June 30th has a pattern. Not a clean one, but a pattern. Over the years, this date keeps catching me mid-motion, either chasing something or recovering from the chase.
It started simply enough in 2002, bleary-eyed in front of a World Cup match, already plotting the morning ride before the final whistle. Two years later, bruised pride and a topo map in hand, I was headed back up for round two on Gold Creek Peak, because apparently one humbling wasn't enough. By 2006, the holiday weekend was approaching with hard rides, harder finances, and friends keeping me fed and moving. Then 2009 delivered a stick to the fork and a face full of wood chips, courtesy of the Homestake track. The neck stiffness had opinions.
A year later, June 30th became a kind of archive, a catalog of mountain bike exploits stretching back decades. In 2020, the date split between wandering Gardiner as a self-described apartment husband, and bolting gadgets into Buttons the van so corners wouldn't scatter everything we owned. There was a Livingston routine in 2021, a visit to Lake Wolcott in 2022, and then last year, a single night near Lolo Pass that somehow stretched into a week's worth of calm.
Twenty-three years of June 30ths, and the throughline is simple... keep moving, keep eating when you can, and let the trees do the talking when the noise gets too loud.