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Anza Borrego: The Existensialist Re-Awakening

Anza Borrego: The Existensialist Re-Awakening

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There’s been a lot of hubbub on here about the interpretation of Jesus and God, and the historical teachings of Christianity and the church. I don’t know who keeps writing those blog posts but I’m here to remind everyone that God is dead. Of course the implication there is that God was alive at some point, and he was. The picture perfect male representation of the ultimate father figure. As the father he handed out inviolable decrees about how we should live and what is right and wrong, saving us from the pesky trouble of having to reason about such trivial matters ourselves. Then something interesting began to occur, as we invented science and began applying the scientific method we began to discover natural laws. These were still of course part of God’s design but a comfort began to creep in as humanity decided that it “knew” things instead of “were pretty sure” about stuff. Then we built on top of these laws and developed the civilizations we know today: housing, government, industry. Yet still God was there as the foundational cornerstone to all ideas as even Descarte’s famous Cogito Ergo Sum declaration rests on the existence of God. As mankind developed medicine they started to forget about their impending doom, death became far removed from the certainty it was in years past and even then, the staunchest believers were sure of a better life after death anyways.

It was in this milieu of scientific advancement that Nietzsche simply declared God had died. Civilization had advanced so far and became so sure that maybe all laws were natural that we didn’t need the foundational existence of God any longer. He removed that Jenga block from the very bottom of the tower. All of a sudden concepts such as morality and purpose that had a direct connection with God were left floating in the void, unconnected to any objective source or explanation. Philosophers have then tried to perform surgery on these most ancient concepts. The purpose our lives shifted from “How to live the best life in service to God” to “Why do we live at all?”. The certainty of death and the apparent absence of God led to a depressing outlook on our existence. The existentialist thinkers eventually came to an idea though, that this mortal certainty is what brought meaning to our lives. After all it was the one objective truth that had not been decimated by the death of god. No one on this Earth can argue that we wont die, regardless of what happens after, this life will end. So death is now a foundational element on which we should rebuild our purpose. Non-existence is the antimatter on which we should measure our lives. Yet there is a problem in modern society, we forget about death. We’ve abstracted it away to farthest reaches of our minds. That’s not to say that tragedies don’t occur everyday but unless we’re personally involved we don’t see the spectre of death hanging over us every second of everyday.

That’s a very long preamble to say that the fear of death was firmly placed back into me by my bikepacking trip to the Anza Borrego desert. I haven’t written about my cycling exploits on here in a while mostly because I haven’t tackled any rides that made me scared, by choice. I chose to have adventurous but predictable rides which definitely deserve to be written about but they’ve become so numerous that it would be a disservice to each one to pick and choose which ones to highlight. The events of the weekend of March 15th 2025 though deserve to be retold. Recently I’ve taken a dip into the world of camping and specifically camping on a bike ride. I was presented with an opportunity earlier this year: 6 months of unemployment in which I wanted to ride my bike for as long and as far as possible, in which I would adventure through much of the west and maybe even Europe. To that end, camping as much as I could would be a great way to curb the expenses of such an undertaking. So I put together a setup that could carry about 50 pounds of extra weight on my bike. Enough for a tent, cooking utensils, one or two changes of clothes, food, water and maybe a laptop or books if I was really feeling sprightly.

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100 Miles Through The Palm Desert

100 Miles Through The Palm Desert

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A Mostly Musical Journey

About to take off at the start line with RCC

Inspired by my triathlete friend Daniel’s Blog where he recounts his big events I’ve decided to write down significant rides on my own though not always through an athletic looking glass. The germination of this particular post stems from a conversation we had the night before the Tour De Palm Springs between Daniel, our friend Sergio (who we recently viciously kidnapped into the world of cycling) and I. The question of what we actually do for multiple hours on a bicycle on these 100 mile rides came up. Obviously we pedal, yes, but our minds are left trapped on this one way train for hours on end. If you stick with a group or are of a friendly disposition then conversations are easy enough to have and those are great to pass the time but if you have a hard time keeping up with groups…let’s say…particularly on climbs or long but gradual inclines like me or if you just prefer riding alone then what do you do?

Daniel and Sergio both agreed that listening to audio books and podcasts is the way to go. I agreed, that’s definitely a great way to live out your masochist fantasies on a bike. Okay I’m being sarcastic, they enjoy this and maybe consider it even more of a “productive” endeavor, a synergy between mind and body where the body is working and the mind is learning. I understand the impulse, it’s the same feeling I get when I used to drive across LA for work, may as well knock out a book or learn some new shit while stuck in traffic, right? May as well learn the secret art of the law of attraction while pedaling for 6 hours straight too then yeah? Hell nah.

I listen to music, it’s a ride enhancer for me. It scoops me out of the lows and it makes the highs higher. My bicycle ride becomes art, a film in my head. Oftentimes the combination of my struggle, the vistas, and the music combine together to form some sort of alchemical concoction greater than the sum of its parts and later on that’s what I remember the most, not the suffering but the grandiose canvas of emotions I felt. I tried to jot down some quick notes to prompt my recounting of the ride so get ready for a deep dive into the intersection between music scores, soundtracks and cycling that you never asked for.

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Why A Meshuggah pit is the most dangerous pit: as told by a survivor

Why A Meshuggah pit is the most dangerous pit: as told by a survivor

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I know what you’re thinking: “NO fucking way Jairo, a Slayer pit is the most BRUTAL.” That wasn’t what you were thinking? okay uh… is it “Cannibal Corpse pit bro, I lost a hand in one.” Still not it? Okay you must be thinking “Metal?! PSH you’ll get fatal diseases from just standing near a punk pit”

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Alright man I’m not a damn mind reader what do you want from me? Oh right, this post.

I saw Meshuggah recently (hours ago actually at the time of this writing) and I know there’s this ongoing joke within the community “lol you can’t headbang or mosh to a Meshuggah song, it’s too weird”. There is a whole world of videos trying to mash Meshuggah’s songs to different dances. Just to give you a timely taste:

But it’s not true, these pits are so fucking dangerous. You have people trying to mosh without rhythm….like they’re trying to avoid giant sandworms. I had the “fortune” of having the pit open up right on top of me while at the concert. I got pushed to the back wall, and I didn’t want to move because I had a good view damnit. I’m used to standing next to pit, and just shoving along anyone who gets too close. But this time I was getting hurt all over the place and found myself flinching like a little mitch almost the entire show. Before I lose whatever small pittance of cred I’ve developed though let me explain the shit I was seeing. In a regular ass circle pit, all you have to worry about is moving in a circle, it can get varying degrees of rough but no one is gonna surprise with a punch to the gut or a foot in your ribs. but here..man…here I was seeing people get weird with it. Every time Fredrik and co. shifted grooves people reacted by violently launching their limbs in separate directions. It was like the band was playing QWOP and the dancers in the pit were the character on the screen:


like this but faster, and more violent

So  that in of itself is kind of a weird way to mosh but it’s definitely not the worst. You can safeguard yourself by keeping track of the shifting bodies, making sure you catch the moshers and send them along. But where this enters nightmare territory is with the strobe lights. Meshuggah have an AWESOME stage show, and it involves tons of lasers and lights. They particularly love to use the strobe. Have you ever danced in a strobe light? it’s like you’re seeing little freeze frames of people moving around. Now imagine those people are moshing, coming at you unpredictably  while you’re temporarily blinded. It’s like in call of duty where the military force throws a flash grenade, breaches a room and instead of shooting everyone in the head proceeds to mosh with the blinded enemy. Now imagine me getting blinded by the strobe lights while I try to daredevil the crap out of the darkened bodies and limbs rocketing around me. I got slammed into, stepped on, and hit so many times. I had to assume the emergency protection position: one hand firmly cupped over my genitals and the other arm raised against whatever may ram into me from the front.


Cup your hand and cover up. NWH say, grab. your. stuff.

The Coup De Grace to the whole thing is the bane of any indoor mosh pit: The spilt beer. Oh yeah, all these poor guys trying to get the other side of the pit only to have Meshuggah start the strobing, blinding death dance in the middle of their jouney means that the beer they so desperately were trying to save was spilled all over the floor of the pit. This only exacerbated the problem. All the dancers were now slip and sliding into my shins while I sat there trying to Mr. Magoo my way through the song.  At this point I probably should have just left the pit for safe zone but I was in too deep, I could show no signs of weakness! War is hell man, but damn…it was a good show.