6/17/23

A 4 year old sits in the warm Italian sun. Behind, children scamper and play and run from the nuns… he sits alone on a wooden bench with a piece of warm bread in hand…half covered with butter and sugar crystals which glimmer in the sun…the other half with a brown coating of what will in later years become known to the world as Nutella …cocoa was rare in Italy post WW2 and Ferrero of Torino  improvised with small amounts of chocolate with hazel nut paste …first as a butter like bar and later a cream to be spread on bread.

 

In the mind of a small child at a Catholic nursery school break…however a child thinks… thoughts form…” Life doesn’t get better than this.”

Years later in America nuns again entered the scene as strict teachers with knuckle snapping rulers in hand. Even now I recall being taught that the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins was Pride. Over and over again it was drilled into my brain…

This most recent ride of 1500 miles was fraught  with bad Karma from the start. Anyone who read the past 20 posts knows the details by now. 

Time allows for perspective and afterthoughts about what went wrong. 

Training is almost impossible for this ride. I spent months preparing for flats and steep climbs but by the time I reached the hills in Maryland the climbing muscle had shrunk down.

I look at my picture and see that I was too…fat…call it like it is…

The size of the group was too small for my social needs; I should have learned that from previous rides.

I fell and injured myself two weeks in…I left that out of the posts…I got caught in a road rut on highway construction and fell cutting my lip, crushing my mirror, abrading my right cheek, bruising my knee and getting an egg sized hematoma on my right elbow and upper arm. 

Only yesterday at the bike shop did I learn that the crash shattered the back of my right pedal and damaged my handle bars…I rode like that for 10 days oblivious to the damage  until things began to fall apart on the last day…that’s why my right shoe sole came off, the jagged pedal had worn it down…

I think the oblivion came from my preoccupation with the deaths I had witnessed on the ride. 

By the time I reached New York my psyche, bike, and shoes were in great need of rest and repair…so I came home.

My last post speaks of baseball pitchers at the end of their careers…I’m not sure that I’m there yet…

Rather I think the Nuns are telling me to suck in my Pride and start over again.

I may never be a starting pitcher again, a figure on a Wheaties Box after a 20-3 season

but perhaps I can be a worthwhile relief pitcher for a few more years to come…rather than aiming for 9 innings just go for 3, 4, or  maybe even 5…not a player who eats the “Breakfast of Champions” but just one with bread, butter, sugar crystals and  Nutella on hand.

And so I will now prepare myself to get on the mound again for a week ride around the Olympic Peninsula in August and  a bit later in September, another week, the Cumberland Gap  from  Pittsburgh to DC.

Perhaps I can throw three innings with 9 strike outs each time  to end this year’s rides as they should…and recall a time in an Italian School Garden so many years ago where I sat in the sun with warm bread in hand and peace in my so very young soul…