Wheels of Life

We kept descending, picking up speed. We were going 25 miles an hour, then 30, then 35. Then I heard a scraping and crunching sound at my side. Sparks danced from the asphalt, and I watched one boy belly slide over the wet, rubbly pavement as his bike rattled beside him. I figured that he had broken a leg, at least, so I stopped, seized by a parental concern.

But by now the kid was already standing. He'd gotten up instantly, as though doing that might erase his brief lapse of poise from the record. I could do nothing but offer a lame admonition. "You really, really have to be careful," I said.

The kid did not want to be hassled. "We live here, mon," he said. He resumed his descent, ahead of me, and it was only then that I realized that he had no brakes on his bike. He was slowing and stopping himself by pressing his sneaker down on the top of the rear tire. Later, I would learn that this was how all the kids braked in Dominica.

WE RODE ON, ALONG THE SOUTH COAST IN THE DARK. We had been on the road several hours by now, shedding gallons of sweat, and Pete simply cracked. His muscles seized with cramps because he was so depleted of salt. Suddenly, he was almost mincing on his pedals and lagging behind. He folded for the day; he hitched a ride from a fellow named Sam. And in the village of Petite Savane, there were only three people on the street -- John, me, and an old man, seriously intoxicated, who came running out of a cafe, rum in hand, to chase after us and offer support as we started in on our expedition's most grisly ascent, Morne Paix Bouche, which rises at a grade averaging about 20 percent. " Original !" the drunken man bellowed, expressing homage in Creole. " Original, mon !"

I started climbing. At first, I was aware of Sam's SUV lurking on the road above me, the beam of its headlights pivoting as it wound through the switchbacks. Soon, though, I was aware only of the pavement around me, and the roadside bushes and grass illuminated by my small light. Then the world narrowed even more. Everything peripheral was annihilated, and I existed, for maybe 10 minutes, in a bliss of focus and pain. With each stroke, I felt my pedals pause and creak at the top of the crank, and I felt my front wheel kicking up, off the pavement, each time I got to a switchback and cut straight at the fall line. My spit was viscous and tasting of blood, and low down on the stem of my brain I felt a certain glimmering satisfaction. "I'm doing this," I thought. "My muscles are working."

I kept climbing -- one switchback, then another. But then, maybe 70 percent of the way up the hill, I looked up for a split second and saw Sam's car two or three switchbacks above. The headlights seemed distant, like candles guttering in the high nook of a cliff, and I knew suddenly that there was no way. It was not merely a matter of will; I was simply not strong enough to pedal to the top of this mountain. I got off my bike, and John passed me, huffing "good work, good work." Then I walked on, secretly ecstatic. I was standing, I knew, on a sweet island in time. Soon enough -- within the next decade of my life, certainly -- I would need to reconcile with my body growing older and weaker and slightly more brittle. I would need to find music in going slow. But right now -- for a moment, at least -- that onus was on hold. I had just pushed myself harder than I had pushed in 20 years, and nothing had broken.

BUT OUR TRAVAILS WERE NOT OVER. We kept butting up against a problem: John remembered the roads only hazily, and each time we arrived at the base of a hill, he tended toward optimism, saying things like, "This one really isn't that bad." Right out of the blocks on day two, we hit a hill that John described as "short." A mile later, we were still climbing, straight up in the breezeless humidity.

"How far to the top?" I asked a woman out taking a stroll.

"Continue like so," she said with warm cheer as she waved her hand vaguely, "and you will soon be reaching your destination."

A half-mile later, another passerby: "You have almost arrived, my friend."

About a half-mile after that, we neared a man who had dreadlocks and wore a red, green and yellow knit hat. "How much farther?" I asked.

The man took a long drag on what appeared to be a cigarette, and then spoke. "Yeah, mon," he said.