What Maps Don't Say About Roads

Processing some pictures from my Northern Ireland trip last year, I remember how different the roads there are from the roads around here. I do not mean just the landscape, but features of the roads themselves. The patterns they follow, the ways in which they wind, the presence or absence of shoulders, even the texture of the asphalt/ tarmac and its feel under a bicycle's tires. Before I headed over to Ireland, I used maps to plan out my routes and was pretty sure I knew what to expect. But the types of roads I encountered had not been in my experiential vocabulary. The maps could not prepare me for the feel of them.

Is it a stretch to compare roads to types of music? The rhythm of the elevation changes in Northern Ireland is jazz-like, whereas here in New England USA it feels more like classical music. How can you describe jazz to someone who is only familiar with classical? They would have to hear it for themselves.

This is more than about topography. Do roads have style? Can a road be elegant, sophisticated, nuanced? Or perhaps it's a matter of physical presence, of chemistry and rapport between road and rider. Cycling on a road about which you've read on the internet can feel like meeting a person and finding them different from their online profile.

With new roads there will always be an element of surprise, a recalibration of the senses. There are things that maps don't tell us, no matter how good we may be at reading them.