sheridesbikes

Light A Candle

2011-10-23T22:42:00.010-04:00

At a routine health appointment last week, I had to fill out a very long questionnaire that, halfway through the second side, meandered onto the topic of stress. Right there it asked: has anyone you know died in the past year? with a follow up question: friend or family? I checked yes to the first question instinctively, then hesitated on the second. Two friends died in the past twelve months, both in brutally unfair ways. And both of my pets had died, both gently, both at home, both utterly heartbreaking. I checked friend, then wrote in a 4 before the word and an S after it.

So, yes, I took a little time away from all this. You know, all... THIS. I tried my best to disengage from both bike racing and the internet for a little while, because I needed to reclaim some space in my brain. I worked on my work. I ran. I rode my townie. I read books (paper books). I recalled what was important to me, and what was not. I got rid of pressure by denying its existence, and like Alice's pack of cards it disappeared in front of me.

One thing didn't change. Riding a good bike down sunny singletrack, fast, on a crisp autumn day, is one of the most joyful feelings on earth. For a while, maybe I didn't want to feel joyful, but now maybe I do again.

Back on dirt this weekend for the first time since July. Although I anticipated being in awful shape, in fact little was lost. Less smooth here, less fast there. Trail features have been elided by memory's fog. My mental map of the Bent Creek trails currently resembles the New York subway map: the intersections are clear but the routes are stylized, the distances indefinite. This weekend saw two trips to the trails to reconnect with the bliss, and one interval session to remind my heart how good it feels to pump that hard.

I light a candle for the losses of the past year, and try to use it to light the way forward. I don't know what to do with that pack of cards, though. I might leave it alone for a while. Anyway, I've never really been a true bike racer. Racers try to limit the variables and control everything, but I tend to get more engaged with the process the more unpredictable things get. I am an experiencer, a traveler, a storyteller. An adventurer. Maybe not a very good adventurer, but that's what I am.

Asheville Half Marathon "Race" Report

2011-09-25T20:16:00.022-04:00

For some reason, last weekend I ran the Asheville Half Marathon. It was not my finest hour.

This was the longest distance I'd run since fall 2007, when I hurt my back badly enough to force me out of all physical activity for a few months. Before I hurt my back I had been living in California and running fairly regularly. I'd done half and full marathons, and although I was never exactly fast I enjoyed myself pretty well. After my back surgery I'd tried running again and it had hurt, so I'd pretty much given it up for a while.

I had been running some during the summer, and entered this race on a whim. I kind of half-assedly thought I would start training for it, but was pretty overtaken with depression after my dog died. Then I got sidetracked on work projects and stopped riding bikes much at all. My plans to run more didn't really come together in any meaningful way. As the race date got closer I was starting to think about skipping it. Two weeks before the race I ran about 9 miles, slowly, as a test to see what would happen. I did it, though I walked some, and so I determined that I could probably finish a half marathon, although it would definitely be much slower than I had back in the California days. If worse came to worst, I would just walk.

The morning of the race I felt okay so I decided I had no reason not to race. I made it down to the race start in downtown Asheville with plenty of time to spare. Runners seem more stressed out on start lines than mountain bikers. I think because there are so many things in a bike race that are completely out of our control, we have to adopt a somewhat detached view of racing, because we know a couple flats, or a bad turn, or a failed component could end our race. When you start a race knowing it might get fucked through no fault of your own, you get a little detached about it. But in running, everything is inside the racer, from the mental game to the conveyance, so runners get to keep this illusion of total control over the outcome. I think this is why triathletes are wound so tight: they are mostly converted runners, but haven't figured out yet that it is impossible to control everything on their bike. I suspect this is part of why some bike shop employees have something against triathletes. Well, that and that they expect bikes to just maintain themselves.

There are no photos for this race. However, I was wearing these yellow-and-blue cycling arm warmers that I got at Machinery Row Bicycles back in June. Meghan (who once expressed alarm over the fact that her former employer now sold such eyesores): I am here to tell you that over the course of the race about ten different people told me they liked my armwarmers, several asked me where I got them, and many more cast them sidelong glances. Glances of revulsion, maybe. But still. I think they are not too bad.

I also wore a Walz cap and Tifosis, because I think they are good. And yoga knickers. And Swiftwick knee socks. I refuse to buy anything specifically for running, except shoes. You don't need special things for it. Because it is RUNNING. That's the beauty of it, and why it is even able to compete with cycling. The only drawback of cycling, especially mountain biking, is the immense amount of extremely specific stuff you need in order to do it.

Anyway, the race started. I ran and ran. People remarked on the hills. I thought to myself, what did they expect from a race in the mountains? People said this was one of the hardest half marathons in the country. I was definitely finding it hard, but mostly because I had not trained at all. The fun part about any race is the other people, really. It is just great to be in a big group of people all going the same direction for fun.

My knee started hurting and I slowed down some. My digital watch broke a while ago, so I was just wearing a normal analog Timex, and had no real idea what my pace was or anything. The 2:30 pace group caught me from behind, and I decided to stay with them since they were pretty fun people. Unfortunately, they would walk the uphills and run the downhills. I enjoyed running the uphills while my knee pain meant running the downhills was a bad idea. I stuck with them for a while, then on one downhill I took a bad stride trying to keep up with them, felt the pain jolt up into my back, and decided I was going to really hurt myself if I didn't chill out.

I let them go, and ran by myself. It drizzled. A couple fairly old white-haired people passed me, and I was extremely impressed by their solid pace. I felt like asking them how they kept their knees from hurting. The route went through some neighborhoods I'd never been to before, then I realized we were in Woodfin as we turned onto one of my regular cycling routes. Eventually we were running on Riverside, and I felt a pang of jealousy as someone cycled past in the opposite direction, heading out for that fun, mellow river ride. Damn! Riding bikes is so much easier! You get to coast on the downhills!

I ran the entire way up Lookout Drive near the UNCA campus, past quite a few people who were walking it. But as much as the downhill hurt, running the uphills were still fine no matter how steep. As the race route headed through campus I chatted for a while with a couple guys from Birmingham, one of whom was wearing Vibram Five Fingers shoes and the other of whom was remarking on how ridiculous it was to run a half marathon in Vibram Five Fingers shoes.

On the last stretch, heading up Broadway back to downtown, it just got really boring. I walked for a little while and felt sorry for myself. As I passed Moog Music I decided to just run the rest of the way even if it hurt. A couple blocks from the finish the route headed up the ass-kicker of a hill on West Walnut between Lexington and Haywood. My run became a stagger but at the top of that climb I picked it up again for the last few blocks to the finish.

They gave me a medal for a very lousy performance of 2 hours and like 45 minutes or so. Yeah. Everyone's a winner at a running race. I felt pretty bad physically and just wanted to lie down. Just after I finished, though, I got to see a significantly overweight lady using a cane walk across the finish line from the 5k, which had started just after the half marathon. She looked a bit embarrassed by the cheers of the onlookers, but it was a pretty great accomplishment. Running races get part of their vibe from the fact that they are so much more inclusive than bike races. Running doesn't have those hurdles of equipment costs and highly refined technical skills, so there is a bigger range of people at them.

I have always sucked at running but it is a good change of pace after a couple years of fairly dedicated cycling. I am blessed to have never been on a high school team of any sort, and hence to have never had instilled in me any pressure to win or compete. No one ever forced me to run sprints on a track, no one ever threw balls at me and expected me to catch them, no one ever yelled at me while I did drills, or made me feel bad for having a bad day. Because of this, I am able to enjoy the experience of athletic accomplishment as a nerd and a wimp, which is to say I go as fast as I feel like going, but feel no necessity to go any faster than that.

Sometimes it's good to do something you know you will not excel at. It's great to not have the expectations and the pressure of people thinking I can do well. It's refreshing not to have to worry about all the equipment, too, to just slap shoes on my feet and show up. And when it started raining, it didn't result in mud spatter in my eyes or a mucked up derailleur. I much prefer riding bikes, but there is something pretty cool about running too.

I know this blog is about riding bikes (it's right there in the title) but this will not be the last running report I write, if for no other reason than the fact that I am signed up for Ironman Wisconsin next summer. Yes I did. Here you go, the reason you read to the end of the race report: interesting buried info. My goal for Ironman Wisconsin is threefold: first goal is (as always) to finish. Second goal is to have fun all day. Third goal is to spend absolutely no extra money at all on this race beyond the race entry fee. That last one might be tough, but I think I can do it. I want to do this race because it takes place in my hometown and because I am convinced it could be a fun time. Hopefully I am right in suspecting that doing an ironman does not mean you have to become humorless and highstrung, or buy a lot of silly extra "aero" gear, or get completely fixated on training numbers. Fourth goal I just thought of now, but am actually really gonna commit to: drink a PBR at some point during the marathon portion. I will just put it in my special Ironman drop bag. :)

Oh, and it gets way more interesting: the other thing that's coming up is that I am going to do some solo singlespeed bikepacking in Laos in December. What's the good of having S&S couplers on your bike if you never take it anywhere fun? More about that later. Complex planning, to say the least. What a weird world it is, using histories of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to plan my vacation.

Outer Banks three day ride: Day 3, Completing the Circle

2011-09-17T22:50:00.032-04:00

Day one post is here.
Day two post is here.

Day three: I woke up in Swanquarter and rode over to the ferry dock on the edge of town. The first ferry left when the sun was still just rising, but it was already pretty hot. This ferry carried the cars of some people who were on their way to work in the tourist economy of Ocracoke, and not many others.

Sunrise, leaving Swanquarter

In the passenger lounge, a fellow struck up a conversation with me by asking me about my bike. He was a cyclist and told me his story of going through a serious cardiopulmonary illness and slow recovery, thinking always about getting back on his bike. He even had a tattoo of the bike on his arm, an incredibly detailed portrait of a very particular bike, which would have been the state of the art in mountain bike technology in 1994. He finally was healthy enough to exercise again, and was happy just to get to ride his bike. The tattoo was a real testament to bike love, and I wish I'd asked him for a photo of it. It was a cool story to hear, because it really exemplified what I think riding bikes should be about. Not about always owning the newest greatest, or impressing strangers, or buying constant upgrades, but about having a bike that works for you and that becomes a part of your life.

I learned a fair bit about the local vacation-home construction industry from this guy, along with some sort-of-dubious, if entertaining, tales about the area. This guy was on the ferry because he drove trucks for a contractor, and was driving a dump truck full of fill dirt out to Ocracoke for a house foundation. Out on the barrier islands there was only sand, so builders on the islands trucked fill dirt out from the mainland to ensure lasting structures. The fill dirt he had in his truck had actually originated in the mine I had ridden by the day before. The mainland and the island were materially connected, then, because the actual substance of the mainland was physically being transported out and incorporated into the island. The island relied on the mainland in ways I'd never thought of before. I'd seen the airbase target practice at Cherry Point from the Cedar Island ferry, then ridden to Cherry Point, and seen the mining at Aurora, and was now looking at a pile of Aurora mine waste being hauled back to Ocracoke. Somehow this seemed fitting in the symmetry of the trip as a whole, and my experiences on each of the ferry rides touching the mainland seemed connected.

A shrimp boat dwarfed by the vastness of the Pamlico. I was rapt, the sunglow and clouds and sense of vastness was like something from the paintings by J. M. W. Turner. I was sure I could not capture the incredible, hazy brightness of the light with my little camera. As the ferry moved forward and the shrimp boat became caught in the pearlescent glare, I took this photo. It might be up there with my favorite photos I've ever taken. Just like I had on the Ocracoke-Cedar Island ferry, I was struck with the thought that in past centuries many more people would have regular experiences of this sort of sublime view than do today.

Yes, there was a bike lane on Ocracoke, but sometimes the sand dunes drifted over it. Do they have a sand snowplow that shoves the sand back onto the dunes?

Once back on Ocracoke I hightailed it back to the other end of the island to catch the last ferry of my trip. It was mid morning on a summer Friday, and there was a lot of traffic going the opposite direction. When I got to the ferry landing to catch the ride back to Hatteras, I was surprised at how much more tourist action there was here than before. There were even some TSA agents who were inspecting people's cars, including holding mirrors under the car's undercarriage, before letting them on the ferry. Perhaps emboldened by the fact that I was not in a car, I actually asked them why they were there. They termed Ocracoke a "soft border entry" or something, meaning that people wanting illegal access to the US for smuggling or terrorism could land on the beaches and make their way into the mainland of the US. I was about to launch into some questions along the lines of, "why not check the ferries at the other end of the island that have dumptrucks full of mine talings on them, instead of the ferries full of harmless beach tourists?" or perhaps "why wouldn't these evildoers just land on a less populated part of the shoreline?" but I was headed off on this line of questioning when they started asking me questions about my bike. It was probably for the best as I am pretty sure I would not have been able to resist asking even more annoying follow-up questions about the importance of public relations versus efficiency in the execution of the TSA's mission.

Anyway, thankfully they steered me away from my brattier impulses. One of them was a smart triathlete type, and was interested in my reasons for choosing titanium over carbon because he thought carbon was the way to go. I enumerated some of my reasons for preferring metal bikes to plastic bikes, and we ended up getting into a pretty good discussion of bike building out there waiting for the ferry. They were extremely impressed to find out that my bike was made in the USA. I let them in on some of the various options in the world of small, independent American bike companies. I really believe that many more people would choose local and domestic framebuilders if they had access and information about that possibility. There are tons of people for whom "Made in the USA" is an important consideration, and many just do not get the info from their local bike shops that such choices still exist in the bike world.

A number of cars, potentially containing evildoers of various stripes, were waved onto the ferry without inspection while we had this conversation.

Tourists in minivans, all driving around to the same locations and having the same vacations.

On this last Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry, I got my first real dose of super intense beach vacation tourism, with swarms of people all over the place. It was funny how different the mainland ferry rides were from the bored and anonymous feel of the tourist ferry. While the working world of the mainland locals was full of texture and individuality, all the beach vacationers seemed the same, somehow.

Not to get too judgmental about other people's tastes, but... oh to hell with it, I'm going to be judgmental. This was fucking revolting. These people drive all over the beach of our National Seashore in these absurd jacked-up pickup trucks, and can barely stagger away from their vehicles far enough to lay down in the sand like beached whales and guzzle Bud Light all day as they roast in the sun and yell at each other over the blare of the radio. Where's a rogue wave when you need one?

Back on Hatteras, there was an incredible traffic jam of people trying to get on ferries to Ocracoke. A lot of people looked like they were on the verge of fistfights. I was nearly run off the road when a giant black truck suddenly swerved to leapfrog the lines of ferrybound cars to speed illegally down the opposing lane, which was occupied only by little old me. Scary. I can never figure out why people on vacation act so angry.

I did get off my bike for one stop on the way back, for a delicious sandwich in a little cafe hidden behind one of the 500 kiteboard-rental shops on the outer banks.

After I got past the idling hordes, things calmed down significantly traffic-wise. I started thinking again about how my car was probably impounded, which made me want to get back well before the close of the business day. If I had to go to a tow lot to get my car back, I would want plenty of time. I had a good tailwind, and decided to just hammer it out back to Nags Head.

Layers of history on Hatteras Island: markers for 1920s Army Air Service field and for the 1860s wreck of the Monitor. I saw markers for events all the way from the 1500s to the 1950s at various places along the route.

People fishing in the shallows at the jetty of the Pea Island Bridge.

Incredibly, when I got back there, my car was right where I'd left it! It was a very welcome surprise.

State bike route sign. This was a nice trip.

This was a really nice little trip. I would recommend it highly, although there is probably no way to avoid having to wait for ferries. They run frequently, but not so frequently that you won't end up cooling your heels once or twice. My only route alteration would be from Minnesott to Aurora: to take 55-304-33, which is a signed state bike routes, instead of 306, which is what I took. That route would take longer, but 306 was so damn boring that I could not recommend it. I would definitely recommend both the Driftwood Motel in Cedar Island, and the not-yet-opened bed and breakfast in Swan Quarter (I bet it would not be hard to find out the contact info for the B&B) as welcoming overnight stops for a bike tour. This route is 100% flat as a pancake, so be sure to wear good bike shorts and bring chamois cream as you will not get any time at all to relieve your position by climbing or descending out of the saddle. I think this tour would be better in the cooler months for sure, especially if you are not comfortable with riding in hot weather. Apparently the winds are less intense in the cooler months too, but the ferries might run less frequently as well. There were a nearly infinite number of food options on the islands, and there were also enough grocery stores and convenience stores on the mainland to make access to food and water no problem. Not counting my small food costs (I ate mostly from gas stations), I spent about $135 total for the three days, on ferry tolls ($3 times six ferries), one night in the motel, and one night in the not-yet-opened B&B. Camping is a possibility, too, so the cost of this trip could easily get lower.

Outer Banks three day ride: Day 2, the Inner Shores.

2011-08-28T00:35:00.031-04:00

The path of Hurricane Irene has just passed directly over the area I traveled on day two of this trip, which has inspired me to come back and pick up the narrative. My thoughts are with the people of the area who, as you will read below, were really responsible for making my time there memorable and fun.

I woke up at the Driftwood Motel in Cedar Island, and ate breakfast in the dining room of the motel. The split-level dining area had been fairly elaborately decorated in a nautical theme many years before, and not touched since. It was pretty great, like being in a time capsule. The booths even had port-hole shaped windows! It was really something else. For a connoisseur of kitsch such as myself, it was worth lingering a bit over a second cup of coffee.

Driftwood Motel, Cedar Island.

By the time I said goodbye to the Driftwood the sun was pretty high in the sky, around 8am. I rode past a couple houses, but Cedar Island is mostly a federal wildlife preserve, made up of a little forest and a lot of salt marsh. Although it was kind of hot, the traffic was low and the wind was not bad. At one point three muddy little otters jumped out of the water beside the road and scuttled across the road in front of my wheel. Pretty cool.

There are straight-line canals dredged throughout the salt marshes, some navigable and some just for drainage, and I don't know enough about salt marshes to know how much that has changed their ecology. I imagine the road would not last long without the drainage ditches protecting it.

Coast guard center on the Thorofare Bay inland waterway at Cedar Island.

The view of Thorofare Bay and the Core Sound beyond was great from the bridge over the waterway. Cape Lookout National Seashore is on the Core Banks islands on the other side of that sound.

At the next bay, Nelson Bay, there was another nice bridge over another inlet. Windswept pines dot the edge of the marsh.

Roadside in the old town of Williston, with spanish moss in the trees and a mosquito/miniature-crab/stormwater ditch.

After a while riding along this nice coastal road, I crossed out of the wildlife preserve and turned inland. The area around North River seemed very poor but people were really house-proud. There was a lot of small-ish homes on large lots with elaborate wooden fencing surrounding them. It was a friendly area, with a few different people waving to me from their porch as I rode by. Also, although I saw plenty of surfer-types on bikes out along the Outer Banks, this was the only place on the mainland I encountered a cyclist, a fellow on his way home from the grocery store.

My road bike, dwarfed by Blackbeard. A childhood of family road trips instilled in me a deep love of the large roadside fiberglas figures of the American vernacular landscape. This was decorating the lawn of either a boat-repair place or a lumberyard, it was hard to tell which.

Riding over the Intracoastal Waterway. And yes, in case you were wondering, I stopped and took a photo on top of every bridge I rode over.

The road I was on was part of a designated state bike route, but there was no shoulder on the road as it went through the Croatan National Forest. The riding was made even less tranquil by the fact that there was active logging taking place in the area, bringing a lot of oversized trucks onto the road. I checked my maps and found a way to skip ten miles of that road for an alternate that was just a little longer.

"Della's Place," falling apart on the side of the road. Interesting to try to imagine when it had been active, and what sort of place it had been. I tried to think about it as a 1970s roadhouse bar where people gathered after work on Friday. Sad to think of the person who had run the bar, then being forced to abandon it in failure. There were fewer of this sort of decrepit ruin than you might expect, actually, and most were quite picturesque. I wish I'd gotten a photo of the series of five old trailer-homes in a row, each painted a different crayola color, the first one inhabited (with its resident in a lawn chair out front with a beer in hand) and each of the next four in the line uninhabited and progressively more decayed and covered in kudzu. The last in the line was nearly invisible under the foliage. It looked like the guy would just live in a trailer til it got really unkempt, then instead of cleaning and repairing it, just get a new one delivered, paint it some insane color, and move in. Slowly, ten feet at a time, he was moving west. I would have stopped for a photo but he looked a little hostile and definitely nuts.

After about seven miles of meandering through a couple villages, some farmland and some weirdly oversized exurban mansions, it reentered the forest-- unfortunately at that point the road was closed!

Oh NO, road closed! Getting back on track took an extra hour of riding, under the full sun from noon til one. I was not super happy about it, and was nearly out of water.

Eventually I made it to my destination, the Cherry Point- Minnesott ferry, right next to the Cherry Point air force base, the location of the nighttime target practice I'd seen from the Ocracoke-Cedar Island ferry the night before. I'd just missed a ferry so waited for about an hour at the picnic tables under some sad little no-shade trees.

These guys had just emptied the crab traps they work on this side of the bay, and were taking the fresh, live crabs across the river to a seafood distributor on the other side. They were pretty worried that the extreme heat and sun would get to the crabs, since they don't get paid for the ones that have died. They had a bunch of wet burlap over them but kept shifting them in the boxes so the same crabs weren't always on the top feeling the hot sun. Chatting with these guys I learned a fair bit about the crab industry in these inlets, which has been on the rise lately. I was surprised how hard it is to keep crabs alive during the transport. Shellfish is a really interesting industry. In a world where most of our food comes through factory production, the shellfish industry is based on these wild animals with really strange behaviors, is extremely localized in production yet also remarkably global in distribution, and is so dependent on the ecological health of the waters. Plus, it is delicious.

I also got to chat with a lady whose husband runs certification classes for various sorts of marine licenses. Jobs dependent on the sea; people who just love being out on the water. I hope all these people are doing okay after Hurricane Irene.

The ferry leaves the shoreline of Croatan National Forest behind and heads out across the Neuse River. There are two pelicans sitting on the end of the pier!

On the ferry, I sat inside the passenger lounge to try to get out of the heat for a little while. I was joined there for most of the trip by one of the guys who ran the ferry, so got to talk to another person whose livelihood is based on the water. He told me what it was like being in the merchant marine and working on a NCDOT ferry, which actually sounded like it was pretty boring, but not all that bad. Surprisingly this guy turned out to really like hiking, even in the heat, which was cool since almost everyone else had been sure to tell me I was crazy for exercising in such weather. We talked a fair bit about exercising and staying hydrated in the summer heat, complete with the standard camelback-vs.-bottles discussion. At the other end of the ferry ride, he let me into the ferry operators' building to fill my bottles with cold water, which was very nice of him.

It was exactly like this for two entire hours. Not the high point of the trip.

The next part of the ride was incredibly boring. Just hot and boring. The road was dead flat, and completely straight, and hemmed in on both sides by thick forest, and the sun beat down on me and the humidity was stifling. Sometimes a ride like this is just about patience, that most basic element of endurance. Over the next couple hours only one thing happened. A giant piece of farm machinery was on the road behind me, which overhung the center line as well as overhanging about three feet over the side of the grassy ditch. Since it was only going about 25 miles an hour, it took a really long time to catch up to me. I occupied myself with wondering what would happen when it got closer. Eventually it was right up behind me and slowed down to my speed. A car or two was behind it, waiting til they could pass it, which was trying to pass me. It was no fun. The roadside ditch looked pretty treacherous with rocks and broken glass, and I didn't want to flat by pulling into it. I was scared to stop on the road, too. I screwed up my nerve and managed a cyclocross dismount, followed by a leap across the ditch with the loaded bike in hand.

It passed, and after it was gone the roadway that had once seemed sort of annoyingly boring now seemed relaxingly peaceful.

Eventually the road had a bend or two in it, thrillingly, and then I passed the outskirts of the small town of Aurora on the way to the next ferry. I did not at all expect to find that in the few miles between Aurora and the ferry was a gigantic mine. There were open pit mining operations on both sides of the road, stretching as far as the horizon. The still air hung with a slight gray haze and the scent of sulfur. After the green monotony of the forest, the mine was strangely shocking to the eye.

A long train can be seen along the other side of the mine's holding pond, waiting to be filled up from the mine and transported around the country.

It probably took a half hour to ride through this mine. At the other side was the ferry dock, where I had about 25 minutes to wait for the ferry. As I sat at a picnic table to wait, one guy got out of his car and came over to find out what the heck I was up to, riding a bike on this ferry. Every car waiting for the ferry was a mine worker getting off work, so I really stood out. He told me all about the mine operation, and how many workers lived in the towns on the other side of the river (I can understand why those towns would be nicer-- they didn't have a potash mine next door!). All along the part of my trip when I was on the mainland, everyone seemed really happy that I was visiting their area. This guy was quite the booster for Hyde County and its many charms. All the mass tourism is on the barrier islands, where the sand beaches are, and these folks are left out of that industry. Frankly, this guy was right: Hyde County was absolutely charming, even more so because there were not t-shirt shops and kitesurfing concessions all over the place.

On the Bayview-Aurora Ferry. The refining facility for the mine is on the horizon.

Once on board the ferry, I got to talk to a couple of the other mine workers too, who seemed happy to have someone to talk to other than the standard crew they worked with every day. This is what I learned during that half-hour ferry ride about phosphate mining for PotashCorp: a) the mined ore isn't harmful, but the chemicals that they use in the refining process are pretty hazardous, b) mining is a union thing, and c) if you can stand to work there long enough you get a pretty good retirement package. And, d) the phosphate they are mining is fossilized plant life, come from the bottom of a prehistoric seafloor from when these lands were under water. As they mine, they find incredible numbers of small fossil fragments-- shells, bones, teeth-- a useless rubble that they dispose of by selling it as fill dirt. Roads, driveways, and house foundations in this area rest on the crushed remains of this prehistoric seafloor.

I rolled off the ferry into Bayview around five. I was not entirely certain where I was going to end up for the night. There was more National Forest ahead of me where I could camp, as well as a pay campground and a couple bed-and-breakfasts. There are no motels, no grocery stores, not even any fast food joints, none of the corporate infrastructure of modern America that we like to think is so pervasive. There I was, in Real America. The chatty fellow before the ferry had told me he thought one of the B-and-Bs might be closed, but he wasn't sure. I decided to just play it by ear but assume I was going to stay at the campground.

Lovely old historic church building sitting in a farm field. It had no path up to the door, so I guess it is not used for worship, but seemed to be in pretty good repair and sporting a new roof.

A couple miles out of Bayview, at a place called Sidney Corners, there was a bridge under repair. A detour was marked, which was sort of demoralizing. I stopped at the Sidney Corners gas station cafe and bought the last burger left over from their lunch service. As I sat outside eating, a family who were getting gas struck up a conversation with the strange solo bike rider wolfing down cheetos and Coke at the lunch table. They explained the detour to me, which was at least five extra miles, and also told me that there was definitely a B-and-B in Belhaven just after the end of the detour but that they had no idea what existed after that.

As I started to ride, I realized that the weather had finally started to cool down and my speed was picking up. I was loath to stop riding when it was actually pleasant, so I passed right through Belhaven without even checking the bed and breakfast. I had enough food and water for overnight even if I stayed out. My stomach dropped a bit as I rode out of town, wondering what I was getting myself into. But I guess it's all about the adventure, and I figured the worst that could happen was that I have a crappy night's sleep.

This was the junk show out back. Flip-flops, cable lock, red flashy, small auxiliary bag of Swedish Fish, and sleeping pad, all strung through the strap of my trusty seat bag. I was continually maxed out on space, but glad I didn't have a backpack weighing down my shoulders and preventing ventilation in the mid-90s, full humidity weather.

Striking old farmhouse and outbuildings, beside fields and under a canopy of trees.

I can't even really describe how beautiful the hour around sunset was. This richly storied agricultural land was silent and seemed completely unpopulated. The fields were completely flat, perfectly rectangular, and ringed with dense, dark forest made even more impenetrable by a thick understory. Riding each road that traversed one of these fields felt like riding across the bottom of a giant empty swimming pool. I think of agriculture in the midwestern style of small sloping fields tucked into narrow valleys, or wide open fields with sparse windbreaks. In contrast, these fields were surreally bounded, almost claustrophobic, like rooms without ceilings.

As dusk settled in I found myself riding down an impossibly straight road, under an allée of venerable old oaks hung with spanish moss, flanked with farm fields. Everything around me dated back to the early twentieth century or earlier: it felt timeless because it was timeless. If this road had been in France, in Italy, people might write guidebook entries about it.

Passing back over the Intracoastal Waterway again. This was a really lovely sunset over the lush pine forest, unfortunately my little camera was unable to capture very well.

It got dark. There were no cars on the road. There were no houses, no lights anywhere. I was all alone.

The mosquitoes came out. I didn't even notice them until I stopped to check a turn, only to find myself immediately devoured by them. Holy crap, I didn't have any bug spray with me. They must grow extra strong and big in the warm waters of the drainage canals of the area, because I swear I'd never been attacked so badly in my life. I jumped back on my bike in the dark, jury-rigging my headlight to my handlebar because I didn't want to stand still for the minute or two needed to strap it to my helmet.

I suddenly didn't want to camp out that night, since with the bugs that bad I wondered if I'd sleep at all. I passed the campground and headed towards the town of Swanquarter, hoping they'd have a bed and breakfast, a motel, anything. It was pitch dark as I rode into town through some shoreline forest. A deer was on the road, and actually froze in the beam of my headlamp. Without knowing it, I was shining the deer. I was confused, kept riding toward it expecting it to move, and finally yelled at it until it finally moved out of my way. Then I startled a heron out of its sleeping place in an oak bough right over the roadway, and that crazy hoarse heron call freaked me out as it flapped away about ten feet above ground level. By the time I got into town I was good and rattled.

I rode into the little downtown of Swanquarter and saw all the lights on at the volunteer fire department. I leaned my bike on the railing and walked inside. I explained my situation and asked them if there was any place to stay in the town? They were pretty great people, really nice and helpful. It turned out some folks were nearly complete renovating an old Main Street house to turn it into a bed and breakfast, and it was only a half block from where we were. One of them called these folks on their cellphone to see if they would be able to put me up for the night, since they seemed to already be renting rooms on a somewhat unofficial basis.

I chatted with these guys about what the Swanquarter Volunteer Fire Department spent their time on. They told me about some of the issues they faced in their jurisdiction, and the sorts of calls that took up most of their time. I am sure right now those same guys have their hands full with hurricane damage. I can't thank them enough for being so friendly to me, some weird space-cadet cyclist showing up on their doorstep after dark, covered in road grime, scratching mosquito bites, and looking for a place to stay.

They got the okay from the folks with the B-and-B and explained to me where to go. It really was just around the corner, in a beautiful old Main Street home with fantastic architecture. The couple who owned it were lifetime residents of the town who were just about done with restoring and remodeling of the house. They had been working all day on the kitchen remodel, but lived elsewhere in town, and since it wasn't all the way done they only charged me $50. As they left me there alone they told me I could pick any one of the three bedrooms to sleep in and that I could eat anything in the fridge. Yes, just like Goldilocks. It was great.

So the second night of the trip I got to sleep in a beautiful antique bed in an empty mansion.

Day three still to come. I promise it won't take as long to get around to as day two did!

Outer Banks three day ride: Day 1, Expedition Meander

2011-07-22T12:59:00.014-04:00

A three day road loop on the NC coast. Six ferry rides!

This trip was really interesting and a lot of fun, and very different from the landscapes I usually ride in. Following a brief beach visit last month, I had gotten inspired to take my road bike down to the Outer Banks and ride around to get my fill of its picturesque beachy and marshy lands. As there are a number of ferries operating in the area, I could cook up a bike ride with plenty of time spent out on the water. Much needed mental refreshment after a couple hard weeks, and welcome change in scenery.

The whole route at a glance. I mapped it out here, if you want to inspect it in detail, including two detours I made for bridges out. In the follow-up post about this ride, I should write out the entire route road-by-road (with suggestions and tips) for anyone who might think about planning their own ride to this area. I used the DeLorme NC State Atlas to figure out my route and brought the relevant pages of that atlas along with me on the ride. Incidentally, Google Maps would have been completely useless for this ride, since among other issues it refuses to admit the existence of one of the ferries.

SSW winds prevail on the Outer Banks, and I spent a little time puzzling over sailing websites' wind forecasts trying to figure out which days would be easiest in which directions. Conflicting data from different sources made me suspect that perhaps wind forecasting was an imperfect science. Finally I decided to just leave on the day I wanted to and ride in the direction I wanted to, and deal with whatever wind I got. I drove most of the way down from Asheville on Sunday evening, and finished up the drive Monday morning. I parked in Nags Head and packed my bike. It was about one pm by the time I got going, which was kind of ridiculously late.

The sign at the border between the town of Nags Head and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

I didn't have any real idea of how long the ride was going to take, so had no specific time or distance goals to meet. Between the headwinds, tailwinds, detours, waits for ferries, and the ferries themselves, "three-ish days or so" was about as precise as I wanted to be. Which was fine with me. I wanted this to be just an adventure on a bike, with none of the restrictions or concerns of racing and training. I hadn't even brought a bike computer to tell me how much behind schedule I was. I had cooked up a kind of satisfyingly contrary trip: a bike tour where you had to keep waiting for boats. The element of chance was a part of the fun for me.

There was definitely a headwind, and it was definitely hot, about 90, but it was pretty nice anyway. The views were great and it was really fun to be out on a poorly-conceived, casual, solo multi-day ride with so many crazy elements to it. The longest ride I'd done since Kanza was a four hour road ride the previous Saturday, so I wasn't exactly in great shape and was a little bit wondering how much I would be suffering later on. I knew subconsciously that if everything really, really sucked, I could bail out and just do a two day out-and-back to Ocracoke and call it good, but truthfully, there was pretty much no chance I was going to take that option.

Riding a long bridge over islets and marshes in the Pamlico Sound. Heading towards Pea Island, part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore

About twenty miles in, it suddenly dawned on me that I had parked in a place where the car was going to get towed before my return. It had somehow seemed okay when I was getting ready, but the more I thought about it the more I realized the car would be impounded. Damn. When I got back in a couple days I'd have to go figure out where the impound lot was instead of just hopping in the car and heading home. I thought about this for the next ten miles or so. Since there was nothing I could do about it I knew I should just stop thinking about it until I got back. On the other hand, with this much time to myself I was bound to start worrying about something, so I might as well focus on something that wasn't really all that consequential in the big scheme of things.

I've found not too many people can be as casual as I am about travel. Worldwide, I've proved pretty adept at just showing up places and going with the flow. I am not too wound up about making or keeping exact plans and tend to leave the decisions until I get the lay of the land. It generally works out to my favor and over the years has led to some pretty exciting and unexpected travel experiences for me. When I started this ride, I didn't have a ferry schedule so did not know how often they ran the ferry from Hatteras to Ocracoke Island, which is still part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. More to the point, I didn't know how the ferries ran from the town at the other end of Ocracoke Island back over to the mainland. What would be the point of getting some time fixed in my head, then getting a flat tire on the way and beating myself up for missing the boat?

There are two ferry routes, which run from Ocracoke to the mainland landings of Cedar Island and Swan Quarter. I wasn't sure how late the latest ferry ran, and although I planned on taking one ferry over and the other ferry back, I didn't know if I'd have to base the direction of my trip on which ferry I could catch. So either I would be spending the night on Cedar Island, in Swan Quarter, or in Ocracoke. I had enough gear with me to camp if needed, but also knew that I could rely on the tourist infrastructure of the region to provide. Luckily I did not have any riding partner along who would be worrying about where we would sleep.

For a while, despite my vow not to focus on speed or distance, I tried to determine my speed using the mile markers and my watch. After successive miles in constant conditions clocked at five, three, six, four, and five minutes, I had to conclude that the variance of my sample was not the consequence of my riding style but of the Cape Hatteras roadbuilders placing the mile markers more or less at whim. Anyway, based solely on feel, I was probably at about 12 mph into the wind.

Eventually I made it to the town of Hatteras at about 5:30 pm or so and headed for the ferry dock. The next ferry was at 6 so I spent some time eating ice cream and cooling off from the 60 miles in the heat. The guys at the ferry gave me a full schedule which showed that there was one last ferry leaving Ocracoke for Cedar Island at 8:30. They said I wouldn't catch it, explaining we'd arrive at 6:30 and it was twelve miles to the other ferry dock. Even with the wind, I was probably riding 12 miles an hour, so I wasn't that worried as long as I didn't have a mechanical. They were clearly not cyclists, and kept insisting I'd miss the ferry, and I kept explaining the math of 12 mi X 12 mph = 1 hour, which had no effect on them. It was actually kind of funny. Even so, a night on Ocracoke would have been pretty pleasant too, so I wasn't that worried.

The Ocracoke ferry was not very full, and held about half tourists and half locals on their way home from work. The trip is a short one, along the border between Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic.

The ferry's route parallels the sandy ends of Hatteras Island, then skirts some sand bars and crosses the marked channel for boats heading out from the Sound to the ocean. I was surprised by how shallow and narrow the break between the islands was. It looked like one could swim the distance between Hatteras and Ocracoke pretty easily, with some rest stops on the sands that poked up above the water along the way. I am sure there are some pretty serious currents along there-- they don't call it the Graveyard of the Atlantic for nothing-- but still, it looked like a pretty nice swim.

On Ocracoke island, the riding was pretty similar to what it had been on Hatteras. A little windier maybe, like 15-20 mph headwind, and the surroundings a little more wild, and way fewer cars.

There it is! The Atlantic Ocean!

Sometimes there were some pretty cool sand dunes between the ocean and the road.

Pretending to be all worried about making the ferry. Argh, I need to rush rush rush. Grimace grimace. Redline! Hammer! Wattage! Argh! Note that I am on a pretty nice bike path here, which runs for a couple miles between the National Park Service campground and the town itself.

I made it to the town of Ocracoke in less than an hour, which left me with plenty of time to cruise around waiting for the ferry. It is a pretty little place, with a peaceful sort of sailing-hippie vibe and plenty of good food.

Monument to the HMT Bedfordshire, a British trawler which came to the United States as part of the Allied effort during World War II. Patrolling the waters off the Outer Banks for German Naval activity, it was torpedoed by a U-Boat and all crewmen aboard were lost. Only four bodies were recovered, two of them never identified. All four were laid to rest on Ocracoke, in a tiny, out-of-the-way plot that is the smallest Commonwealth War Graves Commission gravesite worldwide.

The bike in Ocracoke. Yeah, this is kind of an unusual touring setup, with some packs intended for use on a mountain bike pressed into service on a racing-geometry road bike. I suppose panniers and a frame with "touring geometry" (whatever that means) would have been more in order. Who cares, this is my only road bike, it worked fine and I had room for everything I needed. I should do a quick run-down of what I brought in the next post I write about this trip.

Salt marsh and jetties, and a truly beautiful kevlar-sailed, double-masted sailboat sailing its way back into the harbor. I would see this boat in Ocracoke again on the third day of my ride, so I suspect it is chartered daily.

The ferry loaded as the sun set. There were not many cars loaded on, a couple contractors' trucks and a minivan of tourists speaking french. This ride would be longer, over two hours across Pamlico Sound to the mainland. After watching the sunset, I intended to pass the time writing in the well-lit passenger lounge. Only to find that somehow I had brought my notebook but forgotten to bring a pen. Oh well, the passenger lounge was sort of excessively bright and air-conditioned anyway. I decided to just stay and hang out on the deck instead. I was on the trip to enjoy the outdoors, so I should soak in the experience. The deck was deserted and windy, but the evening was warm and humid enough to be comfortable with only my wind jacket.

Sunset, leaving Ocracoke

As the sunset faded and the ship pulled away from all land, the stars came out beautifully bright. It might have been the best show of stars I have ever seen on the East Coast, so clear that I could see the reddish tinge to Mars. Here and there on the edge of the water there were the steady lights of other boats, some in the sound and some out on the open ocean. Looking out towards the ocean, a strange orange haze materialized, then grew to a sliver of light. A fat waning gibbous moon was rising over the ocean. I don't think I have ever seen anything like it. Watching it rise silent and unobstructed on the perfectly flat horizon was like watching a geometrical proof take place before my eyes. Its deep orange color and wide shape evoked the images of the first split-seconds of the Trinity Test, but far away and unheralded.

I watched intently as the earth turned on its axis. Eventually the moon hung fully suspended above the horizon, reflected pink by the waters. I felt privileged to witness such a beautiful occurrence in such a peaceful setting. It occurred to me that in centuries past, many many people would have regularly experienced such a moonrise. Many people depended on boats for transportation, and the rhythm, speed, and atmosphere of water travel was something mostly gone from our lives today. The bigness of the sky, the sound of the water, the wheel of the stars, it was beautiful to be out in that environment.

I moved over to the other side of the bow, looking across Pamlico Sound. Navigation buoys shined here and there, but even in the light of day, the mainland would have been too far away to see. What looked like a spray of shooting stars appeared briefly near the horizon line. Meteors! I thought. A minute later the exact same spray of shooting stars again. And at regular intervals, several more times. Not meteors at all, I realized-- someone was practicing over at the Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point. I watched for a while more, but the tracers stopped soon enough. The next day, I would ride my bike right by the edges of that base.

It was about 11pm as the few sparse lights of Cedar Island came into view. In one place on my maps there was a motel indicated at the Cedar Island ferry landing, but in another place Cedar Island was listed as having no services. I wasn't sure what I would be doing after the ferry landing. Although Croatan National Forest is just a mile from the dock, I wasn't sure about camping options, and didn't really feel like riding at night. I figured if worse came to worse I could probably just lay out my sleeping bag on the steps of the ferry building for the night. Luckily, when I rolled off the ferry the promised motel was right there. The motel's night clerk was sitting outside at the front door, waiting to see if anyone from the ferry would want a place to sleep for the night.

I rolled my bike into a decent little motel room at the Driftwood Motel, where the air conditioning was already cranked up high. It was great to know I would be getting a good night's sleep as the next day would be pretty long.

Day two and day three of this ride will be another post! Coming soon!

Tiko Brock, 2000-2011.

2011-07-12T12:29:00.006-04:00

"Oddjob, A Bull Terrier"
by Derek Walcott, 1976

You prepare for one sorrow,
but another comes.
It is not like the weather,
you cannot brace yourself,
the unreadiness is all.
Your companion, the woman,
the friend next to you,
the child at your side,
and the dog.
We tremble for them,
we look seaward and muse
it will rain.
We shall get ready for rain;
you do not connect
the sunlight altering
the darkening oleanders
in the sea-garden,
the gold going out of the palms.
You do not connect this,
the fleck of the drizzle
on your flesh,
with the dog's whimper,
the thunder doesn't frighten,
the readiness is all;
what follows at your feet
is trying to tell you
the silence is all:
it is deeper than the readiness,
it is sea-deep,
earth-deep,
love-deep.

The silence
is stronger than thunder,
we are stricken dumb and deep
as the animals who never utter love
as we do, except
it becomes unutterable
and must be said,
in a whimper,
in tears,
in the drizzle that comes to our eyes
not uttering the loved thing's name,
the silence of the dead,
the silence of the deepest buried love is
the one silence,
and whether we bear it for beast,
for child, for woman, or friend,
it is the one love, it is the same,
and it is blest
deepest by loss
it is blest, it is blest.

She Runs

2011-06-27T01:24:00.007-04:00

It's been a while. As much as I'd like to try to make it all the way to the bottom of Dicky's sidebar, I guess I do have some things to say here after all.

It's complicated.

My dog's not doing well. At Thanksgiving he had his spleen out due to cancer, but the cancer has spread as the vet said it would. All signs point to him not living much longer at all. The weekend before this past one, I intended to go up to Beech Mountain for a Super-D/ Short Track/ Cross-Country omnium that I was not in the least expecting to do well at. For one thing, I had never done a Super-D before and don't have a full-suspension bike built up. For another thing, the Cross-Country race was going to be ten miles for my category, which isn't even really long enough for me to get warmed up. But still, it sounded like fun and I was psyched for a change of pace and some new trails.

Tiko started seeming gravely unwell on Friday before Beech Mountain, and I started having flashbacks to October last year when my cat had died while I was at a cyclocross race. I didn't want to leave him alone all day. Massive thunderstorms rolled in, and made my decision for me. Instead of racing I lit out for the coast, for a couple days of restful ocean-staring alongside my pup. I didn't even bring a bike.

On the Outer Banks, at Cape Hatteras. He looks okay but took an exceedingly long time to walk the couple-hundred yards from the parking lot to this spot. And dug not a single hole in the sand!

Pamlico Sound, beautiful and deserted. Proof I'm really a cyclist at heart: soon after returning I ordered this map and began cooking up a two-day road ride encircling this sound.

On the coast, and since I've been back, I've been running. The dog's been getting steadily worse. When I did try to get out on the road for a ride, I started worrying about the dog twenty miles out. It wasn't pleasant. I need to stay closer to home for now.

If you want to learn the topography of your city, your county, your Forest, get on a bike. If you want to learn the texture of your neighborhoods, go for a run. Examine architecture, inspect gardens, peruse storefronts. I've gone through periods of fairly serious running in the past, but I'd forgotten just how nice it can be. In five miles of running I get more human interaction than I would in a week of cycling. Friendly hello from a dog walker, nod from a woman reading on her porch, some back-and-forth chatter with kids on bmx bikes, some drunks at the Altamont cheering me on as I pass. Maybe I need this now. I'm a mediocre runner, but it feels good to see the world at this speed again. And I'm tired within an hour, and back at home.

Snake Exing Slow Down.

Someone is maintaining this sign carefully, it is there every time I run past despite storms and winds.

A few years ago, when a serious injury dramatically curtailed my activities for six months, I made a resolution I intend to keep for the rest of my life: Don't be all about one thing. In other words, be well-rounded. Don't be your job, don't be your relationships, don't be your hobbies. Respect every aspect of your complicated, vibrant self, and get personal fulfillment from a variety of sources. Define yourself in a multiplicity of ways. I struggle with this sometimes, but I try to uphold it. I do not feel defined by any one activity.

I am trying hard to keep my responsibilities straight. Most important: staying true to myself and acting in accordance with my ethics. This dog has been an important part of my life for nearly ten years, and allowing him the best possible path out of this world is an important priority for me right now. When I look back on it a year from now, would I regret not getting in two long rides this weekend, or would I regret not spending time with Tiko? The answer is clear. If I ride slow at Wilderness in a few weeks as a result, I can live with that. Dogs are more important than races.

Dirty Kanza 2011

2011-06-07T20:56:00.033-04:00

At one point around eighty miles into Dirty Kanza I caught myself in one of my standard midrace trains of thought, thinking about how the race had been pretty uneventful thus far. Then I remembered that at that point I had already been forced to remove a moderately important part of my bike, had gotten lost for six miles, and at that very moment was about 4 ounces away from running out of water. Huh, I thought, I guess it hasn't been going that smoothly after all. But that was the kind of day I was having: even though things kept going sideways I still kept having a damn good time.

At the start line I felt more focused and rested than I usually do at 6am, and was generally in a really good head space. The roll out through Emporia was well-behaved, and I was sitting comfortably mid-pack as we got onto the gravel. There were some strong headwinds blowing, but the gravel was pretty well groomed and I rode in some very solid double pacelines. I was glad to be on my cross bike this year, as I think its more aerodynamic profile and narrower tires really helped a lot in sticking with groups and staying out of the wind.

Short rolling hills, already windy, not too warm yet, early in the race.

The groups break up on the climbs and reassemble after the slightly-sketchy descents.

There is such a fine line in this race between finishing well, and just finishing. My only real goal was to significantly better my last year's time of 17h04, and I was pretty sure I was capable of knocking at least an hour off of that time this year. Once the race got started and I was feeling good and averaging speed higher than last year, I knew that was a realistic goal.

About 20 miles in, I started noticing my front derailleur was not shifting well. Looking down at the top-tube-routed shifter cables I could see that the one for the front looked sort of slack. I thought it might be interference with the velcro of my frame bag and planned to find a solution the first time I got off my bike for any reason. A few miles later, just after a cattle guard, I heard a racket from the drivetrain and looked down to see the front derailleur hanging freely from the chain. The shifting problems had not been from the frame bag after all, but instead from the clamp bolt on the derailleur backing itself out under the vibrations from the gravel. With the hard hits going over the cattle guard the bolt had finally ejected entirely and been lost.

On open range late in the first leg of the route.

I took the front derailleur off and wrapped the cable around the top tube a few times. I put the chain on the 39 tooth small ring. I was running a 36-12 ten speed mountain bike cassette (with a Sram X-9 rear derailleur), and I could cross-chain okay without a front derailleur cage on there. So I could even use the 39x13 and 39x12, which was probably not so great for my chain but meant I had more mid-range gears. I didn't want to keep it on the 46-tooth big ring, because cross-chaining to the 46x36 was much harder on the chain and was a little tall for a climbing gear.

Got to ride with Nashvillian Jeff Scott for a while!

The gearing was fine when I was climbing and usually fine when riding in the wind, so I could pull fine but was pretty spinny if I was in a draft. At one point I was drafting behind a tandem and glanced down at my Garmin. I was going well over thirty miles per hour, which was awesome, but I was spinning so hard to stay with them that my heart rate was about 20 bpm over where I wanted it. I fell off their draft, knowing that in the 95 degree heat maintaining such effort would dig me into a hole I might not get back out of.

Tandemonium! Rode and chatted with these fine folks for a few miles.

I rolled into the first checkpoint feeling great, and rolled right back out again. A number of people, myself included, missed a turn early in the second segment due to a parked car obscuring our view of the course marking flags. It was pretty windy and we were working so hard to keep moving that it took us a while to realize the mistake, and were about three miles straight into a headwind before figuring out something was wrong. Some quick backtracking got us back on track, but the second leg of the course featured a couple more turns with course markings that were missing entirely.

Echelon riding with a couple guys from Kansas City. These folks sure know how to ride efficiently in the wind, I have never been a part of such a smooth rotation before. I was spinning like hell to keep up, but damned if I was going to get left hanging out there in that crazy wind all alone.

Near the end of the leg I made a wrong turn with a guy from Witchita who recognized the roads but had gotten turned around, and we ended up getting a few more bonus miles. Somewhere early on, I'd lost a bottle without realizing. I had tried to budget my remaining water carefully, but all these bonus miles meant I was pretty dry. I rolled into the 100-mile checkpoint with 112.5 miles on my Garmin, the last 15 without water. I was feeling like I was on the edge of some pretty serious dehydration.

I knew I needed to drink up before I got back out on the course. And even though I knew I could still finish, I was also feeling a little frustrated from all the extra effort and time I had expended out there, not to mention the missing derailleur. I lay on the grass for a couple minutes and drank about a liter of water while working on letting go of the frustration. I had planned to avoid the convenience stores because I feel that negotiating the heat is much easier without popping in and out of frigid air conditioning. But I needed to replace my missing bottle, and besides, there is no better attitude adjustment than ice cream. I got 2 pepsis and a sports bottle of gatorade I could drink while riding. I was pleased to find they had my favorite gas station ice cream treat, the Blue Bunny strawberry shortcake ice cream bar.

Stopped at the second checkpoint: my bike and the gallon-jug of water I'd just killed. Race promoter Jim Cummins gave the women the low race numbers, and since I won last year's women's division he gave me number one!

I got back outside away from the AC as quickly as I could and stood there drinking Pepsi and eating my attitude-adjustment-on-a-stick. I realized that all the riders around me looked pretty trashed. But I was ready to blow that town, get on the bike and out of there! The third leg of the route started with a tailwind, which meant the riding was very hot. I seem to do pretty well riding in very hot weather and was able to keep on top of my food, salts, and water needs. Overall I do not think the heat was quite as bad this year as last year. There was a little scrim of cloud cutting the brightness of the sun, and it seemed to be a couple degrees cooler as well, about 94 or so.

Dust-covered but feeling good as the third leg of the route begins.

The course opened up some and without trees obscuring the horizon I could see a prominent storm had formed not far away. The rain was coming down in an almost opaque sheet of gray that was warped to the side by strong wind. If that came over here, things would get interesting, I realized. I came up on another racer and we rode together for a while spotting lighting strikes out of this growing thunderstorm. The rain came suddenly, a strong windy downpour that dropped the air temperature down to about 70 almost immediately. It felt great but we wondered just when or if we would need to take cover from the lightning. When there was a ground strike close by we pulled under a grove of trees only to find about six other riders already sheltered there.

Shortly, the lightning passed, and we all jumped back on bikes ready to go. Sadly the dirt double track had been deeply soaked by the storm. The clay soil stuck to everything, DSG'09-style. The grassy ditches on the sides of the road were waterlogged but okay for walking bikes. As I sloshed along the marshy ground I realized it was a rare bike race indeed that held the possibility of picking up leeches. It was possible to ride in the long grass to the far side of the ditch, but the energy it took was significant and there was a good chance of hitting some hidden hole or obstacle.

One thing I like about Dirty Kanza is how big and exotic the plains landscape feels compared to the steep-sided, heavily wooded mountains I usually ride in. On something as airy and rickety as a bicycle, you are just a tiny speck of animal enveloped by the vastness of the plains. Once the bike is rendered useless and you are on foot, that feeling of tininess increases tenfold. It was almost hallucinatory to stand in the ditch, gazing at the flat yellow wheatfields on either side stretching off toward the horizons. Time collapsed, the distances became monumental.

I was pushing my bike through the grass and noticed some overgrown strands of barbed wire just as my wheels rolled over it. Sure enough, a second later I heard the hiss from the front tire. Who flats their bike while walking it? I was running these 32mm Small Block Eights set up tubeless with Stans Alpha rim, and so needed to try to get the Stans fluid to fill the hole. But at walking speed, the tire was not turning fast enough to get centrifugal force working in there! I lifted up the front end of the bike and spun the wheel like I was in the Price Is Right. Incredibly, it worked and the hissing stopped. I aired it back up and everything was fine. Yeah, this was a fantastic low-maintenance, fast-rolling setup for this race. [You can get some too, this guy will build them for you]

At first it seemed like the very rough doubletrack section we had been on might be the worst of the worst, and maybe once we made the right turn a couple miles further conditions would get better. But we got there, made the turn, and it was just as unrideable on the next road. More pushing. How long could this last? I felt pretty good, and still in a ridiculously cheerful mood, but really, just how many miles of walking in a ditch could one person do before calling it a day? And how much more of the course would be this muddy?

The wheat fields along side the doubletrack eventually gave way to pasture and a couple guys decided to try riding in it. We passed our bikes over the barbed wire and found the grazed-down grass bumpy but rideable. We all got excited again just to be on bikes and not staggering around in ditches. Yay! We rode slowly but surely through the wet field, trying to steer around cow poop.

After riding through pasture for a little while, we encountered a couple driving to their nearby ranch. They kindly stopped to chat with us and to find out why all these weirdos were riding bikes in a cow pasture. The man took a look at our course map and pointed out at least five or ten miles of the remaining roads on this leg of the race that he knew based on his decades of local knowledge would impassable mud. We didn't know what the path of the storm had been, and didn't have the route for the final leg til we got to the last checkpoint, but there could have been many more miles of mud in the last section too. A racer could be out there all night.

We all decided we had had about enough of the impassable mud and it was time to bail off the course. What a bummer! It was really a beautiful landscape surrounding us, and it was clear the route would have been really nice to ride if it had not gotten soaked. The rancher also showed us the best way to navigate to the checkpoint via paved roads.

Once we got on the pavement, it was about 30 miles more to Council Grove, right at and after sundown. I rode in with two awesome guys, Eric who runs the Adventure Monkey website, and Malcolm from Lincoln Nebraska. They both were in good spirits and we were all riding about the same speeds. As the sun got low, the fields turned pink with magic-hour light. The road had little traffic and fireflies came out as the darkness took over. This was actually one of the high points of my race.

Malcolm's friend CVO came by in a van, looking for him. He stopped and gave us Budweiser and fried chicken. I am starting to get convinced that Nebraska has the coolest bike riders in the entire nation. Is there anything better than standing in the middle of a road in the dark, covered in mud, and drinking a beer after riding your bike for 14 hours straight? No. The answer is no, there is nothing better. Fortified, we got back on our bikes and rode the rest of the way into Council Grove in good moods.

My mud-covered bike at the last checkpoint. Contrast this photo with the nearly identical pose from checkpoint two. A lot happened out there in the Kanza doubletrack. Final mileage tally including detours and bonus miles was 177 miles from Emporia to Council Grove.

It turned out that the rain had not hit much of the last leg of the course, so folks who had been an hour or so ahead of us had not been stopped by the mud. For a little while, this really tormented me, thinking about how if I hadn't lost almost an hour to wrong turns in the second leg of the course or hadn't lost my derailleur I could have missed the rains and finished. But, if I had done that, I wouldn't have the wonderful and unique memories of the race experience that I do have.

Thanks to all the great folks I got to ride with out there for making this a great experience. Thanks as always to the Nashvillians, especially Hilary, for being awesome support crew, and Thad for toting my sorry self back to Emporia. Thanks Dirty Kanza for another great experience and some epic fun times, I will be back in 2012 for sure.

Mountain Sports Festival Cyclocross

2011-05-31T23:35:00.009-04:00

This past Friday evening, in Carrier Park, the new Asheville Cyclocross Series hosted their first race. Yes, it was on Memorial Day Weekend, not anyone's idea of cyclocross season. It was part of the Mountain Sports Festival, which last year included an unconventional mountain bike race that I'd raced in. The mountain bike race was not on the schedule this year, sadly, but the cyclocross race was pretty damn fun.

They were running women's categories combined, and after a long day of work I wasn't feeling especially fast anyway. I mean seriously, it is May, and I have a two hundred mile race the next week, and the start list showed that some serious cyclocross racers were actually driving in from out of town just for this race. So I decided to wear a hilarious getup to the race as a way to make it fun. My goal was to stay with the lead group as long as I could, but have fun even if I got dropped hard, as I expected to. I wore a Goodwill disco jumpsuit (cut off at the knees for riding), tall striped Endless socks, and a BMX helmet with kitten stickers on it.

photos by Eric

The race started on the Mellowdrome outdoor cycling track, which was cool because it spread the field out a bit before we hit any turns. I was sitting near the back of the lead group through the first turns of the course. The next turn was a transition off of a cement path and onto the grass, and this is where things went wrong. As everyone was turning left onto the grass, out of the corner of my eye I could see this woman with her head down just hammering in a straight line on the cement like she was in a TT or something. I and a couple other women called out to get her attention as we came into the corner. She did not seem to notice and barreled straight into me.

She crashed me pretty good! I ended up tangled in the course-marking tape, with my bike on top of me and my leg between the wheel and frame of her bike. I was mostly worried I might have damaged my bike a week out from Kanza, but no real damage was done. My shoulder hurts a bit and I skinned my knee, but that was it. This was my first real cyclocross crash. Well, my first involving colliding with other people... there have been plenty of cases of me landing on the ground due to my own stupidity. It was kind of a good experience to have, just to know what it was like to crash like that.

Fun times, plenty of hecklers out all along the course.

I had lost maybe a minute, and although I passed a couple people back I knew I would not get back up to the lead group. Except for going down once in the sand pit the rest of the race was pretty straightforward. There were bands playing and beer flowing, the evening was warm, and there was a great crowd of happy people watching us race.

Each lap included a trip around the Mellowdrome oval. I am in front of Gabe of Smoke Bikes, who is racing on a giant-wheeled bike he built himself.

Photo by Shanna. I took this turn too fast and when the shutter clicked I was in the process of planting my right hand on that post and skidding around it. I did not crash executing this manouver!

I ended up eighth, respectably mid-pack considering I crashed twice and was wearing a ridiculous outfit. Thanks to Asheville Cyclocross for putting on the event, it sure was fun to get a cyclocross fix this far out of the season. I am looking forward to a fun autumn of local cyclocross racing thanks to the efforts of this crew! Should be great.

DNFs

2011-05-31T15:03:00.004-04:00

I posted a couple thoughts on my recent racing experiences here on the Team Twin Six blog. I could definitely be posting more finishes, maybe even podium finishes, if I would only race some cross-country races or lap races. But where's the fun in that? These days I race for adventures, not just externally adventuring but adventuring into the farther reaches of my mind and body.

I just hope Dirty Kanza this weekend doesn't make three in a row.

Alien

2011-05-23T03:21:00.002-04:00

80 miles of gravel, started late, and headlamp switched on long before expected. Up to this ridge, then down, then a few more miles to home. To save battery I dismount and walk up the last steep part under the ridge without light.

A waning gibbous moon is low, and behind trees, aiding nothing. Darkness overwhelms for only a moment. The slant of the gravel road gradually perceptible as senses adjust to the quiet world. My friend, the night forest.

The fixed stars mirrored by drifts of blue ghost fireflies afloat in the tender air. The night is thickly humid, carrying the scent of unseen flowers. Whippoorwill, owl.

Stand still.

Here we all are: insect, plant, bird, human. The ecstatic living skin of this stone planet.

Bike To Work

2011-05-20T01:41:00.029-04:00

May, apparently, is deemed "Bike to Work Month." A wise choice, of course, as it would be much harder to lure people out into the nastiness of February. And this week is "Bike to Work Week." And today is "Bike to Work Day." Clearly I don't understand how public advocacy works, because frankly the Russian Nesting Dolls aspect of all of this seems a bit ridiculous to me. But in any case, I have been contemplating the act of city cycling a bit more than usual just lately.

I think calling it "Bike to Work" is kind of lame, too, because it centers our conception of our life around the place of employment. What a drab existence that implies! There is so much movement in our daily lives beyond just going to and from our place of work. Yes, there is commuting, but also grocery getting, shopping, going to appointments, visiting friends, going out to dinner, and just cruising around town. Let's call this whole realm Practical Cycling, instead.

In the past, I've been a serious practical cyclist no matter where I lived. Even in places where people wouldn't think it easy, I did it. I did it when I lived in car-centered places like New Jersey, Silicon Valley, and Atlanta. I rode through the famously record-breaking rainy winters of 1995 and 1996 when I lived in Eugene OR. I just wore good rain gear, squinted and shivered, and then changed clothes when I got to the lab. I never had a special commuting bike either, I did it all on regular old beater bikes fitted with racks and fenders. I didn't even really think riding around in town was something worthy of discussion, much less self-congratulatory pats on the back. I just did it.

Even when I was a kid, I did it. I got towed around in one of the original Cannondale bike trailers when I was too little to go far. And as children of 6 or 8 or 10, my brother and I were pushed out the door and onto our own bikes. One of my most vivid memories of childhood is summer's daily ride down to the neighborhood pool, clad in a swimsuit and old leather Nikes, with my towel draped around my neck. We all did it, every kid I knew, everyday all summer. We locked our bikes under a giant mulberry tree, and gorged on the free berries when the pool kicked us out for the dreaded "adult swim." After all these years, I am still grateful to my parents for instilling our independence at a young age by not driving us everywhere.

The point I am trying to make is not about gasoline, or carbon footprints, or any of the self-congratulatory green-living type stuff. Ride your city for selfish reasons. Ride simply because it will make you feel good about yourself and where you live.

When I moved to Atlanta, I rode a seven-mile commute up and down Peachtree Street from Midtown to Five Points every day. Peachtree is a busy road, but not nearly as dangerous as you would think since it was usually totally gridlocked. Riding around town was fast, far faster than MARTA, and immeasurably easier than driving. I rode all over in-town, and quickly fell in love with the city itself. It was fun, and interesting, and there was always something crazy happening. When people tell me they hate Atlanta, it is always clear to me that what they really mean is that they hated driving in Atlanta. I still think it is one of the greatest cities in the nation, once you get out of your car.

While I was living in Atlanta, I suffered a significant injury to my back and could not ride for 6 months. I could barely even walk, the pain was so bad. I was forced into my car, which nearly broke my heart. I still remember sitting in my car at a stoplight near the High Museum on a beautiful spring day, watching someone ride past, and just bursting into tears of jealousy and frustration. I could not fathom why everyone in the cars around me voluntarily trapped themselves in their vehicles when they could be riding freely through the warm air and the glorious Midtown architecture.

When I finally had spinal surgery and was able to ride again, I knew I would never take it for granted. Getting back on my bike was a victory. My first in-town ride after surgery, from my apartment in Midtown out to Sopo Bikes in East Atlanta Village, where I volunteered every week, was one of the best bike rides I have ever had in my life. EVER.

Today my work life requires driving about four hours on three or fewer days of the week, and working at home the rest of the time. It is true, I have not organized my life to allow for consistent bike commuting, but the trade-off is that I get to live in Asheville, one of the best places I have ever called home. For me, this arrangement allows me to hew the life I want out of the opportunities I have, and I accept the driving as part of the deal. I am still a strong believer in Practical Cycling, in all its forms, and rarely drive my car when I don't have to do so.

Today I rode out into my city. I rode to Lowe's (there is no bike rack at Lowe's), to the eye doctor, out to dinner, and to the grocery store. It was a glorious day to be on a bike, and once again I could not help but wonder why everyone was voluntarily trapping themselves in their cars. Sure, some people have no choice: they need to carry items too heavy or large to safely put on their bikes, or they are not mobile or fit enough due to illness or injury. As I cruised past all those people circling for parking spaces downtown, and locked up my bike right in front of my destination, I wondered whether they were as jealous of me as I had once been of that cyclist near the High.

My current Practical Cycling bike is named Spiderpig. It is a 1988 Trek 1000, and I love it at least as much as any of the fancy racey bikes I own. I bought it used in 1993, my first real grown-up road bike, and for years it served that purpose well. When my previous town bike was stolen during my move to Atlanta, I slapped some old steel flat bars and a rack on the Trek and a town bike was born. You don't need anything special to ride around in the city, you certainly don't need a brand-new city bike, just a good attitude.

The more you ride around in your city, the more you come to know and love that city. The membrane between yourself and the world is so much thinner on a bike than in a car. Open yourself up to that feeling.

PMBAR 2011

2011-05-14T22:45:00.022-04:00

If this race had been kindergarten, this would be the kindergarten report card for our team:

Plays Well With Others
Difficulty Following Rules
Poor Reading Comprehension
Understands and Uses Maps Well
Excellent Attitude
Excellent Attention Span and Patience
Problems Following Through At Snack Time

I don't know why, but I am kind of proud of this report card. I swear, we tried to do better, we really did. Read on for the full story, the long, complicated full story...

Once upon a time, long long ago (like this past winter) in a dreadful gray city called Charlotte, there lived a Dicky. This Dicky spent his days riding around on the flat ground of Charlotte, occasionally finding logs to ride over or fall off of. While he rode around on the dreary pavement, he dreamed of a land called Pisgah where the ground was all slanty and covered with rocks and tall trees.

Dicky began to have the close-to-impossible dream of winning the Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure Race. How could he make this dream come true, when all winter the weather in the gray city had been so sucky, and he had spent almost no time in the mountains, and he had a track record of getting lost in Pisgah? The mountain folk even came down to beat him on his own trails. He despaired. He obsessed. He despaired again. His dream seemed as out of reach as his new frame. But Dicky would stop at nothing, nothing, in this quixotic pursuit. His boldest move of all was to cast aside his loyal two-time PMBAR partner Thad in favor of a so-called "faster" partner.

While Dicky then auditioned Replacement Thads, Original Thad and I decided to be PMBAR partners. Our goals were for Thad to avoid all the catastrophes he had the last two times he did PMBAR, for us to have fun times all day, not kill ourselves, ride some great trails, avoid some crappy trails, hopefully finish, and secretly hopefully beat Dicky.

Over the course of the race we DQ'd ourselves twice over (once knowingly and once unknowingly), got a two-hour time penalty, got many free ProBars, and never crossed water deeper than shin deep. We did not finish. And we did not beat Dicky, although we did confuse him. We did, however, have a great day in the woods.

Here's how the race went down.

At the start, we did not read all the instructions. Even though Eric told us to read the instructions, and Dave at ProBikes had told me very emphatically that I should read the instructions, and the instructions themselves said right on the top that we should read them, we did not read the instructions. We did glance at them long enough to note that there were five total checkpoints, three were mandatory, and we had to get at least four of the five to finish. Then we pored over the map very closely, plotting a route to the checkpoints, noticing which trails and gravel roads were legal or not-legal this year. All the while neglecting to pay any more attention whatsoever to the instructions. In retrospect, I like to think this is because Thad and I have creative, iconoclastic minds unfettered by nit-picky rules. We are idea people. Big-picture types. Yeah.

At the start. Definitely looking at the map. Not really looking at the instructions. Photo by Eric.

We planned out a pretty fun-looking route that would let us hit four checkpoints and go on some nice trails in a somewhat decreasingly-difficult sequence. No deep river crossings whatsoever, and some really fun trails. We rolled out about mid-pack on the mandatory start-route of Black Mountain to Thrift Cove and back onto Black. We saw two teams who were apparently having some race-rules confusion on Black, but somehow it still didn't occur to us to check the rules any more carefully than we had. Anyway, we headed on to Turkeypen, which was in fine shape. Somehow it seemed like the climbs have gotten shorter and the descents have gotten buffer, because neither the ups nor the downs on that trail seemed like much of a big deal this time. Thad was killing it, off the front, and I was wondering if he was going to be waiting for me all day.

At the end of Turkeypen we rolled easy down to the first checkpoint, South Mills and Bradley, where we were greeted with the smell of freshly frying bacon. The checkpoint volunteers had hauled some boxs of donuts, a little grill, and a mess of bacon down to their location and were handing it out. Bacon seemed a little much for me right then but I happily wolfed down a donut. Thank you volunteers! We headed up South Mills, encountering several of the fast-guy teams coming the other direction on some fast-guy route. No Dicky to be seen, though, hmmmm....

The first part of South Mills is like a highway with nice wooden bridges. The last part of South Mills is a lovely old decayed logging road. The middle part of South Mills is straight from hell. It goes right down the river, without any bridges, and includes at least seven or eight really treacherous waist-deep-or-deeper river crossings. I rode/swam that section during P36AR, and knew I would never go back voluntarily. We turned onto Cantrell just after the last of the South Mills bridges. We headed up Cantrell to Horse Cove, which after a bit of an uphill grunt leads onto Squirrel Gap.

Up Cantrell. The new Moots kits are not quite as neon blue as the last year's kits, which meant Thad can hide better.

Right then, my buddy Mark and his partner rolled up. We chatted for a second and he told us about this wooden nickel coin taped to the last page of the instructions, which we were supposed to have given Eric before we left as a test of how well we read our instructions. Uh, yeah, we didn't do that. Mark said it was just a two hour time penalty, so we decided it didn't really bother us that much. As long as we didn't have any mishaps, we could get back before 8 with no problem, which would mean even with 2 hour penalty we would still be official finishers. Interestingly, Thad and I still didn't think of this encounter as a good reason to open up the instructions and read through them thoroughly just to make sure we hadn't missed anything else.

We rode down to the end of Squirrel Gap for our second checkpoint. No bacon here but I got a couple free ProBars, which was good. I had realized that all the food I had brought on the bike was caffeinated, and was a little afraid of what might happen if I ate that much caffeine in a day. Maybe a heart attack or some hallucinations? Thankfully ProBar Fruition bars are pretty damn tasty, so I didn't have to find out. Across the bridge, and onto the high-and-dry last section of South Mills, having skipped every one of the nasty river crossings.

After South Mills we rode Gauging Station and 1206 over to the bottom of Pilot Rock. It was funny how little either one of us really cared about the wooden nickel business. It is not that we didn't want to play by the rules, or that we didn't care about finishing well. But neither of us was too upset about having made that mistake. To me it seemed like we were there to ride bikes well and to plot great routes through the woods, and we would still be doing that no matter what.

We headed up Pilot to the third checkpoint at the Laurel-Pilot Connector. I was a little worried because at PMBAR last year pushing bikes up Pilot was where my partner shifted from riding slowly and seeming quietly disgruntled, to declaring she was going to quit the race right there and then. Anyway Thad had done the push up Pilot before and knew exactly what it entailed, unpleasant and steeply rocky pushing for about an hour or so.

Thad pushing up Pilot. Photo by me.

Me pushing up Pilot. Much better photo, not taken with a rinkydink battered point-and-shoot. By BradO.

Pushing up Pilot is not really suffering anyhow. The flowering trees make you feel like you are in a garden, and there are several nice vistas of the various mountains. Most people feel happier and less complainy when looking at a good view or a flower tree, even if they are exerting themselves at the time. I really am that person who, halfway up Pilot, exclaims with joy over how great everything is. Vista!

We got to the top of Pilot and turned onto the connector, where we ran into Dicky and Zac, aka Replacement Thad. We did a really good job of fooling Dicky into thinking we had turned in our wooden nickel (which he hadn't) and a mediocre job at fooling him into thinking we were on some amazing five-checkpoint loop that would beat him.

We rode off the connector and up to the checkpoint guy. We got marked off. He asked us where we were going, we said right back where we came from, down Pilot. Apparently, he was supposed to be telling people that it was a DQ if they go back the way they came on this trail. That you either had to do Laurel-Pilot or Pilot-Laurel, and you couldn't go up-and-back on either one. He didn't tell us, and as you know we didn't read the instructions, and so we didn't even know we had DQ'd ourselves till it happened to come up in a random conversation around the keg hours after the race was over.

Anyway, yeah. We went back down Pilot, and it was AWESOME.

Just after the end of Pilot.

We rode out 1206 to 276 to 475B to 225. Thad was looking a little under the weather but said maybe he would rally over the course of the long mellow gravel grind we had ahead of us. Unfortunately his stomach issues meant he could not keep food or drink down. When we started to climb up to the Daniel Ridge connector it was clear he was running out of gas. We cut down onto Daniel Ridge for checkpoint four, and then on the awesome rocky section of Daniel Ridge I found myself way in front and was pretty worried. The whole first part of the ride Thad had been killing it in the technical sections, so I knew he was really not okay if he was holding back.

On Daniel Ridge. What a fun trail.

We got onto the pavement and even though Thad said he definitely wanted to keep racing, I started thinking we should probably drop out. It was just around 5 pm so we had plenty of time still to finish. But I wasn't sure if it would be all that smart to let a guy who was bonking out so hard that he couldn't even ride straight on pavement, try to ride down Black Mountain. We hung out for a couple minutes and Thad said maybe he wanted to try out his emergency blanket by laying down on the side of the highway for a little while. I was pretty sure that would cause gawking and/or alarm from the cars. Okay, time to stop racing. I had to convince him that it was time to quit, he really didn't want to but I was pretty sure he would have been headed to the hospital if he had kept going. When we did quit, it was a mutual decision, because it was very clear that there was no way we could finish safely.

We rode down the off-limits section of 276 for our second DQ of the day, but this one was intentional. We got back at 6pm exactly, with four checkpoints.

Finish line! No one is lying under their emergency blanket! Photo by Eric.

This race shows people who they really are. The mental and physical challenge of the race is pretty significant, and it forces us to dig a little deeper into our personalities than most races do. To enjoy this race you might need to be as humble as you are strong, because pretensions and bravado won't get you too far. We saw some crushed souls out there for sure, or at least some crushed egos.

I think there should be a PMBAR podium for the people who really showed how to persevere in the face of frustrations. Third place: Katie (my 2010 Double Dare partner) and Chris, who thought they were totally disqualified because of the wooden nickel but kept on going all day anyway. Second place: Shanna and Laura, who ended up doing the 8 river crossings on South Mills in the dark and finished right before the time cutoff with big smiles. And first place: Pisgah heavy-hitters Yuri and David, who looked so rough when we saw them at noon that I thought they were gonna drop out. Somehow they pushed through to finish all five checkpoints even though it meant they got back well after the official cut-off time. That is real endurance, real Pisgah riding, real bike love. Good job everyone!

I am really, really happy with the race, even though we didn't finish. Thad was a great partner all day, he had an awesome attitude and was a great rider. Even when he was on the verge of keeling over, he did not complain or want to quit. It was great to be out there with someone who was on the same wavelength and who was just passionate about riding bikes all through the forest, even after it stopped being easy. Thanks to Eric and Erinna for making the race, thanks to every volunteer who was out there for creating such friendly checkpoint stops, and thanks to every single rider for making the race what it is! PMBAR is like Christmas for Pisgah riders, it really is. The greatest day on a bike all year.

Some Other Things Happened

2011-05-08T22:59:00.015-04:00

I am delaying writing up a race report on PMBAR until I can be sure that my race partner has made it home safely. Since one of the stated goals for this year was for bad-luck-magnet Thad to make it through the entire race weekend without losing any pets or cars, without getting hospital-level sick, without his home flooding, and without anything else too horrible happening, I figure I better hold off on my "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner until I am sure Thad and Hilary get home without their car floating down any rivers. I can promise, however, that the PMBAR report will be long, and complicated, and will include several life lessons.

Anyway, over the last couple weeks I've had a few conversations with people where I was like, oh didn't you know I...? Only to realize that in the foggy stress of the past couple months I managed to never write up a number of things I kind of intended to put here.

Call it the Omnibus of Spring. Let's do this.

First: The rebirth of Songline, my Niner SIR9. During the Colorado Trail Race, as I was flooding my lungs with pulmonary edema, I was also scraping about two thirds of the paint off of my SIR9. The hideously rainy conditions meant there was almost a constant spray of mud, which then got caught between the frame and frame bag. When I finally took the frame bag off, there were acres of raw steel exposed, some already rusting. There's only so much that touch-up paint can do, and so I decided to get a professional sandblast and repaint. And I decided to further get S&S couplers installed in the frame while it was out of commission. The Niner is a dedicated singlespeed these days, and the lack of shifter cabling makes decoupling and recoupling the bike easy. Now I have an easy-to-travel bike that fits in an airline-legal sized bag. And it still rides like it always did. Yay!

Bilenky did the work. They have a really pro paint shop and also have tons of experience retrofitting couplers into steel frames. I love how the turquoise and sparkle-black paint scheme turned out, and how it sets off the steel couplers. I adore the little star on the I, and the blocky oversized letters outlined in silver. I have a long fascination with intermodal shipping containers and their stark, oversized, translingually legible logos and insignia. This seems reminiscent of some of the best of those. Especially Maersk Sealand and its seven-pointed star, but also the Taiwanese company Evergreen, or even the celebrated MOL logo-- although no alligator, sadly. And yes, the last three sentences come dangerously close to crazy trainspotting-type geekery, but may fall more on the side of trendy font-design snobbery instead. I think? Anyway, I'd rather be a geek than a snob.

Second: on the ride when I took those photos, I also endoed on a steep section of the Black Mountain trail where a rock had rolled into the middle of a gully. I landed on my face, AGAIN, because apparently I never put my hands out when I fall. This time I managed to end up with a bunch of gravel and dirt inside my mouth, and also to have microscopically chipped the underside of two teeth and made all my front teeth hurt. It appears I do not stop smiling even as I hit the deck. Yay? The dentist bombarded my head with x-rays and poked around before telling me the teeth were not dying or cracked or heavily damaged, my bite hadn't changed, and the chips didn't even merit smoothing out, so to stop being alarmist. Then she handed me a nice-sized bill.

Third: I did one of those giant road group ride thingies. I have never done one of those before, so I figured why not see what it was like. It was a pretty good one, like 60 something miles with a fair bit of climbing including Caesar's Head. If you've always wondered what kind of person shells out for a extra-elaborate technicolor custom paint job on their high-end bike, it is the kind of person who is sitting mid-pack at the Assault on the Carolinas. I have never seen so many exotic and expensive road bikes in one place ever before. At one point I realized I was in a paceline with about ten people who were all on titanium bikes of one variety or another except for one guy on a lugged carbon Calfee and one guy on a super nice vintage steel Bianchi.

What did I think of the event? Brevard is a great little town and it was very cool to see so many visitors there all at once. I only decided to go do it at about midnight the night before, so wasn't exactly prepped for it very well at all and actually didn't know much about it before it started. I had a long road ride on my training schedule and was getting really sick of riding alone. I was supposed to stay in zone this-or-that, but I was pretty burned out on the whole idea and wanted to just go ride with other people. I didn't realize anyone would ride it so seriously, or that it would be soooo many people. I expected it to have more of a "5k fun run" feel to it, but lots of people seemed to be there with their game faces on. Anyway. It was fun to crank up Caesar's Head with an endless line of carrots in front and an endless line of chasers behind. That's a damn fun climb, it really is.

What else happened in my bicycling life? Ah yes, Fourth: I got informed via a fairly mean group email chain that I had been kicked off my cyclocross team. I had been planning to leave it before the 2011 cross season anyway, because I found the people running the team very unpleasant. In fact, I'd grown so disappointed with the way they ran the team that I had not worn the kit at least a month. Originally I'd also raced mountain bikes for them, but for the past year only cyclocross because I'd become tired of being associated with them for my mountain biking. As the team leaders were kicking me off they told me they had actually secretly kicked me off in December, but had not informed me at the time. Which seemed very strange and childish, but also made it clear that my only mistake had been delaying so long in leaving the team.

I don't really know why they decided to recruit me to be the sole woman on the team, only to immediately become the subject of pretty intense and prolonged nastiness from a couple of the guys. I am sad that many racing photos from recent years show me representing a team which never respected or valued me as a person. What really frustrates me, though, is the fact that I chose to stay affiliated in one way or another from fall 2008 through early spring 2011 despite all this. Why didn't I leave sooner? At this point in my life, I should know better than to let people treat me that way! Anyway, I wish the team itself well, and still have a couple good friends affiliated with it.

I am happy to have some great sponsors now [listed over there to the right] who are all awesome. Thanks to each of them for helping me get where I want to go. And none of them are mean!

Fifth: That fourth one and this one are not all that great, but this is a chronicle of my cycling and these are things that have to do with my cycling. So, here goes. I spent the time after Trans-Iowa really wondering what was wrong with my fitness and my physiology. I just felt awful on and off the bike, to the point that I was wondering what I could really expect from a racing season. I felt burnt out. Was this still left over from the lingering pneumonia that plagued Fall 2010? I asked for some advice, and was told I needed to cancel out on PMBAR, the funnest race of the year, in order to do three or four weeks of structured workouts full of lonely interval sessions. I said no thanks. I guess the coach and I have an insurmountable difference of opinion, and since this is my fun hobby and not my job I decided I didn't need his services anymore. I will find some other training modality that doesn't seem to depend entirely on depriving me of technical singletrack, group road rides, singlespeeding, Bent Creek night rides, and everything else that is fun. I have a powertap, a stack of books, and WKO+. Maybe I can figure out some decent training plans that let me create structure and also keep the fun. Maybe the trick is just to focus on the fun, find the passion again, and remember that it's just riding bikes. I guess I'll see what happens.

Anyway. A few days passed. I still felt kind of bad. By the day before PMBAR, I was very ambivalent about the whole idea of racing. My legs still felt pretty crappy and generally not as race-ready as I would have liked. If it wasn't for the fact that Thad was going to be counting on me to be a racing partner, I might well have considered bailing entirely. Luckily, I started the race, and by about two hours into it I was feeling really great. By the end of it, I was starting to wonder if maybe I should go to 12 Hours of Tsali next weekend. What changed? I don't know. Healing power of Pisgah, I think. Anyway, tune in again soon for the actual race report... it will be a pretty good one.

Sixth: Let's end the Omnibus on a high note. Also on that same ride where I chipped my teeth, while we were pushing up to the high point of Black Mountain we saw people riding unicycles down an extremely technical section of the trail. They were insane, it looked like they were bouncing wheel-shaped pogo sticks down the trail. Each of them fell at least once, but then, they are on unicycles, so give them a break. They also stopped for a moment to suggest we might like to try unicycles. Um... no. Bask in the crazy:

There was also a dog and one dude on a bike in this crazy entourage. I didn't take photos of them but you can see them both behind the guy in the yellow.

Trans Iowa Race Report

2011-04-28T14:37:00.109-04:00

When the date for Trans Iowa was announced, I had known this would be a tough one for me to pull off. But that didn't mean I wasn't going to try. In the end, it turned out to be even more so than I had expected, but it was still a good trip with some nice riding.

Dammit, Illinois, stop trying to tell me what to do

Leading up to Trans Iowa, I told myself I shouldn't be taking it too seriously. Late April is always a busy time at work. And for a few weeks before it, things had been extra chaotic both at work and in life. I knew if I was going to feel good at the race I needed to do arrive fully rested and ready to go, but that did not look like it would happen. The week of Trans Iowa I had some really long hours at work, with Monday and Wednesday both being days when I left at 5am and came home wondering if I would be eating dinner before 11 pm. Factoring in the difficulty of getting to the race start before the close of registration, a little insomnia, some last minute work on Friday evening, and the 4am Saturday start time, this would mean that over the seven nights before the start of the race I had slept about 33 hours instead of the 56 I should have.

On top of this standard chaos, a heartbreaking loss of a good friend had pulled my focus. Jim had been a catalyst for change when I was just figuring out how to be a grown-up. He drowned in the Mississippi under confusing circumstances, and it took days and weeks for his friends to piece together the story. His body was lost in the swift currents and underwater hazards of New Orleans' decrepit waterfront. This has been difficult for everyone who knew him.

As we go through life, we are constantly confronted with the choice between safety and adventure. Jim chose adventure over and over, crafting one of the most interesting and storied lives of anyone I've ever known. He never stopped being curious, never stopped being enthusiastic, and never stopped being bold. He was an example of just how exciting life can be if we take some risks.

His memorial service was at Coney Island in New York on the Saturday of Trans Iowa weekend. I decided I couldn't cancel out of the race, and he wouldn't have wanted me to anyway. So here I was, driving westward towards adventure through a pouring rain.

The river that killed my friend, fuck you Mississippi, running gray and fast and drowning its banks with all the rains

I had expected to have a driving companion for the race, but he had suddenly canceled out on me the day before. I was kind of bummed and a little stressed out by the last minute change, but nothing to be done. It would be nice to have some support at a race like this, but since I was already committed to going, I would figure out the rest as I went along.

Somehow, the night before the race I still had about six last minute pre-race tasks I had been too busy to do all week. At 11pm I had just un-bolted and re-installed my saddle, measuring tape and carpenter's level in hand. I still hadn't tried on the brand-new 2011 Team Bike29.com kit I was planning on wearing the next day. And I admitted to myself that there was almost no chance I was going to do well at this thing.

These are not intended to be excuses, even if it might sound like they are. Life is all about trade-offs. My challenging day job is also really interesting and fulfilling. I wouldn't change it. I like living a complicated, passionate, multifaceted, hyperactive life, even if sometimes all that beautiful complexity erodes down into a lonely, greasy-fingered sleep-deprived freakout in an Iowa Super 8.

So I rolled up to the back of the start line pretty casually, but still packed for the long haul. I thought there was a chance I would suddenly feel better and be able to ride through to the end, if every single thing happened right for me all day. But I also knew there was a pretty good chance I would be dropping out at the second checkpoint, at 170 miles into the race. Within the first hour of the race, I knew I wasn't going to finish. If it had been a 100 mile race, even a 200 mile race, I would have been fine. But I know my body well enough to know I would not be okay for 300-something miles.

While it was still pitch dark, the racers turned off the decent-if-wet gravel and onto an unmaintained road that was thick mud. The mud stuck to the wheels and quickly packed into the fork and rear triangle. It was not as bad as the mud at Dirt Sweat and Gears 2009, but it was still bad enough to necessitate moving to the ditch to the side of the road. If it had been light, it might have been possible to ride in the ditch, but as it was still pitch black night, it was too dangerous to navigate the bumps and holes. It was almost too difficult on foot. Looking ahead, I could see the line of red blinky lights staggering up and down the steep little hills as people made their way.

After less than a mile, our muddy B-Road route crossed a paved road before continuing into the darkness. A dude with a video camera and an SUV was there, catching riders as they regrouped. I think he was trying to bait people into giving him good soundbites, wanting us to freak out on how hard it was. He filmed me digging mud out of my brakes, while asking me if I have ever seeeeeeeen anything like this? I am positive I will not be in his video as my comments were pretty much, yeah, I have, actually. I've raced in worse mud for much longer at DSG09, I've raced with much less course info and far worse weather, and I did a Pisgah Productions race that ran 36 hours and started at midnight. So far today, I'm not lost, it's well above freezing, the sun's coming up in half an hour, and nothing's broken on my body or bike, so actually, this is going pretty well for me and no big deal! Yay! I was definitely not stressed out enough to make good "epic shit" video. Sorry video dude. I started back onto the next part of muddy B-Road.

Then a mess of white headlights appeared over the next rise of the road, encountering the advancing red blinkies with some shouting. It was everyone. I watched the red blinkies turn into white headlights as the people in front of me turned around. The leaders had apparently made a wrong decision and the muddy B-Road we were on was wrong. Almost the entire field was back together, as the race leaders made a decision to turn onto the pavement and detour to rejoin the route.

Eventually the sun came out. It was clear that we had lost some time to the B-Road, who knows how much, and that getting to the first checkpoint before the time cutoff might be a bit of a challenge depending on how much time these bonus miles took. The question was whether to hammer hammer to get to the first checkpoint, or to just chill out and enjoy the ride. I already knew I wasn't going to finish the entire race but still kind of wanted to get to the second checkpoint at 170 miles. I was torn. Since I didn't have a support person to pick me up when I dropped out, I would have to ride back from wherever on the course I dropped out.

What you can't tell from this photo is that there was an insane headwind/crosswind as soon as the sun came up. It was so windy I could barely take a hand off the bar to get something to eat or drink. It was so windy I could barely think.

Suddenly it occurred to me that if I dropped out at the first checkpoint, I could be sitting at my parents' kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal before the sun went down. I could drop out, get back to my car, pack up, drive to Madison, get in some good riding tomorrow in the Wisconsin countryside, and hang out for a day before I had to be back to work. On this realization, my pace slowed. I decided I would make the rest of the ride as fun as possible and then drop at the first checkpoint.

And I did make it fun. I broke out the delicious special treat food I had been saving for the nighttime, and snarfed it right down. I chatted with people when the wind wasn't too strong for us to talk. I sang when I ended up riding alone. I took a couple photos.

The gravel in Iowa is so well-maintained. There are no big rocks or exposed bedrock or surprise ruts or giant holes or anything- none of the stuff we are so used to on gravel roads in the mountains. Plus the hills are so small in Iowa that there are no moments when you are behind the saddle, in the drops, death-gripping the brake levers, wondering why the hell you are on a cyclocross bike instead of a nice mountain bike with hydraulic brakes and front suspension. Hands off the brakes and just let it go here, carry the momentum halfway up the next little hill.

Also, Iowa's loose dogs sat politely on the porches and watched us ride by, instead of running after us with teeth flashing. I love the Midwest.

As I rolled into the little town of Baxter with a couple other folks, we had just missed the time cut off. I contemplated pulling a practical joke on the volunteers, acting super pissed-off about the rule, and demanding to be allowed to continue, and getting in their face telling them I had come too far to drop out so early. But really I couldn't have kept a straight face long enough to actually fool anyone. It was sweet to know that I would be able to salvage a decent fun weekend instead of destroying myself getting to checkpoint 2 and then dropping out in the middle of the night, alone, tired, hungry, and somewhere lost in the middle of Iowa.

There was a fairly good crowd of people hanging out at the checkpoint who had dropped out of the race for various reasons. The sooner I got started on driving to Madison the better so I wasn't really looking forward to riding back along the highway, even though I had no reason not to go back by my own power. Anyway, I was super lucky to get to hitch a ride back with some Minnesotans while my bike got to hitch a ride back with the Lincoln Nebraska crew.

I got back and retrieved my bike. I had cleared the mud from it a few times but only enough to keep it rolling and to remove some of the largest chunks because they were extra weight. The rest of the mud was still intact, and the wind and sun had dried it into cement. It took 20 minutes of chipping mud away with a stick, then using the landscapers' hose at the Country Inn, then more chipping, then more hosing, before I could get the front canti to release enough to get the front wheel off.

During the cleaning. I found a dead worm and a couple rather large rocks embedded in the mud around the fork.

The fancy logo looks best when almost indiscernable under a layer of mud.

Planet Bike Superflash and Team Twin Six patch on the back of the seat bag. I had to spend a couple minutes scraping the mud off the on-off button on the light before I could get it to shut off.

Cobra Verde. This is the final setup I went with: water in a partial frame bag, food in Mountain Feedbags, repair and other gear in the CDW seatbag.

The bike was fantastic. The Cielo Cross is built with a great old-school-road-geometry style that is perfect for an event like this. I was super happy to have road tubeless wheels too, Stan's NoTubes Alpha Road rim laced to Chris King Classic Cross hubs. Because this let me set up tubeless, I could use faster rolling narrower tires (34 mm Small Block 8s), but be able to run a lower tire pressure for better traction and vibration damping without worrying about flatting. I brought tubes and air, of course, but it was cool to start the race thinking I had a good chance of not having to stop for a flat before the end. Thanks to Bike29 for building these wheels.

I packed up my stuff and drove out of Grinnell, calling my parents on the way. As my dad is going in for major surgery next week I was pretty happy to have a chance to visit them right now anyway, even if it was totally unplanned. The next morning I got up and headed out for a nice 60-mile pavement-and-gravel loop. I realized that people were still racing in Trans Iowa while I had left the race, driven to another state, cleaned my bike twice, showered, ate a big dinner, watched a fairly long movie with my parents, slept decently, woken up, drank a pot of coffee, and gone out on another ride.

Up on the secret hillside gravel. My family used to own this land, which is now a State Natural Area, but I've been riding up here since before the no-bikes rule so I decide to ignore it. I covered over the fancy logo paint so the frame bag wouldn't scratch it up during the race. I still hadn't removed the electrical tape the next day. Note also the creative double Awesome Strap deployment on the seatpost.

Somewhere out there in Southern Wisconsin. I actually got lost out here, despite the fact that I have ridden most of this part of the county. I'd finally gotten a night of sleep but I was still deep in sleep deficit, with no map and no cellphone. Eventually I found my way home, before it even got dark or started raining.

Note: somehow blogspot ate the last paragraphs of this post while I tried to publish. I will either add them in here tomorrow as an edit, or write more tomorrow for a Team Dicky-style miniseries.

I Am The Bandit Cobra Verde

2011-04-15T00:41:00.017-04:00

The little stories people concoct for themselves, the stories that are supposed to explain why they're failing--- those stories are boring. Muttered excuses, told more for themselves than for the listener, imply that it's not their fault. Although I might catch myself thinking those stories, I'm not telling them to you.

I've been rolling with some pretty strange punches that have been thrown my way. I've been making good on some long-neglected promises. I've been cutting out the negative. And I just edited the phrase "trying to" out of each of the last three sentences. Fuck equivocation. I am not just trying, I am doing.

I have gained some perspective in the past few weeks. I have stories, not excuses.

Shall I catch you up on what you've missed? This will take several posts. Part one, Cobra Verde, the gravel bike. The Cielo earned a name after a few good rides these past weeks. It is named after the bandit slavetrader Klaus Kinski plays in the Herzog film of the same name. Cobra Verde is strange, tough, intelligent, and brutal. Incognito, and confronted with evidence of his own treachery, he reveals himself calmly: I am the bandit Cobra Verde.

So it seems Bruce Chatwin's influenced my naming for another bike. Songline was intentional, but this time I completely forgot that Chatwin was the author of the book this film was based on til afterward.

Here comes Trans Iowa. Cobra Verde has some new features for this race and beyond.

New custom wheels from Bike29 mean I can finally stop swapping my road wheels back and forth between bikes. These are my idea of the ultimate endurance gravel/dirt cyclocross wheel: Gold Chris King Classic Cross hubs and Stans NoTubes Alpha road rim, with triple butted spokes and gold spoke nipples. Road tubeless keeps it light and means I can maybe not worry as much about getting lots of flats. I've been riding them around enough already to know they are really exactly what I am looking for. Thanks to George for making my weirdo perfect wheels. He pretends he only wants to build 29er mtb wheels, but look at these.

I don't have much attention span to devote to tires. Some people, however, do. Specifically, El Diablo Wisell, who seems to have memorized 75 different tread patterns, matches tire to trail like he's matching food to wine, and can rattle off the actual (not claimed) weight of a freakishly wide variety of tires. He got me some of the cyclocross Small Block Eights, which I've been riding around and like pretty well for a gravel tire. They are maybe on the skinny side at 35mm, although on these rims they seem to have a pretty wide profile. Also, without tubes I run them a bit lower pressure, which seems to balance out ride quality. I know the Small Block Eights have been on the market for like seventy years and thus are a boring and predictable choice, but I really do like them.

I put on this ENVE carbon fork too, which is fantastic and light. This fork works great at soaking up road vibrations and at being stiff handling the bike through corners. Also, it works great at looking cool as hell, like the sharp front carbon fiber teeth of Cobra Verde.

I am still messing around with the setup for the race. I want to minimize the weight on my back, over that many miles it could be a real killer to have a heavy pack. The mtn feedbags are nice, but really take up a lot of room on a road handlebar. Still testing and tweaking the arrangements of frame packs, back packs, Awesome Straps, and other elements. This is just one of the many different aspects of this race's logistics, and every day it gets nearer and I get more focused on the task ahead.

You Shoulda Been There

2011-03-22T00:13:00.004-04:00

This

and this

It's spring for real. Thanks for the good times all weekend, everyone.

Ice and Gravel

2011-03-16T22:49:00.008-04:00

Weekend rides, a couple days late.

Saturday: seventy degrees in town but still some snow up high. Riding from town up to the Mt Mitchell turnoff is a steady accumulation of 4000 feet of elevation, most of the miles on newly resurfaced BRP. Still closed to cars. For these shining hours before the inevitable onslaught of tourists, it's the world's most perfect bike path.

Ice melting furiously.

Mountains and mountains and mountains.

A tunnel only really bothers me if I can't see the other end while I'm going through it.

Beautiful, even.

We still ended up freezing cold and riding in snow, even while it was 70 degrees down in Asheville proper.

March is what you make of it.

Sunday: a gravel transect of Pisgah. One of my favorite rides, although I doubt many would see its beauty. Given the not-insignificant ride the day before, I took it easy this time, North Mills River to Gloucester Gap instead of all the way up to the top of Pilot Mountain Road.

The big switchback on Yellow Gap. This climb never gets old.

The gate on 475B was closed. At the top of the first climb, some large scale logging equipment. If you feel like snooping around some giant machinery, late afternoon on a Sunday is a good time to pick.

Views of logging equipment were soon replaced by views of logging activity. This is selective logging of second growth forest and is being done using mostly extant (if decades-old) logging roads. However, this area is close to hiking trails, rock climbing access, and established campsites, as well as mountain bike trails. By gating 475B (not to mention 225, which branches off 475B and then dead-ends) the USFS has hindered the recreational use of this whole section of the forest for most users, who rely on cars to get themselves to trailheads.

From what I understand, the Pisgah Ranger District sees some of the highest levels of recreational use of any non-Wilderness district in the entire National Forest system. I do realize that the USFS has many masters and many competing pressures, and that logging is currently a large part of their overall management approach. That said, it would be lovely if logging plans could not just try to accommodate recreation, but actually be forced to work around the needs of recreation.

Anyway. North Mills River campground to Gloucester Gap and back. 50 solid miles of gravel, 5700 feet of climbing. It was a nice solo Sunday ride with lots of time to mull things over.

The Drama

2011-03-13T05:54:00.008-04:00

A lot of the time-- most of the time-- we don't get to choose the crises that come our way. But we do get to choose how we respond to them. Make smart decisions, think creatively, be calm, stay true to yourself. Have style even when the shit is hitting the fan. Especially when the shit is hitting the fan.

Testing our wits when there's nothing really all that serious going on may not be the worst idea. That's what I tell myself, anyway. Push the edge farther away, test the boundaries of a bad idea, and come back home safe with lessons learned. Then wake up the next morning feeling braver. Experience tempers me, like heat tempers steel.

Because sooner or later, it's the real deal: your house is actually falling down.

I had been deep in thought on my road bike, getting out the day's frustrations on a nice long climb. I'd not checked the clock when I left. By the time I noticed the sun was low, I was 17 miles from home in either direction. And 2400 feet higher in elevation than my home. And it was 7 pm. The sweat from the climb evaporated, chilling me.

Dark clouds were pushed across the sky by a strong wind. The temperature had dropped sharply when I'd reached the end of the Mt. Pisgah Highway and turned onto the Blue Ridge Parkway. This section was still closed to vehicles, and littered with blowing leaves, sticks, and patches of ice. I uploaded a couple cellphone photos to Facebook. After I crashed and, lying in the dark forest, succumbed to hypothermia, they'd piece together my foolishness by the time stamps on the photos.

This section of the Parkway is twelve miles of a steady six percent grade, following the windy spine of the range. In the longest tunnels, pitch dark, I unclipped my red taillight from my seatpost, switched it from blinky to steady, and held it in my teeth to guide my way. Halfway down, the dark clouds started making good on their promise of rain. My numb hands kept losing the brake levers. And the descent was interminable. I admit: I wept. As the rain hit me in the face I sobbed at my own self-inflicted misery.

Two hours later, I was warm and dry. I push myself out onto these stupid ledges almost subconsciously. When I left at four thirty, had I thought the ride might end this way? No. I do tend to stumble into the dramatic when there's no one to offer wiser counsel. But the drama makes us stronger and smarter and braver. No one ever got braver sitting on a couch, or doing intervals on the trainer. No one ever got braver without first getting scared.

Just After

2011-03-02T11:56:00.016-05:00

Riding to sunset doesn't feel like sacrifice. The half hour just after sunset, though, is a different story.

I climb diagonally up the side of a valley. The sun goes long through the clouds, gold bathes the trees, birds fly back to their roosts, and the world is at its most beautiful. The road shines, and my pale eyes are not made for this abundance of light. The wide volume of air filling up the spaces between the mountains is afire, energized, palpable. In those conditions, there is an inherent glory in being on a bike at all.

Half an hour later, all that has turned to gray. It's not dark enough to merit lights, but not light enough to be beautiful. Feeling alone. A sense of urgency, far from done with the ride: no time to stop, but no desire to stop either. I can ride fast enough to finish before I really need that light in the bottom of my pack. I'm still on the bike because the ride is not done. This is training.

And I know: this gray and lonely moment is what I need to remember later. Not the glorious sunset, but the solitary expression of dedication in riding past it. This is where racing takes me.

And again: ten minute lactate threshold efforts on the Mellowdrome oval. Over and over I squint into the low rays of the sun, then as the track curves into shadows, work to hold my line against a wind gusting off the river. At seven minutes into the fourth interval the sun was gone below the horizon, and that familiar dingy half-light returned. Patience. Holding my pace, waiting out the discomfort of the effort as the timer ticks down. I tell myself to remember this moment, this very moment, when I was alone in the cold dusk with three minutes to go.

In midsummer, in the heat of a race, remember this gray solitude.

Cielo

2011-02-18T08:45:00.019-05:00

I just got a new/used cyclocross bike. A Chris King Cielo. I bought it off the Pedro's New England cyclocross team, so it is technically used, though just barely. I bought it for gravel racing, like Kanza and Trans-Iowa and such, and for riding all the fantastic gravel loops in the mountains around here. But it will also be pressed into service for actual cyclocross come fall.

Brass headbadge.

It arrived a day or two ago but I just got a chance to really look at it today. This bike is something special.

It is way prettier than I expected.

There is a chrome logo thingy (what would you call this? I am guessing there is a pretentious Italian word for it) on the seat cluster

Uh, it has little star and moon cut-outs on the inside of the fork. Lovely, yet kind of perplexing. I am really not used to this kind of thing.

I generally think of my bikes as tools, really high-quality tools that let me do what I want to do. I know there is an entirely different school of thought, where bicycles are art. Jewels. Even, dare I say it, status symbols. I bought this bike because I recognize it as a really high-quality tool, but now that I have it in front of me, I see that it could also be a jewel. This bike could be taken out to cx races, raced for 45 minutes, then leaned up against a table to be admired. It won't have this fate. I am planning on treating this bike like the workhorse it really is: riding it over miles and miles of deserted gravel road, hanging a frame bag on it, getting it dusty and muddy, taking it places where its luscious paint and fancy chrome will go unappreciated.

I'm planning to swap out a lot of parts on this bike. Carbon fork, black Chris King headset instead of yellow, hopefully SRAM in place of Ultegra, different bars, and new seatpost.

Also, Meghan somehow convinced me I should buy the wheelset, even though I can't really use tubulars for gravel. Admittedly, it was a good deal. Although seriously, tubulars. With carbon spokes. I acknowledge that this is indeed the way to go if you are serious about the cyclocross discipline. I just don't think my mediocre performance, lack of focus, and lousy skills in cyclocross really merit this kind of wheelset.

There is only one thing about this bike that is really objectionable. I knew when I was buying it that it would come with a racer's name on the top tube. I was ok with that. I was not, however, expecting the racer's name to be in that second-most-hated (after Comic Sans, of course) of all fonts, PAPYRUS. Under the clearcoat. And really big. Papyrus? Really? What is this, amateur hour?

Anyway, as much as I was willing to ride around admitting that I bought serious cyclocross racer Rebecca Wellons' cast-off bike, that fucking font just had to go. This is not an astrologer's business card or a vegan restaurant take-out menu. This is the top tube of a handmade steel cyclocross bike.

Plain old electrical tape has that punk rock feel. But looks suspicious, like I'm trying to hide something horrible underneath. Needs a sticker.

Misfit Psycles' Fuck the Scenery sticker seemed like a decent antidote to the scourge of Papyrus, but a little confrontational. It went back on the fridge.

Pisgah Works coordinated nicely with the bike's colorway, and has that whole "ride-local-buy-local" thing going for it, but I decided against it due to proportions.

I went with the Bike29 sticker, of course. Bike29: we are fast and good looking.

I would like to point out to any other potential sponsors that there is still room for your logo on this generous canvas of electrical tape. Make me an offer.

And yeah, I set up the workstand on the deck instead of the bike room. Why? Because it was sunny and 67 degrees, warm enough that I was out there in just a tank top, old jeans, and no shoes. It's spring. Time to start using the deck again. Yeah.

And, I mean, have you seen my deck? It's pretty damn nice. You should probably come by for a beer sometime. Bring your torque wrench, could you?

LATE EDIT: Somehow this post ended up sounding like I didn't like the bike. I really, really, really like it. I am just a bit uneasy with its fanciness. I'll get used to it. This bike is really cool and I am looking forward to putting a lot of miles on it.

Chain Buster 6 Hour Race

2011-02-15T14:26:00.013-05:00

Coming back from Arizona, I had a hard time accepting that it was not warm and sunny yet in Asheville. The snow is gone here and Pisgah trails are drying out, but feels like it's still a couple weeks before they will really start to hit their peak.

I needed to get a good long ride in, though, so I decided to head down to Georgia and do the six-hour race at the Heritage Park trails near Athens. I did this race last year and had a pretty good time, and though this year the promoter had moved it up a month on the schedule the weather still looked to be pretty nice. When my alarm went off at 5:00 am on Saturday I completely forgot why I had set it and came pretty close to just rolling over and going back to sleep. Clearly, it is too early in the year to really expect that racing mindset to kick in. But I managed to shovel myself and all my stuff into the car, and made it to the venue about thirty seconds before registration closed.

I had only just received my Kish back via FedEx ground from SSAZ the afternoon before. So I would be racing singlespeed in the women's open category against riders on gears. According to Rich there should be no pre-race discussion of gear choice, like ever, although for some reason it is okay to go on and on about your tire choice for hours. Apparently singlespeed racing is all about suffering because you are too stubborn to ask questions.

The night before I had picked up a new 20 t Endless Cog from my local cog-pusher Shanna. So I spent most of the time before the race began dealing with changing my cog. Because I am a weakling, 34x20 on a 29er is a pretty tall gear for me on the trail. Folks who'd raced there before (YES Rich, I asked) seemed to think this ratio was a good choice for that trail. But because I am, as I said, a weakling, and also not too experienced with singlespeed endurance racing, I was doubtful. It did seem right for these trails but how it would feel after a few hours was kind of an open question.

Chatting with my old FM teammate Eric at the chilly start. Photos by Mark D.

I still managed to get a fairly good start into the woods and after the traffic of the first half lap found myself riding with Norma for a while. When a stick jammed up in my front wheel I lost her and would not ever catch up to her again. Because I hadn't really paid much attention to who was racing solo or team, I wasn't positive where my place was in my category but thought I was probably sitting in second or third.

The frozen mud of the first lap turned into the not-at-all frozen mud of the second and third lap. The trail was getting shitty out there, and remembering all the derailleur problems I'd had here last year I was happy to be on a singlespeed. Ah. It was a pretty good trail for a singlespeed, with little hills that all level off before you get too spent, and twists and turns through the trees in the flat parts.

Near the end of the fifth lap Cara passed me on a hill and I didn't even try to stay with her. By this time I was starting to feel pretty fatigued, and my forearms were killing me from all the time I was spending "rowing" the handlebar. I definitely need more arm muscle if I use a singlespeed in this kind of race more often.

Wooo! Cara, Norma, and me. Thanks for a good race ladies!

As I finished my fifth lap I still had just enough time to finish a sixth, but my arms were really feeling spent so I decided to call it a day. I expected the woman who was just behind me to go out for a sixth, but either she never went out for that lap, or she didn't make the time cut-off for it. Which means I ended up in third place!

Thanks to the race promoters for another well-run event. This was a really fun race. Just like it did last year, this event got me psyched for the coming season. It was great to challenge myself by doing it on a singlespeed. I had thought I might enter the singlespeed category, but my friends convinced me to enter the women's open category instead. I am pretty glad I did! I might have gone faster on gears, but I think doing laps on these sorts of xc trails was actually way more fun on a singlespeed. Maybe I will go this route again soon...

Singlespeed Arizona 2011

2011-02-10T15:27:00.015-05:00

at Sweetwater trails. (photo by George)

I was lucky enough to be able to jet out to Tucson this past weekend for Singlespeed Arizona. To make everything even more awesomer, SSAZ was bookended with a couple grueling days of Bike29 "team building exercises."

Two weeks ago, I crashed pretty hard on some ice on my road bike here in Asheville. I still had a fair bit of pain in the top of my hamstring and my low back when I left for Arizona but wasn't sure how that would play out on the trail. My attitude about SSAZ was that if I rode slower, I would get to be having a good time out on the trail longer. I was not exactly taking any of it very seriously.

Arriving on Thursday, I met up with the crew of George, Dicky, and Keller. We connected with Dejay, Mike Stanley, and various other great people and the evening progressed pretty quickly from building up bikes and sitting around, to a night of moderate mayhem.

At some point along the way we grabbed Doug and Mandy as they came in on their storm-delayed flights from the Northeast. Also at some point Dejay kicked me really hard on my already bruised ass, which hurt, but I forgive him. Many other things happened too, which will go unmentioned to protect the not-so-innocent. Fun times.

Friday started right, with bacon chocolate chip pancakes at Bobo's. YES. (Photo by Douhg.)

Friday I missed out on the car washing saga while I had lunch with my brother, who was in town from Phoenix for some guitar-related errand. Once I reunited with the Bike29 crew we got it together for a spin around some nice flat cross country trails on the edge of town.

Squinting at the strange ball of fire in the sky, taking off armwarmers, exposing pale winter skin. (Photo by George.)

Doug, George, and Keller grooving on the Fantasy Island trails.

Rich ran over cactus... hooray for Stan's

It was pretty great to be riding in the desert again. But based on that mellow ride I was suspecting I would have trouble on any long climbs or real power moves during SSAZ because just rolling around easy my hamstring kind of hurt.

Saturday was the day. The weather was absolutely stellar, clear and crisp, and the day looked to be a great one. While the rest of team Bike29 stayed in the car listening to Iron Maiden because they were afraid to brave the 45 degree temperature, I assembled my bike, drank some espresso, and started getting pretty psyched for a good long day of riding bikes.

Do what that man says. (Photo from Dejay's facebook)

Eventually we all got our shit together and after some wise words from Dejay we were off for a long neutral roll-out to the trail. At the end of the pavement we all stopped and removed our front wheels for a complicated version of a LeMans start. Then there was some nice gravelly climbing for a while, with some great views of Tucson behind us, as we headed up toward the trails.

Mandy and I at the aid station.

The aid station was well stocked with pickles, red licorice, Tecate, soda, oranges, and other appropriate refreshments. Thanks to everyone who was responsible for putting together that spread, as it was much appreciated. George had to not race due to a knee issue, and he and Stanley were doing great work cruising around making sure everyone had fun all along the way.

After the aid station the singletrack began with some extremely fun swoopy trail followed by some not-all-that-fun sand bogs. Trying to power through the sand, my injury started to give me issues with some tweaky pains in the hamstring and center of the lower back. Not unexpected but still a bummer. As the trail developed into a series of long uphills I was sure I could cruise through to the end despite the pain so decided to make the most of it.

Pushing bikes out there somewhere.

Some more uphill, then some truly awesome loose and technical downhills, then some icky ORV trail where I was really suffering. Honestly, I really like riding singlespeed on technical trails and xc but it can sure get depressing on rolling gravel. Eventually the route circled back to the aid station for another visit, then off in another direction onto the best trails of the day.

Dark Horse George and Mandy

Unfortunately by this time the pain was worse and it was starting to affect my riding. Luckily I was just behind local awesome person Rudi during a lot of this section, which meant his good mood rubbed off on me. It also meant I was able to follow his lines through the rocky sections... when I had the skill. Dang, that ninja can ride.

Goofing around just after the tequila tree.

Heading down Milagrosa I spaced out and rolled right past the famous tequila tree. I realized it a couple hundred yards later and turned to go back up for my shot, but some guy who was standing around at a techy section offered me whiskey from his flask to save me the trouble. So, I guess technically I missed the tequila tree although I did get something.

Eventually the endless beautiful technical trail had to end. Right before the last descent I saw a hawk fly overhead carrying a lizard in its talons, through the clear blue sky and down into the saguaro-dotted rocks. It is easy to come up with reasons to skip a trip like this, and a giant hassle to arrange life in order to make it happen. But the effort is worth it in every way. Regretful to have finished the ride, I rolled off the trail at last and back to the start-finish of the race.

The various "pain management" I'd partaken of out on the trail had not done all that much to actually manage the pain. My back really hurt quite a bit. It was still hurting that evening when we went out for the post-race party at the Surly Wench. In a way I was kind of bummed that my first decently long mountain bike ride of the year had been so rough on me, and started stressing out about all the big plans I have laid for later in the year. 2011 may be the year for giant crash-and-burns for me. Or it may be filled with glorious victory. In reality, it will probably end up somewhere in between. 2011. Yikes.

The rest of Team Bike29 dragged my ass out of the post-race party before I was ready to call it a night, but in the end I guess that was probably for the best as we had more bike riding to do the next day. We headed out to another nice XC trail system on the other side of Tucson, and I was happy that the pain from the day before was mostly diminished. Maybe 2011 won't be full of crash-and-burn failure after all.

Sweetwater. (Photo by Dough)

Another night, another grueling alcohol-based team building exercise. We headed to Rudi's for an excellent backyard barbecue, then since it was Dejay's birthday assorted good folk rolled out to a brewery. There was some sort of football-oriented event on television sets everywhere, but we managed to ignore it fairly well. We hit a second bar for a while, then once again I got dragged out of a party by people who had more sense than me. Well, some of them had early morning flights and some of them were passing out on the curb, so yeah, it was probably time to go.

barbecue in Rudi's trials course/ backyard

Team building exercises with Keller, Mandy, and Doug at the Buffet Bar

SSAZ was a great time. I got to ride some fantastic trails that I am still thinking about. Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen and convinced me to come out for it. Shout out especially to George and Mandy of Bike29 for figuring out the logistics and getting the transport, and for generally being the coolest crew I would ever want to race for. I am super happy to be wearing the jersey again this year. And of course, biggest thanks to Dejay for luring all the best people out to the desert for a couple days of bikes and mayhem.

SSAZ

2011-02-09T08:17:00.009-05:00

Photo by Dhoug

A lot of things happened.

Still not recovered, still not caught up.

Report coming... tomorrow maybe?

In the meantime maybe read about it here or here or here or here or here.

LATE EDIT: okay, my report is now right here.

Crashing

2011-01-27T19:57:00.015-05:00

Can I call this a rule? When one arrives home after crashing on a mountain bike one may drink a bottle of beer in the shower while assessing the bruises and damage. But when one arrives home after crashing on the road one may drink scotch on the rocks while making that assessment, so long as one is careful not to let shower spray pollute the glass.

The afternoon's projects were derailed by communication problems, and with nothing to do but wait til they got resolved, I headed out for a ride. Climbing Town Mountain Road, far off a time trial pace but still sweating in the sun. As the road wound upwards, I could see the tops of the trees at the higher elevation were frosted white. I had climbed out of Asheville's sunny 40 degrees and into the snow two switchbacks later.

I crested the top of the climb and began to recover from my effort on the quick descent to Craven Gap. Rounding a corner into the shade of a north facing slope, suddenly the road turned to ice. I was on the ground, sliding fast downhill after my rolling water bottles, before I'd even thought to tap the brake.

I reassembled myself. Somehow, the only damage done was a tiny rip on the left thumb of my brand new Rapha Winter Gloves. On their maiden voyage. It hurt as much as if I'd just discovered a crack in my frame. Well, okay, maybe not that much, but it still hurt.

It's hard to keep up a good bad mood under such a blue sky. Gazing at five layers of mountains folded up on one another across the shining valley: was there ever any clearer affirmation that I'm making good choices in this life? Still, the cold wind and the aches from where I'd hit the deck kept me from real contentment. Reaching home after four hours, I was in a miserable, shivering hole. Dreaming of Arizona.

But those gloves: they really are fantastic. Luckily I think the tiny rip can be fixed inconspicuously. Thom's review may have more details (more something, at any rate) but I will say I am pretty pleased with my little Rapha prize. Elegant and warm. Comfortable. Appropriate for formal cycling events and group rides with famous people. And never, ever to be worn on a mountain bike in the muddy briary woods: that's what Castelli winter gloves are for. The only fault I found with the Raphas is that they are a bit hard to take off-- but why would you want to take them off?

Swanky glove with a tiny tear.

Kingsport Cyclocross Cup

2011-01-20T17:19:00.009-05:00

The cross season in the southeast stretches late, very late. Nationals has come and gone, yet last Saturday saw a UCI race not one hour from here. I've never taken cross too seriously, cognizant that training for all-day efforts has done little for my redline speed. My underachiever status is locked in. I over-upgraded to Cat 2, guaranteeing poor finishes in most races, mostly because it also meant I could sleep later on race days. Or I enter the nearly-all-male singlespeed races with the goal of just staying out of last place. But racing cross is fun, maybe more fun because my expectations are so low. It's good for the ego to be challenged, especially if there's a beer at the end. The ice, mud, and sun in Saturday's forecast looked promising, so I headed out for one last time over the barriers before spring.

With the UCI Elite races taking up the prime midafternoon time slots, Cat 2 women were banished to an early time slot. My over-upgrading for naught here, unless I want to pony up for an international license. Saturday morning came too early for the late Friday I'd had, and wrong turns on the road delayed me more. I barely had time to register and get ready, much less do a proper warm up or practice lap.

It was bright but cold, well below freezing, at race time. The promised mud was there but frozen solid. The snow and ice that had lined the highway all the way to Kingsport was nowhere to be seen on the course itself. The course was nearly completely flat, with no runups or real hills, and several long paved sections. I have half a chance in a cross race if the course is excessively technical, but for a pure speed course I'm simply outgunned.

In the process of being outgunned.

I got a decent start and passed several people on the early chicane, but when we hit a straightaway near the end of the first lap I knew I couldn’t hold on to the front group for long. After spending a lap nearly vomiting from the effort of trying to close the gap, yet somehow getting passed in the process, I realized it was probably wasted effort. I rode out the last lap at moderate speed, feeling like I was on a cooldown lap before the race had even ended. Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with accepting defeat. Nothing about the course played to my skills, and I hadn’t prepared well for it, and didn’t feel all that bad about a crap finish anyway.

When you check the official results for this race, the silliness begins. The field was small. The entire race was underattended, and they’d combined the women’s 1/2/3 race with the Cat 4 race. With most of the women 1/2s racing the Elite race in the afternoon, there were not many in my race. Officially, then, I finished fourth in the women’s 1/2/3 race. But fourth in my race was also last in my race. And I was the only Cat 2 in the race. And I finished eighth of nine women who started. So I finished first, fourth, eighth, next to last, and last. Let's call it fourth.

UCI Elite podium finisher Meghan with our friend the giant chicken. Ah, cyclocross.

My race mercifully over, I got to enjoy a couple beers and relax as the sun thawed out the venue and the course got increasingly muddy. Fun times watching the Cat 3 men stack it in the greasy off-camber corners and the Elite racers battle it out for UCI points. Cyclocross is really about that post-race vibe for me. I can’t really see myself ever getting too good at this kind of racing, but I am always glad I’ve gone. Looking forward to the next time, which it seems will probably not be until the midsummer night race at the Asheville Mountain Sports Festival. Plenty of time to get ready for that one.

Festive Finish

2011-01-15T22:01:00.036-05:00

Rapha was kind enough to award me a prize in the Rapha Festive 500: a pair of their beautiful new winter gloves. I am extremely flattered to have won something with my little chronicle of rides. And I certainly need new winter cycling gloves:

In a classic episode of closing the barn door after the cows have gotten out, in the mid-1990s I bought these bulky insulated Lowe ice climbing gloves in the wake of climbing-induced second degree frostbite on my hands. They serve mainly as my extremely-cold-weather cycling gloves these days. On the last ride of the Rapha Festive, both linings ripped completely out and I discovered a hole on the right thumb. They may have finally earned their rest.

Thanks, Rapha!

I warmed to Rapha's challenge as the week went on. I abandoned my cellphone camera and unearthed the real one. I dug into chronicling the daily rides. This blog started simply as a place to post race reports, a process I'd begun as a requirement of my old team. Since I left that team, ever more non-race cycling writing has crept in. I'll never nitpick bolt weights or take photos of every frozen group ride, but I will tell you about what matters to me.

What happens on the bike between races may be more important than what happens during the race itself; those long and painful days are what make the sport what it is. The moments of boredom, of joy, of almost unbelievable beauty. The emotion of race day is the distillation of all that's led up to it. Pre-dawn today, waiting for the registration to open for Dirty Kanza, I saw stretched out in front of me many months of such days. I am eager for them. Before the sun had risen, the Kanza field was halfway to its limit. This is why we all set our alarms: not just to enter a race, but to take on an organizing principle.

Also:

Thursday's mention by the kind people at Rapha has been directing a fair bit of traffic this way. The statcounter on this site has suddenly become quite interesting.

First of all: Hello, Europe! Can I come sleep on your couch? Especially you, Switzerland.

Second of all: I was surprised to see how many people have been examining the few photos I've posted here my Kish 29er. In the past four days about 45 people have clicked to enlarge a blurry image of the rear triangle from a few posts back. What are you guys looking for? Checking who made the sliders [Paragon]? Looking for a close-up of the seat cluster? Scoping the curve of the seatstays?

I looked around my hard drive and found a couple photos I had not posted here. There is this one, from right before I built it up:

And these two, from just after its first ride.

A straightforward frame, made for endurance racing and long days in Pisgah.

Sorry about the mud. And the blurriness. I'm no Rapha photographer.

I can't take any photos for you of the seatstays as they, along with the rest of the bike, are now on a FedEx Ground truck slowly en route to Single Speed Arizona. But maybe these images satisfy somewhat.

I'd rather write about the rides than photograph the bikes, but I am incredibly lucky to be starting this year with equipment I love so much. I had a lot of bike drama in 2010, and was pretty burnt out on thinking about equipment when the Kish frame arrived in late September. Luckily, I don't have to think much about this frame, because it is just exactly right. Understated, honest, strong, light, perfectly balanced. A bike's real beauty is in its spirit and its function, and this is a beautiful bike.

Goodbye Off-Season

2011-01-06T18:23:00.004-05:00

Well, that was a nice off-season.

Who am I kidding, no it wasn't. I spent most of it sick and/or injured, and I'm happy to be back to the grind.

Mellowdrome intervals: go fast-ish, turn left-ish.

Spot-on interval workout on the deserted track in the park. Much preferable to riding the trainer, even when it started snowing a bit near the end.

Festive, Day Seven

2010-12-30T21:07:00.029-05:00

Finished the Rapha Festive yesterday with a ride of 90.93 miles, for a cumulative total of 311.07 m/500.62 km. Yeah.

The weather report had promised sun, and temperatures near 50, neither of which materialized. When I headed out around noon it was clammy and cold, and the gray skies threatened rain. Or worse yet, sleet. Or worse even still, freezing rain. Due to some scheduling issues on December 30th, I wanted to try to finish the Festive on the 29th, although an 80 mile day followed by a 90 mile day seemed pretty ambitious out-of-season.

Feeling good, riding strong, in the beautiful rolling hills west of town

Many of the higher-elevation roads were still covered with snow, and all the gravel roads were too soggy to ride. I headed out into the farmlands west of Asheville, hoping they'd plowed and salted enough that the roads would be clear. As I started out the door, I definitely felt the previous day's eighty in my legs. I wondered if I could maintain a decent pace for long.

Some amazing old farm buildings still in use out this way. This barn is a masterpiece.

Coffee: Liquid motivation. Worth the time lost to stop for a couple minutes.

As the landscape rolled by, I got into a rhythm. I wasn't feeling especially fast, but I was pretty sure I could ride the whole ninety miles. Cold winds and dark clouds gathered, though, and any raindrops would force an immediate change in plans. I checked the Garmin incessantly, watching the miles slowly accumulate.

As I toiled up a long steep climb, the air was filled with the scent of splintered pine. The grinding of a diesel engine was punctuated now and then by the sharp crack of falling timber. Rounding a corner, I came upon this two man farm-woodlot logging operation. Much respect to those doing real work on a cold wet day, while we merely play at work on our bikes.

Asheville is which direction? This is where I stopped to consult the Droid.

The rain never came, but the above-freezing temperatures meant roadside snowbanks were melting fast, puddling on the roads. As the afternoon grew long the day's worth of wet roads soaked through my shoecovers and my toes went numb.

I apologize to my lovely road bike for putting it through this.

At five o'clock I was still far from town. I turned on my red flashy and headed towards the lights of the city. As I hit the city limits my Garmin showed 73 miles. I had no headlight but I felt safe enough to grind out a few more miles under the streetlights of downtown. I could get the Festive done a day early.

In town, tracing the bike lanes, squeezing the last few miles out of this day.

As I threw myself into one particularly steep little climb in town I felt an emotion I'd missed for months. A secret smile, like an inside joke. That moment that sometimes comes when you know that your position in the race is secure, as long as you keep going and don't crash. The race isn't over, but inwardly you've crossed the line, the congratulations have started, the finish-line beer opened. From where I was at that moment, all I had to do was get home and I'd have over 500 km.

Rolling back through my neighborhood I came inches from getting hit by a BMW peeling out of a parking lot, a reminder that the ride's not really over til it's all the way over. Adrenaline still pumping from that near miss, I cruised up to my door glad to be done. I finished the day with 90.93 miles (146.34 km), putting me just a half km over the 500 I needed.

So, why did I do this? I've been coach-less since October, and starting to miss that structure. Working toward some specific goal after a couple months adrift was energizing. Like I said earlier this month, I've been feeling renewed on the bike, motivated. It didn't take much to convince me to go for this, really. Perhaps I need structure, numbers, limits, accountability, to give me something to strive for as I ride.

And also: I just really, really like riding my bike.

Curiously (and I'm not naming any names...), the buddies who'd turned me on to the Rapha Festive have been suspiciously quiet over the last eight days. Between folks' work schedules, travel schedules, and aversion to snow, it was pretty much impossible for me to find anyone to ride with out there. Except for half a mile drafting behind a rider with panniers (blissful) and another couple miles rolling around town with a friend, I was alone the entire way. Some quiet hours to contemplate the year past, the year ahead, and all the great things sure to come my way. Happy new year everyone, and thanks to Rapha for instigating this crazy Festive.

Rapha 500 post recap:
Day one
Day two
Day three
Day four, five, six
Day seven

Festive Days Four, Five, Six

2010-12-28T23:10:00.010-05:00

The morning after Christmas, it was still snowing. I had to get around town but my car was at the bottom of a steep and unplowed driveway. Going around town via bike definitely seemed more interesting than shoveling. The weather was harsh, and the traffic was heavy on the slushy gray streets. I still got 17.35 miles over the course of the day.

I took the Kish, which is still set up experimentally. Right now it weighs 19.5 pounds (with 3x9 gears). This is what I'd intended to race at the Gravel Grovel, at the end of November, before I was unfortunately forced to miss that race. The Kish looks gawky with 35 Small Blocks and the mismatched carbon fork, but it is an all-day gravel destroyer.

I didn't ride any bikes on the 27th, sick of strong winds and slushy roads. And the weather report promised three good sunny days would follow so I wasn't too worried about missing one.

Indeed, I woke today to bluebird skies. It was above freezing by noon, and I was out on the road bike again. After a couple days of sideways-blowing snow and gray skies, the sun is a miracle. Who cares how cold it is.

Chainheart was closed, making slacking-off more difficult.

Shadows were getting long but the roads were in such great shape I couldn't resist getting in just a few more miles. Ended up being caught out a little bit after dark, lucky to have a red flashy light with me.

80.05 miles/128.83 km today. 220.14 miles/354.28 km ridden so far. What do you know, I might actually finish this.

Festive, Day Three

2010-12-26T11:50:00.014-05:00

I have to admit, all this is pretty fun. Writing so much at what is usually a once-a-weekish blog feels odd, and taking so many photos on solo road rides seems odder still. But it's nice to have some compelling reason to get out there and ride without it being coach-prescribed race training. An urge to go out after dark with my Garmin would usually be produced by a mash of insomnia, scheduling difficulties, race anxiety, and a deep hatred of riding the trainer. I've done more lonely late-night interval sessions on dark backroads than I care to admit.

But in the dead of winter, the races I commit to for the next summer feel both monumental and ephemeral. Race 310 miles of gravel in April? Sure. Dirty Kanza 200 again? Of course. So far away on the calendar that I can hardly conceive of them now. Midnight thoughts of Iowa gravel might push me out the door in March, but little immediate reality.

It snowed all day and all evening. After Christmas festivities, around ten, it occurred to me that I might get out for a short night ride. There were a few inches of wet and sticky snow, but I thought I would see how it rode. I've never done any proper off-road snow biking, the sort some people get all excited about, but how hard could it be?

On the steel singlespeed, the obvious choice from the bikes I have. 2.55 Weirwolves are pretty wide, and still have some decent tread on them, but probably no one's idea of a good snow bike tire. And snow packed up under the XX fork almost immediately.

Product placement shot: Endless, the leader in snow cogs; Bike29, the leader in snow handbuilt wheels; Industry Nine, the leader in snow hubs; Niner, the leader in snow singlespeeds. Mostly-spent Weirwolves, undoubtedly not the leader in snow tires.

I headed for the no-name singletrack down the hill from me, which was trampled down pretty well by Christmas Day dog walkers. Immediately I was floundering, and crashing, and walking. The mashed-up snow coupled with the rockiness of the trail underneath made me work hard just to stay upright. I fought the terrain until that trail exits onto a short stretch of deserted pavement leading to the Greenway bike path. Only a couple sets of footprints marred the flat snow on the Greenway. Cruising along making freshies, I started to see how this could be fun.

Like sledding, but on a bike, at night, with a fancy helmet-mounted LED.

The snow had drifted on some little hills in the park and I couldn't help myself. I got up some speed and just rode it down as long as I could, crashing softly into the snowbank when the bike bogged down. Now, this was fun. Not a lot of real mileage gained by goofing around in the snow, but it was definitely worthwhile.

After the end of the Greenway I cruised around the deserted streets of the River Arts a bit, looking at the way the snow had transformed everything. The singlespeed is currently set up with a winter-in-Pisgah gearing of 34x22, which means I was completely spun out on the road at almost all times that I wasn't pointed straight uphill. A nice mellow roll around town. It was heading towards midnight, and all the slush kicked up by the road was making me pretty cold, so I headed back through the sleeping town to my home. A paltry but memorable 13.8 miles of goofing around on a white Christmas.

Festive, Day Two

2010-12-25T11:14:00.013-05:00

In front of a traditional assemblage of illuminated plastic Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus, and Mrs. Claus. Happy nondenominational winter holiday everyone.

Day two of the Rapha Festive. My parents were arriving in town later in the afternoon to visit for several days. On the phone with my mom the evening before, she mentioned she'd read about it here. I told her how pitiful my first day's mileage had been. "Well now that you've said you're going to do it you're committed; you put it on Facebook and everything. You better start riding!" I agreed, and told her my little math equation about how much I had to ride which days. "When we're in town we want to see you, so get a lot of miles in today!" I told her I was thinking about riding gravel on the Kish because the Ergons would be easier on my hands than the drop bars. Also, I'd nearly frozen to death out on the road. "Emily, no! You gotta get a lot of miles in before we get there! Get back on the road bike. Just wear warmer clothes this time!"

Happy to have been raised by people not just firmly rooted in the go-outside-and-play ethos, but who wouldn't think of trying to talk their child out of a ridiculous idea. So for day two I got back out on the road bike, with warmer clothes and mittens. What's more, I took the ridiculously heavy old wheel off the front and put on a lighter one with a narrower tire. Winter training regimen be damned, I had a lot of miles to cover.

In the morning I sat inside sipping coffee and contemplating the 500. Doing the math over and over, determining alternately that I could and couldn't finish 500 km in the days allotted. Finally settling on believing I could finish it, I congratulated myself on the feat. Eventually, though, in order to finish 500 I had to get outside and actually start riding. The weather looked better than the day before: just as sunny, just as cold, but the strong winds had disappeared.

The Lynskey at an inlet along a bend of the French Broad, in front of some of the more spectacular riverside ice conglomerations.

Without the wind, the river ride was more appealing. I headed down Riverside and out to the Old Marshall Highway, which follows the bends of the French Broad River. The river was cold and gray, ice piled up on the banks, waters low as they spilled over rapids. After 20 miles or so the river road enters the hamlet of Marshall, an almost ridiculously intact version of midcentury small town America. As I rode down Main Street, no less than three strangers waved to me.

Madison County Courthouse at the crossroads in Marshall. Well preserved early-twentieth-century storefronts on all sides.

Today I crossed over the river to add a few more miles. Not as flat as the river road, but the rolling hills were so beautiful. I explored a bit, taking some roads I had never tried before. This area is so rural for being so close to Asheville. Weathered old barns, working farms, tiny churches, little clusters of homes. On one winding road I passed a large flatwater boat aslant a steep field, marooned Fitzcarraldo-style to decay far from any water. On another I passed a hillside of fat goats tended by two giant white Newfoundlands, who chased me enthusiastically to the barbed-wire edge of the field. With each turn a new discovery, I realized how glad I was that I'd jumped on this crazy Festive idea. What else was I going to do today, anyway, clean the apartment?

I circled back around towards Marshall, using my Droid's maps to figure out a route on the fly. I found myself grinding up a steep grade, sweating in my winter clothes, to reach a high point above the hills. It looked like this:

But felt like this:

On the spur of the moment, I added another exploratory detour on my return along the river, thinking a road called "Lower Flat Creek Road" would be nice and, well, you know, flat. It wasn't, but it was still a nice discovery and added a few more miles onto the day. This segment included my only real dog sprint of the day, on an uphill, as a lean-looking stray came out of the woods barking. The hound must have been in the Christmas spirit, though, because he gave up the chase pretty soon.

Back to town at sunset, to intersect my parents on their arrival. 68.8 miles for the day. Not bad, but I'd been shooting for 75. After dinner, back at my apartment I decided to round out the total on my town bike. I needed to return a dvd (Moonraker, yes indeed, Roger Moore forever) to Orbitz and return an empty growler to The Wedge, so kitted up with an extra layer of insulation and Sorels on the flat pedals. After the errands I cruised the peaceful streets of West Asheville to check out some holiday lights, ending up with 6.7 miles to round out the day's total to 75.5.

Pro Bikes holiday window with some adorable kids' bikes under the tree. The star atop the tree was made out of an old cassette painted white and red. Nice work guys!

The town bike (an '89 Trek road bike) in front of some of the warehouse grafitti down in the River Arts district.

Good thing I hit the road when I did, as this morning it all looks quite different.

It's a White Christmas!

Festive, Day One

2010-12-23T19:05:00.007-05:00

Day one of the Rapha Festive and I had some big plans. It was sunny and just above freezing, and I wanted to go out for a solo ride along the river and pick up a bunch of flattish road miles. Turning onto Riverside, I was hit with the strong upriver wind and second-guessed this plan. Several cars were parked outside Chainheart Cycling Studio when I passed, and I decided to stop for a moment and reassess my route plan. In the shop I picked up a green herringbone cycling cap that not only fit perfectly but functioned much better than the sad fleece earwarmer I'd left the house with.

It was warm and cozy in Chainheart but I forced myself to get back outside as quick as I could. It was still pretty dang windy along the river, though. I decided to postpone the river ride for another day and warm myself up with some climbing in the hills. I wove through town and headed out to the Blue Ridge Parkway for a climb up from the river to the roadwork barricades just past Pine Mountain Tunnel.

This is a nice climb, made nicer by the closure of this section of Parkway to auto traffic. About 1300 feet of gain in four miles. The road's ever more stunning as it ascends, wrapping around the trailing edge of the Pisgah Ridge, offering eastward views of endless hills and valleys under a clear blue sky.

Austrian wool herringbone cycling cap, Chainheart exclusive, get em while they're hot. At the Chestnut overlook halfway up.

The only thing not to like about this climb are the tunnels, which are long and dark and icy and scary even without traffic.

Two summers ago, about 70 miles into a century, I hit debris and flatted deep in the middle of the 1300-foot-long Pine Mountain tunnel. It was pitch dark and I had to walk the bike out, dodging cars as I did. I still haven't fully recovered from the experience.

When I got to the barricade I stopped to rest and eat, and took my helmet and gloves off. I laid them on the edge of the pavement and in a moment, a wind gust blew one glove loose and down the road. I ran after it, Speedplay cleats clattering on the pavement. As I caught it, another strong gust hit and blew my helmet clear off the roadway. Looking over the edge, I found it resting in briars some fifteen feet down the mountainside. I clambered down to retrieve it and decided I'd had enough of the view and the wind. I reassembled my gear for the descent.

I had not noticed just how harsh the upslope wind was until I was headed straight down into it. A steady strong headwind, like being doused in cold water, almost unbearable when concentrated in the dark, damp tunnels. Periodic sideways gusts threatened to knock me down, and precluded any descending with hands sheltered off the bars. By the end of the descent I was entirely chilled and my hands were blocks of ice. I reassessed my route and decided to ride over to Carolina Fatz to warm up. My second bike shop visit of the ride-- this was not looking good. I chatted for a few minutes and warmed up my hands in front of their heater. I'd been misled by the bright sun: it had been wrong to go with the more dextrous but less insulated gloves for the day.

I left the shop, intending to ride back to my apartment and quickly swap gloves before getting in a few more miles in the last hour of daylight. By the time I made it to my place I was frozen again. I went inside fully intending to grab the gear I needed and head right back out. But before I knew it, I had a glass of red in my hand and was deeply absorbed in a magazine article about diving in Fiji. The sun was dipping lower and my motivation was too. Sigh.

A mere 35 miles down, with 275 to go. No problem. Warmer gloves and more miles tomorrow.

Festive 500

2010-12-22T14:39:00.003-05:00

Rapha laid down a challenge: ride 500 kilometers between December 23 and 30. Document your rides with photos and stories. The first 100 (or 500? there are conflicting data) to do so get a patch with that excellent snowflake logo. One most-deserving person wins some beautiful Rapha winter apparel, and one person wins a beautiful Hope Tech light. Living outside the snow belt, I suppose I may suffer less than some will, but it's still cold enough up here in the mountains to make this seem like a real undertaking. A 500 km challenge in the summer would be a slightly higher-than-normal-volume week, a nice excuse for basking in the warmth and soaking in the landscape. In the winter it feels more like a battle.

Since it's Rapha, it's about road miles, really, though I am going to try to get some gravel and dirt (and snow) rides in there too. The trails are slushy right now, and in any case I'm in a strong road riding mood while I try to regain the strength I lost to pneumonia this fall. I am adding an extra personal goal to this challenge: to ride some of the 500 on each of my 5 bikes: the Lynskey road bike, the Niner singlespeed mountain bike, the Kish geared mountain bike (currently set up in sub-twenty-pound "gravel destroyer" configuration), the Blue cyclocross bike, and ye olde Trek towne bike.

So this post is a declaration. In the next week I'm going to ride 500 kilometers and tell you all about it. I'll post here more than my habitual once-a-weekish tendency. I'm going to dig out the camera and take more photos than usual. Wait and see what happens.

Clear

2010-12-17T23:36:00.027-05:00

It was clear when I looked out the window at noon. Clear, and the week's snows had melted onto the roads and then evaporated under the cold pale sun.

Wednesday morning's frosty ride, crisp snow-covered gravel on the edge of town, had relit the pilot light. I'd finally felt the quick smooth circularity of pedal rhythm I'd missed since July. Really, now I can admit it, since before Colorado I'd not felt quite right on the bike. As we rounded back around toward the shop at the end of the ride I breathed a sigh. It has returned.

Today I went farther. The road bike again: in the cold but avoiding the muddy slush of the woods. More than practical considerations, I was yearning for that meditative state of just turning the pedals and gazing at the river as it rolled along beside me. But heading into town I felt the strong wind blowing down the French Broad River, a wind that would rob what warmth I had while pushing me far from town. I've done that sort of ride enough to make a last minute decision to head for high ground instead.

Heading up towards the Blue Ridge Parkway I stopped at a light. Next to me a Buick with windows rolled down, enjoying the 40 degrees. The car pulled forward, and the woman called to me out the window.
     "I wish I was doing what you're doing."
     "You can," I answered, "anyone can! You should be out here!"
     She shook her head. "Oh no, I wish!"
     "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" I said.
     "It sure is," she said. "You enjoy it."
As the light turned I noticed the handicap-parking hangtag on her mirror, and the crutch laid on the passenger seat. A reminder of just how lucky I am to be able to do this. Because it's just not true to say that anyone can go for a ride. To ride up to the Parkway on a Friday afternoon is a gift, a privilege, an honest piece of good fortune coupled with hard work.

Winter is the most beautiful season here. The Appalachians are lovely shorn of their leaves. The folds and ripples of the hillsides unobscured by their usual thick green cover, the sun pale but insistent through the branches. An extra gift, too, the temporary closure of several sections of Parkway. Without being incessantly buzzed by view-gaping tourists, the mind calms. The mileposts ticked by, while the sun dropped lower and veiled itself with clouds.

Haw Creek Valley overlook. So empty you could lay your bike right down on the double yellow.

I turned around, now facing mostly descent on my ride back to Asheville. As I came down off the highpoint I got colder and colder, my hands frozen and my mood dropping fast. At the exit off the Parkway I was met with the full force of rush hour traffic. Less than a hundred yards on, a Starbucks beckoned. I clumsily chucked my bike along the plate glass window and staggered inside. Large green tea and a scone.

I sat in the faux-leather easy chair on the inside of the window where my bike leaned. My hands ached terribly as they regained feeling. I wolfed down the scone and then set to guzzling the green tea. Across from me a woman sat, and soon she bluntly asked my BMI. Abashed, I stammered it out, and she followed up by explaining that as a geriatric nurse it was good to see someone so healthy. "I mean, look at you," she said, "you're all muscle!"

I couldn't help but be flattered to appear such a paragon of health while at home I beat myself up over the lingering remnants of the pneumonia-- the six extra pounds, the slow-to-recover heart rate after intervals, the weakness on climbs. Racers nitpick, and I've been doing it more than usual as I close back in on what I think of as fitness. She and I talked about the twin forces of motivation and health, how you need both to be truly fit. We talked about how long life is, and all the peaks and valleys we all experience in our fitness over the many years we have. But the sun was dipping low and I knew I had to leave if I wanted to get home before it got completely dark.

It's not just luck, it's hard work coupled with passion. I miss being on form, miss it enough to do the work to get back there. That moment: in the big ring, accelerating, pushing and pulling against the bike with every muscle in the body, don't look over the shoulder til you crest the hill. It's coming back, I can feel it.

This Year

2010-12-08T16:06:00.019-05:00

2011 will hopefully go more smoothly than 2010 has. I know, it could always be worse, and yes, I've had worse years in my life than 2010. I have. But 2010 hasn't been smooth, in racing or in life.

Some Good Races Happened:

I've been daydreaming about Dirty Kanza 200 lately. I went back and read my race report, then reread a few other people's race reports, then the article I wrote for XXC Magazine on Dirty Kanza, then the rest of that issue, and revisited the official Kanza website for a while too. Maybe the cold snap we're having here is making me nostalgic for the insane upper-90s weather and relentless sun of that day. Maybe. All I know is that Kanza was the high point of my year on the bike, not just because it was a decisive win but because getting to that win was the result of some really intense personal growth.

It was 200 miles of gravel. It wasn't boring. It wasn't flat. The bigness of the landscape was stunning. The people were great. I really, honestly loved the terrain and the ride. Like so many really interesting experiences, you just can't understand what it feels like to be a part of it until you go do it yourself. It's not singletrack, it's not mountains, but yes, it is a race on some definitely challenging geography.

Kanza may have been the highest high point, but there were a lot of races that didn't go nearly as well for me but were still fantastic.

Looking back on it, I don't even want to call the Colorado Trail Race a disappointment. I am really proud of the fact that I found a way to have a personally satisfying performance there, even though I didn't finish. It would have been great to finish, of course, but I'm just happy I was smart enough to make it back home with nothing worse than a raging case of pneumonia.

Likewise, I was so satisfied with my mental game at Cohutta 100 that the fact I finished in 9th place (and destroyed a race wheel in the process) doesn't even matter. That damn honey badger will stay with me for the rest of my racing life, I know it.

And P36AR, while officially a DNF, was also one of the best bike experiences of my life. Seriously. Just read the race report.

What does it mean that three events that other people might consider disappointments were also three of the best races of my year? The only real disappointments, for me, were the races planned but didn't get to do, especially Shenandoah 100 and the Gravel Grovel. And now that the year is closing out, and the pain is dimming some, I look back fondly on the entire year of racing, with all its ups and downs and pneumonia and bike failures.

Now Onward:

What's coming for 2011? Oh man.

Some predictable inclusions, like Eric's races and a return to Kanza, but some new craziness as well. Like Trans-Iowa. And for some reason I think 2011 may be the year for my first-ever forays into sanctioned road racing.

I've never been a believer in that old saw, "do one thing every day that scares you." If it's something you can easily incorporate into your everyday life, it shouldn't be scaring you in the first place. And if it's an everyday thing, how much of a risk is it, really?

Instead, let me propose this alternate prescription: Every once in a while, do something that absolutely terrifies you. Get all the way out of your comfort zone. There is a lot that is still up in the air for 2011, but I guarantee I will be rolling up to some terrifying start lines next year.

Bridges

2010-11-28T21:36:00.004-05:00

My dog is dying.

My cat died early last month, and by Halloween the dog was not seeming right. He spent weeks looking for the cat, who he seemed sure would turn up behind a door or under the sofa. He missed the cat, for sure, and was definitely pining for her, but there was something more physical as well. I told myself there was no way the dog could be getting sick so soon after the cat.

But he was eating poorly and acting lethargic, and I finally took him in last thursday. An ultrasound revealed a giant tumor on his spleen, and he had surgery the next day. He recovered while being boarded at the vet and I went up to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. The lab results finally came back Thanksgiving eve, an aggressive and fatal soft tissue sarcoma. Taking out the spleen fixed the immediate problems, but there will be no recovery from a cancer that pervades his blood vessels. I drove all the way back to Asheville on Friday to bust him out of doggie hospital.

When a person gets a diagnosis of fatal cancer they grieve to know their end is coming. They plan. They make peace. They ponder regrets. They do the things they've been putting off-- taking trips, reuniting with family, living well, relishing every day.

Tiko doesn't know his end is coming. He doesn't even know if there is an end. He doesn't delude himself into thinking he knows anything about the future, or anything about the past.

Tiko at the three bridges over the creek: interstate west, interstate east, and the venerable old bridge closed to cars but so useful for quasi-legal bike routes. The vet shaved his belly fur off for surgery, making him look even skinnier than he is. The sunny side: he adores belly scratches on the newly shorn skin.

But if he did know, I don't think he would do anything differently. He lives in the now, never putting off til tomorrow anything I let him do today. What could be better, for him, than today: where he sleeps next to me while I work, romps with other dogs, goes exploring in the woods, drinks freeflowing creek water, and eats (on doctor's orders) a pound of boiled chicken laced with salmon oil for dinner?

On the path along the creek more energetic than he had been in weeks, the temporary benefit of the splenectomy evident. As we walked today, I knew that in his death he will teach me something tremendously important about living. Dogs meet the future with the grace only attained by being fully present in every day. My sadness comes from knowing my time with him is limited, but maybe I can release that. I don't control this: I am just his steward, not really his master.

I've been shouldering burdens lately, but as they pile up they're breaking me down. Like I said in July (before the move, before the big DNF, before the pneumonia, before the cat, before the dog, before the innumerable work issues and life issues that go unmentioned here) the harder the journey, the less you should bring. It's time to soften my white-knuckle grip on the present, trust myself, and try to live carefree without living careless.

Maybe my favorite me-and-the-dog photo of all time. 2005, fast-and-light backpacking a big loop in the southern Sierra Nevada. Snapping at fierce hordes of Sierra mosquitos, he made such a ruckus outside that I finally invited him inside the mosquito-free mesh confines of my one-hoop bivy. Knowing how good he had it, he didn't move a muscle the rest of the night.

Up next: some lowly sketching out of some bike race plans for Next Year. What would I do if I could do anything?

Swank 65

2010-11-20T00:59:00.016-05:00

The weekend after Double Dare, I was back at Cove Creek Campground for Swank 65. There were a whole lot of excuses I could have used for not racing that day, but I showed up anyway. In retrospect it might have been smarter to use one of those excuses, but in the moment I couldn't turn away. The main excuse I had, but was not using, was the pain I was in following the crash during Double Dare. I had bruised one rib pretty significantly, which made coughing, laughing, and deep breathing hurt. Coupled with the lingering problems from pneumonia, breathing properly would be the crux of my race.

At Cove Creek for a civilized 10am start time. The women's field included a number of people I had never raced against, a couple I knew slightly, and Carey. Unless Carey's bike fell apart or something, she had the women's win pretty well in hand. Carey's bike doesn't really fall apart too often so I knew I was racing for second place.

This was the third time I have raced Swank and like previous years anticipated a bottleneck in the beginning of the race as everyone funneled into the uphill singletrack. Either I am getting better at starting this race, or Todd's reworking of the LeMans start did some good, because the bottleneck never materialized. A fine start way up in the red zone and I realized I was feeling kinda beat. Carey came around me after a mile or so, and all was right with the world as I was no longer leading the women's field. I settled into a steady pace and wondered if I could hold onto second for the rest of the day.

Up the gravel and then onto Daniel. I felt great ripping down the steep rocky upper section, but felt the rib pain pretty seriously as my 80mm of travel bumped each root on the lower section. I blew through the first aid station to start the climb up to Butter Gap. By the turnoff at Gloucester I was feeling pretty lousy and wondering if I was going to be able to hold onto second place much longer.

Butter went fast, and I rode up the Tunnel of Terror at a moderate pace with some nice conversational dudes who were enjoying themselves. It was good to chill a bit and not beat myself up over my lousy prep. Seems like fairly frequently I show up to a race poorly rested, injured, or underprepared, then spend most of the race killing myself trying to race as if that wasn't the case. By the end of Swank it would be quite clear to me that much of my race performance comes from a simple willingness to hurt on race day.

Started up the long climb to the top of Farlow Gap with two fresh bottles from the aid station. I was definitely slowing down and again grumbling to myself about how poorly I'm climbing lately. The rib was hurting with every breath, and the breathing was still not great to begin with. By the top I was also starting to feel some twinges of cramps in my quads, from the heat and the unwelcome effort. I was glad to have some downhill time ahead to give my body a break.

Picked my way down the steepest upper part, feeling tired and stressed. My spirits were raised when I started to hear Jonathon et al whooping and hollering from their prime spectator spot midway down the techy rock garden. I stopped to chat for a second and they urged me to shut up and keep racing. When I got back on the bike my quads were cramping and I stopped for a second to shake them out.

Right as I was getting back on my bike the third place woman passed me. Oh! I didn't know her but between the Sycamore Cycles kit and the pink Industry Nine race wheels I surmised she was not joking around here. I figured I had been fading and she must have closed the gap when I slowed down so much on the Farlow climb. When she stopped to walk a log drop I went back around her and then rode a section she did not ride, then rode some kind of sketchy stuff pretty fast to widen the gap. She got back on my tail as I pushed the uphill part but I opened up a gap again on each of the downhills. At my previous Swanks the women's race had gotten blown apart early on for me but damn, for the first time I was actually RACING on Farlow.

At the wooden stairs she was right behind me and we chatted for a second. In my head I expected we would ride together to the bottom of Farlow/Daniel, and then once back out on the gravel she would turn on the heat and drop me. I told her I was climbing really slow, so we didn't need to duke it out too much in the singletrack as she could catch me on the gravel. I mentioned Double Dare and she in turn said she had just run the Shut-In Ridge Run and was hurting too.

Oh.

Well.

Game On, then.

I was still just in front of her as we rode the moderate trail on the lower sections of Farlow. We turned onto the rocky side of Daniel Ridge and I decided to give it all I could. I cleaned the rock gardens all the way down without checking behind me to see whether she was following my lines. I passed a couple guys and breathed a bit easier knowing she was not right on my tail any more. I hit the last rock outcrop and without pause shifted up and big-ringed down the old logging grade. I finally glanced behind and she was nowhere to be seen. I was still on the verge of cramping and completely out of fluids so I knew I needed to stop at the aid station at the bottom of Daniel.

I skidded to a stop and saw Jimi from The Hub manning the aid. I gave him my empty bottles and tried engage in some friendly chatting as he filled them. Then I just broke down and said, "I'm trying to be all casual and relaxed but I am just a few seconds in front of the third place woman right now and kind of freakin out." A guy who had rolled in right behind me heard me, and said not to worry as she'd stopped at one of the rock garden sections. He said I might have a minute on her. Arg, a minute? Why didn't she just pass me and put me out of my misery? I got the full bottles back and hightailed it out of there before I saw sight of those pink wheels again.

I hung it out there on the Davidson River trail hoping to increase the gap a bit before the climbing. I really thought holding onto second was a lost cause, as the last gravel section is just such a killer. As I turned onto the first, steep section of the climb, I decided even though it was going to hurt like hell I was going to give it every shred of strength I had.

Sometimes it seems like that's just what it comes down to. Just get down there in the pain cave and wait it out until the finish line. Get comfortable, it's gonna be a while. It's just about tolerating pain, and tolerating the boredom of pain. Just be in that excruciating place and appreciate the experience as one more part of life.

Every switchback up, I looked back down and did not see her. I was veering toward total implosion but managed to stay on the edge by forcing down food and liquid. I made it to Cove Creek trail for the final descent having passed several guys and not seen my pursuer behind. I hit that trail full speed and felt like I was riding well despite how tired I was. Scrambled over the bridges and railed the turns for the final stretches of trail. I couldn't believe I had done it. I rolled over the finish line in second place, with third less than a minute behind me.

As soon as I finished all the pain caught up to me. My rib was killing me and my entire shoulder area hurt. My breathing was awful, and if it hadn't been for the pain from the injured rib I would have been hacking and coughing non-stop. I was bonking out and freezing cold, and the partly healed road rash from the week before had reopened from all the hard effort. It had been pretty reckless to race with such abandon, especially for a Sunday race when I had work the next morning. Even hours later I was still not breathing right, alternately hyperventilating and coughing. Luckily I still had the inhaler they had given me when I had been diagnosed with pneumonia, so I took a couple shots from that and felt like my breathing was calmer but still shallow. I was afraid to take any real pain med on top of the inhaler and was hurting all night, but still got up at 5am to make it to work on time. It took days for my breathing to feel normal again, and the rib and shoulder still hurt.

In the end, what did I learn from Swank? It was a chance to succumb to the passion of racing and just commit to a course of action outside of all logic. As I lay on the ground at the finish, still really and truly hurting in a number of ways, I told about my race and a friend said, "but you loved it, didn't you?" And I had to smile. Yeah. It's all pain and it's all redemption.

How in the world would we know we were really alive, were it not for such days?

Double Dare

2010-11-14T23:15:00.011-05:00

These races fade into memory so fast. Shifting from a vividly remembered action sequence into a hazy montage as new events pile on top. The last weekends have been some great racing, I'll do my best to tell the stories before they get any hazier.

Double Dare is a two day race in Pisgah from Eric and Erinna of Pisgah Productions, the folks who bring us PMBAR and the Pisgah 36. Like PMBAR, it is raced in duos. Each of the two days, you have 12 hours to get up to ten checkpoints throughout the forest. If you come back after the end of the 12 hours you are disqualified, so a lot of the race strategy is knowing how to manage your time and energy in the woods. Local knowledge definitely helps. The first day starts at noon and ends at midnight, and the second day starts at 6am and ends at 6pm. No sleeping in, either-- if you don't show on the starting line at 6am you're out.

Leading up to Double Dare I was not taking it too seriously. I had been finding it much harder than expected to bounce back from the pneumonia- although I didn't feel sick any more I had lost a lot of fitness and still had a lowered aerobic capacity. I just couldn't mash up hills as fast as I would expect and would still start coughing and wheezing after hard efforts. I knew my endurance was still below where I would like it to be and that I would have to maintain a pretty chill pace to last the whole two days. Getting all wound up about this race would only lead to disappointment later.

Through some mutual friends Katie Miller and I partnered up, the only women's duo signed up for the race. Luckily Katie was not too dedicated to any sort of awesome finish for this race, which was good because I didn't think I could handle a lot of pressure or stress about the weekend. Emphasis would be on having fun times all weekend, and on finishing.

Time was marching on and we still had to get out on the trail and get stuff dialed in. Two weeks before the race we finally got it together for a ride in Pisgah that included her first ride down the steep and technical Farlow Gap trail. Just one week before the race I got Katie out on her first night ride ever, equipped with one of my lights. It was like we were cramming for an exam, and the exam was Double Dare.

When you read the above paragraph, maybe you rolled your eyes. But you shouldn't. Doing well at something like this is about being brave enough to take on new challenges. You need to be confident enough in your capabilities to believe you can finish what you start, and good-humored enough not to be deterred by the possibility that you won't.

In the ten days leading up to the race a lot of shit hit the fan for each of us in our respective lives. Like, really messed-up shit, the kind of thing that would make great excuses to not race. Hearing what was going on for Katie made me worry that she was going to drop out, and maybe a tiny part of me would have not minded too much if she had decided to do that. Maybe she felt the same way about me. But she was still psyched to race, so I was still psyched too.

Somehow I found some form of equilibrium that would hold long enough for me to go race all weekend, and tried to partition the stress off into a far corner of my mind. When I woke up Saturday morning I realized I had done zero packing for the race. I threw everything I could think of into the car and crossed my fingers that I hadn't forgotten anything too important. The only real issue was food, as I had completely run out of energy bars or other food for all-day-long hard rides. I ended up grabbing anything that seemed remotely appropriate and portable. This meant that day one I was packing along some bananas and a large, two-day-old deli sandwich, and day two I was bringing half a loaf of whole wheat bread and some M&Ms.

Katie and I on Cove Creek trail, photo by Brad O

The race started with Eric handing us our first day's cue card. 10 checkpoints, 1 mandatory one at the top of Slate Rock and 9 others scattered far and wide across the eastern side of the forest. Katie and I took a look at the options with the map before us. She had some high hopes for how many we could grab, but I kept being the pessimist (a role that does not come easy to me). I was really worried about how much I could ride and was very afraid of getting stranded far from the campground while the time was ticking down to midnight.

We started off our ride by grabbing one checkpoint at Club Gap on the way to the mandatory. The day was beautiful and chilly, the trails were in great shape and very dry. We headed back around to ride Black-Buckwheat-Bennett and pick up a third checkpoint halfway down Bennett. I could ride the technical downhills faster than Katie, but was getting slow as hell on all the climbing.

We were on our way up Clawhammer-Maxwell to the intersection of Black and Turkey Pen for the final checkpoint of the day. I was dragging behind, and Katie had ridden far ahead without noticing. Afterward, talking to other people, I realized that every duo had some dynamic like this, one person was almost always going to be hurting more than the other at some point or another. At the time I just felt like I was letting her down. Anyway, in the moment I was just tired, and hungry, and feeling bad about myself and my poor fitness, and stressing out about everything else.

As the sun began to set, we turned onto Black Mountain for a good uphill push. Every once in a while it is just time for a good cry in the woods and I guess that was the time for me. Some nice catharsis while pushing up that steepest part of trail, the frustrations of the past weeks flying away into the darkness. After that moment, everything else in the race felt so much lighter and easier.

We got to the intersection, took the photo for proof, then turned around to head back down Black. It's a striking trail to ride at night because you can see the lights of civilization, shops and cars and homes, way down in the valley. There's something beautiful about seeing the prosaic activities of the town and feeling just how remote you are from it all. Up high above you feel the quiet stillness of the stars against the dark edges of the mountain ridges, a sharp contrast between the forest and the town. This was Katie's second night ride of her whole life, and this descent is by no means an easy one even in the daylight. This was an awesome ride, way to go Katie.

Took the long mandatory trip down Cove Creek trail to get back to the campground and made it there with plenty of time to spare. We had not gotten many checkpoints than other teams, but had time to eat and rest around the bonfire while other teams were still riding around in the freezing dark. There was still a whole next day of riding to come.

Returning to the camp ground at the end of day one.

I don't know why Eric's head has disappeared in this photo. Spooky!

Photo by Brad O

Due to the fun of the bonfire and the promise of an extra half point for a "special test" slow-race at midnight, neither of us sacked out til 12:30 and awake again at 5:00. The race would re-start with a time trial gravel grind from the campground to some spot where we would be marked off and given our checkpoints for the day. Any team that didn't start when their team was called at 6am was disqualified. Ack! the stress! Discombobulated and tired, shivering in the pitch dark, we nonetheless appeared on the line at the right time. We started and headed up the gravel to Butter Gap. I felt awful but it seemed like I was not the only one as many teams were dragging on this climb.

Just below Gloucester Gap I saw some eyes shining at me from the undergrowth along the roadside. I figured it was an opossum so kept my light on the eyes to check out that cool little animal as I passed. When I neared I realized it was not an opossum but actually a nice-looking plump calico housecat. Like fifteen miles from the nearest home. What the hell? No one else saw it or seemed to share my excitement about seeing it, so after a couple minutes of trying to chat about the cat I just let it go. But... you guys! Seriously. A housecat! In the forest! Alone! Living wild!

Anyway we got our day two cue sheet and as the sun came up I started to feel better. Much better. We rode down Butter for a checkpoint and started up Long Branch. At the intersection of Long Branch and the gravel 5095 we stopped for another checkpoint. A guy rolled up behind us and asked us if we were going to take 5095 or the "Tunnel of Terror." We both looked at him blankly, trying to figure out what he was talking about. Tunnel of Terror? Was there some really fun secret trail around here that we didn't know about? Eventually we figured out he was referring to the truly moderate and pleasant Long Branch, which does include a couple rhododendron tunnels but contains absolutely no terror. We told him we thought we would brave the tunnel of terror. As Long Branch includes a good bit of uphill it probably would have been faster to take 5095, but it actually never even occurred to us to choose the gravel over the singletrack. As we rode it, we repeatedly cracked up about its new name, Tunnel of Terror. Heh.

This is really not the sort of thing I do on a regular basis. At all.

Photo by Brad O

Following Long Branch it was up to the top of Farlow for the mandatory checkpoint of the day. There was a special test there too, involving eating pickled eggs for a half-point. When I dropped my bike, the QR lever gashed the side of an unopened can of PBR that had been sitting on the ground. It started hissing away and it was like I had no choice but to shot-gun it!

Starting down Farlow after the eggs and beer. Photo by Brad O

Finished with that and headed down Farlow. It seems like I've been riding this trail a lot lately and I sure do like it. Up onto Daniel and from there onto the gravel of 225. There were some sections of 225 where the Forest Service had lately put down some fresh gravel and in one downhill turn I slid out and laid the bike down. Some road rash on my leg, hip, and arm, and a fairly deep pain in my ribs. I jumped up and back on the bike pretty fast, but the bruise started to hurt when we got back on singletrack.

Lucky us, we got to ride Bennett again for a second time in two days. Riding that trail is always sweet and made all the sweeter due to its closure during the summer months. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Down Coontree to the pavement, and a slow grind back to the campground to end the race. We ended up with 11 points, which put us in eleventh place overall. Given how lousy I was feeling on day one I was pretty happy we ended up not in last place!

This race was serious fun. There was a lot of stress involved on day one, but it was entirely in my head and once I got over it I really enjoyed myself. The race really helped me get my heart and mind reoriented towards the positive. It helped me remember how great this planet is and how lucky we are to be able to ride bikes over its forests all day and all night. Thanks Eric and Erinna for all the hard work of designing and producing such a great race. We got two fantastic days of really fun long rides on great trails. Who could ask for more than that?

Some of the better checkpoint photos:

On Bennett, Day one

Black Mountain and Turkey Pen, day one

intersection of Butter and Long Branch, day two

Pinkbeds, day two

Slate Rock, day one's mandatory checkpoint

Quadruple Dare

2010-11-09T18:07:00.005-05:00

Challenge: race two brutal Pisgah races on back-to-back weekends, sandwiched in between three of the busiest work weeks of the year.

Result: Got 2nd place woman at Swank 65, and 11th place duo at Double Dare. Also got one bruised rib, plenty of truly fantastic autumn riding, some great stories, and quite a few extremely long workdays. What a way to end the 2010 mountain bike season.

More to come.

Farlow

2010-10-17T23:29:00.021-04:00

Nice ride today, 475-229-Farlow Gap-Daniel Ridge-225-Cove Creek. Farlow is in great shape right now, at the peak of the season for sure. The leaves are turning but not fallen yet, so you can still see the trail, and the dry conditions mean the technical sections are riding well. I was riding with someone who'd never been on that trail before.

As usual, there were not any other trail users on Farlow. The trail's such a Pisgah classic, but it gets talked about way more than it gets ridden. Admittedly there are two or three sections of trail near the top where crashing would really suck, and yes, it's a bit of hassle to get to the top of 229, but really, considering how much people talk about the trail I'm always surprised no one's on it.

Farlow was stellar today and it was fun to ride it with a first-timer. I rode this trail on my first time riding in Pisgah, and maybe it was there that I started thinking about moving to Asheville. Maybe. Maybe I'd been heading here for even longer than that.

New Bike:

I was on my new Kish titanium 29er hardtail. He has near-legendary reputation among West Coast framebuilders, has been at it for two decades, though he is not as known on the East Coast. He is a master for sure. I love his aesthetic: very clean lines, functional design, minimum silliness. Beauty through function. Something about the look of the Kish bikes I'd seen really struck a chord in me, and isn't that what a bike should do?

Anyway, I never thought I was a custom-frame type of person because I thought the custom world was just for the odd-sized and the big spenders. But turned out this was a great way to get my needs met on geometry and other features (Paragon sliders and third set of bottle cage bosses). Also, it is titanium. Jim Kish was super easy to deal with: straightforward, honest, accessible, and friendly. He built me the frame I'd been looking for.

This bike vibrates with energy when it is just leaning against the wall. This bike rides like it knows where to go.

Yeah, I should take some photos of the Kish in decent light. And maybe with a camera other than the one on my phone. Also a close up or two where you can really see the craftsmanship on this frame. Stay tuned.*

This new frame had been on the horizon for a while. I built it up with mainly the parts that had been on the SIR9, so there's not a whole lot new to say about the build. I did have to pony up for a new Thomson seatpost to get the diameter and length I needed but most everything else is tried and true. Thanks to George at Bike29 for killer handbuilt wheels (both my 29er wheelsets are Industry Nine j-bend classic hubs, and Stan's rims, fantastic combo). George was also the source for the RockShox Reba XX fork.** I'm also still using the same Hive Fifteen.G crankset which continues to look great, not fall off, and be light and awesome; the pink Hope brakes; XO drivetrain; and Ergon GX1s on an FSA flat carbon bar. And I am using the red Cane Creek 110 headset I used to have on the Epic. That shiny red ano sure looks great against the matte gray titanium. Also, that headset still has 108 years left on its warranty!

The SIR9 is now the rigid singlespeed it was always meant to be, with brakes and other parts stripped off my old Epic to round out the build. It is still named Songline. The new bike has not earned a name yet.

*I took this photo on a late afternoon ride a couple days ago. I am kind of addicted to this route right now: park at Hardtimes then go Homestead-Pinetree-Explorer-479-5000-Spencer Branch-Trace Ridge-5000-479-Lower Sidehill, because going up and over Bent Creek Gap so often is helping me get my fitness back after the pneumonia.

** Back when I got this Reba XX fork midsummer, a lot of stuff was going on and I don't think I got a chance to point out that getting that fork fulfilled a long held dream. Way back when I started riding mountain bikes in 1992, those first RockShox had recently come out. I thought those bright yellow forks were incredible and was super jealous of my one friend who had one. But I also thought $220 was way too much money to pay for a suspension fork, especially since using one kind of seemed like cheating. Also, they were yellow, and my bike (a Gary Fisher Hookoo) was purple, and that was just too clashy for me. So I never got one, and just rode on a steel fork for all my formative mtb years. Still, they were SO COOL. Now, just 18 years after my original crush, I finally own a RockShox fork. Thankfully, they are no longer bright yellow.

Ten Ten Ten

2010-10-10T23:37:00.014-04:00

I headed down to Augusta today for the second race in the Georgia Cross Series. I brought two bikes, my Blue CX6.5 cross bike and my Niner SIR9, which sported the rigid carbon fork and which I had converted to a singlespeed the night before. That way I could race the Singlespeed and Women's As races, which were scheduled back-to-back.

I'd been at Augusta last year, and this year the course was almost the same. However, this was the first time I had ever raced a singlespeed for anything, and the Niner was the first time I'd had my own singlespeed mountain bike. When I was getting ready to build up the bike I had gone over to Shanna's to buy an Endless cog, and we'd had a kind of speculative conversation about what might be a good singlespeed gearing for cyclocross. I remembered reading something from Thom about how you should pick a gear for cx that is really, really hard, but then Thom is kind of a freak so I didn't want to go overboard. I'd ended up buying a seventeen, thinking that if it didn't work out it would still be a good gear for XC trails or intown. Once I got to the venue and rode it around a little bit I knew I should have geared taller. I was spinning out just getting my equipment over to the Faster Mustache pop-up tent.

I was the only woman in the singlespeed race, and I expected to be pretty far in the back of the pack. I was losing ground on the flats due to my spinny gear, but kept a decent pace for the first lap. Early in the second lap I dropped my chain, and was in next to last place. I decided to try my hardest not to end up dead last. It turned out I hadn't cranked down hard enough on the EBB bolt after tightening it, and it had slipped some. It was the first time I'd used the EBB, and hadn't really had any idea how tightly it needed to be set. Over the course of the race my chain came off four more times. I still managed to not come in last, and also received a pretty seamless beer-handup in lap 3 thanks to MM. All in all a fairly successful maiden voyage for the rigid-and-single version of the SIR9.

In the singlespeed race. Those GCS barriers are high! Photo by Trish

There were only 15 minutes between the end of the singlespeed race and the beginning of the women's As. Just enough time to drink a bunch of water, swap bikes, and head back over to the start line. The women's category had some really fast and dedicated cross racers, and from the way my legs felt after the first race I knew I was going to be in the back. I was probably last off the line at the start, and as I lifted my eyes after rounding the first corner saw a dust cloud, crashed rider, and a bike on the ground just in front. I could see she had crashed super hard on her face, shoulder, and arm, and scarily she was laying there without moving. The entire women's field stopped within seconds and we stood worried as people aided her. Amazingly she got up on her own and was helped off the course before the Men's Bs (which go off a minute before Women's As) got around their first lap. Still everyone was pretty distraught from seeing someone we knew in such a rough crash.

Thus chastened, we needed to restart the race. At Trish's wise suggestion we elected to race a shorter duration, and to just do a neutral roll out to the first run-up, then the race would be on. Luckily this plan was cool with the race organizer and official, as none of us wanted to have to do an official restart with the Men's As later in the day. The EMTs had come to check her out and as we raced we could see them just off the side of the course.

The race went fine from my perspective, although it hurt a lot and I had some menstrual cramps going on. I ended up just out of the money in sixth place. I hung out to watch the Men's As and then took off back to Asheville.

The whole way back to Asheville I was on the phone with various family. My cat Molly has been very ill for the past couple weeks and I'd been feeling a burden to try to make her well. I'd also been wondering how I would know when it was just her time to go. The late-night singlespeed converting of the Niner was really a product of this distress, since bike work helps me relieve worry. The Niner had been stripped down to the frame to build up the Kish, and yesterday at 6pm was still just frame, fork, and stem. The fact that I managed to build up a raceable singlespeed using whatever good-bad-and-ugly parts I could find in my bike room should suggest how very, very upset I have been about this little cat.

There was a traffic jam on the way home, and when I finally arrived back I could not find her right away. My dog had been with me in Augusta, and he was pacing around worried. I finally found my little Molly laying on the acid green NanoPuff pullover I had used every day of the CTR. When clothing gets to go on a great journey, it comes back indelibly imbued with the real power and magic of the adventure. Forever after it is special clothing. Today Molly lay down on this pullover that was full of adventure power, and let go. Quietly and peacefully, she slipped away.

In 2005 when I lived in Mountain View CA.

The traveling menagerie during the move from California back to the East Coast. Tiko will miss her too.

She was nearly thirteen and was very sick. She was withdrawn and couldn't keep on weight. But if you knew even half the journey she'd been on with me, you'd understand. In her last days I still remembered the hyperactive little black kitten I got in East Cambridge in 1998, when I was overweight, unemployed, and even more of a mess than I am now. But I knew my time with her was ending soon.

I know that whenever I wear that pullover I'll see her laid out on it, her black fur set off against the acid green nylon. Ultra light, but full of warmth. It's got even more adventure power now.

Some times a race report is really cool and funny. Some times maybe it gives you a vicarious thrill of suffering or victory. But some times a race report is just a chronicle of someone trying to escape the all-to-real worries and frustrations and responsibilities of grown-up life. This is an honest race report: today was a rough day.

Low Stakes

2010-10-08T22:36:00.027-04:00

I did two races in the past week, both of which were notable for my lack of preparation and overall unreadiness. What a shift from the out-of-body-freak-out level of preparation before CTR, or the moderate hum of planning before Kanza. The stakes are low right now, the races nearby and cheap, so why not just line up and see what happens?

Race #1

First off, last Saturday I turned up for the Bent Creek Park short-track mountain bike race. The day before I had picked up my newly built Kish (more on that later) at Carolina Fatz. I had gotten to ride it around in the parking lot at Fatz, then a short night ride around the neighborhood and through the grassy fields and woods across the street from my house. But that was it.

So in keeping with the pattern established the last time I picked up a new bike, I decided I should probably race the Kish at Bent Creek the next morning. They were having a full day of events in the community park of Bent Creek (not the main mountain bike trail system) including trail running and kids' races. I slept late and got to the venue with ten minutes to spare-- just in time to do the pre-race lap with everybody. It was a good thing I did, because once I got on the trail one of the Paragon sliders moved a bit, causing the tire to rub on the chainstay. I cut short the pre-ride and went back to the start, where I got the slider re-set by the race organizers and their tools. Kindly they delayed the start for a second until I could run my bike down to the staging area for the LeMans start-- thanks Bent Creek race posse!

I was still a bit frantic at the race start, and didn't pay any attention to where the other women were in relation to me. Since I have been mainly racing the longer endurance races lately, I didn't have any idea if the women lined up next to me were short-track rockstars or not. I got into the woods assuming I was in third place or so, but not really sure. After the race started, I realized how long it had been since I'd been in a real fast race-start situation. Cohutta was probably the last time I'd really been on the gas at the beginning of a race, since the summer had been taken over by ultra-long races with laid-back, neutral roll-out starts. The fact that I'd finally kicked the pneumonia and could breathe again put me in the mood to really pin it. And, putting the brand new Kish frame through its paces, thrashing it around a bit, and getting to know how it moved, was pretty enjoyable.

The trails in this little park are pretty fun, with some berms and jumps as well as some rooty technical sections, overall a good fast trail. For a while I was really enjoying sticking behind Gabe from Smoke Bikes, who was on one of his own handbuilt fixed-gear mountain bikes, with what looked like a road wheel in the back. That guy can shred some trail on a fixie. Round and round for a while, and I kept looking for the women in first and second. I was hoping maybe they'd fade by the end. As the race went on, I lapped the women in the back of the field.

I was actually hurting myself pretty good out there cranking around the laps. All that effort was getting me in the mood for the utter abandon of cyclocross: the ten minutes where I felt like puking, followed by the fifteen minutes where the good clean burn of the effort was almost transcendent. Ah yeah, there it is, like an old friend.

It wasn't til the next to last lap that it dawned on me I might have actually been in front the entire time and been chasing a phantom. When I passed my friend Karen, I realized I had lapped the entire women's field. Huh! Guess I could have avoided putting myself in that hurt locker during lap seven! I don't really understand short-track mountain bike racing strategy, and am sure I should have done things differently-- although getting to that total redline state sure was fun.

with my cool first place prize at the finish (photo by Karen)

My first place got me an awesome trophy made by Smoke Bikes, and I also got a gift certificate from Motionmakers Bike shop... but what it really got me was honestly excited about some more stupid all-out racing. Short track mtb season may be winding down, but cyclocross season is gearing up, so there are plenty more opportunities for riding as fast as I can round-and-round in city parks in my immediate future.

Race # 2

The second ill-advised race in this report is the last race of the Wednesday night cyclocross series in Fletcher, near Asheville, hosted by Renaissance Bikes and Cane Creek Cycling Components. I'd been meaning to go to this series every week, but since my workday tends to go long on Wednesdays I had not managed to make the drive up in time to get there.

This week was the last of the series. I had my bike and kit in the car. I drove up the interstate like a bat out of hell, while ingesting the only pre-race nutrition I had with me, Chex Mix and Diet Coke. But some construction delays on 26 (DAMN the Saluda grade and its endless construction) put me slightly behind schedule, and I got to the race venue just after the As race had gone off.

Luckily, the race organizers were pretty laid back, and said I could just jump in late. I ran back to the car, kitted up, and jumped on my bike without missing a beat. Starting to ride, I saw I was about halfway across the field from most of the racers. I decided I would try to ride hard enough to only get lapped once by Cara, the only woman in the As. I also wanted to try as hard as I could not to get lapped twice by the lead men, although those dudes are fast.

The day's Chex Mix, Diet Coke, interstate driving, work stress, and 4:30AM wake-up time were starting to catch up to me. Within twenty minutes I was sure I was going to puke, the second time I'd ridden into that zone in under a week. It was the first cyclocross race I'd been in since Southern Cross, and the first real dismount-remount attempt I'd done in a race since last year. I managed not to crash or puke, however, and at the barriers managed several successful dismounts and unremarkable remounts. So I call this race a success. I didn't get double-lapped by Cara, although I do believe I got double-lapped by the top men. Despite my lack of cyclocross-specific skills and fitness right now, I am psyched for more races in the coming weeks.

Hints

2010-09-26T00:17:00.020-04:00

Rode out today right into a rainshower. No jacket. So early in the ride, but I couldn't turn back. I needed a spin no matter what, just had to get some hours in, turning the pedals over.

The rain was warm and required no accomodation. Still into the high seventies today, but a change is coming. Here and there a tree had already burst into flaming orange.

Smokes in the valley, stormclouds breaking up. Looking over South Mills River Valley to Black and Clawhammer, with the exposed rock faces of Lookingglass on the far horizon.

Up on 5018, I paused to take in the view of Pisgah. The post-rain vapors loitered amongst the trees below, smokiness of these smoky mountains. As I stood there a wind blew up from behind me, carrying some leaves. The wind was still warm, but held a quiet implication of the cold to come. Suggesting the not-too-distant day when a sudden shower without adequate raingear could get serious.

In the dripping heat of summer, I try to recall the feeling of cold. Under the relentless sun I try to conjure the contraction of the shoulders, the muscle stiffness, the nonfunctional digits, the watery nose. In the gray cold of winter, I try to conjure the overheating, the exhaustion, the inexplicable slowness, the salt-tinged eyes of midsummer. In each season, I cannot quite summon the sense-memory of its opposite.

On the most oppressive summer ride, the heat is all that has ever existed. In midwinter, the glare of the summer sun is just a fable we tell ourselves.

Up on 5018 I look out on the smokes curling from the valley floor, knowing I've stood there at every season of the year. Knowing that soon I'll be standing there under a pale winter sun again, the bones of the hillsides visible beneath bare trees. And knowing that soon enough I'll be standing there in the uncompromising heat of summer yet again, suffocated by the overwhelming greenness.

On the way back down Yellow Gap, caught within one of the rising smokes

The seasons are just far enough apart to let our species forget the all-too-real suffering the opposite side of the calendar brings. Year after year the earth spins round the sun, year after year we yearn for the suffering of six months prior. Same as it ever was. Have our brains evolved this way? Are our sense-memories incapable of extending quite far enough to recall the discomfort of the season just passed? This lets us remain optimists: that faintly-recalled snowstorm of February is just a visual memory. I remember the ice falling from the trees, but forget the cold wind that accompanied it. These hands have never been gray with cold, never been so numb they were unable to work the brake levers. These river crossings have never been anything but a respite from the heat of the day.

Back

2010-09-20T00:02:00.019-04:00

I have finally kicked the pneumonia after a solid month of being sick. I am getting back. I've lost some fitness and gained a couple pounds, but I've bounced back from far worse in the past. The work week had been insane, with very little sleep. No time at all to think about whether I was still sick or not, and almost surprised, come Thursday morning, to find the bottle of antibiotics empty and my lungs clear. I crashed out hard Thursday afternoon for a full fourteen hours of sleep.

Friday morning I woke up just in time for my volunteer commitment at the Pisgah Stage Race. It was my first time volunteering for any race other than cyclocross. It's always so great to see volunteers stationed way out on the course in the middle of an endurance race, and almost always they are super helpful and encouraging. I was interested to see the scene from the other side. My job was to ride out on the course to two trail intersections to make sure folks didn't make wrong turns.

First was pointing people up Thrift Cove trail, just a half mile up from the start line of the race. The fourth day of racing, and people looked pretty beat from the gun. Within fifteen minutes they'd all passed.

Go Jeremiah! Go... Other Guy!

Then I had to drive over to another part of the Forest, park, and ride up to my second trail-directing station, the intersection of South Mills River trail and Buckhorn Gap. Todd had specified that I should be there by 11am to catch the first guys. I got up there at 10:45, ready to point the heck out of my turn. 11:00 came. 11:15. I gave up on slapping mosquitoes and pulled out my book.

The clock ticked slowly. I realized that Todd had made a very optimistic prediction on how fast the fastest guys might be doing Black-Turkeypen-Mullinax-Squirrel-Horse-476-South Mills when they had several days of Pisgah already in their legs. Finally at a couple minutes before 12, I heard two voices coming up from below as second place caught the front runner just before the top of the climb to the intersection. Jeremiah Bishop and Andy Johnston ripped through the intersection wheel to wheel, chatting. Then silence returned.

Time passed. I realized from this day on, every time I rolled through that trail intersection I would think about the day I spent there. It's not an especially striking corner of the forest, but as the hours passed it was really starting to grow on me.

I amuse myself for a while by attempting to take action shots of the racers as they go by. The Droid shutter is unpredictable. Snaps too late to catch Robert Maron.

Snaps too early to catch Evan Plews Dot Com.

Snaps just right to catch the one and only Sue Haywood

I stretched out on the ground, head propped on my bag, reading the novel I'd brought. The racers might have been suffering, but so was I, because the book, which I'd randomly pulled from a stack of yet-to-be-read novels, was awful. [my three syllable review of Kowloon Tong: Don't Bother.] I suffered through 125 pages of it anyway, because there was absolutely nothing else to do. No cell phone reception, no one but the dog to talk to, nothing to listen to but the wind in the treetops, dozing in the sunshine until I heard the next racer grinding up the hill... okay, it wasn't all that bad. The clock finally ticked around to 3. The last riders came through, and I packed up to go.

Saturday I had mostly intended to race cyclocross in Johnson City. I wanted to race, but was not looking forward to facing the fact that after a month of sickness I was going to be in lousy shape and riding slow. When I woke up Saturday morning, my back was hurting in an alarming way. As they say, the "pain was referring down the left leg" in a manner that recalled the herniated disc issues I'd had in 2007-2008. I was definitely not going to race. I contemplated how lucky I had been to have such successful disc surgery, and how after the surgery I'd resolved never ever to take spine health for granted. I'd dropped ten pounds almost immediately post-op and been diligent with my abs and back exercises. In recent weeks I'd fallen off the wagon on diet a bit, and the pneumonia had been such a distraction I'd forgotten all about stretching and core strength work.

I decided to head out for a decent mountain bike ride instead of the cross race, then go to the finale party for the Stage Race. I parked at the stables on 477 to ride a fast loop, Clawhammer-Black Mountain-Avery. The extended climb up Clawhammer left no doubt that the pneumonia was gone. I was thankful to breathe deep and sweat it up the climb.

Recuperating at the Clawhammer-Black intersection. Felt so damn good to breathe that hard. Nothing like a period of illness to make you appreciate health.

Once I hit Black Mountain I was surprised to note that the Force was strong with me that day. I was riding bold on the technical downhills, almost afraid of the lines I took. I hit a big log drop on a steep rocky descent on Black, a drop I always dismount and walk down. I made the landing, then was so freaked out by what I'd just done that I had to stop and mentally regroup.

Coming down through the rock gardens of Avery, I realized that this 2-hour-ish ride was so good that I could happily spend a day doing it three or four times in a row. And then realized that there are many loops I could say that about in Pisgah. But the real luxury is that while I could do it if I wanted to, I never need to lap any trails in the Forest because there are just so many good ones to link together. I am so glad I moved to Asheville.

Subaru was a sponsor. Sooo, yes, I parked my Forester in a VIP spot.

I hit the Stage Race party in Brevard to hang out with friends who'd been racing, and to get my free-to-volunteers food and beverage.

I did not partake in the Pie Eating Contest, which looked somewhat terrifying. Note also the Brevard White Squirrel mascot in the back. Later on, as the party really got going, children began hitting him with sticks.

It was cool to hear people who have raced on choice trails all over the world talk about how fun the Pisgah trails are, and how challenging they are. It's true. These trails are badass.

Big poplar on my favorite stretch of Laurel

Sunday my back was feeling better and I thought for a moment I might go to the second day of the weekend cyclocross races, but instead got back out on the trail. From the sick time and the trip to Colorado, it had been ages since I'd been on some favorite trails. The climb up Laurel Mountain unfolds like a story I've heard 100 times and still can't get enough of. The plot points are familiar but still intrigue me in their particulars. The lines through the technical bits elude me sometimes, practice makes perfect-- but there are moves through the exposed rock sections that I'm never going to master.

Remnants of course markings and high numbers of tire tracks, reminders that the race had routed up this trail. It was nice to think about all the people newly introduced to a trail that is just so incredibly fun to ride. Over the five days they'd crisscrossed the map repeatedly, looping back and forth from a base near Brevard. I hoped they'd been able to enjoy it all even while in race mode.

Forward, downward; no going back on this one. Look around for Cerberus before you commit.

The racers covered most all the choice trails of Pisgah, but there are a few they missed. I left the clamoring echo of the visitors behind to turn down a different trail. It's nice to show the racers the best of the Forest, but it's also nice to have beautiful trails that would never be in the race. I'm no Pisgah Local, but I'm local enough to know these trails. An unmarked rhododendron tunnel leads to a narrow switchbacked descent dropping out beneath the front wheel. Foliage grown in so tightly that there's just a split second between seeing what's coming, and riding over it. The steeps end at last alongside a creek, and pausing there the remoteness of this spot is overwhelming. Wading through the river ten times to get back to the car: thankful that I know this trail exists, thankful that I am healthy enough to ride it, and thankful that I can sleep in my own bed tonight.

"You'll Never Make It"

2010-09-09T14:04:00.007-04:00

When I first decided to do the Colorado Trail Race, I told my plan to the only person I knew who had any experience of the race. I had been hoping that although he had DNF'd fairly early in the 09 race he might yet have some pacing advice, some trail beta, maybe even some words of encouragement. Instead, without missing a beat, he responded with an emphatic "you'll never make it."

In the months following, our friendship soured fast as he continued these demotivational messages, topping it off with a brief, cruel text message the day before I began the race. That all of this poison was so obviously a reflection of his own CTR performance did little to dull the pain of these insults. The fact was, I was completely capable of "making it," and I knew it.

I couldn't help but think about the effect someone like that might have on someone who was less confident. Women are so outnumbered at the longest endurance races that just rolling up to the start line can take a lot of bravery. One-tenth of the CTR racers were women-- a fairly typical ratio for an ultra-endurance mountain bike race-- but what about the people who talked themselves out of lining up? I think about women who I know are capable of being great endurance racers, but who never show up for events. How many of us had heard someone say, "you'll never make it?" Even if we know it's not true, these words stick in our heads, and justify our fear: we don't belong here.

I didn't make it, of course. But not because I wasn't capable. I got pretty far while suffering some serious altitude sickness, and when I finally dropped out I did it under my own power. I tried my best to race smart, keep a positive attitude, and pull the plug intelligently. My DNF had style.

The bronchitis that developed out of the CTR's lung irritation then evolved into walking pneumonia, and I've been more or less laid up ever since I left the race. I've missed the last two races I had planned for, Fool's Gold and the Shenandoah 100. I've been thinking a lot about failure and success, and about the incredible value of the CTR to me. My experience in that race made me a better person, and I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

I've been thinking about the expectations others have for us in these events. Here's the thing, and women, listen closely: Don't try to live up to other people's expectations. Not because you might fall short of them, but because you are capable of doing so much more than anyone expects.

Women, I think we can all stop listening to those negative messages. I think we can get past the anxiety, the self-doubt, the worry. We can do it, but we need to support each other. We need to share the information that might be hard to get from other sources. Those of us who've been there need to tell those of us who want to go. There's a learning curve to these things. But you gotta take the first step, before you can take the next step.

What if we had a place to share ideas on how to train, what to expect, and (as a friend put it) what to do if you have your period on race day? What if we stop wondering whether we could do it, and instead go prove to ourselves that we can? What if we had women friends-- at least internet friends-- who we could hang out with before a race, after a race, during a race? What if, in other words, what if we carve out our own sense of belonging?

What if there were a nonprofit group that was dedicated to supporting women in amateur endurance racing? What if I started it?

What Worked

2010-08-19T19:59:00.012-04:00

Recently my brother accidentally crushed a very fine handmade classical guitar. He'd been playing it for around fifteen years and it had been the conduit for some very lovely and innovative music. Despite being beautiful, the guitar wasn't perfect, suffering from a tremendous overreaction to changes in humidity among other issues. Talking it over with him in the aftermath of its destruction, he said to me that he was especially sad to have lost it because after so many years playing it he felt like he'd finally learned how to adapt to its personality and anticipate its quirks. The process of living with it and using it, and learning to adapt to it, increases the attachment to it. If it is possible to love an inanimate object, that love is inspired as much by its shortcomings as it is by its successes.

The instruments that let us do what we love to do are not perfect. Just like there is no perfect guitar, there is no perfect bike. Find one that has quirks you can learn to anticipate, and learn to love. Learning how to adapt to the instrument's specific needs and personality is part of the process of using it-- of falling in love with it. Only once you know the bike well enough to react and accommodate subconsciously can you reach that ideal state when the bike disappears beneath you.

The totally objective bicycle review is predicated on not having any real permanent attachment to the bike itself, not forgiving it for anything. The totally objective bike review tells you exactly how a particular bike falls short of ideal. It also tells you if the bike climbs like a monkey in a set of crampons and descends like a monkey in a set of crampons being dropped from a helicopter.

I feel uncomfortable writing in that genre. It seems to feed into that larger misconception that buying new stuff, and fancier stuff, will make you faster and better and cooler. It's not true. Bob Mould spent much of his career playing not a Gibson Flying V, but a $200 Ibanez knockoff of a Flying V that Husker Du fans assumed was a Flying V. He shredded the hell out of that cheap guitar on multiple albums and on stages all over the world. Long after he could afford the real thing, he kept playing the knockoff. That's punk rock, and that's true love.

This is a post where I write about some of the gear I used for the Colorado Trail Race, but this is not a gear review.

Songline is the name I gave my Niner SIR9. The name comes from one of the great travel narratives of the last century, Chatwin's Songlines, his book about the aboriginal Australians and the process of travel through the interior of that country. The songline is an invisible conduit across the landscape, a method of traveling great distances, and so is Songline. If Kanza is when I started to fall in love with this bike, the Colorado Trail Race cemented the deal. It has a lot of springy soulful feel to it. I've gotten to the point where I can adapt its quirks in handling and anticipate how it will react to particular trail conditions. The bike disappears beneath me.

Bike parts: I have an XX fork on it now, set up pretty stiff, which almost feels as precise as a rigid fork but I can ride it all day. The combo of the fork, the Ergons, and the big wheels together were plenty cushy for me and I had no issues at all with arm pain and never felt like I wanted more suspension. The CNC'd aluminum non-drive side crank felt pleasant to the touch over the many miles I carried the bike with the saddle hooked on my shoulder, one hand on the fork, and the other on the crank. I used some slightly overbuilt wheels due to the rocky trails and extra weight on the bike, and when I heard that one racer broke four spokes the first day I was glad I had made that choice. George told me the WTB Weirwolf was his Colorado trail tire of choice, so I gave them a go. Although I am no tire connoisseur I was happy with their performance in all the craptastic sandy/muddy trail conditions the race dished out. Thanks as always to George and Bike29 for the best gear and plenty of opinions, I am super happy to race for you guys!

Other things that worked: the Tomicog successfully performed its role as an amulet to ward off freehub failure. On the matter of who came up with the fixie fix first, I'll let Dicky and Thad fight it out like Newton and Leibniz bickering over who discovered the calculus. (Sorry Thad, but I think Dicky is clearly Newton.) The specific bikepacking bags I used were all excellent. I used 2 Mountain Feedbags, a Revelate frame bag and secondhand CDW bar and seat bags. The Pearl Izumi X-Alp Enduro shoes were great hike-a-bike shoes and combined with the mini-platform of the Candy pedal were stiff enough not to cause problems. The 30-hour battery time on my little mp3 player meant that I didn't have to be too sparing with the tunes (note to self for next time: more Go-Gos, less everything else). Despite the rain, the Hello Kitty stickers on the faceplate of the stem stayed on the entire race as did the weird skeleton-rabbit sticker on the seat pack which came from an all-you-can-eat pizza restaurant on the way to Dirty Kanza. Good little stickers.

Absolutely filthy Industry Nine rear hub, the morning after I dropped out. I9 hubs work.

[LATE EDIT: I realized I forgot to mention two other things that really worked well and made my time out there on the CT more fun. First were the Castelli winter gloves I used for any time when it was raining, which was a lot of the time. I have really bad circulation and numb hands have been a serious situation for me on more that one occasion. These gloves actually sucked in the rain until I seam-sealed all the seams, now they look crappier but work better. Second was the Dinotte headlamp that runs on AA lithium batteries. Perfect amount of light for singletrack and no recharging worries.]

Everyone seems to geek out about who has the lightest setup. I never weighed my loaded bike but it was not very heavy, it was pretty compact and easy to ride with, and I stayed pretty comfortable in bad weather and at night. The truth is, you'll never get down to the lightest weight possible just by dropping cash in REI's ultralight backpacking section. Think outside the box. Modify your gear relentlessly. Make your own. Test and retest. Adapt your behavior to make lighter solutions possible. Spend money where you have to (it's good to have a really nice sub-16-oz sleeping bag and some decent rain gear) but cheap out when you can. Be smart. There are a lot of people who are happy to separate you from your money, but that doesn't mean they can solve your problems better than you can yourself.

I almost hesitate to put anything in the category of "didn't work," since I almost never had any problems with gear at all. The brakes were a bit overmatched on a couple of the really long descents, and the mud was a bitch in the front derailleur, but that's about it. And frankly, the descents were steep and long and Mono Minis are really lightweight XC brakes not designed for this kind of thing. Plus, I love them in an irrational way, so I will give them some forgiveness on this matter. Also, this model is discontinued, so I don't really know what the point is of doing a not-review of them in which I not-complain about them. The only two real disappointments were the zip ties that broke and allowed my SPOT to fall off, and the Koss earbuds which really never worked right the entire race.

The Trip Back: DNF The Long Way

2010-08-15T02:07:00.016-04:00

About a week before the Colorado Trail Race began, working on the logistics of return from Durango, I contemplated the possibility that I might end up bailed out to some other town following a DNF. I told myself that if this happened, unless it was absolutely impossible to do so, I would ride my bike back to Denver. Looking back on it, I think this resolution was born partly from a desire to remain in keeping with the self-supported ethic of the race itself and partly from some aesthetic sense of the journey's balance. Cadging a ride or buying a bus ticket would have the whiff of failure in a way that a return via bike couldn't. If this resolution also served as additional deterrent to a hasty decision to bail off the route, so be it.

As fate would have it, I found myself rolling into Salida in the wee hours of Saturday morning, having just bailed off the route below Marshall Pass. With a 24-hour Walmart, a backpackers hostel, friendly people, and innumerable decent places to eat, this is not a bad town to blow into tired, sick, and broken down. I hit the Walmart first, buying food, a bike lock, and some non-bike-clothes and flipflops. I changed in the bathroom and immediately felt less like a tumbleweed and more like a person.

After a shower, a hot meal, and a little lying around coughing and feeling sorry for myself, I went and found a computer. I shot off a couple emails to tell folks I'd dropped out, and then checked the race's progress online. Yep. There was my SPOT's last ping at around 7pm the night before, next to a small stream in the middle of segment 14. It must have fallen upside down or under a rock, in a position where it couldn't communicate with its satellite any more. So my plan was to spend Saturday riding back up to look for my SPOT, then start the process of getting home on Sunday.

Before I could do any of this, I needed to get my front derailleur working again. It kept getting clogged with mud and keeping it working on the trail had been increasingly difficult. Absolute Bikes in Salida is a fantastic shop. They genuinely appreciate and understand all the nutcases who come through Salida on long-haul rides, not just the CTR but also the Tour Divide racers, the coast-to-coast riders, and all the others. Not only did they get the derailleur dialed in, they studied the maps with me to find the shortest road ride from town up to the trail, and let me leave my frame bag and other packs in the shop for the day while I went SPOT-hunting.

Good lord was I tired. I hadn't slept since BV. I can't believe I didn't just say fuckit and leave the thing out there.

I'm not ashamed to say I walked it up this hill. Okay, I'm a little ashamed. When a family drove by in an SUV I felt like a cautionary tale: mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be mountain bikers.

If I had not been so sleep deprived I probably would have realized the SPOT hunt was doomed. Riding the 13 mile climb up to the Mt. Shavano trailhead left no question about just how fatigued my body actually was. No longer in go-go-go race mode, it was suddenly hard for me to ignore the aches that had been building up for days. Riding up that gravel felt as hard as anything I'd done all week. At last I reached the trailhead and turned onto the CT, this time northbound. It seemed like a lifetime ago that I'd been racing on it in the other direction, though it had been less than 24 hours earlier. I got to the right section, and walked up and down on it for forty five minutes. No sign of the bright orange SPOT. Either someone had picked it up and turned it off, or it had fallen so far down into the rockpiles lining the trail that it was hidden completely from view. Or it had fallen into the rushing waters of the stream and carried down somewhere below.

If I stayed any longer, all my gear would have been locked inside Absolute Bikes for the night, so I gave up on the SPOT and got back on the bike. $150 worth of SPOT is out there somewhere. Oh well. I motored back to town, picked up my gear, picked up 2 burritos and some Odells IPA, then checked into a motel whose decor was unchanged since 1983. That night I slept like the dead.

The next morning I headed back to Absolute Bikes. I explained my desire to ride my race bike back to Denver, and they seemed to think this was a perfectly normal idea. Then most awesome bike shop employee Fawn helped me pick out some cyclocross tires, so I wouldn't have to push the meaty 2.55 WTB Weirwolf treads over all those miles of pavement. And then, THEN-- and this is where you really can tell how incredibly understanding this shop is of the long-haul rider-- she arranged for Absolute to mail my tires back to me in Asheville, because it was Sunday and the Post Office was closed, so I couldn't mail them myself, and I had nowhere easy to carry two bulky 29er tires on my packs. Thank you Fawn, Scot, the other mechanics, and seriously every single person who works at Absolute.

So rested, fed, cheered, and lightened in tire, I headed out from Salida at 2:30 Sunday afternoon. It was only around 150 miles back to Denver but I was super tired and still feeling the effects of altitude sickness. I decided to embrace the mindset of le cyclotourisme européen and enjoy the scenery, take any workable detour from pavement onto gravel, and go as slow as I wanted.

Sometimes the roads were lovely.

Sometimes not so lovely.

Some of the route I managed to find nice gravel alternates.

Spent some time contemplating this Pi flag, and the tiny, irrational nation that might exist down that drive.

Snack time! Ah yeah, this is real touring style. Cheese, crackers, prosciutto, even a beer. Miles and miles from anything. Sat for a while here, watched the dragonflies. (Note that I moved my sleeping pad from inside my pack to across the rear of the seat bag. The blue is super visible, and I swear most drivers give you more space if you have something horizontal across the back of the bike. I think they can't figure out how far it sticks out.)

I was feeling kind of low after a while, thinking about the altitude sickness and the DNF. I was riding slowly up a gravel climb, and it seemed to take forever. As a black pickup passed, a little blond kid in an orange tshirt leaned halfway out the passenger side window, turned back to look me straight in the eye, and gave me a big smile and an emphatic thumbs-up. As the truck roared off I burst into laughing tears, I was so overflowing with surprise and gratitude. Even right now, thinking about that kid makes me smile.

It could be easy to fall into the trap of calling this race a failure, but it was still a pretty fantastic ride. And the adventure continued, I was still riding that bike. Even in that low state of mind, moping along at half speed, inching back toward the city, I apparently looked like I was having enough fun to merit the hearty approval of a little kid. That thumbs-up gets at the real truth of this whole trip. Biking is fun. Camping is fun. Biking and camping together? Now that's really fun.

Out of the Arkansas Hills, into the shortgrass prairie of the intermountain basin.

Up this road spur into the Pike National Forest, where I slept for the night. After sunset lightning storms settled in over the Front Range on the horizon, flashing silently in the distance, entertainment before sleep.

The next morning I rode across this basin. It was neither as windy nor as boring as you might expect. And at the end, there was a barbecue stand! Again, in the spirit of laid back cyclotourism I forced myself to stop and partake.

In the background, where I'm heading, is the back side of Kenosha Pass. The route is meeting back up on itself as I near Denver. The basin I just rode across is visible over my shoulder in this photo from just above Kenosha Pass on the second morning of the race.

I rode up to the top of Kenosha Pass and down the other side to Bailey. After Bailey, I was riding into the farthest-out exurbs of Denver Metro. The plan was to ride the bike paths into town and right to my friend Elasha's apartment in the heart of the city. The road got busier. Construction forced me to ride off the shoulder, on the grass. As I entered the actual suburbs, a police car pulled up and starting asking me questions. A cyclist with a fair bit of gear on the bike seemed to read pretty much as homeless to paranoid suburbanites. After proving to him that I was no vagrant, he insisted on giving me and my bike a ride to the edge of his district. Who was I to argue really, it was raining again and the construction was a pain in the ass. As I got in the car and closed the door, accepting the ride, I realized it was the first thing I had done contrary to the race rules. Two and a half days after I had left the course, I had finally left the race.