Nature In The Ear
There are some riding days when the great dome of the sky conspires with the budding trees of Spring and the sun -driven breezes to create a symphony of overstretched metaphors that makes the ride a harmonious union of man, machine, and the goddish world.
Then there are days where you just get coated with topsoil.
The riding itself was fine - a light day, just 20 miles, without the trailer. But windy. Many of the broad valleys around here were once at the bottom of a lake, and have a thick layer of rich, black soil in them. For reasons beyond my knowledge of agriculture, they mostly use that soil to grow onions. The straight, flat roads in the valleys are littered with road onions that have bounced off the trucks - red, white, yellow, Vidalia. These roads are also subject to wicked crosswinds, which explains why many of the telephone poles lining them are canted east at a 30-degree angle.
I saw it from about a half mile away: a dark plume billowing off of one of the unplanted fields. Nothing from the neighboring acreage; just this one field that hadn't been furrowed or watered or whatever it is you do to a field when you want to grow onions in it.
Nothing for it but to keep going. Just as I reached the field, the wind gusted up to around 30 mph, and the road was obscured by a rich fertile cloud of black dirt, which I rode directly into. It hissed off the fairing and blasted the right side of my face, getting into my eyes, my nose. Then, after pedaling a dozen yards half-blind while squinting down at the road between my feet, the air was clear again. I rode into the next small town and scored a phat Rice Krispies bar and a small keg of Gatorade at the local gasoline and food concession, then headed back home.
I burst out laughing when I saw my face in the bathroom mirror: I had expected some grime, but the whole right side of my face was swathed with thick black splotches of fecund, onion-friendly soil, with pale circles where my stylin' cycle shades had done their best to protect me glazzies. I took a shower, and then used up four Q-tips and a clump of toilet paper getting a window box's worth of the stuff out of my right ear and my right nostril. At that point Woodie Guthrie jumped out of the closet and twanged "Dust Bowl Refugee." He's always doing that, but for once it was appropriate.
The nostril thing puzzled me: why just the right one? I understood the ear, because that was facing the cloud, but don't I breathe through both nostrils?
Such are the mysteries of nature and of noses.
I'm sure the nice Indian gentlemen at the Citgo Food Mart were equally bemused.
