Geez, riding is all I'm doing these days. I went to Kings Canyon National Park yesterday, and what did I do? I rode. I wasn't even planning on riding much since I figured the altitude would kill me. The first thing I did was test the altitude and did a short ride from the Grant Grove Visitor Center to Panoramic Point. On the map, it looked short and sweet and it seemed reasonable to assume that there would be some climbing to get to a "Panoramic Point". It turned out to be a 1000' climb over 2.2 miles! I kept thinking, "it burns!!" in regard to my lungs (apparently a quote from some movie that Katie kept saying a while back). I even stopped once, and as a rule it's bad to stop on a grade because you lose momentum, but there was no let up in the grade, and I just had to stop. But wow, what a view as a reward! There was a parking lot up top, and then a walkway up for another 50-60 vertical feet, and I just rode right up the walkway since I was on a roll and not a soul was around. Kings Canyon and the high Sierra spread before my eyes, looking almost fake in its grandeur and stunning silence.

In my mind, the important thing was that I made it all the way. Even though I felt a burn in my lungs from the altitude, I was able to do it. So in my mind that meant I should ride some more. Brillig. I drove down Rte. 180 into Kings Canyon. It's just a road that goes 30 miles down into the canyon, a vertical drop of 3500'. It isn't decked out to be a major tourist draw like neighboring Sequoia National Park is with its Giant Sequoia redwood trees. Unless you're planning on camping or hiking, it's just a drive in and out. But I love shit like that, winding canyon roads, towering granite cliff faces, not a whole lotta people.

I drove 25 miles in, rode 15 miles out and then back in again. It was an arduous ride, but it behooves me that the statistics aren't that impressive. 30 miles total is no killer ride, the total vertical climb was 1600', also no biggie, and the altitude was between 3000' and 4600', below where lungs start burning. I'm not sure what made it so hard.

I was just about to write that I wasn't dying, but I just remembered, I was. I actually drove in 5 miles too much. Five miles shorter, I would have started at Boyden Cavern, the low point at about 3100'. Where I started, at the Grizzly Falls picnic area, was at 4200', but that five mile stretch runs along Kings River and there was an illusion that it was flat, and driving in I didn't feel it was a 1000' climb, and riding out it didn't feel like a 1000' descent. But riding back in from Boyden Cavern to Grizzly Falls, boy howdy, I felt it. If I had started and ended at Boyden Cavern, it would've been a perfect ride, but those last five miles/1000' was not fun. I got through the last two miles by watching my odometer, counting my progress by hundredths of a mile. My theory is that you can get through anything if you break it down into small enough increments. Concentrating on 200 hundredths of a mile is still better than thinking about how much you're suffering.