It was hot on the morning of the day my friend Scott tried to kill me and it was even hotter in the afternoon when it became clear he would, despite a great effort, fail.
The year was 1993. Scott was an absurdly strong cyclist. He was the first person I knew who had a suspension fork on his mountain bike and the first who rode with a heart monitor. He was ahead of me in fitness, tech, and experience, and when he suggested we ride up the highest point in the Santa Ana Mountains, twin peaks known as Saddleback, and try to reclaim an old, overgrown scar of a trail dropping from the saddle, I didn’t think twice. I probably didn’t even think once.
The temperature was in the nineties when we started. I had one water bottle (“what is this thing you call ‘hydration’?”) and a single PowerBar, sealed in its gold metallic wrapper. Saddleback is nearly six thousand feet. “We” were
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