Yesterday was another injection directly into my pleasure center. A friend and I did “The Lowman Loop” up through the mountains visiting Idaho City before returning to Boise. When I did the same ride four years ago, it was miserable. The temperature was an unmerciful 40⁰ C (118⁰ F for Yanks). Yesterday it was much nicer – about 30⁰ C (86⁰ F) lower down and a few degrees cooler up in snow country. Here’s a bit of pretty scenery on the way up:

You can barely see some snow on the mountaintops in the scene above. As you climb higher, the habitat changes from scrub and deer to pine and bears – no, I didn’t see any, but I’m told there are plenty around. A little place where we ate had a bearskin hanging on the wall above my chair. I kept looking around and seeing its teeth. Here you can see the beautiful piney woods – smells wonderful too:

I think the highest elevation we hit was about 1900 metres (6200 ft). It was still quite warm. I was happy with my t-shirt. Once in a while a blast of icy cold air would rush over us, making for cheap thrills. For a brief time we were surrounded by snowfields and pine trees:

Of course, wherever you’ve got toasty warm mixed with snow, you’re going to get lots of water. Alongside nearly every valley road there is a rushing stream: 

We went with a small group of riders from my friend’s church. Fifteen or twenty were expected, but only five of us showed up. I found that more pleasant, anyway. Here we are in Idaho City (minus my friend, who’s taking the picture): 

On the way down, I got a little camera-happy. My bum was killing me. You try sitting on a Shadow’s pillion seat, about the size of a cigar box, for seven hours. See if you don’t suffer temporary deformation of your gluteus maximi.

As I put my zen to work distracting me from the pain, I kept noticing the interesting reflection on the back of my friend’s helmet. It was like a backwards, warped, magenta movie – psychedelic in the extreme. After staring at it for a few minutes, getting the gestalt of it, I remembered my camera: 

Feeling better now, I began to think of other distractions. Rear-view mirror? Why not? 

This photo will help me to remember that I was actually there – it wasn’t a dream. Speaking of which, as the sun ratcheted lower there was one bit of magic left for my lens: 

I don’t know if I’ll ever enjoy this delight again, but good memories are nearly as satisfying as repeat performances.

If you have the bandwidth to do YouTube, you can watch some video. A riverside scene is here. The snowy pine forrest is here. A bit of helmet psychedelia is here. The sound is terrible – you can only hear the wind

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 16:12 and is filed under Mixed Nuts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.