Gummy Bears and Root Canals
A Dentist on a Mountain
The sunset from Legacy Bike Park does something to you. It stretches all the way down to Flathead Lake, pink clouds stacked against snow-capped peaks, the kind of scene that catches you mid-thought and just holds you there. You forget what you were worried about. For a few minutes, anyway.
I had a root canal scheduled for the next morning. It had been sitting quietly in the back of my mind all day, the way unpleasant appointments do, surfacing at inconvenient moments between runs on the Legacy trails. Not debilitating, just... present. A low hum of dread.
Then, on one of the shuttle rides up the mountain, we met a dentist. He was handing out gummy bears to fire up his family for another lap. A dentist, mid-mountain, feeding his kid sugary candy with the casual confidence of a man completely unbothered by irony. When I mentioned my upcoming procedure, he told me root canals are really no big deal anymore. Simple, routine, nothing to worry about.
I wasn’t entirely sure whether to feel reassured or suspicious of a man whose professional advice arrived between handfuls of gummy candy. Both seemed reasonable.
Still, I decided to take him at his word. Flathead Lake sat glowing below, the mountains behind it doing that thing they do at golden hour when the light hits the snow and the whole scene looks slightly too good to be real. I watched it a little longer than I probably should have, then turned my back on it and went to bed.
May 19th Never Sits Still
Twenty-four years of May 19ths and the pattern is right there in plain sight. Racing, recovering, stressing, riding, ranting, and occasionally just standing in the flowers noticing that spring showed up without permission.
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