While riding through Sequoia NP yesterday, approaching 7000′ and well into the snow zone, I started getting pretty chilly. I kept my eyes peeled for a safe place to pull off the road that also offered an opportunity to bask in the copious sunshine. After a few minutes of twists, a spot appeared that fit the bill perfectly: full western exposure, a nice little granite slab on which I might relax.<\/p>\n
I sat, munched some peanuts, and relaxed. Given how much I have to rely on vision as I ride, I released my other senses, allowing them to pick up the little signals we so often miss: the shrill of a jay, throaty rat-a-tat cough of a raven (I first thought this was a woodpecker), numerous unidentified birdsongs, solo and conversational. The crystalline trickle of snowmelt splishing down the rock face across the road, in contrast to the distant sibilant thunder of the rushing river in the valley below. The whisper and caress of the breeze across my earlobes. The warm blanket of sunshine, the simultaneously smooth and rough granite beneath me. Salt crystals melting on my tongue as I ate the peanuts. The scent of old snow, and older forest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While riding through Sequoia NP yesterday, approaching 7000′ and well into the snow zone, I started getting pretty chilly. I kept my eyes peeled for a safe place to pull off the road that also offered an opportunity to bask in the copious sunshine. After a few minutes of twists, a spot appeared that fit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}