Paths, attitude and craziness.
Nights that I’d like righted, days I’d like longer, some memories shorter, but I know we must remember.
To walk with a breeze and soft sunlight, showing, guiding and pulling, hearing the joyful noise of all of it through the trees. To earn with a living, these steps I’m believing, will always lead the way.
In hands we’re united, fingers twined but not in fighting, love should always win again.
Unfurrow your brows and allow the sweetness of each day to wash over you in waves of gratitude and patience. Allow ourselves a bow and remember how, love is the brightest part of each day.
In sickness and in health, through poverty and wealth, our attitudes shall always offer the most riches. It’s always darkest before light, so I offer you find comfort there to learn your way. The fear will subside, your heart and mind will slow, your eyes adjust allowing an image you never saw before.
In fear we can flight, or stand to fight, what we believe in and know we are going our way. Treat others better than yourself, find a balance in mind and health, and know, tomorrow is always another day.
Lay your head where it may, close your eyes and sway, keep your chin up all you crazy fucks, and remember to go your way.
Night~JP.
Howling dog, Lost Sierras, Storms of thought and morning.
Steam rises from a stainless steel coffee cup, warming my hands and lips, filling me with caffeine and perspective. Outside the storm pushes on, rain for days, our snow pack melting, soggy streets, dampening spirits an increasing solidarity. The rivers and creeks ebb and run over their banks, flooding roads and further isolating us from the outside world.
When I decided and found a way to move here, I couldn’t help but be excited about SEASONS, actual four seasons of the calendar year. The nourishment and lessons from each, the patience and prospects, reaping what you sow , enjoying and falling in love with the seasonal rush. I wanted to find a new adventure in the backcountry, skis, skins, snowpack and the changing hills fit and fill me with a passion and love I do not have words for. Reading at nights, trying to enjoy the shorter days, with a clean effort of what we need to do to prepare ourselves, our finances and souls, our hands and all they hope to hold.
There is a rhythm and hum of what all needs to be done. A constant pulse of work and play, of bills and pay, and of loans and interest rates. Lately its been my future love, this shop, this town, some woman who can house me, expand me and simply be with me, in those outlandish and quite times, equal intro and extrovert, and to each their own.
The elements shift like mood swings and our great mother has been brooding, overflowing and full of nourishment, I know that is also why I moved here, the Lost Sierra is my Soul Kitchen, her cupboards full and bright, filled with color, experiences, toil and effort, but the reward is tremendously high in both reward and gains, personal and financial. They long told me of the winters and tightening up, I am lucky to have a low overhead for a man entering his fourth decade roaming this land, although I do have loans and guarantees, promises and words kept, and those who believed know I’ll work my fingers and ass to the bone.
The rain thunders down on the asphalt shingle roof, the power flickers, the southwest wind shivers great arms of pine n cedars, causing cones and needles, fat droplets of aquatic spheres thrown about the ground. there is a steadiness and cause for storms, unlike temper tamptrums, they fill watersheds, clean out and thin the backcountry, causing more work for those who trim and cut trail, but seasons always need force and life cannot always be a beautiful John Muir picture. In truth, we all need to rage with energy, good and bad to create a cleansing new beginning and a end.
Attempting to be an entrepreneur of some sort, a business owner, friend, fixer and shop, to become an idealic member of this community, one that fits and fills a lack of family and longtime friends. I find my allotment of personal pleasure is in the backseat to the reality and wanting of this idea, this creation to be done better and more personal than ever before. It’s amazing the smattering of people who decide to make a little town their home. The hills are dotted with brilliance and success, but with equal parts failure and hiding. We all move to the same cord, just different tunings. It all works as a muse for me, especially when a woman cannot. The Brothers Comatose provide the music, as I reach for the pot of coffee to warm the steel and refresh ideas, its the only warmth’s in this otherwise typical Pacific Northwest day I grew up in.
Bikes and mountains, love and life. Energy, currents, sometimes swelling sometimes swaying, cover and scare us, allowing us to float or reinforce boarders. Passion and effort, the realization of a life’s work, a mentor of mine told me once you find your niche, your life’s work, you hone that and you’ll be alright. Alone in these mountains, I know that I’m not, but the wheel is mine sometimes the strength wavers but the passion does not. I believe in the ideal of the effort. Outside the windows and shop door, the neon open sign shows the rain in a technicolor, giving a different perspective and beauty to an otherwise bleak day and reminds me I love my brain and oddness of thought, but mainly the ability to be still and see things how they evolve instead of forcing and ideal.
And that, is my morning in the Lost Sierra.
JP.
Getting found in the Lost Sierra
I suppose I shoulda realized all those years ago, that this is where I should’ve ended up and gone sooner, but knowing now, this is where I belong. I was 15 with a learners permit in wallet and a bike mechanic for a co pilot heading a meandering southern route to Mammoth mountain and my first national, but more importantly it introduced me to the Sierras. I remember a spell of amazment, giant peaks, big trees, rivers and lakes, everything a boy from Snohomish loves, but alas, no soggy rainy gray skies, just bluebird days and brilliant sunshine.
Broken hearts and torn dreams, scattered remnants of what use to lay between, my head and heart floated amlisly I had lost my pure passion for the bike and its people, I was integrated into the wrong folk, I was grumpy and scared, the plight of an independent rep trying to provide for a family and find the inner love and freedom the machine had always given me. A mutual lack of communication and less and less time spent together spelled the end six weeks before knots where tied and vows where made, isles where walked and a lifetime of plans where laid. Looking back with a clean conscious and piece of mind, it all happened the way it should, although I do miss the structure and foundation of love, and being in the warmth of it, there, I’m truly my best self. Hands touching the soft porclien skin of a woman, and these lips have places to go, hands and fingers twined together and my heart and soul find a counterpart worth their time and devotion.
Exes and counterweights, the way a 9 foot 5 weight fly rod shake, trembling in current and rings in lakes, the cool air of sunrise and sunset cast a vision felt through my core. Dancing on rocks and pounding nails, fixing bikes and riding lost Sierra trails, I’m not content, I’m in love with the lay of the land and my place amongst it, I’ll never regret that relationship ending because it brought me here, where my love and soul converge and my eyes can roam and my body can be at rest and tired from true effort. Maybe she’s out there too, a woman who’s been lost and found, hurt and bound and ready to move on. Each experience is its own sphere, planets align and stars shine, we find love and gratitude be our galaxy and keep us in place, we are all energy and currents, some bigger and brighter than the others, but energy the same. Fear is a thought that keeps us sharp but can override us in times of drought, when love and reflection have gone missing our current dries and our bright ideas and eyes die.
There is always contrast, west and east, country and city, nature and civilization, youth and age, heart and head, energy and wisdom, love and tragedy. To be balanced we must hold all these accountable, much more, ourselves. We all need to find our purpose, and I’ve got mine, although my personal time is cut short by bank loans and my desire to pay those back and people who believed in this endevour, but everyday I lock the doors and roll out, the tall pines and cedars welcome me amongst their limbs, embrace and envelope me in a welcoming hug. The sun shines on my face and back, a nip of cool air cools my thoughts and I’m surrounded by beauty, simplicity is the root of life, but we often spend the majority of our time fucking it up.
I often think of a custom made left hand band and the pride I took in wearing it and the craftsmanship of the woman who created it. Eventually all wounds heal and we gain perspective and thought, although I loved her like no other, and we co habited well together, she wasn’t the human for me, I think moving beyond that was the hardest part, the idea VS the realization, that was the biggest hump, and also realizing my allotted time in Arizona had come to an end, I’m a man for the mountains, and without them I will go crazy. In all honesty however, I do miss her mom and the artistry they shared, that’s something beautiful I’ll always carry with me.
I don’t know when or how we forget a dream or find it out of reach, or not worth the fear of failure, sometimes you have to pitch it some reign and let the big dog eat, do our life’s work and find our place. I’ve rarely been lonely here, I have desires like any other, but I’ve found a peace from my work and my effort, more importantly though is me downloading and helping those who honestly need it and appreciate it, all my exerpeicnes come together like the big two headed river and I’ve created a space I’ve always wanted and craved, and that fellow souls can mingle and laugh, and that makes me about he happiest mother fucker you’ve ever met.
The lost Sierras have found another soul, and I’ll be forever thankful, I couldn’t help but feel that this area needed me as much as I need it, it spoke to me the way love does when I fall to it, easy, all consuming and no words need to be spoken. My passion for life, people and the bikes are back and better than they’ve ever been. I miss the Rice’s, Clint, all the Ahwatukee folk a lot, those I rode with and challenged each other, my friends in Tucson to Flag, but I had to do this, and it was the best decision I’ve ever made, all those experiences we shared are now being shared with others and the stories have new voices, much like the rivers and streams joining each other and rambling on to new lands, we all cast lines and have hope, hook and snag, catch and release us, but love and gratitude is always the current.
I hope y’all still dream and fight the good fight, find love and gratitude, challenge and peace, and at the end and beginning of the day you have somebody to kiss and love on, keep it simple, deep breaths and little steps, we’ll all be alright.
Night~JP.
One of the first I ever wrote, these road days and miles are winding down, time to get back to who I am, and yea, I’m a bit soft.
What if all I am is a rhythm without the lyric.
A constant melody of shifting emotion wrapped in forms of intoxicating verses. It is the sweetest sound of your name from the openings of her mouth, corners of lips curled up in the shape of a smile. Strands of hair come undone from behind her ears, and fall across her face and cover the eyes, and it is here through this transparent mask there is no use in hiding anymore.
The cool air of sunset filters in the shapes around, here the angelic bliss comes closer. The texture of a kiss lingers on the anatomy of my lips, and now I’m left holding my eyes to yours and trying to unlock words to say. And then song begins again, as I see love in the corner of your eye, and now the soul melodic structure has a verse, or at least a chorus.
I thought about you in length today in the midst of my doings of nothing, just gathering the hours and bringing it to a close. I saw you at sunrise, sleep in your eye watching the explosion of a new day. Chilled air comes through naked maples and shines brightly long skinny shadows on the frozen ground. Streaking colors of violet and tangerine skies covered your face in a wash of color, as I kissed you on the neck and held you from behind. It somehow didn’t make sense of my rude image belonging in the picture, but it is my story and that’s how I see it. To flirt through a weekend morning, trying to watch my behavior, the stems of your legs shoot through the openings of my boxers and your body shrunken in my shirt, another wave of music enters my subconscious and adds to song.
In the vapors of afternoon rain, the cycle continuing upward in natures own rhythm, I pictured you through the steam, walking from rock to rock, I felt the base line of your feet carrying the beat, careful not yet to dip into rivers water. Your arms outstretched for balance as conducting an orchestra, condensations gathers around your finger tips, and the crash of symbols and drums rumbles from behind, it gathers a force when searching for a new stone, and then crescendos down when a path appears before you. It is here I know I’m dreaming, but there is no hurry to rub my eyes.
In the imagination of love, softly knowing I’m headed towards the end. I can make out the lines around your face, and skin to my chest. Gathered in arms and lordly with feeling, I hold tightest to the knowing everyone has a song to sing. But it is here, undercover of thread count drifting in sheets, half tangled in reality and wanting, I’m comfortable in essence my arms are full and the song not yet complete. In its own music it shuffles over life and makes the words, but it is us who provide the voice.
SWAY
Going to get back to more of this, loving, grounded, believing, forgiving and growing.
Sway
I have dreams of my great grandmother, and this is our conversation. She was the first woman I met of unbearable will, and also the first person I was to ever see pass away. I was twelve years old staying in Vermont when she died, visiting her and my family. She reminds me of the great, strong women I’ve let into my life, and all that comes with it.
In dashes of light. Come what might, I seek to find.
Out beyond waters edge, out past where the sidewalk ends, I’ve always felt more comfortable in the dirt.
The earth have me to bed in soft grasses that whistle, the sound water ripples, a sweet voice calling me to stay.
I feel a hand in my palm, pulling me along like a boy who’s finally found his way. This feeling I’ve felt, the last time I knelt, at the foot of your grave.
With the eyes of a child, I see you and smile, you tell me its all okay. Young in skin, I ask to see you again, you whisper, just close your eyes, and sway.
Sway with the cattails off the waters breeze, move with the lyrics, no one else can see, sway with the power you create, just remember, its not all for you. You’ll be alright come morning light, the gift to see beyond has always been your way.
My Dear boy you’ve got fight, I hope you find, that not everything is a struggle. You have a lovers soul and look to find, questions that sometimes have no answers. Let your adventures tune you to yourself, find a balance in home and health, let good people into your soul. The strength you have is not just yours, but you have always known that.
You have a poor mans will, a preachers faith, the poets guilt, and a masons grace. How you’ve risen up beyond your place, as a child you where scared and timid, not once did you shy away from the pain. To know the truth is to know agony, to feel its power and live it in the day to day.
It has served you well for the places you’ve dwelled, out on the oceans, down the divide, countless races, it has its place, but cant erase what was done. You don’t live in the then, but fight in the now, I ask you please, to allow yourself a bow, there are people who love you and more that respect you, some that are affraid of you and more that don’t get you, but its not their gift to see.
I’ll always be that voice that calls to yore, out beyond the water bringing waves to the shore, you’ve always been able to find me. I am that breeze that comes through the pines and aspens bringing a song to the air, I see you lay your head down and stare at the leaves that twirl in the autom air, I’ve seen you fight and stumble but never ask why, some answeres a mother just knows.
Sweet boy, in my arms I hold you tight, through deep water and windy night, I’ll see you forever more.
Love, home and family.
I’ve spent nearly a month at my parents’ house. The house that we built, the space that saw me through high school and beyond, the gravel road that carried my feet from 1982 to beyond. Maturity was a benign word to me, perhaps, till even a couple years ago. I had to find it on my own, without the safety of parents, old friends and familiar people. Through failures and patience, the love a few damn good people, I’ve come out on the other side. I’ve always prided myself on internal honesty and honing a perspective unique to me, also knowing that said ideal could be shifted askew by the thought process of an irreverent man. But I also knew that T’s needed to be crossed and I’s dotted, that’s the maturity and vocabulary I was once missing to handle it correctly.
When I was a kid, I found solace in the quite. Our life was always full of noise, what I perceived to be hectic, white noise I didn’t know anything about. Filled by People with lots to say and no ears to listen, and I, didn’t know what or how to begin to unravel the alphabet trapped between my ears or the jumbled knots in my head, heart and gut. I was reminded of subtle beauty, sounds and getting lost in space and thought. My legs stopped what they were doing, my eyes looked towards the sky and my mind slowed to everything but listening. The axis shifted and the world once again came to me slowly, in maturation it ebbed quicker, but the feeling and sense, one and the same. Wide brimmed maple leaves sway and rub together in a melodic hymn, tops of pines leaning on each other’s shoulders, sharing a view and a story with one another looking over the mountains and river. Crickets, frogs and dogs walking upon 5/8ths minus gravel where all I heard, and I of course felt love, but a nostalgia for someone who is back in our home. I realized I’ve always listened, perhaps as a way to avoid fear, the unknown is what everyone was afraid of, and sometimes of what was inside the house. I waited to hear it coming, and instead however, I was ushered into a translucent beauty full of color, sounds and imagination.
The mornings are cast in an array of dew, spider webs spread from blackberry bushes upwards to poplars carrying weaves of water slightly drooping each filament of web. Pools gathered in the depths of leaves, captions of breath held like quotations above your head, the world was held in an aquatic chill, fog and the mystic of a new day. Baby blue sky bends to white arching across the sky patiently waiting for the sun. Soon however, it will rise from behind the mountains, tall pines and slowly burn the fog off and bring it back into the cumulous, where the cycle would repeat, or eventually come down in earnest precipitation.
The artic light of late summer throws sunlight deep into the later hands on the clock, where a man can still navigate till 10 pm, but he should be close to home. It’s here I realized, that 187th was no longer home, but a place I grew up. It’s the house we built and the structure that houses my parents, but for me, it’s an address. You’d be hard pressed to discover love as the underlying movement amongst our family, we’re fighters and workers, sometimes shameful, others gluttonous. Markedly different but we share the same stories and last name, but for me, it’s because of her I’d do anything for and our future.
Sacrifice, commitment, Love and the steady peaceful feeling internal happiness comes when you’re paired with someone that speaks on levels both seen and those we didn’t know we had, pushes you to be better and live fuller. For me, it’s the only time in my entire life I simply couldn’t get enough of somebody, or something. I wanted her near whenever possible. Worked hands become silk when brushed against porcelain skin, rugged edges become smoothed by whispers and a kiss, and madness at times fills us both, especially on her end, as my idiot endeavors have tested every boundary she’s had, and for reasons I’ll forever be grateful for, she’s here, love is indeed, the greatest feat of them all. With a look, a convoluted world makes sense when I watch her, and it wouldn’t matter if it was Chandler Arizona, or Chernobyl, I’d go right now with her.
Love, when done right is the most selfish and gratifying of any emotion and endeavor. Selfish that in the notion of purely loving someone it fills a well within, all the while filling theirs, the preverbal win/win. In adoration, I’ve become fuller. Acting true to yourself, heart and beliefs makes them love you even more as silent rhythms resonate and give new light to find further things we love about something, or, someone. In over a year and a half my introduction to this is continuing, learning new things about the emotion, fear and complete joy as a wide smile crosses my face by just a thought. It’s addicting, funny and a fact that I’ll never bore in love with her. Missing someone is the quintessential etiquette, their sound, touch and habits.
The last time I was housed here, there wasn’t any madness to love. I remember telling my friends, “why you with her if you don’t like to be with her” I, of course was a virgin and late to the party, but it still holds true. I’ve spent the greater majority of my years alone, and it’s been alright, I’ve seen and experienced the hardships and unworthiness of others. In circles spinning smaller and larger, we all come around, whole, there is a steadiness now, a foundation and core, a pact and honor. For a couple years I lost that, tangled in deceit, falseness, lost my trust in myself and others. Spending months fishing in Alaska to return, mildly homeless, I’ve always wanted a home, warm, soft and trusting. Filled with someone I cannot get enough and positivity, where any direction is alright, especially if we’re heading there together.
In the time and talks with my parents, sister and family, we’ve righted many wrongs and non-spoken words. Mended and coped with love and hope, but more importantly dedication and I’ve felt myself a changed man, closure and good endings, I’m looking forward to a lighter self, a self-imposed prisonment is over, and at the core I firmly see what I’ve always believed and the path and direction has never been clearer.
It is never too late to do the right thing, it’s never too late to be honest. Find remarkable people, give them yourself in honesty. Find a woman who inspires, trusts, loves, shapes and voices, images that will last longer than a lifetime, and pictures that make you see your life play out, acts of a husband, father, friend, lover and partner. That honor is something I’ll never bury again, the privilege of someone’s love and respect, it is beautiful. I would’ve never thought that my life, especially love life would be this overwhelming, that the long images of who I wanted to truly be all them years ago has come to fruition, that hard work pays off, but most important that love is the true barometer.
It’s shown me what I’ve achieved and learned, what I have and the gratitude, respect and honor that comes with it, but more importantly what we need to work on and improve. These are all things I’ve thought on oceans, bikes, mountains and rivers, but now they’re being played out, that the core is stronger than ever, character will always shine through and home has never looked so good. Here’s to family future and past. Who every would’ve thought maturity could feel so good.
Art, stories and understanding.
Art, I had once thought was based on the education of understanding patterns. To fully understand it, you need to reflect on what you see, and that, is the beauty of art, the impressions we all see differently looking over the same objects. It’s interpreted through your eyes, casting a wave of spells over your brain sending electrodes throughout your body, casting down through, and between your toes to rise back up again leaving the vocal chords numb of beauty and effort, words cannot do it justice, so we sit in silence and drink with our eyes.
Time however, was never our strength, always behind the eight ball making ends meet, running to events, trade shows, side jobs and family obligations. I was young and knew I was different. I wanted to stop and watch tall evergreens sway and tip each other, like there was current in the tree allowing it to bend against its will, but its constructed to do so. Thick maple leaves cast off from their homes and become inanimate objects stuck in the swirl and birds float in the wind. My day dreaming would be interrupted by my father telling me to stop being lazy and get back to work and not kill time, but my mind had gone in the breeze, tall trees swaying to frame the Cascade mountains, thick cumulous gathered at the their shoulders and ebbed towards the forest, and us.
Softness, wasn’t something we had every day. There was love, without question, but the jelly squishiness of it was over ridden by the sheer need of what had to get done. My parents started a family early, a couple years after they got their own license. I believe they didn’t get to fully find themselves without the anchor of little ones running around, but they are responsible and here we are. Of course grandparents do what they do, and that is when my world slowed down, they would take me to places and asked me what I saw and how that made me feel, down to the big city of Seattle, wharfs, Pikes Place, Museums and of course the ocean. My small world became full of old planes, flying fish, highways and storied buildings. I believe that is why I returned to them in the end of their life, to ease what I could, but age and Alzheimer’s took the majority of their best parts, leaving sections of beauty that would occasional return.
My first memory is our house in Marrysville. We had a half door leading to the back yard that led to a willow tree, I was small enough to walk under the first half of it, everyone else except my younger sister had to open the top half, I thought it was made just for me and the dog. Out to the large base of the comfy willow, there was a stream down below the bank and I would lay here for hours with our dog Boots, a large, loyal yellow lab mix, dumber than the bottom part of that door but a good hound. I remember thinking that life is grand, a soft tree, a river bank, a pillow and friend in the shape of a dog, everything was clean. I remember walking with my brother to his bus stop but didn’t understand where he had to go for hours on end.
We become reflective and educated with time. I was young and thought I was tough, but I also knew things where beautiful, and that life could mirror a poem, a baseline chord we live our days to. It was quite the contrast from my family as I wrote early poems in the tall grasses of our backyard as my brother would disappear with his friends and driver’s license, my sister the youngest would be with her friends and I was fine being alone, but I never felt alone. lost in an emotion I didn’t understand. I grew up in a greenhouse and barn, one gave life and beauty to flowers my father would inexplicable grow from pin point seeds and one that would ease pain the law deemed illegal.
Two gutter connected greenhouses stretched towards our barn and equaled work, I took a young cucumber plant under my wing and it grew to give us a nice yield, till one day I saw bugs around it and knowing my father used a spay to kill them, I picked up a green spray paint can, and begun to kill the bugs, my plant as well as paint the plastic walls of the greenhouse. It was one of the only times I fucked up that he laughed at it, I was sad I killed the plant and thought for sure my dad’s skilled and callused hands could certainly fix it, but he took the plant out of the pot, tossed it into the compost, inspected the soil and recycled it to another pot, the circle of life. Pigs, chickens, flighty horses and cows. They’re all beautiful to watch and move, their strength and fears, trust and tempers, sitting on half eaten wooden fencing my world bent around the edges of alders and huckleberry bushes, the burn pit and tractor.
We always respected strength, fighting strength, lifting strength and effort. I was young and small and didn’t have much but I never quit, my father used to forcefully stop my brother and I from doing sit-ups, he thought anything over two hundred we could hurt ourselves. I began to realize in our mobile home that my strength was in the foresight, knowing beauty and the totality doesn’t belong to the wealthy, that art is all around and it’s given to those who can see and feel what is created. I was stuck recently by a passage from a lost mentor.
“But that is the way it was for me-a young romantic beginning an involvement and commitment to life and writing which-when it reached its most enlarged and present state-rests on the basic belief that what seems most beautiful in all I see about me is what men and women can create with their hands, issuing from their hearts and heads.”
We were beautifully rough, hands that created things from raw material, hands that protected our last name and sister. My father probably doesn’t think he’s an artist and that too is the beauty of him, and I believe that is my role within this bunch, to be a mirror for them to see themselves as I do. The fisherman, how lucky was I to experience years with him on a boat built by artisans in 1929, built and tailored for punishment, effort, work, payment and family. Allowing souls to experience the meaning of dedication, belief and power of currents, mountains and of course, wind. He too an artist of life, in the knowing there is no ceiling, and we can be whoever we choose.
Creating things with your hands, issuing from the hearts and heads. Eventually someday I hope to be a good story teller, that in some way my life will bend to allow the grandeur, defeat and effort of all I see and have done. That I can do justice in the beauty of the place I was raised, in the silent pride of our family, that my spelling and punctuation will someday match the staccato and rhyme in my head and I too will issue it from my heart and head and create something beautiful with my hands in a different way than I was once taught
The Pettit~Files-Family, the great divide and a day of Memories
Life is segmented by memories, they make up the DNA of our years and mark chapters of who we are and what and where we have been. Towards the end we all converge, like a notch in a mountain, a watershed ravine that spills to a river that swaddles and wonders towards a bigger ending, both a berth and a death.
I read, the pointed truths of those before me, with more education and a greater knowledge of vocabulary vernacular, but story tellers all are wishers and wonderers, all lovers of rivers and all with an internal twist for expression.
I recall a memory often of mine, maybe because it was full of fear, full of unknown and full of loneliness, defiance, effort and it marks my family perfectly.
I rode the Tour Divide in 2011, I started with a young man who I wish would’ve let me persuade him to who he is, but we all have destinations and disappointments, and those lesson he’s learned many lifelong assentation’s from. Now it’s a footnote to a long list of accomplishments, and for that, I’m deeply proud of the individual he’s become. Every failure is a window to future success.
I rode 90 percent alone, some 2,915 miles and 217,00 feet of climbing once Taylor sought a different path, I had some mechanical issues that needed time and that too left me trailing most. I wanted to ride in truth the ethos of the event, little help, little hotels and isolation. I read a lot of Norman MacLean, his family had a summer cabin in Seeley Lake Montana. The days leading up to that spot on the map where filled with cold nights, snow hikes, chilly rain and bears, a lot of bears.
On the run in towards Seeley Lake I encountered a typical Montana rain storm that I knew from growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I was experiencing the mild humbling’s of hypothermia to only find a laundry mat/restaurant at 5 a.m. My buddy stopped early, I walked in Snow for hours upon hours to the idea of Sasquatch, hunger and death. I really had no idea the true distance, nor did I want to, the idea of the next town was fuel, and my large imagination ran rampant on the idea of soft chairs, strong drinks and food.
You go through many epiphany’s in doing such an effort, you become manic in moods, they are marked on either end of the truest high, and the lowest low. My night in the Rockies of Montana, the closest I’d been to home where lonely and frightful, I saw well over 30 bears on my ride through the Forrest service road towards Owl Creek and the outskirts of Seeley Lake.
I had been awake and moving since Whitefish Montana and the massive rain storm, lying in a simple gor-tex bivvy I laid under a property sign hoping for some coverage, the tall summer grass laid over me and blanketed me in wetness, the bivy sunk from the pools of water and sat in my mouth attempting to suffocate me. I was once Closter phobic but, commercial fishing cured me of such nonsense, I pulled my shit together and rode to a gas station in town, stripped naked and blasted the hand harmer all over my frozen hands and man parts, life wasn’t good.
Waterproof maps soaked through and ruined, batteries corroded over, spirits where sunk and absolutely nothing was dry. I spent half the morning with everything in the dryer, then pushed off into the wilderness, off towards a destinations I’ve always wanted to see. The miles where long, with little stops but cute little churches, tiny A framed buildings of faith I knew people needed in this country, all painted white and coming to a cross over the doors.
A late afternoon sun broke through and shone on the green mountain next to me as I covered easy flat miles, it reminded me of home and the hills and roads I grew up in, my mood changed. A little gas station a ways off the track then the road to Seeley Lake, I had caught up to the South Africans, Luke and Meriam, really nice people doing it right. Somewhere during the miles we spit up in the long steady climb up. I had an old shitty blackberry phone and reception sucked, so I never had constant service or communication on who’s in front or behind, or little rest stops that others could search for.
I rode on, alone towards town some 75 miles away, I came to a clearing after seeing the most bears I’ve ever seen, including Alaska. The Montana Rocky Mountains laid over my right shoulder, it was nearly 10 pm but still light out, snow shouldered their slopes and gave a hint of white to the dark blue and grey mountains, the light was soft and the hue of some daylight hung in the air. I heckled at bears like you would cows, “hey bear”, “hey bear” ushering them out of your line, they were fat from a good spring, and my contraption was odd and they slowly meandered off the road. I rode in the dusk towards midnight, I had slept maybe three hours the day before and was done. At this point I still had my jet boil so I made some tea, romin and tried to calm myself about sleeping in the valley of bears. I found a random campsite and took that as an omen, it was complete with a built shitter, a water spigot and two picnic tables, one I slept under, life was good.
I woke up in the pre-dawn hours, looking over at eye level frosted grass I saw three bears no more than 20 yards away. I rolled my head back over, back to the down and synthetic warmth of safety and closed my eyes wishing they would see something different. I again turned to my right and saw three bears loaming about, I waited a second, noticed the bent forms of heavy bladed grass cursed with the weight of frost, I still had some of last night’s food in my mouth and gathered a plan. I moved and the crinkle of the bivvy and frost caused them to look at me, I stared at them in my most evil, don’t fuck with me alpha male look/please don’t eat me. They rambled off at the odd animal under a table and a pile of gear on top of it, occasionally all of us would look at each other, gauging, judging what we should do, I loaded up my gear on the bike, pedaled off and starred at bears.
I made my way to the outskirts of Seeley Lake, from gravel to pavement where the dirt road shot up mud till I reached pavement. I saw a long row of US flags at a cemetery and swerved my bike across, a list of those gone but not forgotten proudly remembered. The town had grown from what I had read about it, but those where the 20-30’s and in his last book, “young men and fire”. I found the first diner I could, rolled my bike up and fiddled with equipment as the waitress brought hot food an drinks, it was here I found that my camera charger could charge my ipod and for the first time during my ride I could have tunes. My spirits began to sore, I had a belly of food, a plan of action to Lincoln Montana, and beyond. The South Africans joined me on my last round, and as well all reveled in our experience I paid my tab, saw my music device fully charged and was stoked to cover miles.
It is a process to load up your bike and gear stash, and I was still a rookie at this point. In gathering my things and making my way to the door I saw a twin to my brother, we locked eyes and he began to make his way to me. It took me awhile to realize that it indeed was my brother, it had been nearly five years since I had seen him, my dad had joked that he would find me when I “ride my bike” at the time telling them of the trip it didn’t really sink in till we started, then they realized the scope of what we were doing.
Josh came up to me and said we’ve been trying to find you for days, you had some shit weather. He said Dad was across the street, I hadn’t seen my father since I moved to Arizona. I walked outsided, past my loaded up bike and looking north across the street was a grey haired man looking to leap frog through traffic. He came up to me and for a second there was a brief awkwardness of side hug or full hug. I waited till he was done looking at my bike so we were shoulder to shoulder for a good solid hug. The last couple of days where the most trying mentally and physically for me, and for the first time in a long time I felt the security of having your father there, even if it was for a moment, the security, the piece of mind, it righted me for the rest of the trip.
He didn’t have a smart phone, so he was in contact with my mom back in Snohomish about where I was and how to find me, distant GPS signals and no name towns and then, boom, a reunion. We had a brief conversation, I needed to make use of the sunlight and good roads, we had agreed to meet in Lincoln. It was 80 or so miles to meet back up, I had tunes in my ears and The head and the heart played as I left the nostalgia of seeing my dad in half a decade, my brother was healthy and present, I rode along a swollen river to see them again, through a couple small towns and asked them to stay open for the South Africans, through fields being irrigated by rolling sprinklers leaving a mist that laid at the foot of the mountains, past the big Blackfoot river where MacLean fly fished and I stopped and took a pic of tombstones rising up like shark fins in the flooded waters, his staccato matched my cadence and gave further song to the ride.
The last little bit of ride to Lincoln is pavement, alongside it was a creek cut deep into the earth, a beautiful sunny ride, my first in Montana, I rolled into town and heard “PETTIT”, “HEY, PETTIT”, “JONNYP” and there as promised sat my dad and brother, hanging out waiting for my meandering ass. I had to do laundry again from the muddy roads, we ate together and then I wanted to push off, but he waitress had other plans, she showed us the dumpster out back where a bear had shoved it open, a grizzly to be exact. So instead of covering ground I stayed with my family and we talked for hours, and to some to not see each other for years is odd, for me and us, its normal. We got caught up as big mosquitos bumped my a bear totem pole outside the hotel, the late night air was much lighter than the day before, here, with my dad and brother I was awash in safety and familiarity.
In the morning we had breakfast, we shared a room and they both snore beyond control, a large part of me wanted solidarity, to experience the divide as it comes, but I knew these days are few and rare. I stayed longer than I should at breakfast and enjoyed them for who they are, I knew a long lonely day awaited me and maybe we would meet up again, but here, in Lincoln, we were perfect, and together, a beautiful sunrise had greeted us, there was no, “you should call more” just love. Love for me being me, love for them being them, I had a 20-30 mile climb ahead of me and at the top, surrounded by myself, I stopped at the beauty of all that was around, in the snow and wind, with the pines and dirt, it was the only time I cried on the entire trip.
My dad has since had some health issues, and my brother is dealing with issues that I don’t know how to speak of, but I know he’s more than what he has been, and certainly more than who he is right now. I sit in the sun and he sits somewhere remarkably different, past failures are a window to success, we don’t have to be limited to our past and we have to have the imagination and integrity to become what we imagine, all I really know is, when I was the most scared and lonely, my family was there, and approaching the 40 mark I should probably let them know more often, they’ve always laid a path for me to get where ever I’ve ever wanted, and that, is beautiful. I rode than damn long stretch of trail, I saw them again and it brought us back together.
As should bikes, effort and forever seeking limits and truth should.
The human condition, bicycles, paths and people.
I was coerced recently into a conversation spun by a magician of mankind. Before I had realized what had happened I was pried open as he was licking his fingers searching for the cliff notes to some of the worst and greatest chapters to date. His monologue was remarkable clear, honest and truthful. And for some goddamn reason I can’t let it out of my thoughts.
An educated man I proudly suffer for, and still can’t believe our paths had crossed to the depths they have, it’s a relationship I would’ve thought impossible years ago. Back then we’d be two curious anomalies sniffing each other out all the while thinking that’s how the other half lives, they’re more fucked up than me.
Wealth, was an unknown to me until I had finished high school. Although my experiences and pride in what and where I’ve been had usually left me with enough brass to allow me to hang in any situation. It took me over thirty years to realize more importantly wealth isn’t just a comma in bank accounts but structure of family, relationships and bonds. Those had always alluded me, the only true bond I knew was a love of bikes, being outside and seeing remarkable things and the kind that kept my ass out of jail. We all see in perfect view our past, and most feel the need to insulate themselves in moving forward. I’ve always prefered to feel the burn or chill , feel the effort exerted from my body and watch veins of effort rise and collapse.
What he’d seen in a couple years and hours spent stuck to my wheel was the most concise advice I had heard. “Let all that go” he said a few times, and while he doesn’t know everything he knows enough and mixed with a gifted brain and time to think, I already knew he was right. “You have to allow yourself to be proud of who you’ve become, what you’ve done and allow yourself that confidence”
Hearing a man that I hold in such high regard say that to me brought a wave of emotion that crested behind my eyes. He isn’t perfect, nor his family or some beliefs, but he’s human. His body has been riddled with ailments that would kill 99% of cockroaches but he’s still here, busy as ever, pouring miles into his legs and riding with his boys, I feel the same crescendo of emotion knowing that I’ve become one of “his” boys as I did when he actually spent earnest time thinking of me.
I’m lucky to have had three remarkable men of all different walks of life lend me parts of them. Oceans, fathers, patriarchs and of course bikes, but more importantly personalities. I had countlessly given myself to people not deserving of my loyalty, compensation and time. I allowed all the things that don’t matter come before those that do, and sometimes it takes the smartest guy you know to remember to smell the flowers and allow gratitude and time to look around.
I was fractured when I came here. I had a half broken cross bike, a couple dollars in my hand and an idea that I knew that I was more than my years, that the internal drive was grinding on plates and a new range was going to be formed out of sheer effort and time like those backbones of mountains I love so much.
A 16 penny galvanized nail held a shimano ultegra shifter together, bent down towards the bottom of the hood causing a caules to form and blood to drip while sprinting or climbing, or just riding the shitty asphalt and gravel I began the reclamation on. I was really never even that good back then, I was a creature of places and experience, my friends put in honest hours and time and where a ways a head of me, but I was free, I was alive and I saw tons more than they did in their suffocating state of anarobia. I rode myself from 210 to 200, 200 to 190 and hovered there for a year. Then morphed another 5 pounds and now average around 178-185 depending on habits and miles. My shoulders no longer look like a man who uses his body as a fulcrum, but I’m also not a T-Rex cyclist build either. We are defined by our lifestyles, our individual human condition and some combustible drive we can both describe but cannot define, however through our efforts and the collection of people we attempt to put words and images to it.
We all need structure, we are creatures of habit, integrity and influences. A collidiscope of images, experiences and people. I have learned to be loved, to allow a few good quality people into my life, to be soft and rounded. We all have acts in life and if we’re lucky the number climbs with age and we become muses and thespians, characters and friends. A bike and a drive brought me these people, a four hundred dollar two wheeled machine allowed me to stretch my legs and shed a skin I hated and never felt like myself in, that two wheeled machine allowed me to tramp down the divide, a couple podiums, pondered life in the aspens and thin air, but more importantly brought a wave of souls to me that I’m inspired by, encouraged, defeated by and laugh with, and days and nights are not lonely or misplaced now.
Some of the biggest pillars of my life have died, I feel a solace that I helped in some way, and that I was helped by a worn out bike that allowed me to leave death beds for mountains, unattended funerals to rivers and given the time to realize in effort of pedals turning over days to months. As a kid anxiously waking his tired father before day break on the only day he didn’t work, I’d make coffee, have the truck loaded and warmed up to becoming a balding, grey spattered bearded man reaching towards forty the thing my latest mentor and I agree on is the start line. There is no substitute for miles, for effort, for saddle time, for heart, lungs and soul. That the economics end to some degree on that damned line, you can look like a million bucks, but effort brings out the nature of who and what we are, I was surprised that him and I where dead on in that regard. He sat at the end of the table and waved a finger at me and said, “That’s exactly right JP” We both know you can’t fake it forever. That those with minimal hallways lead to the shortest corridors of perspective and places, those who seek gratification over gratitude.
In the morning we woke up around five, loaded up bikes and hit the shootout in Tucson, and he did what he does best. Boast of the hogs in front, playing on the feelings and emotions of those in the group and saying “I don’t know who those boys are” to saying yea, “That one is my turbo diesel, and that one’s my boy” I could hear pride and happiness in his voice, he too was alive, healthy and surrounded by people he’s always wanted, again, a person I would’ve thought I would never have anything in common with, the doctor and a mason, a masters and a laborer, but we’re the same on two wheels, pride went through my body and I cranked on the pedals with a smile, knowing I’ve reached a spot in life I’ve always wanted, and these situations and people where brought on by effort, bikes and honesty. A chain, some gears, a couple tires and something to slow you down, we can be as big or as little as we want to be in life. Even my relationship with my parents has greatly improved by realizing who we all are, that nothing will change that last name, but we can change the history and live out loud
The Pettit files~the road, fight and good fun
It’s been over a year since I’ve seen my folks and the gravel roads that brought me to and from school then back again. The routs had changed, grown over by the rain and sunlight covering two lanes of simple asphalt, photosynthesis has a power in the Northwest. It created a canopy that once was just a mild envelope attempting to drown out light, now however the darken lanes split with a ribbon of yellow seemed a different route that I used to take home, the distances between turns was shorter and rives not so deep.
Everything I knew and grew up around was callused. Shoulders, knees, hands, knuckles and fingers that shed like a Gardner snake, handling tons of wood, steel, rebar and sheeting that constructed the exuberance of imagination. Even the towns grew up rough and rowdy and they too seemed to find a mellower way to make ends meet. Those with money could expand blueprints, those with capability could build. The dichotomy always struck out to me, the beauty and the beast, the needs and the haves it’s a dance of interpretation that’s been honed over centuries
There is something soothing about my father’s presence now, pragmatic, sensible, understanding and still a youth of wandering and wondering. 50 years of work will do that to you I suppose. Your parents grace, coffee, small talk, and differences, they wiped your ass and fed you and soon the tables will turn.
We all have our own faults and transmissions, how we relate to ourselves and the world. My skin has turned and wrinkles begin to appear, grey and lack of growth of hair transcend my body. My hands sometimes don’t look like my own, they’ve become aged and bent, morphed by years and work. The idea of cultivation seems too long gone, planting seeds, ideas and thoughts we can harvest for future use but yet we’ve become a now, all knowing, and now people.
Legacy, fate and facebook post we all tell a story. A twang of harmonica and twisted strings help me find mine, blended with soft hops and bourbon whiskey I’ll recite a rhyme, never cast light where none needs to be, allow the curvature of earth and natural beams come to you on their own. Apps have transplanted color and texture, but now a hashtag will describe a situation and feeling.
In fits of sleep I can smell the raw gas burning from a 350 engine and carburetor that’s in need of a tune along with plenty of exhaust leaks. Low grade unleaded and the pull and drag of manual steering and the sounds of chunky rubber breaking loose over gravel as your forearms and triceps attempt to steer the steel beast. With my arm out the window and actual music telling a story coming through the stereo we gain speed down those old two lane back roads, cylinders fire off in rhythm as we are in search of a river, mountains, girls in bikinis and trails to ride bikes.
I was given an AM radio from our friends who owned horses, Id earned it from cleaning stalls and I remember waiting till my parents picked me up so I can have control over the dial and hear voices I never had before. I think I was 8 and up on the top bunk of a room I shared with my brother I had my first alone nostalgic music experience when Bonnie Raitt came across two shitty tiny speakers with angles from Montgomery, I turned knobs to hear it better and play with imaginary antennas, my world came to a complete stop and I closed my eyes and tried to understand what John Prine was trying to write and describe, but her fingers on the guitar and soul in her voice I was in love, I had and still to do have complete paralyze when she sings. The next song was Merle Haggard momma tried then Tina Turner, those where the first three songs I’d heard alone and was allowed the time and thought to process my ten acres and single wide world I knew just expanded tenfold by people, a little black chunk of plastic with two speakers and an antenna could transport me, at night I could actually tune into delta blues music, as I began to play in band, my soul was blues, honest, sad and love, truth music and described a feeling all I could think about was more as I twisted the knobs and asked questions to those how knew. I didn’t know how to, I asked people who knew, my uncle Jim told me how I could find muddy waters on AM radio over the crackle and shitty reception came to me in star war sheets and I was a skinny 40 pound pre-pubescent child who knew what a slide guitar was, I thought I had an edge.
My mother and grandma could play anything and my uncle Jim was a musician. My dad’s father was equally amazing and gave a vast spread of offspring. My dad however knew three cords and zero rhythm but he knew what a song meant, growing up in England and Seattle the beetles where his go to, but when Bob Dylan always played on large vinyl in the house especially Reuben Carter the hurricane came on he would dance around shadow boxing me telling me to put my arms up and fight, it was his go to that we are against everyone, nothing was given and we need to fight and earn everything
Or it could be taken away from us, never back down, and do what you can.
To this day, I can feel my hands on the throttle of an old John Deere three ’48 wheel tractor, a large steel green lever just behind the steering wheel, tempting you with the slow rumble of the engine. Although I wasn’t allowed nor strong enough to drive, I tried. I sat in that springer steel seat and watched my dad and brother operate their feet to guide the green mass and thought I for sure could handle it, I broke many fences with that and the three wheeler, eventually though I became a good hand, after many frustrations and “learning” experiences.
I now awake in the early slatted blinded light of sunrise in a sub division looking out towards the pool with my girl by my side and the dog who had to get on the bed between 2 and 4 am. It takes me a minute to grab my bearings and figure out a path towards the coffee, blinking between dreams and reality then towards bikes and a lab top. That song by Bonnie Raitt is still in my ears, the first notes dragged along wood and bended steel along with numerous people who’ve guided me, my parents, grandparents, Aaron, Rice’s, Norb, the list is long but all their niches and catch phrases never leave me alone, and I know they’ve served me well in my desperate need of companionship and fortitude. Even now approaching forty I don’t own the vocabulary to express what they all mean to me.
Now the thought of soft pines and cool breezes fantasies my lobes as I ride in triple digit heat, motivation and gratitude wane in the atmospheric rise of temperature that turns mere metal objects into branding objects. I reduce polyester and Cotton and take a plunge into the pool, for a quite aquatic moment the imagination is awash of water that could be from anywhere, my imagination always goes to the Snohomish river and fingers of the the pilchuck, teanaway, and Yakima rivers. I pretend the air rising up is from the salt water of the pacific and maybe I’m with Aaron back in Alaska, or anywhere along the inside passage. I come to the surface as oxygen runs low and carbon dioxide high, then the imaginary balloon is popped and I’m indeed back where I started, but I bless the thought and brief reprieve.
I love my life, home and more importantly the woman who stands beside me and those friends that continue to surround me, together we’re and impenetrable force. Learning how to gauge my fight has been the longest learning curve, but its and all-encompassing effort, I still have a chip and carry a cut I feel my family has, but instead I turn it to gratitude, but I want the best out of myself and know I’m capable of having the things we didn’t early on. The conversations now with my parents are much different, my father and I both wanting the best out of each other, and sometimes we talk about the past, but we all have to know where we came from, and senior is alright, the struggles are now worth our relationship.
The old twist and bends from honest tunes, efforts and love now lead my life. Sometimes I fail, sometimes I reach into the stratosphere but always I’m in in the middle, back home hearing vinyl, skidding on a gravel roads, hand me down shorts and no shirt asking the world to bring what it has, cause I’ve got a couple knowing hands and a solid chin and a do or die effort inside, we live how we chose and these days dictate our lives, and nobody can take that away.
Anything is everything
Anything is everything.
Exclusivity, I had once thought was the right reserved to the upper crust. Manicured golf courses, valet parking, homes with top to bottom trim designed by an affluent home owner and architect. New cars, expensive skis and bikes ridden in places I’d only seen in glossy magazine pictures. Exclusivity usually meant a membership into some known or private club with secret handshakes backed with old money and free to do as they pleased.
Team and club sports with matching kits, fancy shoes and gear bags. Everybody moved as one and they used strength in numbers to achieve goals and ambitions, I however was never invited, nor did I let myself become involved in such bullshit.
I had grown up in a single wide mobile home on ten acres, exclusivity wasn’t a word that was in our vocabulary. I watched our neighbors build houses, have big machines cut into the ground for foundations, knocking down trees and clearing pastures, and we stayed idle with our humble tin can and barn. My father made attempts to short cut the process of building our house that my parents had blueprints for, that resulted in another learning experience and dealing with adversity while others condone and look down upon you, but we built our house and took the knocks on the chin, we never knelt to anyone.
I was athletic in high school and I knew it. Skinny and small I wasn’t built for much yet, but I was equally as strong as bigger guys with twice the endurance. By my junior year I was steadily riding my bike to school, 18-25 miles round trip. What started out as a show of defiance by getting kicked off the school bus turned into an experience to this day I still practice.
When you grow up rough, your confidence is most affected. I was shy and had a hard time looking people in the eye while talking to them, and even now occasionally I catch myself doing it. The need to please others before myself has put me in awkward and unrewarding situations.
I played soccer, ran cross-country but it was more to show people I could do it, and that I was just as good as they were but I wasn’t happy, I was competing against myself for than anything, for some justification that I was indeed good enough, that out running or out playing them gave me confidence. Now I see it as a shallow way to build myself up, that ego is an evil and is usually the head of those exclusive pricks I hated so much. We were fighters down to the nail full of pride, vengeful and sometimes misused our strength.
I raced my first handful of mountain bike races in hi-tech hiking boots, soccer socks, tighty whities, soccer shorts and some kind of shirt. I had graduated bikes up to a Kona hot, a sweet steel frame designed by Joe Murray, 3×7, thumb shifters and fully rigid. The introvert had found a release of an inner being that before stayed dormant and repressed. I was in the mountains with other strays and outcast, wildly athletic people charging up ski hills and bouncing down them. We would battle then afterwards reflect on what and who had just punished us, grievances aside the warriors had their fight and now we were all friends again, I had found a calling.
My personalities and competitive nature had for the first time a positive place to go. I raced on cheap bikes with washing machine parts spray painted by me and my dad dueling out with kids on high end aluminum and this new thing called carbon fiber in muddy cross races. I didn’t put in the time some of them did, nor was I a fan of NORBA cross-country races that only lasted an hour and a half, I liked big loops and carrying back country tools to fix any ailment, otherwise it felt like a team sport where you could rely on others instead of the singular effort of you against nature and the balance between the two.
Most of the time I ride alone now, especially on the mountain bike. I enjoy the wholeness of the effort and always have, from not having much for most of my life to now steadily building and acquiring, I’m in a place that’s sometimes foreign to me, but I know I’m deserving of it. Knowing where I came from to where I am now, the different paths, jobs, houses and states, everything is different, but the current is 100 percent the same.
Enjoying a lazy rainy summer day in Bartonville Texas at the home of my girlfriends parents, I perused the magazine isle at barns and noble finding the history of mountain biking magazine. Realizing my generation was at the boom of the sport, and now we ride towards our 40’s fit greying, balding and covered in scars. Enjoying what we’ve accomplished and the ability to ride steeds we once could only touch in shops, it’s amazing to look around and feel the pulse that we’ve created. That longevity, creativeness that we’ve sprung and be a part of it all. We try to segregate ourselves, to find an individual niche that makes people take notice of us, what we do and what we like to ride. We point and mock, and try to establish some sort of exclusive grouping of likeminded people, when truth be told we are all just looking for the same ending result. Mountain bikers have longed not gave a fuck about groups or clubs, if you liked to ride bikes-cool, if not do your thing and I’ll do mine.
We should take pride in the different endeavors that bikes bring to us, and allow our minds to expand at all the possibilities. Without a handful of wingnuts who just wanted to ride down mountains a lot of us would be years behind all the fun we’ve already had. It’s a beautiful thing the beast and machine, the lines of mountains match the lines on my face, maps and stories of where we’ve been. A bike raised me in my youth and has raised me to be a better human, it is my greatest ally, deepest confidant and pursuer of things left unseen and mountains to climb, there is nothing exclusive about that.
The Pettit~Files. Enough is enough, can’t we just ride bikes.
Enough is enough. May we call a truce on the words used to describe rides, adventures, miss haps , road rides, all mountain rides, enduro rides, cross-country rides, fat bike, gravel rides, self-supported rides. We are dividing ourselves by verbiage, already a narrow group against the motored crowd we are becoming our own worst enemy.
Fat, skinny, hairy legged, shaved legged, shaved head, fuzzy head and a beard, as far as I’m aware, we still have two legs, feet and arms. 5 milers-5,000 milers, we all forget we ride things with two wheels and some kind of driving force that we push to move it, that’s a bicycle. The simple, glorious thing about a bicycle is its innate ability to inspire and give adventure, vast vistas, new friends, loves, passion and empathy. The different the bike, the different the endeavor, but the soul of the effort is the same as the LA fixie hipster, to the brah downhiller and the 140 pound cross country cat.
We look at gladiators of decades ago in woolen kits, wrapped in spare tires and the efforts across their face, hard men we still connect to for reasons we don’t know, but reasons that have brought us together. We didn’t call them roadies, fixies, no; we call them by their names and names others gave them, that are alive and vibrant to the lore that they are. They weren’t ever categorized as a being in a group, but by establishing this same group we honor today. There is so much terminology now that surrounds what a bunch of rebels cascaded down a mountain in California, escaping crowds, seeking adventures, and getting the hell away from problems both they created and those they live with. Men who started multi-million dollar companies off of one ride, we burn at the cross when they step outside a line we created, instead of praising their endeavor nearly 40 years ago. We all fuck up, we all sometimes continue to make mistakes, and we’re human and cyclist.
The funny thing about legends is usually no one sets out to become one are a part of one. They followed a path, single in its width, and a couple of friends who ventured out where the sidewalk ended. At our current peak of technology, words are being created that diehards don’t understand, what happened to just being a cyclist? What is wrong with the pure form of wanting to feel better about ourselves, become fitter in mind and body, and see sights that take effort to see and appreciate.
I started riding bikes that costs 10’s of dollars and like my age they have since gone up, but I get the same feeling as riding down that gravel road I grew up on aboard bikes that used non bike parts to get down the road. Take your bicycle up mountains, down mountains, across mountains. Take your bicycle over roads, chip seal, gravel, and potholes. Take your bicycle to school, around the block, down to the tavern. Just go downhill if you want, just ride it flat if you want. The important thing is the damn machine makes you happy, no matter the discipline, you’re a cyclist. We need to stick together, because if we lost one, we lose part of that oddness that sets us apart, an appendage we need.
We will always be individuals in this sport we love, it alone sets us apart. While our passions may differ, our heart is the same, the stronger the grouping the louder the beat, and while I usually spend the majority of my time and rides alone, I’ve never lost the first home and group I’ve known. I’m proud to call myself a cyclist and belong to this sect of odd folks. Let’s take it easy on the menagerie of names and just ride our damn bikes.
The Pettit~Files. New bikes, soul rides and friends.
There are people in your life that you know are good for any adventure, good, bad or ugly. In the midst of a storm or complete pounding of UV rays, lost and contemplating mileage, refuel and safety, there is always a joke and a knowing that all will be alright, but your skin, muscles and mind will however never be the same. These days fall under the “soul” ride category, days where you have mini epiphanies and tragedies, hunger knocks, thirst pains, great vistas and places rarely seen and touched by man. Those who are down for such events are rare, unique, odd, oddly amazing and perfect company.
Robert LaRoche is such an individual, and in my four years south by southwest we’ve had many adventures. Usually twinged with remorse that we put ourselves in such situations, but after the first beer is cracked it no longer matters, but out on some rocky, unridable stretch with the sun and elements bearing down trying to break us we see the pure effort and endeavor of what we are trying to do, no matter the mental anguish and physical and psychological hell we’re in.
On this ride however it was meant to be an easy day, reconnect, be some of the first to ride Black Canyon Trail north a ways. Figure out the new Lapierre bike and get a firm understanding of the design, and build of the bike. The relationship between man and machine is critical to a man like me; I spend my life, hours and days planted and clipped in, I recon it to breaking a horse, that feeling when you are connected through movement and the instinctual happens. My foot finally healing up a little, or I should say enough for me to just say screw it, I’m doing this anyway, I got a brand new full suspension bike, my body will heal along the way. Papa Roche isn’t too fit either just yet so we were heading off in search of knowledge to see what kind of shape the trail is, ride something different and spend some quality bromance time together.
The first section is pretty, initial climbing lends to some curvy switchback descents and a forging of the Agua Fria, which, to our surprise is deeper than we both thought. Now with wet shoes and soggy socks we begin the climb out of the valley. The sun was out but not overbearing, the loose trail gave way to rocks and a lot of them, boulder fields that not long ago housed a flood and took our good soil away. When we chatted we both said the trail is a “little rougher” than usual, he’s been farther north than I have, and I asked what was ahead. I’ve learned a couple P Roche ism’s from our years together. The idea of miles and feet of climbed elevations are never too accurate, so taking that into full consideration, I adjusted my attitude accordingly. I was surprised I wasn’t hurting too bad; I’ve managed a couple of long days with the traveling and tried to keep a steady ride time going.
We crossed a pavement section of road with a gallon of water nearly gone from a plastic jug and he locks up the brakes and circles back. I know what’s next, the smell test then the shoulder shrug and dumps it into his bottles, I also know some story about his months in the grand canyon drinking earth purified water is also coming. I however still had enough to sustain. By this time already our initial plans changed. Instead of 3 ½ to 4 ½ hours now since we were “already” heading towards Cordes station we should just go there, bypass a little single track and take a couple miles of road then some technical, slow single track up towards the town.
I remember him and Melley, along with Yeah Yeah McMaster did this ride a while ago and all of them hurt for some time after. The cat claw was out and grabbed at anything the hellish plant could get ahold of. The trail was crossed with dancing lizards, snakes and tarantulas, I tried to avoid everyone I could, but some, by virtue got ran over, I considered this an even trade as now my body dripped blood down my knuckles, arms and shins so we marked each other closely being all gods creature and we abided by the eye for an eye clause.
The flowy goodness of trail gave way near a crossing of a large saguaro giving a brief moment of shade while I collected my thoughts and waited to hear the sound of Laroche coming across the trail. We again converged on mileage, time and just what Cordes Station may have. We rode washed board dirt roads up to and past Bumble Bee a small town with nothing in it, cars past and left a plume of dust for two souls to ride through. A right hand turn near a big water tank begins the single track, loose, loamy kitty litter earth, again covered in cat claw and slow going. I was enjoying life upon a full suspension, while my minimalistic mind and stubborn self don’t like any movement I knew the ride was noticeably much easier. The climbing was fairly tough and slow and I marked my water supply and fuel closely, knowing we’d be 60 or so miles, having a come to Jesus moment wasn’t on my list this Saturday. We finally topped out on another dirt road and began the splendor down towards town. It’s always a haunting feeling knowing, shortly, you’ll be going back up it, but still there is excitement heading towards life.
The celebration in town came in the form of Cordes Stations 130 years of township. Cowboy poetry and a slow rolling history of the city came from a man standing on a rusted old weigh scale. Heavy patina cars sat out in the fields marked with age and colored perfectly. The man whose family formed the town finished his drawn out dissertation of the history, then a cowboy poet came up. Laroche searched his seat bag for remnants of cash and came up empty. I had 26 bucks and knew we’d need all of it.
A lunch token was five bones, and everything eatable in the rustic gathering of oddities inside the “store” was an even buck. The first wave brought us Dr. Peppers, waters and Gatorade. The second outing took us out to the outdoor seating and the hickory smoked bbq in the half drum of a former 55 gallon bucket. Two grown men metaling about in spandex while others pool around a gold panning expo, others drinking warm natural lights, surprisingly nobody gave us grief, maybe it was the raised welts spewing blood that caused hesitation. A fine burger with cheese a bag of Doritos then we made our way to the condiment area. Two large jars of pickles, mustard, and ketchup. The pickles however are a delicacy to any salty endurance fool, so we properly gouged on them. Round three took us to the end of my paper monies as the lady said “wow, we like you guys” Leaving me to wonder if nobody else spent more than 20 bucks often. She turned the handle to an old brass National cash register and put away her cash.
Calories replaced rehydrated and heading back up the hill, the town left a soft spot with me. The funkiness was loud, ever present and comfortable within itself and I dug it. The sun was out, our blood was dry and we had a decent amount of downhill to attend to. You know that feeling when your body is crusted and irritated and doesn’t want to be bothered any longer? Well the best lines are through the cat claw, oneside a miserable line, sometimes a big drop off and the other the best “A” line but inevitably bloody. Your mind and the machine know what direction they should go, but your body cringes knowing at speeds the mini razor blood sucking vultures will indeed tear you apart, being scarred bikers we take the best line over our outer appearance. The skin winces in pain and the process extracts blood from our bodies but we are alive in the movement and presently unaware of wounds.
Life aboard the Lapierre xr was a rolling train of ecstasy, the miles came easy, the harsh Arizona landscape became tolerable and my mind was somewhere thinking of greater adventure s aboard the new machine. Laroche trailed a bit and I tried to block the wind for him, doing my deed for the elder statesmen and showing my respect. We took the washboard road all the way back to town. The chunky gravel broke to asphalt and we cruised through black canyon city, thinking of times we nursed ourselves at the first store on rides that took too much out of us. Back to the car and Travis Mcmaster left a note on the rig further proof that today was indeed great. The doors opened, we changed out of sweaty, and bloody clothes, loaded up the bikes and turned on some tunes and collected ourselves. As the songs came through the airwaves Laroche would laugh and say “damn JP, you were still in diapers when this came out” then came the conversation about when you aren’t in diapers any longer, neither of us having kids nor around them much.
Soft sunlight filled the air, we were the only car left in the parking lot. Laroche packed four ice cold coors original beers and with the mountains still blue we listened to the music, talked amongst ourselves and each other. I doubt that you could find two guys that understand more the need for adventure, measurable pain and the need to find and see parts rarely seen by others. I’m lucky to have met and continue meeting people, towns and experience that shape me. Directions that define me and movements that create history and a telling enjoyable past. Bikes are a gateway for me, and always will, the paths they show, the introspective gained from reaching a point or view under our own power give a greater understanding of what was created before us. It’s humbling to know that others saw the greatness and settled down to build a life, that we stop and take a breath and be allowed to have our breath taken away by life, the beautiful landscapes, friends and loves.
Whatever your journey, however long the ride, whatever skill level you’re at, we all try to achieve the same feeling. That internal peace that bikes lend us, that friends give us, and this life allows us. A connection from within to everything we experience, that’s why I ride.
GO OUTSIDE and be GREAT.
Dirt, Love and Aspens.
Death and taxes, single track and aspens, blend me with a mix of frustrations and passions. I was burnt on love, more than once when it came from another. In the silent beauty that was created long before us, rejuvenates and nourishes back to a whole. Idle hands do the devils work, tips of fingers connect freckles that do pleasures work. These clocks have no hands as hours turn to days when you lay your head on my chest and expel the words trapped in that pretty head.
We are all held by expandable ideals, our past, present, and future. These sidewalks lead towards unpaved areas, and that is where I do my best work. The world is big and round, some however still believe that at the city limit sign it dives towards infinity, and I believe nothing should have a limit. We are all currents moving to what drives and separates us. A couple weeks ago I took friends to a slice of trail that I may love more than anything. I never cover the miles at speed; I covet my time in the tinted perfumed air and listen to aspen leaves rustle in a cooling breeze. It has all things I love and worship about riding a mountain bike, personal freedom, amazement about beauty, effort, and bermed trails where your weighted body flows over perfect earth.
It would be inaccurate to say these days are the same as last month, last year or yesterday. The hours are shattered by the thought and idea of someone new, something healthy and a positive in the depth that stirs below my gut and behind my ribs. Life is for living and people are for loving, bikes are for riding and hours are for exploring. To each their own, and own identity, we blend in the pot as big as we wish to meld. Wrought iron rust, we’re caged and we must, become more than what we’ve been. Experiences define us, people come and go into our lives and it’s up to us to allow just how we accept it.
I have always felt comfortable in any situation. I’m as happy waking up along a trail completely alone with just my surroundings or being dropped into a room of college tuned intellectuals, mine was earned by time, effort and experience. They tell tales of what they’ve read and what they would like to do. My collar unbuttoned and free to move about, there’s a credence of precedents, doesn’t matter the situation, a knowing is a knowing. Character isn’t defined by what you talk about or what you speak about, rather what you’ve done and where you’re going. We are all molded by the past and future ideals, but every mold should be broken, and every idea and action should spawn from a thought, those with character turn all those into adventures, leave behind still photos and a wanting to share with those they love.
Long before the fall flickers and fades to winter, the decisions we’ve made, hang and linger on what we think should’ve been. I’ve been jailed, housed on a boat, held by people I love, and caressed by the paths that help define me. I wish to touch you in the early moon light, before the sun is awoken to the east and the effervescent hangs to the west, we are in the middle. You kiss me new in this decade of three plus, lines replaced the perfectness of youth, grays dot my pours, my hair thinned and faded from atop my head. Stronger, defiant, soft and comfortable in the knowledge of where I’m going and all I’ve done. I don’t hang to a sliver of what I was once but think of the tree I’ve become, my arms hold my friends turned to family as pages roll from upsets to triumphs, past failures and goose bumps. With roots and time we grow stable, some fall to fables and others to tales, me; I’ve always loved a true story.
A blended mix of durometered rubber grips the earth under me, connecting me to nature, myself, all these thoughts and flooded grey matter. All that I see and feel is breathing, the sights downloading from my eyes, the clicking of shifters, and the slowing of brakes. The tall grass moving around my body as I slalom between trees and move around stones, it’s the purest effort I’ve felt, and the longest love I’ve known. Everything smells alive and living, you’re in natures living room as a guest and the more prepared you are, the longer the visit, some of us pack better than others. Like your grandparents telling stories of decades past, I curl up and listen to all it has to say with the boyish amazement and wonder that is still housed in me.
Gatlin guns and trampolines, we all jump and shoot and try to live outside our means. I won’t be washed in the disbelief, facades or ambience. Brick and mortar, labors of love and lessons learned, I’ve become harden and skin torn and wrinkled but in the trees and holding on to the ideals of you I become youthful again. The cool air whistles and calms my exuberance and mellows back to me, the soil under my hands like the seeds sown, harvesting thoughts and growing the fragility of what was once broken back to being stronger and wholesome.
Running on faith and the caveat of mortality, we continue these days and efforts and are joined by others. All who wonder are indeed not lost, all whom are broken are surely repairable, we absorb and deflect, move and react until our bodies can no longer match the brains ask, and that is the rhythm of riding that I seek, and also the balance with those who surround me.
A trip home, Bicycles, Beauty, and a fallen 19
I went home for the first time in four years, since I left south by southwest. A ragged mix of emotion and raw whatever you want to call it. I was only a refined worker and knew how to use my body but really nothing else. I had always known I wanted more, but sometimes the first step is the largest and leaving all you’ve known takes brass balls, but to continue down that path you need larger ones that aren’t afraid to be busted a time or two.
I have never felt comfortable at home; however I praise my parents for where they decided to put roots, an area so full of lust, effort and beauty that it taught me more than I ever could’ve known. The walls that housed us where full of love, but not always a connection, and being an angst kid wanting to venture around didn’t lend for quality time you could say. But down that gravel road and along the arms of the cascades and banks of rivers I found adventure, and myself.
The water and rivers back home are cloaked in the arms of maples, and evergreen trees that house them. Their branches hide it from the outside world, trying to keep the beauty and noise all to themselves and allow the effort of people to enjoy them. Enshrined in life, wrapped in toxins, they embellish all they told. “Neath the canopy the elixir sways the soul, the sound gives us the music we attain, it soothes and cures any ailment or quandary I’ve ever had. It’s a hidden world I sought time after time. Hidden from everything but myself, it was the first place I was comfortable being me.
A bike took me to such places, and if my parents knew then how far I traveled to find such things there would’ve been a revocation of some kind. Once car bound it was on to much further locals. My brother always seemed to be in some sort of trouble, my sister was the youngest girl and as the fable goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, she was well lubed. I never complained too much, not my nature, I was usually left to my own vices, a good kid, not in too much trouble, so my birth was wide and I discovered that with the distractions of the other two, the middle child was free to roam.
Sometimes driving old back roads with my dad he’d say, “that road there goes up to the top of the mountain, a dirt road all the way to Sultan” I’d smile and say “I know” he’d look at me funny, like I wasn’t being honest. So I would say, “Well you have to pass the old boy scout camp first, beyond the spot where people shoot, there’s a cool small water fall with railroad tracks on top after a long series of switch backs, then a long fire road climb till it turns to forest again, then it flattens out and descends towards highway 2, hop a large gate then head west to Sultan. He responded by “maybe we should get you a better bike”
I would find old relics of logging and mining towns and equipment. I would sit-down stare and listen to what it all said. I could begin to hear voices of those that where here before me, the effort, toll and hope it took to create all they did, I felt then as I still do now that I was one of them. It took a certain kind of grain to go where they did a hundred years before I stepped foot there. Rotten iron descending into the earth, the sheer magnitude of those who didn’t know any limits, I would return home completely destroyed from my day, the miles and toll it took to allow my imagination to leave me alone for a while. Running on complete fumes I could barely turn the pedals but looking around at what allowed me to grow up I knew it would give me safe passage to get home. Spending 12-16 hours a day by myself wasn’t uncommon when I was young. My dad would sometimes call me lazy when I got home, and I’d smile because I knew something he didn’t.
It felt like I had a secret, I had a key to time and places so spectacular that I almost didn’t want to share. I felt a connection, my first, it was to the inanimate, not a person, not my mother, or grandparents. I’d lie on my back and watch the clouds and the gorgeous noise of a river. My father on our road trip home said you always knew how to side step the shit and drama of people and families, and it was because I understand beauty, the silent perfect beauty of what happens when we stop fucking with it and allow it to be authentic. I had no language for love; we weren’t a hugging type family. It was a dust yourself off, is anything broken? If not let’s get back to work. Soft words spoken followed with a soft touch was something I’ve always wanted, but as a youth didn’t get, I had to develop into what I wanted to be on my own. I understood and knew beauty but didn’t know how to speak of it, I knew that life’s hard enough to try and make it what we think it should be. Take off the filters, go beyond where you think you should, and go deeper within yourself, all these things, a bicycle gave me. Be authentically you; trust me you’ll find it. I get a deep pleasure now allowing those the same opportunity this contraption gave to me.
When you’re old enough to learn about beauty, simple true beauty, it fills us with a noise that humbles and harmonizes us. The soft love of nature may have been the first I ever felt, or at least let myself feel. There is no misunderstanding, or frustrating beginning or ending. The same deciduous that nearly cover the cool waters from bank to bank wrapped me as well. I never felt alone when standing between great trees in knee deep glacier run off, completely singular and void of human contact.
Maybe that’s my biggest connection with it; open veins of water ways don’t hit me the same ways as an enveloped river. To see the beauty you have to dig a little, the vaunted obvious texture allure us all, but go beyond where most roam and you’ll be rewarded beyond belief. Most get stuck on the immediate beauty of what they first see, me however, I’ve never worked on such cues. I’m not a smart guy, my test will show this. My brain works in a different manner, and that too brought childhood frustrations with my parents. But by listening and being intuitive something clicked and wondering how it works instead of why it works allows us to be humbled by our own failures and success, it’s not just for us to enjoy what we do.
Maybe its nostalgia that brought me this piece, or the aging of my parents. Driving the car around old roads everything had changed a little. The streets where cast by large trees and weeds that where small when I left, the town looked the same, some old shops and restaurants, had moved or closed. There is a light that peers through the clouds that filters the colors, making the green, greener and the trees spectacular. Something in me though was different, it wasn’t my home any longer, and the idea at first took a long time to soak in. I rode on all those roads that raised me, this time a man and the miles where easy especially on the new machines. I had grown strong, wiser, fuck-I even matured. Don’t get me too wrong, I still found my old usual haunts and boardwalks but even those too where different and no longer fit like they use too.
The trip was to see a union, my second in June. A great person saying I do in the back ground of Mt. Si, but I had been meaning to go home for a while. Through past relationships, old plans and a dull pain of the unattainable, I still made the journey. I met up with people I had been meaning to for years, rode my favorite slices of asphalt in hick mining towns and drank bottles of Rainier and looked under the cap to find my fortune.
Spent time with the Fisherman Captain, a couple old friends, my parents, my old hound Chubbs, nephews, and gravel. Drove by old houses and wondered who lived in them now, the same people still? I didn’t knock, time was short. I never made it east of the mountains, a place I would escape often. I picked through old papers and boxes of books and found the scripts that speak to me the loudest, tucked them away in a bag and prepared to head back to my desert home. I get centered on Norman Mclean, the man picks my nerves and ties me with rhythms about truths and life and through his shorts stories and the master piece of a river runs through it, I found “young men and fire” the story of the Mann Gulch fire where 12 smoke jumpers died in 1949.
The next day I had heard of the deaths of 19 fighting the Yarnell fire outside of Prescott, I looked across from my laptop at the book next to me, the cover of a crew posing near the tail section of their plane where they would jump out and try to save the natural abundance we all enjoy so much. After high school I spent time in Winthrop Washington at a smoke jumper camp, learning the ropes and equipment. I was living in the back of my truck, riding bikes in the beautiful hills, trying to entice the ladies, and sneaking beers from the local brewery. I had heard of the Smoke Jumper academy in Missoula Montana. Unsure of where my life would weave, I looked into joining the school. Jumping out of planes and into a forest trying to save the trees and earth I love so much resonated with me, dropping into an inferno and emerging heroic, the idea of being a normal fire fighter never occurred to me, there, you have to deal with people, here, you deal with beauty.
If you want to understand the thoughts, the truth, description, and poetic ideals of those that protect our lands. Buy the book and allow yourself to spread over the pages written only a way a master can. I awoke my father at four in the morning and we began our trip south towards the flying crafts. I had enjoyed our time immensely, the most consecutive amount we’ve had together since I was 17 years old. Boarded the plane and read paragraphs of all the books I grabbed. I had an hour layover in Salt Lake City; the captain said we would be flying over the Grand Canyon, then Flagstaff and towards Prescott before descending down into Phoenix where the temperature was already a 108 at 10 am.
The sky was clear off in the distance, then became heavy with cumulous, smoke and darkened by the choking of sunlight. The air felt heavy and I was pulled away and back to the window. I thought of the last gasp of those 19, where the land they protected had turned on them and took them forever. They gave all they had, protected us, attempted to save acreage they loved and loved being men in. I had met most of them in Crown King, a small town a ways off a gravel road. On a “secret” training session I was camped out and just riding and reading, putting pieces together after a break up. Outside the saloon where most ate and the general store, their worn out green suits picked up my bike as they bought some goods and sharpened saws.
We swapped a couple quick stories, I was off to ride to Prescott and back, told them once, before I became a little grey and bald I was nearly one of them. Broad smiles and backs, I would’ve loved to be amongst them, even on their last effort. The plane cut through the smoke and I thought of their souls rising up to the heavens over a land they protected and always will. It’s not for the money, but for the effort of beauty, at least that’s what I’ll tell myself, Young men and fire Mclean wrote but it’s a truth of life. If we don’t put ourselves out there we’ll never feel the heat and exuberance of life, being afraid to get burned will lead to dormant days, we never know which will be our last.
A couple days later I played host to a fourth of July party. Great casual friends mellowed about my house, hammock and pool. I looked around at them and was gracious for the efforts that allowed me to become a portion of who I am meant to be. I thought of the 19 whom no doubt had plans on our independence day, but would’ve jumped at a moment’s notice when they were called to duty. The measure of people should always remain open ended, their efforts always calculated, effervescent, and alive, the way they always will be.
Take nothing for granted. Ever.
Reins, Memorial days and truths~A meandering really.
Fables and sirens, midnight rhymes and sweet dreams. We all plow the earth to plant our seeds, our futures and dates grow from what was below. Healthy stocks and strong limbs, we climb on out to live again, the stronger the foundation the further out you can roam. Bending till it breaks, hands and eyes that have lived through and seen it. We’ve become aged like our parents; different ailments come to us, generations have lost fight, reaching hands out to grasp what we haven’t deserved.
Back when nothing was for show, the pure function of it made it a necessity; those days seem too long ago. Fact before fiction, love before hate, family first and friendships that lasted till your ending days. I use apps, and sometimes limit my interaction with public, there is an ebb and flow to when I’m “on” and when I become reclusive and desire to be around things that sooth me without word, filled with the quite noise the pureness makes when we quit fucking with the world and let it be how it is. Not everything needs to be artificially enhanced; we should let the natural depth create the mystique we see in it.
I spend most of my time alone, nights especially. Windshield time, shop visits, sales meetings, laughs, miles, great friends and work intermingle with the hands of a clock. Minutes roll towards hours, and hours to darkness, a full moon broke up the night sky last night and I swung in a hammock for hours. The past be what it may, what’s done is done, but the hours ahead of us loom larger than anything. I had to learn how not to fight, my wiring crossed with frustrations, thoughts of doubt and failure, all that bullshit though seems to have slipped away. I fight now for what I love, and work towards what I want, I have discovered I’m more than worthy of this life I got, and I was always driving it to be this way. I’ve become gracious in praise, that collar no longer itches, what once felt like a noose has been let loose and I only hope to mirror those that are around me.
Reins, everyone has them, some with a greater capacity than others. By definition they are used as subtle commands or cues, signal a turn, ask for slower speed, or request a stop. I grew up around horses and had them for a while and spent time with horsemen before this act in my life. There is something about a pure connection when working with something that doesn’t have a voice. A horse named Pablo taught me patience, when you are aggressively connecting with an animal that weighs over a thousand pounds chasing other animals, nothing is more primal that the cohesion between man and beast. You learn how to move your body and muscle to move theirs, you develop a language with them, and when it begins to work its truly one of the most amazing connection you can have.
The fisherman captain roped and reined and his daughter could out ride us combined. During both of our relationships I developed a language I lacked, frustrated at times but I could see the progress in both animal and myself. For roping you used a looped wax reign, I can still see my hands resting on top of the horn wrapped with rubber, the tanned worn fabric in my hand running through my fingers, coils of rope in the other, easing up on the bit in the horse’s mouth. Feeling them move and rumble beneath you, a bump of the heels a hand forward and you leap to action, a simple word and tension on the line means to stay, their ears careened back waiting for cues, their eyes bent to cows, attentive to everything around, it’s a connection I simply loved.
Most of the time I feel like that head horse, a mix of softness and a pile of trembling muscle, aggressively waiting for an opportunity or chance, with a decently strong bit between my teeth and me trying to gage how much “rein” I give myself. I’m a firm believer in your in or your out, ride out the hardships for what you know will come. Me gauging my own rein affect, it’ll be a work in progress till I die. The ability to talk to anyone, relate to them lends to disingenuous ideas. The problem with being mildly attractive and in my line of work, people assume you’re a “player” of sorts, and that the depth you contain has a purpose other than following your passions, having a lifelong connection with people and a wanting to have a “one”. I can see how I can come across as cocky, but spend a half hour and I’ll prove you wrong every time, and if that isn’t enough, then it’s you not me. I act how my passion dictates, my mouth rarely has a filter and that’s when I wish I knew how when to rein it in, but at the same time the other angel says fuck it, if they can’t hang, then they can’t hang. It’s a spooky dichotomy that is housed by the truth, love and the ability to do anything really, but I know what the soul wants and that’s the queen bee of who we are.
Understanding how we are built, and finding the acceptable levels of madness we all need. Madness isn’t a bad word; everything should have a tint or a full shade of it. I’ve come to realize I was built for pain, for exploring where not too many can, and in a language try to explain it to others, also for love, patience, and housed by gratitude. Knowing how to appropriately fight is a must, and perhaps in years from now I’ll lose that notion altogether. I do believe in a chip, a nudge, knowing how big brings us back to the rein notion. There should be growth until we expire, bottom line. Both interpersonal and those we deem to have around. That fighter also finds comfort in the routine, attentive to details, a touch of someone I love and a quick and knowing smile.
In the rare cool mornings here in the southwest, the clouded sky brings a peace. When the temperature needle breaks the monotony of triple digits it allows us to pursue other mindly interest. Without the pressure of the scorching heat, the soft light of a cool morning bring us a sense of relief, like anything is possible. For me, my mind wonders like the cumulous above, softly moving with the surroundings, giving shade and withholding the sun. Thinking forward about new days, new people and so many others left unsaid and undone. I wonder about my remaining years, what’ll I’ll accomplish, my family and starting my own, and realizing these boyish endeavors.
My bare feet tap to the music, my fingers type a rhythm, there is a pace to living. Allow your eyes to indulge what they want, feel the moisture, heat, and hopefully someone you love on your skin. Feel the wind even when you’re not moving, allow yourself a wide smile for no reason other than being happy. Roll down the windows and put your arms out, feel the force of what we create. Memorial Day shouldn’t be a weekend a year, it’s about being aware of our past, the past of our fathers and mothers, the history of our nation and how we got the privilege to live out loud like we do.
Drop the false fronts we pack around and let the tender parts exposed to this big world.
Stories of past, and the hands of time.
I grew up alongside the shoulders of alligators. Men, who worked with their whole bodies, using them like fulcrums and pivots, work days where not defined by hours but by hours of daylight. Packing panels, soil, 2×4’s to 2×12’s, sheets of plywood and drywall, hauling gear across the ocean, labor isn’t an action but a doing.
Calloused hands, calloused shoulders, calloused knees and calloused hearts. Men made of iron and thick skin abrasive but giving. Their hands like sandpaper, cracked and splitting, stern enough to right your wrongs but soft enough to cure any ailment. Lines on their face, scars on their bodies, knowing eyes and impossible ethics. There is nothing in common between people who say the words doing, to those who say done.
I’ve always wanted to tell stories. Stories that are true, but to gain the ability to write them, and write them well you have to see and experience everything. Every cell is tuned to the present, every fiber and optic nerve is awake and heightened. Your ears are packed with noise you can not only hear but see and let it soak in through your skin, you have to be porous and transpire the moments. There is a pain involved with this that not many can bare or at least grasp. There is no false fantasy in the truth, its authenticity is brash, colorful, electric, but mourned with agony of effort, extolled by will, miss understood and romanticized by those who don’t fully get the effort involved nor the depth of character and the audacity that transpires.
It’s not always beautiful but when I get twisted around I remember a passage from Emerson. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” I feel as though that’s what I’ve been doing and working towards, better than I ever have with this support structure behind me.
Of mice and men, all the places we’ve been. From the palace flop house to the great divide, to oceans swells and a loss and gain, of pride. Lend me your ear and whisper me a kiss, I guarantee you’ve never known a love like this. I grew old along the continental divide, months on a fishing boat, pouring concrete, but I grew wise in love, developed a language for the passion and untied the knots from years ago.
Speckled with grey, lines of maps from heart and effort, times and hardships drawn across my face and body. Pain moves in slabs across me like glaciers receding leaving a scar to always remember them. Hung in gravity, afloat with dreams and ambitions, the yearning and lust send us transmitions of what we want and what we don’t have. Wicked smiles and wicked ways, hands reach out to touch and feel the anatomy of love lingers on a thought, its precipice teeters towards the softness where the heart can go and find the comfort of someone, be engulfed by their arms and bodies, lay with soft touches and tender kisses and rewrite all the wrongs. Lay down your shield and come crash into another soul.
Hands tell us a story about the person their attached to, define a life lived and give truth and credence to the body which they belong and if we’re lucky, they can also write us a story. It should all be mad, madly passionate, loving, knowing and peaceful.
I used to sit and watch and listen to great story tellers, with the laughable grin that they can recall and relive the idiocy of their youth, the moments they got out alive and all their hellish pride. I was curious if they’ve lived all the stories they told, spread across a life and always came back to themselves, and those who loved them. I was envious and wanted to be on my way of having stories, a past, develop my own laughable grin about the fucked up places I’d been. Thinking back on what I’ve done so far, I sat with sheets of empty paper and looked at my hands and thought about where they’ve been and what they’ve done. I’ve always wanted hands that told a story, hands that grab my love, hands that can build anything, hands that can fix anything. Looking at the work they’ve done so far I saw layers of scars, some new some old, fingers and knuckles that are miss shaped bent and broken, their tanned color and sun spots, blood blisters and callouses, grease from bikes and the worn edges from working with wood. Thickened skin on the tips from playing guitars, and that loneliness from not holding someone at night. The pen began to drip ink like blood from a vein, the days slowly twist on to weeks and months, years and decades. I began to write down the ideas, thoughts and paragraphs that get contained in my head.
I was transported back to being a small child on wooden benches, the words filled with a voice that I recognized as my own; it felt like hearing those men talk amongst themselves all those years ago. Laughter and a painful knowing filled the air, remembering desperate situations, understanding love, and love lost. Realizing these friends have become family and my family has become deeper and fuller. My heart aches but it pumps a steady rhythm with new blood in new days and chapters left to write. But damn I’m happy and alive.
My father nearly died in December, I have a hard time seeing my aunt after my cousin had passed, my neighbors son was beat to death for no reason, a relationship ended that I thought never would, a friend took his own life and I have come to understand mine. The ability to chronologically give these days the space and voice they need and to exercise my own, I’m not sure if it’s a gift or a curse of if there even any good. Every day the sun comes up, gives everything light and new beginning to an end. Past lives are like fire flies flying around my head, we all sit around in real time telling each other the places we’ve been. Directions, maps, fairytales, love, faith, dedication and communication everything tells us where we should go, to have the fortitude to follow our passions and live the days that we want.
I hear the echoes of a woman’s voice calling me through the darkness, I can’t see her but I know she’s there waiting. At night I walk out to the cooler air after a couple hours of sleep, feel the breeze pull across my body and try to find a scent of where she’s been, or where is it I’m supposed to go. Dates and times shadows and the gallows our past hangs from the noose. Freed of our mistakes and righted by understanding, we march on. I am not haunted by anything I don’t want to be, there is more to this life and I’ll find it.
Give me a trail with trees on either side, a slip of earth that follows mountains and peaks, and I’ll find my own peace. Exhaling the effort into the quite unknown, surrounded by understanding beauty, comforted by the endeavor, secure in who I am and those I’ve gotten to know. Hear the leaves of an Aspen tree serenade the air, tinted with pine, wild flowers and sunscreen. Look down through the moraines at an alpine lake, and watch the curvature of a river cut through the swath of earth as it rolls to its destination, swaying beyond sight, carrying the stories of everywhere it’s been.
And maybe that’s all I want to be, a wide river carrying the voices that have come along with me, always moving forward, meandering from left to right, from bank to bank. Gaining speed and depth at times, then slowing down to a mellow swagger, covering everyone’s aches, cooling their souls and bringing a smile. I hope everyone finds a voice that calls to them, be comforted my arms that await, and knowing where you’re going and know where you’ve been. I hope you all enjoy the ride, I know I’ve never appreciated anything more.
The call of one of our own, the loss of a friend and questions that have no answers
Sound the pipes; one of our own has been called home. I wish the circumstances could be different, I wish that action could be taken back, but I am not an apostle, and the deed has been done. I won’t remember you as a man who took his own life, left behind a daughter and another with your wife. I’ll remember the wide toothy grin down by the river in our hometown, all the nights and days we spent burning them down.
Truth be told I was once always jealous of you, handsome and fearless, smooth with the ladies you garnered a lot of female attention. You never pushed or excluded those around you, but you lit up a room and everyone in it. Like many I struggle to find the myths and reasons why, but we all have devils and demons mixed with heavens pride. I wish someone would hold your hand and take it off the trigger; those mistakes made cannot take back what was delivered.
I struggle with the falseness of people, relying on the instant and comments from those they don’t know. The fakeness of their core causes them to lash out and seek instant satisfaction. You my friend; where never this type of man. I will always be warmed by your energy and that damned grin, the ahh shucks attitude and the fact you knew you were always going to win. Our talks of becoming husbands and fathers, a chance to rewrite what was done to us, but those duties are now down to one and your voice is gone.
They all say to rest in peace but I want to rage, and not go quietly into that dark night. The moon and stars have you to bed now, I am blessed with the sun on my face and miles in my legs and now tears fall down to keys that write out my plea and beg you another chance. I hope you find the solace and grace you sought, and maybe through these words I’ll cast out my thoughts and make amends and find my own peace, love and appreciate what you did, the days you had and the life you lived.
I’m tattooed by the images of our summer days down by the river that bares our hometowns name. Underneath the underwear tree, swinging out on sturdy branches into the cool waters and climbing back up the bank, trying to persuade the girls without swimsuits to go in their panties and bras. Launching off the trestle with rocks to see who could touch the bottom, raising hell on First Street and painting the town. Nights out on the levy where the tide came in and nearly sunk our trucks, to waking up with cheap beer hangover’s and heading into town for breakfast with bloodshot eyes and a smile and hunger to do it all again.
Our ten year reunion, a chance to act out like rebellions; the whole crew large and back together again. I will not think of your last minutes and days, but I’m etched with that smile walking the streets, fields and shorelines of your town. Lean back brother, into the arms of your hometown, rest easy knowing we will never lose sight or forget the soul who brought us the smiles that cause these tears. Into the earth of your hometown where you laughed, cried and lived like any hometown boy should. I’m saddened by the ending and how it happened but I do not regret the years and days we shared neath star dotted sky and the bend of the river.
The Pettit~Files, the mad diaries of a rookie rep #3
Lend me eyes and allow the story and your imagination to make noise for your ears, disconnect from your appliances and give yourself adequate time to allow earnest thought and appreciation for what you and others do to propel the globe turning on our axis, because these truly are the days of our lives.
The sram wagon
Of all that’s been written and what’s been said, we are all the movement we need to be in this life, there is no damned outside forces, only circumstances and time. Everyone should find a plain, an equal zone to realize all that we’ve accomplished, what’s still on the plate and the dates, times and action for the rest to be realized, achieved and earned, both within ourselves and those we need in our lives.
In the last two weeks I’ve been spread across the great state of Arizona, from the Mexican border, to Tucson, Prescott, Sedona, Flagstaff, back to Prescott twice and randomness in between. Back to my house for a night or two and shared time bike packing with friends on the Arizona trail 300, to new people on the trail and road.
at the start of the az 300
The Arizona trail race spans from the Mexican border to the Utah line, with a portage of 20 plus miles through the Grand Canyon. I was signed up for the 300, which spits you out on US 60, just west of Superior. The route is front heavy, and just getting to Tucson is good, then up over Reddington Pass, then the slog to nearly 9,000 feet to Lemmon. After that you have a beyond technical descent to Oracle, after that you get a smoothness of sorts to the highway. I’m not new, I’ve been beaten, bruised, baptized and completed the tour divide. But this is a different beast all together, it’s the longest single track race in the world (the 750), its rocky, technical, slow and fucks with your body and mind.
I only made it to the half-way point, as a pully bolt backed out of its proper location causing some grief, slow, slow miles and more damn pushing than I care to think back on. The boys did well and trying to tackle this event for your first bike packing effort is a heavy task, it’s a straight up beautiful bitch. We looked for my pully for a while but in the dry earth burnt black from the sun and fires it wasn’t going to be found in this game of hide and seek. There is a lot for your eyes to take in, one of my reasons for bike packing is the pace, effort and new towns to roll into, allow it to cover you in mutual praise and look around while reconfiguring yourself, mind, body and give a brief rundown on the mass social media sights,” hey, look at me I’m going something cool, this is where I am”
The run to Patagonia wasn’t too bad I didn’t think a little walking and a flat tire but we made a good pace, after though, heading towards highway 83 it gets rocky, technical and slow. We rode till nearly midnight and I had a feeling of dread realizing the mileage to next stop ratio. We got a late start, and I knew that it was going to get funky soon. The last section to Tucson has plenty of get offs, I don’t mind hike-a-bike but the constant starting and stopping is a pain in the ass and makes my left knee pissed off.
the end of my 300
After the great pully debacle of ’13 we broke the chain, mounted xx1 and cut 10 gears off the bike and made her a single speed, which it didn’t appreciate, at all. We chatted with some hikers not too far off the trail, said they may give me a lift to town, but after making such a slow pace I lost my patience and rode on, managing a meager 3-5 mph average, if I had a loaded gun the trigger may have been pulled.
Baking in the sun, my legs turning over like a rotisserie I was becoming a well done bird ready for a thanksgiving feast for any passerby or woodland creature to consume me. I was pissed off, aggravated and thought the whole bike was going to snap in half from the pressure, but I limped into a gas station, saw Taylor walked in, cracked a beer, grab food and paid. To the reply of the lady,
“did you see the sign no open containers on patio” I said I’d conceal it and we bid adieu till the next wave of food had to be ordered. Taylor called Mary and the rescue mission began, I recovered from my heat stroke and sat on the wooden planks of the store and thought about the world, slow fucking miles, the idea of a god damn DNF, my bike, and all the other ideas and thoughts that flutter in the grey matter of my head.
I got home not too late tore apart another rear derailleur, patched up the bike, fixed some of its ailments and got up to go pre-ride the whiskey 50 course in Prescott with friends. Out on the berm’d single track my frustrations ironed out, the easiness of the idea itself made me relaxed, I thought about the bike, what its allowed me to do and how its allowed me to become who I am. Forget the falseness, find the realness, be who you are and who you want to be. I’m frustrated by my lack of physical affection, my hands and body want a place to land, explore, pleasure and download, have my lips speak the sweetness of someone’s name in a affectionate way, but that right now is my only gripe so I said fuck it and rode some hi desert flowy trail.
its good for the sould and ties us together
I had a heavy work week, shop visits owners and managers that I had to see, take their pain away and ride bikes. I packed up the SRAM wagon with a weeks’ worth of riding clothes, samples, sleeping gear, food and all the other rep accoutimon that we need. I rolled into Flagstaff at sunset, streaking colors lit up the sky and I was at peace in the laid back attitude of the town. I met up the Patrick Kell of IMBA for a beer and some chatting, along with a guide from Sedona and another IMBA supporter from Tucson. Good to catch up, see what I can do to help/promote, and try not to get in the way.
In the morning I rode some of the AZ trail and other connecting ripping single-track. I found large patches of snow, plenty of downed trees and thought about the dichotomy of the state, two hours south it’s saguaro cactus, hot and dusty. Packed up the rig and hit a handful of shops, the attitude and shops are completely different, and I dig it. Some food, and point the rig south by south west towards Prescott and the Whiskey 50. I got the Rockshox ride experience to come out, my first event as a rep with some company support and I was stoked, let the public see the company show them some local support and fan the stoke.
Camped out in the van, I had a 7 am conference call with World Bicycle Relief, if you don’t know much about it check it out, amazing to see what a bike does for a country mired in conflict. Sitting in a cool coffee shop in Prescott the locals chatted, I took some notes on WBR and was met by some new friends from Colorado. Finish up the conference call, chow some food, fix a quick flat then take some people up on the race course for a little recon. Turning around I passed all the greyhound pro’s some I know from back in the day and those I’ve drank and wrestled with.
Rockshox ride experience at the whiskey 50
Meet up with Andy and his girl Karle from the Rockshox ride experience, get set up and get people on our new stuff, help out some racers and get ready for the pro men’s and woman’s crit in the downtown square that zoomed right in front of us. Great crew at SRAM the more I get to know the company and the people the more I feel like I am in the exact place where I supposed to be. The festivities kicked off, bikes where ridden and beers drank. Friday night was fairly chill, all the people racing Saturday so the town wasn’t flooded yet. I was a little bummed I wasn’t lining up as I’m fitter than last year but I was happy running the booth, getting people on our products and changing the way they thought about us.
All my friends had a good race and I was happy for them, no major issues. Spent a good nearly 12 hours in the booth on Saturday, then the party kicks off. Epic rides does it right and it was great to see the tension on everyone’s face be relieved of its stress by having the race over and done with and they can now focus on fun and good times had. Tunes and beer gardens take over the town, I met up with the crew and those from Washington state.
good people and great times
Sunday back at it up and early, in the booth helping the pros get ready for any last minute checks and tweaking, people coming out to demo some bikes. Amazing to see how fast the pro’s charge the course and make us all feel mortal and give us the attitude check we need from time to time. All the other vendors begin the break down, Andy was kind enough to let me get out of town a little early. Scoop up Hunter who needed a ride back south. Out on the patio of the liquor deli was a plethora of mountain bikers having a chill beer on a patio, all laughing, joking and smiling it’s a good life.
A couple hour drive south, joined this time by someone else’s voice, the miles went quick and all I could think about was my home, showers, hammocks pools and the idea of the attainable girl who drives me crazy in good ways. I dropped of my co-pilot, got to my house, hit the garage door clicker and it opened the envelope that is my life as bikes and gear revealed themselves too me as it got higher. I was comforted by the fact that I’m creating all that I’ve ever wanted, missing a piece or two but I’m allowing myself to experience the truth in places, people and the times.
Home, its good
I walked into my backyard, stripped myself of nearly a weeks’ worth of road trip miles, exhibition/demo days, and riding clothes jumped in my pool and was washed by my week, the new faces met, new experiences conquered and miles driven and ridden. I’m back at it this weekend for the Sedona single track fest, then Tucson, Vegas and all points between. If you see the SRAM wagon holler at your boy, lets ride some bikes, laugh at ourselves and find what G-Love says, “Peace, love and happiness”
theJonnyP 