BigRingCircustravaganza- day two!

This town used to seem so small. Measuring distance in bunny-hops, staircases, and from bagel to bagel.

The rest of the country was a place I meant to go, the rest of the world an uncracked novel by the bed. This town used to seem so small!

Now it seems so crowded here. Falling for a southern belle in the Grand Tetons is packed in close to driving all night across South Dakota black highways, frozen and swirling with icy air. How does it all fit in this place? All those pancake mornings in Bozeman, MT? The Boiling River? The things I wanted to do used to fit into so few words, most of them still unfamiliar to me, but I could listen to a Pixies song and know how I wanted to feel about things. (Unless it was a Dinosaur Jr. kind of morning).

Seriously y'all, it was a leopard-spotted Jamis Dakar sized-town.

Now it is a job and contemplate the future of a full grown man kind of town, a "schedule your rides" and always wear lycra sized town.

Going to the grocery store I can see so many moments in the rearview, the traffic is really something.

Screaming into hurricane winds, arms above my head. staring down into pots and pots of etoufee, pot roast, artichoke paella, and that left foot unclipping from a pedal *snap* and settling to the red clay, the cinnamon Munson sand, dusty, root-covered sorry ass Tom Brown Park. click, click, click. Flashing yellow lines down a Georgia highway, sun melting over cottonfields no longer picked by slaves. Cotton, it means something big in this part of the world doesn't it?

The bike is packed hopefully away in the car now, no matter the weather, schedule, or destination. I used to get all my good miles in on my ride to Food Glorious Food to sling some top dollar hash. I don't ride in the living room anymore, but the bike is still close.

This town is just getting so crowded. It used to be so small.

Juancho