The Hill, part II

Anyone who’s ever seen Marked for Death knows that the secret to Screwface was that he had “two head and four eye.” Yes, Screwface was actually a pair of insidiously evil identical twins. If I just ruined the film for anyone, I totally apologize and you should watch it anyway ‘cause it’s utterly beautiful in an early ‘90s action flick way.

The point is that The Hill, much like Screwface, has a twin. In this case, The Hill’s twin sister is fraternal, as she’s the more beautiful of the two and probably got more of her mother’s features. However, with that beauty comes a sinister temperament. The Hill, while rough and tumble, is at least a sport about things and will honor persistent effort so long as you gut it out for fifteen to twenty minutes. Her Twin, on the other hand …

To continue our film analogies, The Hill’s Twin is Asami Yamazaki from Takashi Miike’s Audition. From the second half of the movie. Yeah.

The Twin eats granny gears for lunch. She laughs at feeble efforts of ascent and rewards whatever gut-wrenching effort you can muster with a sadistic hairpin twist and … more climbing. Somewhere above all my panting and heaving, I swear I heard my bike snort and whinny: He was gettin’ spooked. I didn’t have time for that, so I gave him a gentle pat and wheezed something about “Hang in there buddy we’re gonna make it.” Honestly I was delirious and I have no idea what I said. I might have just mumbled, “Orange water bucket of plaster.” Either way, I was speaking to a bicycle so something was up.

I wish I could say that when it was all over I was able to soak in a gorgeous view and breath in the triumph of victory, or at least give a sweat-soaked self pat on the back and enjoy a granola bar. Instead I just said, “Sweet mother of creamed corn, that sucked,” and kept on going to get home. For the record, yes, the view was spectacular, and, sure, some day I hope to enjoy it after climbing. Then again, some day I hope not to be huffing and puffing, red faced and sounding like a schoolhouse boiler about to explode by the time I get up the darned thing.

I guess that’s a good goal.