From LA to Little Bernal

       August 14, 2011

Early one August dawn a cool and dank beginning began

Three riders launched at the base of a hilly winding climb

Pedal strapped and pulling bar, with wheels in lowly gears,

Moved towards a caldera, a dormant crucible long sleeping,

But yet scarred in spotty blackness from recent fiery fumings

The road trekked from the eastern portal to the southeast rim

That luscious lip of a grassy bowl named the Valle Caldera

Ascending in windy steepness for nearly a panting league

And then releasing these velo riders, moist and parched,

Into the cool and expansive embrace of the ancient calderas

While skirting the most southerly brim of the verdant basin,

Propelling each with cyclonic force, these wheeled riders

Traced a deep descent along a treed perimeter to the low land

Slinging them beneath ancient Redondo’s spreading wings

Laying lazily betwixt Calderas Grande, Toledo, and Antonio

This dished trio collectively forming the grand Valle Caldera

Slung as primordial pebbles ejected from earlier eruptions

Floating past smoldering Las Conchas and ashen East Fork

Along the dark coarse and undulating band of tarred gravel

Past the rough-hewn structures of La Cueva’s conveniences

Offering water, fuel and hard-baked grandma’s apple pie

And a place of unwinding respite beneath a shaded portal

Before gently convening a roadway within a narrow gorge

Canyon San Diego defined by Mesas Virgin and San Juan

Through which flows a quiescent thread of watery runoff

Riders skimming the edge of the brown and roiling Jemez

Warmed by the steamy and sulfurous plumbs therein arising

Decorating this patched roadway, rough and pebbly worn

Vibrating each iron steed and reining arms tautly gripping

Chattering the aching bronzed legs rounding in to and fro

Propelling the wheeled beastly whine and whirl attending

To choppy progress against the pull of road and gravity

Along San Diego’s narrow and downwardly thrusts pass

Battleship Rock, Soda Dam, Jemez Cave and Jemez Springs

And beyond La Cueva’s fork descends the red-walled shoot

Channeling into ever narrower confines with relaxed strokes

Spurting effortlessly wheels and pushers past these venues

Both road and river falling together, engulfed in a tepid wind

Entwined ribbons of burnt-brown water and blacken tarmac

Compressed by the dusty rusty walls of Canyon San Diego

Baked under the relentless sun hanging from a thin azure strip

Populated with inviting resting places, churches, monuments

Cafés and intimate inns invite and allure the scorched riders

As they swiftly traverse the narrow and white-lined road’s edge

Winding through the Pueblo lands, racing, ever descending

Buffeted by relentless waterless heat and desiccating breezes

Growing intensity as altitudes earlier gained are duly repaid

Moving towards San Ysidro’s cool respite, and iced slurps

Finally meeting the broad and wrinkled road, rolling dry and dusty

pinon-laced and steel-girdled, trafficked by roar and fumes

The roiling Rio Jemez replaced by rolling hills, long but gentle

As Pueblos of Jemez. Zia, and Santa Ana arise and then retreat

Ultimately convening in the congested of town of Little Bernal.