Seen While Riding

seen 

With a great sea of foamy clouds sweeping in and, mostly, clear distant vistas opened up, it would have been easy to miss what was under your wheels if you didn't keep your eyes moving this weekend. Saturday, then Sunday. Both were long-view kind of days with those clouds that encouraged the eyes to follow them to the most far, most distant points on the horizon, points like a city's downtown buildings spiking upward, massive when standing at their feet, yet minuscule in comparison to the mountains bulwarks in another direction. Yet the stories told in those more distant views were clearly defined. The mysteries this weekend were in the stories of the closer up views. An athletes number erected like a little pup tent on the verge. Did it come loose, pins failing in a rushing breeze of movement? Or was it ripped loose during a passing fit of despair? When did it happen? During the running part of competition, or riding? Would the volunteers let me take one of those pumpkin pie slices, plates filling tables, forks stuck upright and awfully inviting. And what of the RCP - the Revolutionary Cyclists Communist Party? What made that little patch of asphalt an appropriate place of the hammer and sickle? What is the asterisk for? Is gaping polarization going to become the new norm, the same polarization that has ripped countries apart elsewhere?