To ride where I do, you have to be a willing target. One for aimless autos transporting their mindless automatons with cell phones grafted to their hands and faces.

One for rigs spewing acrid after-burn that immediately sets up shop in the peeps, schnoz, and windbags, our most naturally efficient system for toxin transport to blood and brain.

One for frigid, mist-laden gales that bite and _always_ blow against. One for spider webs that cordon off the trail every few feet and stick to lips, tongue, and lenses, and slow you down just from their weight and friction.

One for bees, who find the most beautiful of settings and fair of skin.

One for leash-less k9s that want nothing more than to savor your spinning meat.

One for mud that is primed to vector fauna scat and giardia down your throat. One for poison oak, whose urushiol resin stealthily hitchhikes on your bike and gear to squat later in red anger on your most secluded skin and membranes.

One for green vines, growing to lasso blood from skin and douse lenses with dew, blurring out all vision just atop the next technical drop.

One for woody vines that, like tangled moss underfoot, will uproot your balance in a heartbeat, that, like prisoners behind bars, will thrust out limbs and claw their way through your skin. One for wood that, occasionally confused with a meteorite careening from above, will squash your mellon in a flash.

And one for solipsism, whose foot soldier and equestrian adherents spew streams of fanatical invective, claiming the public trail to be their own exclusive country club.