What follows is about love. Forget your post-modern jaded sensibilities--
here we are talking romance in the way the 19th century poets of the great 
English language undersoood romance.Do not mistake this romance for 
anything mortal--no, it lives beyond any mortal coil. This is not love of 
a man for a woman, but the love of a man for his favorite mountain--she 
being a truer mistress than any fickle human female...

The scene: dusk at the base of a once pristine mountain, but now despoiled 
by crass commercialism and selfish greed of an elite. Despite sleepy 
looking security guys sitting in lumbrering SUV's, I found a unposted way 
to gain entry to said giant's lower reaches. Like a furtive lover, I 
stroked her access route gently at first, until I was assured that she 
wanted me to ascend into her misty hieghts. Gently I used my gearing, 
afraid to startle her with noisy or crude rapid shifts. My tactics seemd 
to work well, as after an hour long grind (not bad for 42 y.o. male) i 
found myself at my goal--the famed snow stake. 

What release I felt! I had made it to the sweet spot without being 
rejected by her or her goon-like minions. I found myself shivering in 
delight at the windswept prospect; sublimity ruled my every nerve as I 
viewed her spread out before me, the conquering hero! Truely a Byronesque 
moment, if ever there had been one. Suddenly, I felt her anger rise with 
the winds, and I beat a hasty retreat down her flanks, brakes squealing as 
friction worked it's magic on my steed's disk rotors. Soon, all too soon, 
I was off her, and traveling through her wonderful notch. Once home, i 
spoke nothing of my experience to my wife. As Europenas seem to understand 
better than those of us descended from our Puritan fathers, a mistress is 
a fine thing to have. 

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