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Sunday, June 26th, sucked. After two glorious days with my love snuggled up on park benches and river banks, Sunday came tumbling over me like a blindsided tackle in a touch football game. Did I mention it sucked? It sucked in ways that I had not previously experienced in my lifetime; ways I had never dreamed of or imagined were possible. It sucked so powerfully that Ben and I lost all sense of direction and East became West and North became South and we were pulled through a vacuum of suck that held us near the edge of defeat and threatened to call the sweeping curtain down on our adventure entirely.

Our day started early and ended late. The moment we turned out of the campsite entrance and turned south (the opposite direction that #6 was headed) we began climbing up past the access road to Mount Saint Helens our fate was determined. We were to be forever be going uphill. Sunday was supposed to be our day with the Lord and, having found ourselves in His house once again uninvited, the Lord said unto us: Thou shalt pedal uphill. And we did pedal uphill and it was good. And then the Lord said: Thou shalt continue pedaling uphill; and we did and it was still good. And then the Lord finally said: Thou shalt forget whatever thought you ever had of pedaling any direction except uphill, and, if such thoughts as those pertaining to traveling downhill or of any activity other than pedaling uphill should enter thy minds, thou shalt be struck with lightening that shall attack thy Achilles Tendon of thy left foot.

After two hours of steady climbing, and only the first fifteen minutes of which were supported by positive affirmations, we pulled over at the entrance to the access road that leads the rest of the way to Mount Saint Helens and I stepped off my bike and bit back a scream. A lightening bolt had struck and I was certain my ankle would give way.

“This is not good,” I said. “Despite my day of rest and relaxation at Iron Creek, my ankle is still threatening to give way and throbbing worse than ever and I cannot walk without a limp and I cannot pedal without considerable pain and I can do little else except eat eggs and curse our Lord God. Surely, good friend, we should do something about this.”

Ben said nothing.

We shared a sandwich, silently, then continued upward.

There should only ever be one major climb in any man or woman’s bicycling day — one slow climb that takes an hour or more to overcome but, upon arriving, that gives the traveler a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. On Sunday, Ben and I experienced neither of these feelings, though we did experience two very long, very slow, and very painful uphill climbs. The state of Washington and our Lord God above were testing both our perseverance and foolhardiness.

First there was the ascent past Mount Saint Helens, and after, we arrived at some level ground which still caused our knees to wobble wearily. We claimed our respite on a bit of downhill slalom, which ended abruptly and drew us ineluctably nearer to a particularly soul crushing section of the road that brought sweat from the nether regions of my skin and poured it out onto the surface of the earth like so much blood spilled to appease so many Gods. Before we turned up that second hill I argued passionately with Ben that we could avoid the mountain before us and that the path he was suggesting could not be the correct one — it just couldn’t be. I had no argument to the contrary, of course, and my opinion at that moment held little influence as that I had been recently relegated to the realm of those who complain and make excuses. But I tried anyway. I set my bike down and leaned my should against the incline and struck a relaxed pose, while Ben calmly showed me the map and indicated that there was no other alternative: this was it.

Defeated: I got back on my bike, attached my cogs to the railway, and started up. After a few minutes of pedaling, the sun came out and drew close to the flesh of our faces and arms and the incline steepened. Ben, carrying the weight of the Bob behind him, raised his head to me, in salutation, and then said five words I have rarely, if ever, heard:

“Solidarity, my friend, ends here.”

He was referring to the Unspoken Agreement #1,425-F which states: one best friend would not enter a gear ratio easier than the other best friend unless under the most extreme and necessary circumstances. This meant that while Ben had access to the extra gears and could idle around on many variations of hill-climbing power, during our trip, he would not use them. That was our solidarity. That was our pact. I would never ask it of him, and he would never expect it from me, but he was willing to suffer as I suffered and by his will alone our fate was inextricably tied together.

Until that hill.

“I understand,” I said.

He drifted behind me as I stood upon my pedals and pulled ahead of him. He could slow down — he had the gears — but I could not. The sweat worked its way into my damaged ankle and for a time I attained that level of exercise known as the Runner’s High; that point at which your body says “this is just too stupid to be continued and yet we continue anyway: I give up: do whatever you want. I’m going to take a nap.”

It didn’t last long. The hill leveled, imperceptibly to me, and Ben drew alongside me again. We rode the rest of the way up in silence — never once mentioning the gears, the girl, or the growl in our tummies. We were being toyed with by the fair state of Washington and we knew it. She had us her wicked grasp and was squeezing us ever so slowly trying to turn best friend into worst enemy.

We eyed each other as we ate crappy sandwiches and pissed poor urine and wouldn’t say what needed to be said. Ben kept stealing furtive glances out of the corner of his eye to measure the amount of damage truly done to my ankle all the while wondering how auspicious it was to be injured this close to Issaquah. I tried my best to put on a happy face and to not sound like I was panicking most all of the time but I was and he was well aware of what he was up against. He was no match for #6 — this trip, even, was no match for #6 — and now there was this “claim” of a sore ankle. How convenient, he thought, how very convenient.

He sharpened his Swiss Army knife slowly.

Though I didn’t want to, I couldn’t keep the thought out of my mind either: if my ankle continued to get worse, would Ben let me go back to Issaquah to recover? And: was that really what I wanted more than anything anyhow? Did it even matter that my ankle was hurt?

Of course I knew that Ben did not actually believe my ankle was injured the least bit whatsoever. Not really. This was confirmed by him to me only later after he had finally accepted that the pain in my ankle was real and had nothing to do with #6 (at least, on a conscious level). But on that Sunday, he assumed I was either exaggerating terrifically or lying unabashedly or both. He saw straight through my cries of pain to the other side of the coin, which was poised ready to purchase a one-way ticket out of this trip and back to fair Issaquah. I can’t blame him for not believing me but I can laugh at him and call him names and point out that it wasn’t much later at all that he got a karmic bitch slap that, had I not been miserably chained to the same boat, I would have enjoyed more thoroughly.

But all of this, and more to come, was just Washington’s way of saying: “Hello, and welcome; stay awhile and, if you can, enjoy the hills.”

DAMON: It’s 1:15 on June 26th. After a climb of despair where we walked through clouds of mist, where we went downhill while pedaling seven miles an hour from the very peak we were redeemed by a simple yellow sign which said — actually it didn’t say anything it had a little picture of a truck pointed downhill and a number six and the letters “mi” after it for which there were multiple hallelujahs, there were screams, there was laughter, there was much rejoices and then Washington as it always has played with our emotions we went from sad and despair to joy and elation swinging down swooping hills and turns into the sunlight with the grassy fields and the flowers on the sides and the birds coming down to land on our shoulders the heat — the temperature rose by at least fifteen degrees … oh — god bless Washington, god bless. End note.

The problem with joy and misery, as I see it, is that they are both too ephemeral to warrant much attention. The difference between the two is that misery tends to leave a bit of a sour taste in the old gullet whereas joy is more easily forgotten. Yet they both, regardless, come and go and neither one has any real staying power in the end and neither of them often has anything to do with the ACTUAL GOD’S HONEST TRUTH. And the truth of the matter is that we did go downhill, for a time, and I was prompted to remember that it was fun. It was joyous. We coasted to a flattish grassy area near a stream with extraordinary purple flowers and there we disembarked from our trusted steeds and ate eggs, sandwiches, and other food items while I iced my foot in a glacial stream and settled on my back for a much deserved post-prandial nap.

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