowlands in Germany’s far north, and to the island of , a popular tourist destination on the North Sea. Uwe asked us whether we’d like to do a long walk on the beach there. “Sure!” we said, not realizing our ideas of what constitutes a “long walk” might be different. We took a bus to the northern end of the island and started the trek south.
Though we were bundled up in coats, hats and scarves, Frauke insisted that we peel off our shoes and socks to walk in the water for a bit because it’s “good for your feet.” We kept walking, walked some more (mostly with shoes on) and were surprised to see nude bathers, not because nude beaches are surprising, but because of the temperature at this particular nude beach.
The sun dipped. Hours later, finally approaching the main village, where I hoped we would stop at a restaurant for a late dinner before I passed out, Uwe confessed he was getting worried about making the last train off the island. Since we were his guests, I decided I shouldn’t pack wet sand into a softball-sized wad and lob it at his head. Instead, I said something like, “Let’s book it.” We speed-walked and jogged toward that last train. As we squeezed on, I silently vowed to drag Uwe up a fourteener upon his next Colorado visit, without telling him how far it was, of course.
At Lake Pueblo, I made myself pedal onward as more thoughts of food and exhaustion zinged my brain. I recalled the time that, while climbing in the Alps, I freaked out while perched on a ledge waiting for other climbers to get through a bottleneck, causing my mountain guide to say, “when’s the last time you ate something?” I thought about getting stuck in a bear-induced traffic jam in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and being so hungry when I emerged in Gatlinburg two hours later that once I had a sandwich in hand, I hunkered down with it like a wary bear myself, ready to growl at anyone who might interrupt me.
Every one of these stories is cause for a chuckle now. I guess that’s why I keep going out there. I still feel the odds are in my favor: 90 percent chance I’ll have a good time, 10 percent chance I’ll be riding back at 2 m.p.h., bonked out of my gourd, either crying or seething because three dozen people have passed me and asked whether I’m OK. And if the 10 percent happens, I’m 100 percent certain that later, I’ll laugh about the state I was in, how I wanted to yell to those passing cyclists, “I’m not OK, I need a bag of peanut M&Ms, a helicopter and new friends, ones who aren’t trying to kill me. But if you see my friends, will you please tell them I’m OK? I don’t want to ruin anyone’s day.”
Jenn Fields: 303-954-1599, jfields@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jennfields
