I began the morning with a coffee at Agii Pantes. The village was still, all but for a lone church bell tolling across the rooftops. The sun was lifting and warming the air — much needed, as my ride was heading high into the White Mountains, climbing to 1,200 metres. One climb and one descent lay ahead, the numbers already set in my head: gradients of +19.4% and -18.9%. The day’s ride measured 20.4 kilometres, with an elevation gain of 820 metres. My time riding was 2 hours and 3 minutes, of which 1 hour and 12 minutes was spent climbing. The route was 97% off-road, following a rocky, stony track with stretches of loose gravel that demanded balance, care, and constant attention to line choice. Altitude makes itself known on the body. With each metre ascended, the air cools, the lungs feel the thinner pressure. Science gives it form: every 100 metres brings an average temperature drop of 0.65°C, a fact that becomes reality with the turn of every pedal. The sweat on your back chills sooner, the wind carries a sharper edge, and the body learns what the textbooks describe. The ride carried me upwards through the switchbacks until the gravel thinned and the track itself faltered into stone and scrub. It ended as many Cretan mountain tracks do: abruptly, without fanfare, fading into a footpath that only shepherds or goats might carry further. This was the end of the ridable track, a place where the machine could go no more. It was there, at that rough terminus, that I rested. At that point of arrival, my mind turned strangely to the yo-yo. It is among the oldest toys we know: terracotta examples appear in Greece around 500 BCE, often painted with the gods or scenes of daily life. Centuries later, its name would come from the Philippines — “yo-yo” meaning “come-come” in Tagalog — before passing into Europe as the pastime of nobles and then on to America in the 20th century. Its motion is simple, up and down, out and back, the same path yet always new in its rhythm. Western Crete is small compared to the rest of the island, bound by mountain and sea. Yet within its limits the tracks pull me back and forth, like the string of a yo-yo, the same routes repeated but never the same in experience. Each return brings a different light, a change in season, another layer of memory. Here, at the end of the ridable track, I imagined a conversation — not with a fellow rider, but with Socrates himself. The high air seemed to lend him shape, his figure leaning on a boulder, his voice half stern, half amused, drifting with the wind. Socrates looked out over the valleys before speaking, as if weighing the mountains themselves. “Tell me, Alan, have you found truth in climbing this mountain?” I set my helmet down and answered, “I have found effort, the burn of the climb, and the reward of standing here — but whether that is truth, I cannot say.” He smiled faintly, eyes narrowed in the light. “And what of this place? Does meaning live in the stones beneath your wheels?” “No more than wisdom lives in words carved on a page,” I replied. “It is the people who bring meaning, and the questions they carry inside.” He paused, turning a small pebble in his hand as though it might give answer. “So, do you ride for the track itself, or for what you discover upon it?” “The track is my tool, not my end,” I said. “Each ride is a chance to return to the same place, but changed — to see what was already here with clearer eyes.” Socrates lifted his head toward the high ridges. “Then you admit that travel alone does not change the soul?” “Yes, as I see it,” I said. “To ride far without reflection is to return unchanged. To ride short but to think deeply is to travel further than the kilometres can measure.” He let the pebble fall, and it clicked softly on the stones at our feet. His voice grew quieter. “Then carry that lesson: that truth is not in the stones, nor in the track, but in the turning of the mind, as constant and returning as the yo-yo’s string.” I turned to reply, but the place where he stood was already empty, only the rocks and the wind remaining. I left the track with that thought lodged firmly — that the climb had not only brought me to a ridge of stone but to a ridge of mind. Mandináda The ridable track will end at last, where silence claims the height, and as the yo-yo’s path returns, the mind turns back to light. Ὁ δρόμος φτάνει στὴν κορφὴ, ποὺ στέκει μὲ σιωπή, ὡς τὸ γιο-γιο ποὺ ξαναρχεῖ, σοφία νὰ δοθῇ. (Back-translation: The track comes to its high end, where silence stands alone, and as the yo-yo comes again, wisdom is made known.) Epilogue Looking back from the descent, the end of the track soon vanished behind me, swallowed by the mountain. Yet its presence remained, fixed in memory. These rides are not measured only in kilometres or gradients but in the moments they open: a path that fades into stone, a voice from the past, a thought that lingers. Crete’s mountains carry these moments like cairns on the ridge, each marking a return, each waiting to be revisited.