For a while I’ve wanted to organize a vow-of-silence sunset ride (riding together for a few hours with no talking, no cell phones / cameras / other electronics, on a secret route where you can’t think ahead but just follow, look, and listen).
After a scouting ride last weekend and a lot of dead ends, I had a route planned out criss-crossing the presidio, much of it on back trails, dirt paths, and little roads labeled “not a through street” you’d never have any reason to ride down.
A few of us did the ride together tonight… and it was beautiful. About half an hour in, riding over loose leaves among ivy-covered trees, with birds twittering and not another human ahead of me, I felt a ripple of almost disconnection from my body and a heightening of my sense of hearing.
On another hill twisting among long low greenhouses, we heard a rhythmic low thunk-boing! thunk-boing! and rounded the corner to see two very intent children playing ball– not with each other, but each kicking their own soccer ball against a stone wall to get the rebound, going in and out of sync.
Later, we stopped at a little-known overlook where a single hidden bird hopped through the bushes feet away and chirped at us, a distant siren wailed, and, as the wind changed, some strains of bluegrass from Hardly Strictly a mile away.
Fifteen minutes later we were riding over wheel-silencing pine needles, dodging massive pine cones, and smelling distant smoke as we rolled down to the Pacific ocean, catching it just before sunset.
During a break on the sand we heard an ice-cream-truck-like melody, exchanged a wordless glance, hustled to the top of the ramp– and indeed, a man in a minivan loosely converted to an ice cream truck was trying to work the sidewalk. A guy in a 90s hi-top fade with unlaced neon green and black Nikes was vocally disappointed that the truck was out of the one thing he wanted.
As the sun dipped below the… well, not the horizon, but the above-horizon fog bank, a row of bonfires crackled to sooty life. We remounted and zoomed along the ocean as dusk fell over the choppy waves, and finally ended our vow of silence at The Riptide, where a no-cover country band was playing.
A very present evening.