The weather's been bad the last few days and the trails are saturated. I had to ride the Hoo-E on pavement, but for an extra degree of difficulty, I hammered out a 25-mile, nonstop time trial to the top of the Grapevine and back. It's been a while since I went that long without stopping and in the wind and the fog and the dark, coupled with the fact that I probably played things a little too safe tonight, things got a bit trippy.

Power surge	The village at night	Sounds are distorting

Starting out south on the bikepath through Pillar Point harbor, I'm feeling pretty good. Strong and electric. I can feel the energy crackling through my arms out to my fingertips and I'm flying past Surfer's Beach. La Mirada is a hectic whirl of bumps and tracks and clifftops. My jaw is getting tight and my mouth tastes kind of funny.

Alert the media, I'm taxiing, I'm taking off. Push the pedals, drive on. Primitive thoughts, primitive instincts. Primal, tribal emotions overtake me. Associations with peoples of the past and carboniferous fauna and flora loom up at me through distorted shadows and distended visions. Flickering torches line the path and cast an eerie pallor on the thick, heavy blanket of fog. Sounds coming alive.

Attack
        savage
    Piggy

Accept the power surging through veins, synapses, legs. Use it all. Don't restrict the energy, open completely and let it flow nakedly -- but it must be contained. The mind running free goes Lord of the Flies. Whipped into a violent reptilian frenzy of power and energy, society becomes only a concept. That lone walker, I could attack and brutalize him right now; he could be thinking the same about me. Tap biology for an advantage, but beware Oppenheimer's lesson: once unleashed, energy cannot be completely controlled.

Stereo footsteps following behind me. I hear "Breathe" and feel as though I've committed a crime. Have I transgressed the established moral and ethical codes for society by simply contemplating assault? Am I Raskalnikoff? I was only taking advantage. Very A Clockwork Orange. Where are the droogs come to tear me limb from limb?

Coming off the path into the city, I am leaving a world of sin and depravity -- assimilating into a new world and leaving an old one behind. All is again well as I weave through the village lanes towards Kelly Street. Merchant stalls, bustling citizenry, the smells of animals and cooking meat.

In town, there are drumbeats and cries from the surrounding jungle. I pass a reputable den of iniquity. Inside ferns and hanging plants climb the walls, vines dangle from the ceiling. A smoky haze fills the dimly lit room. Troubadours play in a far corner of the room to clusters of noisy, yelling patrons. It is a frontier gathering place.

So many fantastic colors are here in the wonderland. Sounds are distorting.

Echos
        echos
    echos

Airplane propellers droning around me. More Pink Floyd shouting. A medieval tower, a castle, knights on horseback, prideful carriages. Shields, armor, swords, helmets, steeds. Human distortion.

I'm now following the cobblestone highway south out of town. There is a low, powerful, metallic hum everywhere. A thick, stewy fog envelopes me. It is soupy, milky, floating, vacillating. I am in the nucleus of reason, climbing to a higher plain. Loudspeakers announcing "trains now boarding at gates . . . ." I arrive at the pinnacle, and the power overwhelms me again.

I am in the center of depravity. Warrior, fighter, gallant knight; stronger, better, superior to all that I look upon. Swaggering back down the mountain, I am now a visitor from the outlands. Rugged, physical, callous, brutal, tough. Alone in the night, I answer to the Gods and receive their guidance. I am a messenger for the Roman empire facing the dangers of the countryside. Or could I represent the Russian aristocracy? They've been overtaxing an interior Cossack village; it was taken by force and hundreds were depraved. This is a bad precedent for thought.

The lights of the city have a hypnotic, subduing affect. Eerie, rose-orange blankets of light gently caressing and surrounding, then strangling, suffocating. The streets have witnessed destruction, they are uneven, cracked. Upheaval. They will again be worn smooth by the force of maian suffering.

Leaving the village gates, I once again take the cobblestone highway into the north, towards home. Strength, confidence, power wear deep purple and long, flowing velvet robes. A crusader in waist-high boots of thick Spanish leather. A triumphant return from the field.

But the frontier is an uncertain place. I crank hard along the path separating "civilization" from the unknown darkness of the sea and the swampy marshes, but the path becomes shrouded and closed out. It is a passage to the psychic plains. My eyes glaze over and lights flicker aimlessly across the underbrush. There is danger about.

Suddenly, a white orb materializes at the vanishing point of the path. It becomes a glowing skull. I hear my voice. The skull turns as I come racing forward and pierces me with its bottomless eye sockets. Shaken, I flee on past this gatekeeper with renewed vigor.

Danger
        foul
    leader

More invisible screeches, shrieks, screams, cries come intermittently from the swampy interior. The wind is an invisible ebb pulling against me. Once my ally, it is now my foe in this battle for supremacy.

Hours pass. Is it hours? Didn't I just start? My legs are still surging but now are tight, taut. Finally, out of the darkness, I see the lamps of home burning brightly for me. A couple more turns and I am received through the gates. Once more I have successfully evaded the highwaymen and completed my mission.

"No horizon ever seems so distant as the one that leads to a new beginning."

Tab, your beleaguered working boy