Both Trout & Stream

I don't mind when someone passes me on the Poto from out of nowhere. I think Jim James is a fine person.

It was my first ride of the year on the Poto. Though, as I was reminded by Ben Caldwell, not my first experience on the Poto this year. We did have that day of reckoning sometime mid-winter on cross-country skis when Ben and a guy named John left me alone and floundering after about ten miles of camaraderie and ruthless pace and I spent the rest of the ski fatigued and struggling up and tumbling down the overly numerous hills that the Poto has to offer. I was welcomed with a Bells Hop Slam at the end of that adventure, which was fitting because there were definitely many moments of hopping and some real choice and humiliating periods of slamming that took place along the way.

It's amazing that some scars stay with you for months as reminders of past foolish behavior. Part of my right leg looks like a map of the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia on one side, Egypt and Sudan on the other, (topography and all) after that day out in the snow.

But, getting back to the bike, what is it about people like Jim James on a trail? He passed me on an uphill. I'd been passing one rider after another to that point as they bumped over rocks and into shrubs trying to move aside because I would ride their back tire until they gave in. Then I hear this crunching behind me and I look around and the next moment I'm alongside Jim and I'm the one looking for the shrubs to give him enough room to get by. He had a real friendly Jim James smile. We recognized each other and there was that warm moment of acknowledgment. He was not breathing hard. I've watched people reading books who've breathed harder than he was as he passed me.

His wheel went over the top ahead of mine and I thought, cool, I'll try to hang with Jim for a while, up my game. I learned a lot in those next few moments. First, it was immediately obvious that I wasn't going to do any hanging with Jim. His wheel just kept creating a larger and larger gap between us. He stood up a couple of times and it only made things worse. I thought about standing up, and even tried it once, but my standing and Jim's standing have much different effects. Mine made my legs hurt. Jim's seemed to propel him to another level altogether.

Next, I learned that Jim is liquid as a mountain biker and I am...well...maybe gelatinous would be a good way to put it. He just flows along the trail. He was accelerating through turns, up hills, down hills, through sand, and he was doing it with this ease that looked to me like water doing its natural flow thing. His whole body moved with the bike and it even looked like the trees were working with him, shifting ever so slightly to his rhythm. His organic flow might even be compared to a trout gliding through a stream where every vertebrae has its place in the flow of the body and the water. And as the trout moved ever farther ahead of me I envisioned a large black bear appearing alongside the stream/trail and swatting that cocky son-of-a-gun trout right out of the water and onto the banks of that stream/trail into an environment that was not as comfortable, where he would be flopping helplessly in the leaves, sucking for liquid oxygen.

I met someone on a quiet road ride one day a year or so ago who competes against Jim in X-Terra races. Jim, he said, was the goal. Jim beat him mercilessly each race, but he also gave this guy incentive to improve. I think the guy was my age. Good luck. I imagine he has similar visions of the black bear every time Jim disappears up the trail ahead of him.

A couple of years ago I did well in the Iceman. I won my age group in the Sport class by a wide margin. I was, to say the least, ecstatic. At the awards ceremony I bumped into Jim. He asked how I did. I told him, like a little boy wanting to shout it out to the world, that I won. Congratulations, he said, with that nice Jim James smile. I was so wrapped up in my own accomplishment that I failed to ask how he did. Later, as the awards were handed out for the Expert class, they announced Jim's first place. Someone beside me told me his time. It was like an hour and a half better than mine. OK, exaggeration, but it was a lot faster than I could even dream of.

And here's where my concern came in. The next year I'd be racing in Expert class in that same age group (unless I wanted to sandbag in Sport again) and my competition would be Jim. Well, that next year I had a heart attack a couple of months before the race, which gave me a good excuse for not attending, and I'm not sure if Jim even went, but it doesn't take much to imagine what the results would have been if we had both attended even if my health was good. Yesterday's chance meeting along the Poto carved that in a notch or two deeper.

I'm getting a bit suspicious about that smile of Jim's. It's nice and friendly, but there's a hint of something else. Just a hint, but it's that enigmatic hint. You can read into it whatever you want. I'm reading this: It is nice to see you, Rob, but we won't be here together for very long to exchange a lot of pleasantries and to catch up on old times. Good that we could share this patch of ground momentarily, but unless your legs do something that they're obviously not doing right now, I'm gone.

He passed me near Pickerel Lake and I had him in view after Hankerd, up the first monster hill, and along the long uphill switchback, but by the second monster hill he was both trout and stream and he really was gone.

One other thing. I'm changing my name to Rob Roberts. It might be the key.