Cycling in the South Bay

Some things, you don’t really realize how amazing they are while you are doing them. You take them for granted, people, too. 2019 was the last year of David Jaeger’s French Toast Ride. In 2018 I was sick and missed my first FTR since I was first invited, in 2010, I think. The ride itself started in pre-history, a mythical time from whence no photos or written records exist in which David and Harold Martinez were supposedly good bike racers. In all the years that the French Toast Ride went off, twenty or so, there was only one ride that got shortened due to bad weather, and only one ride that got canceled because of it.

The French Toast Ride started off as a way to prepare for the first big road race of the year, the epic Boulevard RR held in the high desert of southeastern San Diego County. It began as a no-frills, no excuses, no lollygagging 117-mile beatdown through Ventura County with sprints, climbs, the punishing ascent of Balcom Canyon followed by the golf course climb finale outside Camarillo. Although the ride greatly degenerated into a gaggle of old, weak, complaint-ridden, bladder-incontinent old farts, despite the ravages of time you always knew that it was going to be one of your hardest days of the year on the bike.

David tried to sweeten the bitterness by holding the start and finish at his parents’ home in Camarillo, where an entire family effort pulled together the French toast beforehand and the sandwiches + beer for those who survived, but no goodies could get you through to the end if you hadn’t done the preparation.

To that effect those of us lucky enough to be on the invite list, or unlucky enough, began receiving emails from David in October or November, advising us of the number of weeks we had left until we would be left puking or crying in the bowels of Balcom Canyon. Those emails were as brutal as the ride itself, because they always turned into a forum for name-calling, chest-thumping, butt-hurting, and the type of written entertainment you might expect from a group of childish old farts who thought they were tuning up for the Tour. The laughter and heartburn generated by those email was legendary …

The French Toast Ride had four stops. One in Ojai, one at the Santa Barbara County line, one in Ventura, and one atop the Balcom climb. I still remember my first FTR, having gone all-out, completely thrashed, collapsing at the county line, and having Harry look down at me with an evil leer. “We’re half-way,” he said.

Every person who did the French Toast Ride had their own awful story to tell. Although no one ever failed to finish, many was the rider who made it only through the fumes of shame and peer pressure to the Jaegers’ driveway back in Camarillo. On the year where it was shortened by rain, cutting out the Casitas Lake climb, I actually got lost in Camarillo with Randall Coxworth, unable to find the Jaegers’ home in this tiny town, soaked in freezing rain and unable to use my phone because it, too, was soaking wet. So near and yet so far. For a lot of riders it was a once-only affair, for many it was two or three times, but only David and Harry made it every single year. That’s quite a record given the toughness of the course and the inevitability of family, work, sickness, sloth, and the other lame excuses that get in the way of training.

But the continuity was a function of David’s family as well. His parents Jim and Nancy, his wife Lynn, his brother, sister, and their families all pulled to in various years to cook the food, send the riders off, then haul their sorry asses off the driveway at ride’s end. Macy and Carly, David’s daughters, literally grew up with the French Toast Ride. Were they scarred forever by having their January annually punctuated by the horrible sight of ugly, wrinkly old men prancing around the living room wearing garish clown suits? I don’t know. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, maybe. That family aspect of the French Toast Ride, more than anything else, made it special, people opening their home to strangers, helping pull off a miserably fun event for no other reason than, well, that’s what families do. And to the eternal credit of the miscreants who rode the ride, there was never a word spoken or a deed done with regard to the Jaeger family that lacked our appreciation and gratefulness for their generosity and good cheer. Excepting of course the time that Gregg Stern clogged the upstairs shitter with four pounds of TP.

The French Toast Ride was a kind of written record of our cycling careers. People got invited when they caught David’s eye or somehow entered his closest circle or when, on rare occasions, he reached out to me to ask if I had a particular recommendation. Otherwise, you couldn’t beg, buy, or steal your way onto the French Toast Ride. In a way that was a shame and a discredit to all of us because the ride never had a black rider, and in its two decades only two woman, Cynthia Marie, Kristie Fox, ever rode the FTR. This is how racism and sexism work, sometimes consciously, but most often unconsciously, excluding women and people of color simply because you accept that your world, your friends, your experiences, are a complete picture. I know that if there were a French Toast Ride done again, that part of it would be done differently.

And how people begged! Everyone wanted the golden invitation but Dave was scrupulous in limiting the number of riders. He didn’t care that it was the most prestigious ride anywhere, he cared that it was safe, and he had a maximal number of people he’d allow, a number that correlated perfectly to road safety and to the number who could crap pre-ride without destroying his parents’ plumbing. David’s commitment to safety wasn’t in name only. For him the FTR required a kind of super-human fitness because he did the ride and he also played mother hen, making sure that the riders who showed up against their better judgment weren’t left to wither and die on the roads of Ventura County. There were only a handful of crashes in the ride’s history, and never a significant injury. More crucially, no one ever had his bike destroyed.

Of all the unusual characteristics of the ride, David went out of his way to invite people who were as good or even better than he was. He had no pride and although he was always one of the top climbers, I don’t think he ever won Balcom and maybe not even a sprint. He didn’t care. The ride was fashioned to bring out the best efforts of the best riders, and if it meant that David got shellacked, so be it. On the other hand, since he was always preoccupied with making sure everyone’s diaper was dry, shuttling back and forth from tail to the front, it’s a safe bet that if he had ridden FTR to crush and destroy … he would have. He made sure the ride was fun, even if it meant he wasn’t always having any. And no matter how hard it was, he never looked tired.

This is also the reason that David’s email reminders were so regular and so brutal. He wanted you to come but only if you were in shape, and no, it didn’t count if your shape was round. He knew that one wholly unfit rider could ruin the ride and he kept the pressure on until the day of. The only thing more dishonorable than bailing at the last minute was showing up unable to ride. To that end, once you’d been invited and had done the ride, you were on the list forever, and the only thing that could get you stricken was a) rudeness to the hosts or b) failing to show up without notifying David. He accepted your lame excuse without scolding or shaming. He knew, you knew, everyone knew, that you were too weak and that after all the braggadocio you simply didn’t have what it took, but he appreciated it if you quit, even at the last second, as long as you let him know. And I believe that in 20 years only one rider ever failed to notify him. It’s a sign of the respect that we all had for him and his family. We’d rather be dishonorable quitters than to dishonorably leave him in the lurch.

The French Toast Ride had some truly animal participants. Olympic gold medalist Steve Hegg was a regular for several years. Neo-pro Alex Bowden showed up one year and rode like you’d expect a pro to ride after some initial drubbing by the old farts. Phil Tinstman’s one FTR was in the rain-shortened version, and Michael Marckx showed up every year fit and ready to kick ass. No one though can match the record of Jeff Konsmo, who won the Balcom Climb practically every time he did it, along with Casitas Lake, over a period of fifteen FTRs, maybe more. And of course tough guys like Greg Leibert, Dan Cobley, lightning sprinter Aaron Wimberly, and David himself ensured that every single year you were going to suffer like a dog. For years the misery of the French Toast Ride’s climbs were exquisitely revenged on US 101 by Harry Martinez, famed for his 35-mph “King Harold Flatback” along the coast. Let a few inches open up and you were by yourself all the way to the next stop in Ventura. Stay connected and you were going to wish you hadn’t.

For all the pain or because of it, the French Toast Ride had camaraderie. You looked forward to it it and you trained for it. It was cold when you started and boiling when you finished. You spent a day with friends and sort-of-friends, you #fakebattled, and at the end you ate sandwiches, told jokes, acknowledged getting your ass beat, and felt lucky to be part of something so special. You reveled in images of Joe Yule getting towed up Balcom Canyon by hanging onto a pickup, and of Harry finally dominating a climb by grabbing onto a motorcycle as he ascended Casitas Lake. My own sneak attack at a pee stop that resulted in cramps and collapse at the foot of Balcom contributed to the lore of the ride, along with a hundred other people and moments that made the ride what it was.

This specialness continues on today, in its own way. The Belgian Waffle Ride, America’s best and only classics-style road race, grew directly from David Jaeger’s French Toast Ride. The inspiration that BWR’s progenitor, Michael Marckx, got from the FTR spurred him to create something that in the beginning mirrored this morning get-together of friends for a truly vicious beating smothered in syrup, bacon, and French toast. FTR lives on in other ways, too. The people who did it, when they reflect, know that it was a snapshot of fitness, fun, and cycling intensity that won’t come again. It was from their youth, youthy-ness, or middle age. It was from a snapshot of time in which speed and fitness and competition on the bike were important. It was from a time when you had the legs and weren’t afraid to test them out against your betters.

Maybe the French Toast Ride wasn’t the best group ride ever. But if it wasn’t, please direct me to the one that was.

END

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Postscript: I shot off a few text messages to FTR alums to get their top three French Toast Ride moments … here are a few of them!

• Seth cramping on the way up Balcom and splayed over the guardrail.
• Shon Holderbaum spinning around the intersection like a top and almost taking out a taco cart.
• Going up the golf course climb in the pouring rain riding up the gutter which was roaring like a river.
• Winning the golf course climb!
• Literally eating pig shit as the pig haulers roared by in the mud and rain.
• Shon Holderbaum falling for absolutely no reason.
• Racing down every hill with Aaron Wimberley.
• Getting second up Balcom.
• The awesome food and people at the end.
• Rain pouring down Balcom like a river.
• Seth clinging to the guardrail after an “ill-timed” attack.
• On the maiden FTR, we were calling it the “No Whiners” ride, thinking we would just put our bags on the porch of Dave’s folks’s house and MAYBE use their restroom, and thinking after the ride we’d simply load up and head home, when we were surprised to find a full French toast breakfast with everything you might find at a hotel brunch as we’d been adopted by Jim and Nancy Jaeger. The real heroes were the hosts, unforgettable, and second to none!
• You and me drilling it to Balcom Canyon.
• Finishing second or third three times on that DAMNED hill.
• Chasing from Castaic Lake and getting a KOM for that stretch.
• Drilling the front going down the 101.
• Jim Miller’s consistent cramping in Ventura.
• Drilling it in a paceline after the Ventura stop.
• The rainy day!
• The crazy sprinting after the first major descent into Fillmore.
• The drive up the first time!
• The year of the rain!
• The girls doing chalk art to welcome home the riders.
• The year the coffee pot kept blowing the fuse to the kitchen and we were in a panic trying to get the French toast ready and had to drag an extension cord in from the garage.
• Seth cramping on Balcom, OF COURSE!
• The rain year, I was fuckin’ miserable.
• Stern’s excuses for either not showing up or not being able to hang while bragging about how many miles he did and how old he was.
• Yule hitching a ride on a truck up Balcom.
• The year it rained, getting soaked and coated with roadside mud.
• The gas station stop re-group in Ojai and the dreaded anti-climactic golf course hill EVERY YEAR.
• Most epic FTR was the year it rained. It was funny to see grown men cry because they were cold and wet.
• DJ’s entire family was so into the FTR. His girls Carly and Macy and the chalk art on the driveway, his mom and dad welcoming everyone as they arrived, and DJ’s sister opening her home up as the lunch stop in Ventura, and Lynn always making sure the breakfast and lunch were spot on!
• The overwhelming generosity of Jim and Nancy Jaeger.
• The fear of Balcom.
• DJ arguing with the Circle K manager as to why he and his entire crew should be granted an exception to use the non-public restroom … and winning!
• Public encouragement by Michelle on Facebook the night before telling me I could do it!
• Riding the first climb, talking with Dan Seivert about cycling.
• Eating a life-saving blueberry muffin that Andy Schmidt gave me on the 101.
• Most brutal 15 minutes I have every spent, 27 mph paceline on the coast.
• Gorgeous view from atop Balcom Canyon that marked the end of the right–NOT!
• Michelle Landes immediately posting congratulations when it ended for being the first and only woman to ever do this ride.
• Everyone’s pre-ride anxiety.
• Everyone’s post-ride collapse.
• The time DJ and Harry rubbed a fake poop smear in Konsmo’s shorts.
• Leibert’s funky outfits!
• Steve Hegg shredding everyone on the climbs despite being 40 lbs. overweight.
• Getting invited!
• P-Normous doing the ride with no mileage on his legs, finishing, then collapsing on Dave’s parents’ lawn, unable to get up.
• Riding with good friends.
• Riding in the canyon leading up to the steep section of Balcom, having someone tell me “It’s not that bad,” then coming around the bend with the steep wall in sight and yelling, “Oh shit!”
• Steve Yurosik walking up Balcom.
• Harold flat-backing on the 101.
• Post-ride group photo!
• Walking in the front door and seeing three generations of Dave’s family making us French toast as if it was our last meal.
• Shon jumping early and raising his hands in victory … 50 meters before the sprint finish in Ojai.
• Yule hitching a ride up Balcom with a pick-up and hopping out as if no one would notice.
• Sliding across the intersection in the rain.
• Food at DJ’s parents’ home when we entered.
• 3rd up Casitas behind Leibert and Konsmo.
• Konsmo’s chartreuse North Face jacket and wondering if it came in a men’s model.
• Seth doing the entire FTR on a handful of nuts and black coffee.
• Seeing you on Balcom thinking I would catch you only to have you look back and ride away!
• Fear and anticipation of the herd before the ride.
• The one-inch bow wave of water coming off the road onto my front tire as I slogged up Balcom on the one and only rain year.
• Seth’s ill-fated attack toward Balcom and the subsequent mega lock-up against the guardrail.
• The happiness of having all my trusted and mature (mostly) biker buddies treat my Mom and Dad with the attention and respect they deserved.
• Killing it on Casitas and crumbling on Balcom … EVERY YEAR.
• All the memories. Good times, bad times, you know I had my share!

Dear Suzunami,

When you entered the world this morning near five o’clock, I was asleep and wholly unaware of your arrival. You showed up ten days early and you exited the warm place quickly, in only a couple of hours.

Fat, bright red, and hungry, you latched on and drank yourself to slumber. The first I saw of you was a photograph as you lay content, warm, snuggled, asleep.

I won’t see you for a few days yet, but I thought about you all day, and you know what I thought? I thought that everyone should have a written welcome into the world. Here’s yours.

From time immemorial the birth of a child had meaning, but what that meaning was people had to divine from the natural world around them. Some divined it from the stars, some divined it from special marks, and some divined it from the wild creatures. I wanted to know the meaning of your birth so I got on my bicycle and rode up a long, dirt road. A bicycle is a toy; you will someday have one. Dirt is also a toy, you will come to love it. Roads? They are things that we all follow whether we will or no.

As I rode I looked up in the sky and saw a hawk. A hawk is a large and fierce bird, and this one had a red tail. I have seen many hawks like this along this road, but today I saw something rare: The one hawk, as it floated on the wind, was accompanied by another. I have never before seen two such hawks flying together, so I watched them because I knew they were the sign, the omen that I had been seeking that would tell me the meaning of your birth. Unfortunately, no matter how long I looked I couldn’t figure it out. “Maybe,” I thought, “they are just hawks.”

So instead I will welcome you in another way, shorn of superstition but warm and loving as I can make it nonetheless.

You have been born into a world that is no better and no worse than any other world of any other time. It is filled with happiness and sadness, with good luck and bad, with surprises and boredom, with obviousness and mystery. Most importantly for you, it is a world filled with love. You have a mother and father who love you mightily, grandparents who love you mightily, and two older brothers who are going to love you mightily though they may not know it just yet. You have uncles and aunts who adore you, and even great-grandparents in great number. You have been born under a roof that will keep you warm in winter and cool in summer. When you are hungry you will be fed. When you are sad you will be entertained. When you are happy you will be surrounded by people who share your mirth. When you are sick you will be succored and when you are healthy and running fast your brothers and friends will run with you. When it is your birthday you will receive Hot Wheels, new ones, not the used and banged-up ones handed down by your brothers.

As you grow up you will see that the world is complex. Things that seemed one way will seem another. People who spoke one way will speak another. Places that felt one way will feel another. And the you that you thought you knew will one day become someone quite different but at the same time will be unchanged. Also, you will one day have to wear pants and use a potty. I told you life is filled with sadness.

Your job? Learn to use the potty. And, to never let us forget that you are here to teach us. To remind us that if we fail you we have failed everyone. To be our inspiration to make things better so that you, when it is your turn, will have something left to pass on.

You have more jobs than that. You must learn to laugh deeply and to cry openly. The crying part you appear to have already learned. You must learn that all people are, oddly enough, people. It’s a dumb world where you’d have to learn such an obvious thing, but you’ll find that grown-ups needlessly complicate and dumb-up the simplest things. Since I’m your grandpa, which is a person impossibly ancient and old, you will have to accept that some old people are utterly ridiculous. You will have to learn how to play “Bal-ti-mo,” how to watch Ultraman episodes 1-500 in a tent, and how to rip out an old man’s beard by the roots. You will have learn to infuriate your older brothers and how to tattletale when they are mean to you. You will have to learn this mathematical equation: Grandpa = Gummy Bears + Unlimited Cartoons.

The good news is that for now all you have to do, you’re already doing. Eat. Sleep. Poop. Repeat. You will be snuggled and loved, loved and snuggled, dandled and kissed, kissed and dandled until you’re so sick of it that you will learn to sit up, then crawl, then walk, then run. Some day, with legs stern and stout, you will run far from me to places that time will place beyond my reach. Carry me in your heart then, even if it’s only a little bit, when you do.

All my love plus gummy bears,

Gramps

END

Of course the thing that gets you is the saddle. It arrests you from the second you spy it across the parking lot. Images of discomfort, cheapness, misuse, overuse, and of course incompetence, all these things and many more are transmitted at the flick of an eyelid.

Some things, though, in their retiring nature demand closer inspection precisely because they care not the montance of a tare whether or not you notice, indeed, they are placed carefully, discreetly, artfully, so that your eye will pass over, if at all, and keep moving on. There is something to see here, but not for you.

The more our eyes dug into this old piece of steel, barely held together it seemed, the more we were rewarded. One brake only and that attached with a cable which barely worked with the mightiest of squeezes, then repaid the squeeze by refusing to release the rim.

One derailleur, the rear, shifted onto the fifteen, and the chain permanently slammed onto the big meat. The rider didn’t fear hills.

Brilliant Nitto bars that shone brightly on the tops where they had never been wrapped, perhaps, and sticky, ugly, black on the lower halves from some peeled-off ribbon of Christmases past. Schrader valves. Thirty-six spokes. Mismatched, mostly bald tires. Chain grease that bespoke an oiling every few years or so. The artfully beautiful pantographed “FUJI” on the steel crank. An original and originally corroded centerpull rim brake. Cable clamps around the tubing from a day when internal routing wasn’t even a dream, the pie plate still happily jammed in between the freewheel and the hub.

The down-at-the-wheels worthlessness of the bike was belied by the owner’s attitude, unmistakable in the giant u-lock that bolted this prized possession to the bike rack. His or her sole means of transport to a minimum wage job at the supermarket? His or her hipster ride to get groceries?

I don’t know, but I do know when a rider looks at their bike with fierce affection, because beneath the rust and jangly parts you could easily see the noble and lovely lines of the classic triangle, so much strength and endurance and longevity built into that simple triangle of steel, prettier than any plastic.

END

Do you remember your first bicycle ride? I mean the first time you pedaled a road bike with all those gears and skinny tires and the saddle that hurt your ass?

I don’t remember the first time but I remember the second time. I had bought a bike to ride to campus and don’t remember the route I took, or recall even riding, back to my apartment on Burton Drive off Riverside.

But I do remember putting the shiny new bike in my bedroom and gazing at it with love and awe and anticipation of riding it to school the next day.

Do you remember the anticipation? How excited you were to ride? How you couldn’t fall asleep? Where did that go, and where can I get some more?

That next morning I bounded out of bed. Do you remember bounding out of bed with excitement to ride your bicycle? I do.

I threw some cereal down my throat, dressed, stuffed my books in my pack, and wheeled that pretty, shiny bike out the door. At the bike shop I had gotten a map of Austin. Do you remember maps? Big paper things you had to read to figure out where to go? I do. And I knew I didn’t want to pedal along the death alley that was Riverside, so I found a little street called Woodland that would take me to Congress and then to the Capitol and then quickly to campus.

I was pretty proud about finding that route. But since I was still a few moments away from becoming a cyclist, I hadn’t considered gravity, and with blithe heart I set forth. Woodland had no cars and was pretty until I came to the biggest hill I’d ever seen.

Of course I had seen hills and mountains plenty but you never see a hill for real until you have to pedal up it. And that is when, that very moment, I became a cyclist, because halfway up this massive peak my bike wanted to stop and tip over and even though my legs were screaming and my lungs were burning and the hilltop was a thousand miles away, you see, I refused to get off and walk.

All I had on the back was a 23 with a 42 on the front, and sister let me tell you, did I stand on those pedals. It was late November and humid and hot, I was sloshing with sweat, and I cursed that hill for standing in my way, gasping my way over the top, lightheaded and wobbly and flush with a feeling I’d never had before, the feeling of a conqueror.

My heart rate dropped back down to 190, my eyes focused, and as I was starting to really bathe in the amazement and satisfaction of having whipped that bastard of a hill, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a second, even bigger one.

Now, though, I was a cylist, transformed from victim to aggressor, and I took the bit between my teeth and charged. It was another monumental struggle of life and death but I vanquished that wall, too, now wetter than if I had showered. The third and final hill I crested after a bitter struggle, hit Congress, and sailed downhill all the way to school, where I started class among my groomed classmates looking like a bedraggled cat. I cared not. While they had been plodding afoot to class or driving, I had been ascending steep slopes under my own power that they, poor dopes, couldn’t even imagine.

Yesterday Matt drove me over to the old Village Glen apartments, now renovated into condos. I only lived there a semester, but the daily battles I fought riding to school were unerasable. “Let’s take Woodland back to town,” I said.

“Sure,” Matt agreed.

The road was just as I remembered it, only we passed under the freeway and there was … no hill. A hundred yards or so went by and we came to the slightest, shortest, most gentle bump you have ever seen. We crested it and a little later there was another, equally insignificant rise.

There was no third hill at all.

END