"Everyday, An Adventure"

After finishing my book, "Brother to a Dragonfly," I drove to the Ocoee trails at the Ocoee Whitewater Center (the home of the 1996 Olympics for paddling) reminiscing on the philosophies of life that Will Campbell discusses in his book. My favorite part, was his elementary description of the Christian faith..."We are all bastards, but God loves us anyway." He also talks about when dealing with matters like Civil Rights and Race Relations, that we are all victims and enemies. We are all just wrapped in a web of tragedy and love is the way out.
So, I suited up to ride pondering over the questions of life, but my focus quickly shifted to riding...and bears. The trails were awesome. Two straight great days of riding. I put about 14 miles on the bike, with plenty of climbing to boot. The trails were just like I like them. They followed the contour of the the land perfectly. The trails in and of themselves would have been an adventure, but it was what happened in the last 3 miles that was the most exciting.
I was quite aware that I was in bear country and the trails were surrounded by some high vegetation, so I was visualizing all day, coming around a curve just to see a big bear smiling in my face. When I would come around tight curves, I would whistle just to not surprise a bear, but after meeting a ranger at the top who told me that most of the bears had been seen several miles away, I stopped. I started ripping down a downhill section called the Thunder Rock Express and didn't make it 3 minutes passed the ranger when I came around the curve and sure enough, not 20ft in front of me was a big ole mama bear, with 4 cubs. Mama+ cubs+ me = Danger Will Robinson! The mama loped just off the trail about 20 yards with one cub behind. The other 3 cubs ran up the tree next to me. I slammed on the brakes and froze. The mama and I had a nice little stare down. She didn't seem to worried about me, but she wasn't going anywhere with those cubs in the tree. I turned my bike the opposite way just incase. Then I started talking to her. I know you are supposed to sound intimidating or something. I am not sure that I was saying much of anything, and whatever I was saying/yelling, she didn't budge. After several minutes, the last of the 3 cubs came out of the tree, ran to mama, and they moseyed on into the brush. I was still stuck. Behind me was a huge hill, and in front of me were 5 bears that I couldn't see. I moved a little closer to see where the were because forward was 2 miles to the car, and backwards was 12! I finally decided to ride on because I thought I saw her about 30 yards into the woods. As I went by I looked to the right, and she was only about a dozen feet away! I panicked and cranked as hard as I could, running myself off of the trails, freaking even more finally arriving back on the trail. I stopped after about 10 yards of panic and laughed at my skittishness. As I rode away all I could think and say was "So beautiful, so beautiful." What an awesome experience!