Day #66: Interior to Rapid City, South Dakota (73 miles)
- chrisbentley349
- Aug 5, 2024
- 2 min read
If yesterday was magic, today was a trial by ordeal... I think it was the hardest ride of my trip, because it was so long and the headwinds were so merciless. I started early, and the portion that ran due west went quickly. This part of the route wound in and out of the badlands and the landscapes were beautiful:
The troubles began when the path turned northwest and I was hit with all or part of the 9-18 mph wind blowing north to south.
Philosophy sidebar: when I bow my head to block out the view of how far I have to ride or how far up I have to climb, it occurs to me that this is like Plato's Cave in reverse...
Plato was a Greek philosopher who told a story about people who grow up their whole childhoods in a cave. The only things they see are shadows cast by cutouts in the flickering light of bonfires. They never see a tree or a horse, they only see flat shadows of tree or horse cutouts cast by the firelight. Then one day they climb out of the cave and see the real world. They see real trees and real horses and they understand so much more than when they lived in the cave.
This gets used as a metaphor for any time you see that the world is different than you thought. It's going on in the Matrix movies, when Neo realizes his life is an computer simulated illusion. It's similar to Tiffany Aching opening her eyes and then opening them again in the Wee Free Men books.
When I duck under the visor of my baseball cap, I'm going back into the cave, because I can't handle how big the real world is. I should also mention that Plato is saying that our real world is also a "cave" and that if we open our eyes even more we can see an even more ideal world, where some things that don't make sense to us on this plane will start to make sense. I haven't gotten there yet... I'm just trying to get out from under my own cap.
Action shots:
Snapshot: 73 miles, starting at 5:30am and ending at 4pm, with 9 hours of actual riding:
Love the connection to Tiffany Aching... and how interesting that sometimes you need to go back under the cap. I'm glad you made it through this tough day! -Nof
73 miles per day is a lot by any standard. The view is so different, so surreal. People go back to “the cave” all the time for many reasons,one common reason should be overwhelmed by real world, “if I don’t see it, then it doesn’t exist”,or “not today,tomorrow”, or “not now, later” :-)