On
The Road
The sun was out, and briefly the foothills shone with the kinds of amber, goldenrod and
khaki that rivaled the coruscating mental boners jolting from my being. Then the clouds
huddled above like offensive linemen around the world’s last cheeseburger. The mountains
steepened abruptly, footed with eroded scree, and scoured to a funerary grayscale—-ash,
gunmetal, slate, glaucous—-and one couldn’t help but be reminded that outside of Asia,
these tectonically shifted megaliths are the highest mountain range in the world. The
wind chill’s viscous fingers dug through my leather jacket, my helmet, my gauntlets; and
what little of my personal atmosphere I could securely enclose was tossed behind me at 50
miles per hour.
This Andean reality persuaded me that stamina, thinking good thoughts
and an elephantine pair of testicles would do little to prevent my transmogrification
into a popsicle on two wheels.
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