Spirited Away

I took a long bike ride this morning along the Mississippi River greenway. The roads were damp and strewn with puddles and debris, the skies were overcast, and a light drizzle of precipitation seemed to hang in the air, invisible but felt. The temperature was about 38 F (4 C).

Three miles in and I was violently pedaling through mud and crunchy gravel, evading crisscrossing construction workers steering their trucks and lifts, and crossing over railroad tracks. Riding in harsh weather is exhilarating.

Then my front tire went flat. I changed the flat with my final spare tube and considered my options.

I could keep going without a spare. I didn’t bring my phone. If I had another flat tire, I’d have no one to call and potentially no one to ask for help. This could be trouble if it happened enough miles away from my apartment.

The alternative would be to turn back.

Naturally, I decided to keep going. Sometimes you just gotta tempt fate.

In the worst case scenario (and worst cases are typically unlikely) I’d be about 25 miles (40 km) away from downtown. However, that would be if my bike went flat near the furthest point of the journey. The human body can survive for days without food. I’ve therefore endured worse.

Even with a bad right foot, I could physically maneuver the walk home in a day or two. Further, there are typically at least two other cyclists on the trail. Odds are that if I needed help, I’d be able to find it.

My point is that the worst case scenario is often not as bad as we fear. And sometimes, you have to experience the worst case scenario to truly feel alive.

I kept riding northeast, mile after mile. And suddenly it was as though I was transported to another world. I thought of the train ride in the film Spirited Away. It’s a ride of gloom and ghosts that transports Chahiro to the witch she seeks. Chahiro’s journey was a one-way trip over an endless ocean, which seemed eerily similar to my own ride.

A dense fog overlapped the atmosphere as I crossed Chain of Rocks bridge, which took me over the Mississippi River and away from Saint Louis.

The fog was like thin strips of white cotton candy that sifted through the the bridge’s steel frame.

I glanced out at the river as I pedaled. I heard a steady roar of water hitting rocks and I viewed the resulting white color. There was quiet in the roar, which is a phenomenon only nature can produce. A lone boat was out there on the river, near Chouteau island.

There can be so much beauty in gloom, sometimes more beauty than warm sunshine could ever hope for.

Normally I’d turn back at this point. I decided to keep going into uncharted territory. I pedaled beyond the bridge, mile after mile. I did not bring a watch and had no concept of how far, or how long, I was going. One of the best things to escape is time itself. Chahiro’s train ride seemed to exist outside of time as well; ghosts enter and leave the train but only repeat the mundane actions of their past lives.

I road over gently loping hills as I left the state of Missouri and entered Illinois. The landscape was dotted with ponds, lakes, and farmland. Far to my left was an interstate and a steady stream of cars moving over it.

I heard a large hawk cry above me and the cry was eerily childlike. The bird glided in a sky veiled with fog and its soaring could easily be mistaken for floating.

I crossed another bridge that took me over a canal. I realized that I was completely alone in this strange ghostly world outside Saint Louis. I kept going, over yet another bridge, lost in the moment. It felt as though I was leaving the human world.

I don’t remember when I turned back, but eventually I did. My tire never went flat. I arrived with a layer of mud on me and several layers of mud on my bike. My ankle held up.

I had been gone for more than four hours. The worst case never happened.

There’s merit in preparing for a worst case scenario. It’s said that in the first race to the North Pole, the surviving expedition was the one that was the best equipped.

But in a world consisting of pills for every ailment, spares for every possession, and sterilization for every smudge of dirt.. sometimes it’s worthwhile to just let go and see what happens.