Ammi Midstokke: The long (sandy, hilly, sloping) ride home

Some days start out better than they finish. It’s just a reality, such as what goes up must come down. In my case, what goes down must come up.

The downside to my move onto the top of a granite slab that is fickle about water production has been the distance between home and town. My once 23-minute cycling commute on back roads turned to a highway slog that I wasn’t ready to attempt.

Typically I am schlepping kid, violin, brown dog, groceries, medical reference manuals, laptops, lunch, coffee, a protein smoothie, some dental floss, and a glove box that basically acts as my fire safe. It’s hard to pack that on a bike.

Determined, I put a rack on my cross bike and some panniers and waited for school to get out for the summer. In my first commute this week, I learned a few valuable lessons. Such as – while panniers can be very roomy, it is not always best to stuff them to full capacity just because you can.

It was a glorious morning. I loaded my bike with all the comforts of a working woman: Swedish Hasbeen clogs, make-up bags, some extra mail I wanted to read, some books, clothes, water, and approximately fifty more pounds of naivety. If I’d had room for my coffee maker, I probably would have thrown that on there too.

Part of the adventure of where I live is the combination of cycling needs from knobby fat tires to highway slicks. I went with something in the middle so I could make it down my four-wheel-driveway without kissing dirt and roll the highway with relative ease.

My first observation was that a loaded bike on skinny tires and choppy gravel at a steep incline makes for sketchy steering at best. Also, if you load up on enough adrenaline first thing in the morning, you need less coffee.

Once I hit the normal road – the one that actually shows up on maps but is still washboard gravel and – WATCH OUT FOR THE DEER! My happy cruise turned into wildlife dodging at 25 mph on a sandy corner. I wondered: If I crash my bike and a medical chart falls out of my locked pannier, is that a HIPAA violation?

I coasted down the road, the fresh morning wind in my face, blue skies stretched before me. As I descended down the hillside, the Pend Oreille River came into view again and just as I was thinking I could not imagine living in a better place, I realized I had not pedaled in 3 miles.

Now that sounds great. Unless you have to get back home later. Even then I might not mind a good sweat except that I haven’t had indoor plumbing in about six weeks and bathing with the tadpoles isn’t exactly an improvement of personal hygiene.

It didn’t matter. The ride to work was glorious. Selkirks to my left, river to my right, a wide shoulder and no drivers texting and obliterating me.

A public safety notice: Please do not text and drive. It is my greatest fear as a cyclist – some person responding to photos of the latest Starbucks frappe with dancing emojis clobbering me from behind. I do not want to die for lame texts or even Reddit scrolling.

After work, I packed my bags again and noted: They are really heavy. Then I wondered why I offered to pick up curry and ride it home. I pedaled over to Sandpoint’s best kept secret: A curry house that is open only on Mondays (Curry in a Hurry) and has authentic Indian food. I’ve lived in India. I know what real chai should taste like. These guys have it.

Now my bike was loaded with the Amazon book order that arrived at my office that day and dinner for five, plus everything else I had schlepped to town.

Riding with weight is, in my experience, a significantly different kind of riding. It’s like patience and slow motion and slog combined in a cocktail of intention and destination. Also, I’m going to need some new gears on that bike if I don’t want to be caught pushing it up hills. Pushing your bike (to young arrogant riders) is the equivalent of (young arrogant) runners taking a walk break. Never in the public eye.

That kind of misplaced pride is what got me up the first two miles of my road with burning quads and bursting lungs. The brown bags of curry wafted in the breeze, a reward for my efforts should I ever make it home. I wondered if cougars like Chicken Masala and a slow moving target.

I made it to a place we call the bottom of the hill then hopped off my bike when my rear tire spun out. This is the part of the road that inspires visitors to ask if we drive up here in the winter. I am barely able to push my loaded bike to the top.

When I get home, sucking air like a fish on a dock, my dad blinks at me through his safety goggles – the perpetual remodel still underway. He doesn’t have to say anything. He’s deaf and a cyclist so we communicate with silence and eyebrows. My look says I didn’t make it up the hill. His says, “Do I smell curry?”