Elvis the Sheep

Once again I am in a major tourist destination running errands this time searching out bike and auto body shops to dismantle my ride. While everyone rides around in boats to walk with penguins I grab my tools and begin the dismantling process. I am not generally overly attached to my bicycles. Bicycles are tools for doing something I love they are not what I love. Bikes come and go but I always go riding. Frames always break given enough use and get replaced by new frames - usually under warranty (thank you Salsa). I knew this bike was not coming home the day I broke the frame clear through a weld on the rear drop out while climbing into the highlands above Huanuco, Peru. While wrenching and discarding tired/broken parts, I had a bitter sweet recollection of growing up on the farm. Elvis was a yearling ram that I showed at agricultural fairs for a season. Elvis was a sweet tempered sheep which can be rare in rams - he enjoyed having his neck scratched and willingly walked on a lead. But he was a ram, you only need so many rams on a sheep farm, and we could not sell him . . . So one crisp fall day I led him for the last time out into the front yard to go under the knife and into the freezer. I remember dad asking if I was ok . . . but this is reality - things come, things go, and we ate him. But like most of our animals we put his name on the package giving meals a reverence for their memory. I enjoyed this bike. I enjoyed imagining the bike. I enjoyed building the bike. I enjoyed long days in the saddle in my journey across the mountains, deserts, and jungles of two continents.

"Feel an object before you. Feel the absence of all other objects but this one. Then, leaving aside the object-feeling and the absence-feeling, realize."