Ode to Burgundy Hill

 

A word or two from Anthony....

 

“……Such was the degree of difficulty of this ride that not one rider conquered Burgundy Hill on the return. All elected to take the Studley Road route, all SCX, not a stud to be seen!”

 ......All except one, that is.
 

Unaware his co-riders had turned away that day, trembling before that craggy, misty massive, he gathered himself for the final challenge in a day of challenges (as the scribe, El Don, has already writ so well). And so he began to climb – one crank and then another, slowly at first, yet questioning his soul in even attempting it, until somehow he found the thing that he had been questing for.

Something that the long miles (……OK you could say kilometres, but metric always sounds rubbish when you try to go all faux Alexandre Dumas) and other lesser ascents had not already claimed from him that day. And this, dear readers, is how the mountain became his. And he became the mountain.

Others have tried to capture the legend of that place, to cash in on the spectacle for their own, easy to see reasons – see, for instance, the sub-Bruckheimer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19D4wKrARTA&feature=plcp. Yes, exactly - hmmm.

But no mere record could hold the heart of that place. For it was too broad, too tall and too deep for Youtube (…..OK maybe 70mm or maybe Imax would get close…but something would be missed, trust me).

But I digress - there would be no witnesses that day. Nothing but the mist on his breath and the whir of 39:28 gearing (the mightiest, nay the holiest, of ratios).

Visions appearing and disappearing before his very eyes – namely a virgin, a floating espresso machine, the log book to a 1974 Fiat 124, his mother calling him, bits from the start of Fellini’s 8 ½ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmEqBdde5H0) which then went a little bit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou6JNQwPWE0 to the sound of “Barbara Streisand which then somehow ended up in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjGRySVyTDk – I’m still trying to figure that one out. Freaky or what?)…. last year’s mardi gras outfit. You get the picture.

No, his memory would suffice as the only record of that day. Other than, perhaps, a fragment of his soul lingering there still.

And that is all.

Rider X

 

Just to set the record straight there were two other riders, who were detained by some minor mechanical issues on the day, but on arrival at the Burgundy Street hill,....just rode up it.

 

It did not occur to them to do otherwise...

 

Riders Y & Z