Best. Coach. Ever.
January 24, 2016 § 13 Comments
My coach, who didn’t know he was my coach, had sat up and was drifting back. I had been dropped on the very first section of the Switchbacks after Charon, Prez, and Bruins had split the huge field into fragments going through Portuguese Bend. They spun out the back like used rocket stages, but the damage had been done.
The lead group had about twenty riders and they pedaled away.
When Canyon Bob came by and motioned me to get on his wheel, it seemed like a good idea. I temporarily forgot about my [insert sympathy-getting excuse here] broken pelvis and focused instead on how happy I was to be on my bike.
Bob quickly brought me back into the way-too-red zone, and then I was alone again. Up ahead was Coach. I call him Coach because he once gave me some advice. “Don’t be the strongest guy in the break,” he had said.
Lots of people give me advice, of course. “Sit in.”
“Don’t pull.”
“Conserve.”
“Don’t move around on your bike so much.”
“Quit being such a dick.”
Etc.
However, none of them won 26 pro races last year, have a fistful of national pro crit titles, or are considered the best bike racer in America.
Also, Coach became my coach because he hardly ever talks to me. I hate it when people tell me stuff. I am stubborn and dislike advice, especially when it’s unsolicited and free, and even more so when it’s paid for and requested. I once paid a woman $10,000 to not teach me how to pass the bar exam. That’s a true story, and I passed.
Ron Peterson, one of the top coaches in the business, has a word for people like me: “Uncoachable.”
Anyway, Coach has never given me any training advice. He doesn’t care about how I ride, when I ride, what gears I ride in, what equipment I ride on, what my schedule, diet, power numbers, heart rate, or what race calendar is. “You can find someone to advise you about all that on the Internet,” he’s fond of saying.
“Only thing I can help you with is, you know, actually winning a race.”
At first I thought he was kidding until, following his advice, I won my first two races since 1986. Do you know how hard it is to win a bicycle race, even a creaky-kneed, leaky prostate one? Let me tell you: It’s very hard. Very, very, very hard.
And it’s harder the older you get because there’s no churn. There are no younger guys coming up displacing the old guys. As you get older, so does your competition. They age grade right along next to you. The guys who were beating you in ’88 keep beating you in ’98, then in ’08, and soon enough in ’18. In math terms, they’re always doing calculus, you’re still struggling with arithmetic.
Coach is awesome because he fills in the huge void of ignorance that I live in, the ignorance of strategy. And the strategy itself isn’t difficult, but then again neither was sailing to America for the first time as long as you knew the earth was round.
So Coach drifted back. “Get on my wheel,” he said. I did, panting so hard it hurt almost as bad as my broken nutsack and fractured childbearing pelvis.
After a few seconds, you know, those really, really long ones that other people call “minutes,” normal breathing resumed. “Okay,” I said. “I can go faster.”
But coach didn’t go any faster. He kept me in this strange zone that said “I am doing a lot but I can do more.” My instinct, of course, was to do more. Isn’t that how you beat people?
Pretty soon we caught and dropped Canyon Bob, who I never catch and never drop. Then we got passed by a mini-three-man-train. Coach let them go. “They’re dropping us!” I wailed.
Coach looked back. “The climb’s not over yet.”
This bizarre purgatory of pain but not unendurable pain continued to ratchet up. We caught the mini-train. Where the climb jerks up for 200 yards they splintered and we left them for good without ever accelerating.
“Steep walls have a speed limit,” said Coach. “It requires exponentially more energy to accelerate on them and if you kick it there you have nothing left for the longer, easier grade where you can make time.”
We made time and picked off other riders, guys who are lots fitter and faster and younger and richer have prettier mistresses. They were not happy to get passed by Ol’ Gimpy Busted Nutsack latched onto the wheel of reigning national champ a/k/a Coach.
Now what had seemed like steady but endurable pain became suddenly awful. This corresponded with the short flat spot on the way to the Domes, where Coach sped up. I popped, he slowed, and I got back on, settling into purgatory again.
We caught and shed several more riders.
Afterwards he explained it. “Don’t ride in the red.”
“Okay,” I gasped.
I thought about that, and it prompted a billion questions until I reminded myself that one fool can keep a hundred wise men busy for a thousand years.
Then I pondered that out of that entire gaggle of idiots, only 11 had finished ahead of me, none was my age, none had a broken ballsack, and we’d picked off about half of the initial lead group.
“Hey, Coach!” I shouted. But like Racer X, he was gone.
END
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Playbook
September 7, 2015 § 5 Comments
We dropped down off the Switchbacks in a line. Sweeping through the right-hander onto PV Drive South all of the familiar figures fell into place.
Charon, Rudy, Derek, Leadout, Michael, Cuttler, Stathis, X-Man, and Undercover formed the point while the rest of us jostled for protection on the screaming downhill followed by the punchy rollers through Portuguese Bend. Everyone knew what was coming and it was gonna fuggin’ hurt.
The scene of so much misery is called The Glass Church because, amazingly, it is a gradual roller that starts at the bottom of … guess what … a glass church. It’s not very long and it’s not very steep so it’s just the right distance for everyone to get in over his head.
Undercover pounded off the front in a hopeless kick destined for immolation and, always the one to pick the worst wheel at the worst time, I went with him. Chunks of sputum, toe jam, and tooth enamel began to bleed out of his eyes and after a couple hundred yards he began doing the Brad House arm flap. When he slowed to a pace that I could pass and maintain, I jumped past. The wankoton was well behind. I ground it halfway up the grade until I heard the telltale “whoosh, whoosh” of approaching carbon doom made of 100% full carbon.
It was Rudy. I grabbed on, then held on as he accelerated all the way up the roller and over the top. Derek was with him and we had a gap. I took something that looked like a pull, only it wasn’t. After a few rotations we were at the bottom of the little hill past Terranea. Rudy launched. Davy had bridged, somehow. Three-quarters of the way up the bump I punched it coming up the right-side gutter.
We flew down the short grade to the final uphill before the sprunt. Davy charged with X-Man, who had also come across, on his wheel. I faded backwards like the burnt out stage of a Saturn rocket.
We regrouped at the light and Rudy was grinning. “You hung on,” he said.
“Barely. There was that one point on the Glass Church when you came through and I had to bite down hard.”
“Those are always the moments when you either make the split or you don’t.”
“It felt like I was slowly chewing off my own tongue.”
“But then it lets up and you’ve made the split. Because everyone else backs off.”
“The taste of your own tongue isn’t very good,” I mused.
“I work with a lot of riders who are just starting out. They have that great ‘new’ fitness but the depth isn’t there yet, where they can max out and still bring their heart rate back down. They hit top gear and stay elevated.”
“There’s so much out there about how to train,” I said, “but I’m still waiting for someone to write a book about how to win.”
He laughed. “Yeah. Same as in poker. Cycling appears to be about training and fitness, or in poker it appears to be about luck, but in the final round it’s always the same five guys sitting at the table.”
“Because the guys who win have a playbook.”
He nodded. “And they follow it.”
“When are you publishing yours?”
We had hit the bottom of Via Zumaya and he glided away. “Someday!” he said.
END
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The strange pull of cycling
November 19, 2014 § 20 Comments
I first saw the old elephant about three years ago. He was gray-headed and busting out at the seams as we flew past him on the Donut Ride. He’d gotten a good ten-minute head start but we overhauled him long before the first big climb. He huffed and puffed and mashed for about ten pedal strokes, trying to hang on before he was blown out the back.
As we passed him someone said, “Good job, Bill,” and then we were gone.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s Backintheday Bill,” the other rider said as he filled me in on Bill’s career as a top local pro and general two-wheeled wrecking ball.
“He looks terrible,” I said. “He’s gotta weigh over 250.”
“Yeah, I haven’t seen him in fifteen years, maybe more. His race weight was 140.” From that Saturday on I saw Bill every weekend and always said hello when we passed. Over time he stopped taking head starts and began rolling out with the group. And he was getting smaller.
At the beginning of the year I noticed that he was sticking with us up the first hard surge, and although he was still a pretty big fella, he was certainly under 200, and his kits didn’t look like they were about to unravel and kill someone with the force of the exploding seams. Now he’s visibly getting thinner by the month, and sticks with a much younger grupetto all the way over the first big climb. All of his kits are new because the old ones flat out don’t fit anymore.
Bill’s one of many, many riders who come and go and then come back. They leave for all the right reasons — racing is dumb, cycling is costly, pedaling is dangerous. Some leave for all the wrong reasons, too. My buddy J.C. had found Miss Right through cycling.
“Can you imagine anything better?” he had said. “A girlfriend who loves to bike?”
I didn’t say anything, because I could imagine a lot of things better, like a girlfriend who loves to cook, who earns seven figures, and who loves you to bike while she perfects her home brewing recipe. But I didn’t say anything except “Nope.”
They married and six months later she quit cycling. Then six more months later she told him to quit cycling. Then six more months later he was single again, and back, of course, on his bike.
Some dudes quit for spiritual enlightenment, like The Buddha. Tony used to be one of the most feared racers in SoCal. Then he started growing a big bushy beard, and worse, reading books, long books with hard words. They ruined him, of course, and one day he announced on Facebag that he was “done.” Now he’s a Buddhist adept, spreading love instead of dishing out the pain, but mark my words, he’ll be back. As nice as it is to make the world a better place, it’s even nicer to watch people crumble.
Sometimes when a guy sells his bikes and is “done” you’re kind of glad, but other times it’s a sinking feeling of genuine loss, like when Todd quit coming to the rides, then sold his bike, then vanished from view. Everybody loved Todd. He never had a bad word to say, he was one of the funniest guys alive, and he was always up for a beer. If you had a problem he’d give you the shirt off your back, even if what you really needed was a pair of trousers.
But as a cyclist, he was the guy who made your ride fun. You know how when someone pedals up and everyone kind of moans inwardly, as in “Why’d that buzzkill show up?” Todd was the opposite. Punctual-departure-Nazis would sit around for ten, fifteen minutes, gladly waiting for him even though he was always late and didn’t show up despite blood pacts the night before about “being there no matter what.” Todd was the brightest jewel in the crown of South Bay cycling fun, and then one day he was gone except for the occasional post on Facebag, which always made me sad.
Then yesterday Fireman texted me a photo. “Just finished our ride,” the message said, and next to the words was a picture of him and Todd draining a fermented recovery drink. There was a huge smile on Todd’s face, and I bet it was mostly from being back on his bike.
But his smile wasn’t nearly as big as mine.
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You are not a climber
October 5, 2014 § 11 Comments
I used to think I was smart. I used to think I was handsome. I used to think I was going to be rich. I used to think I was good in bed. I used to think I was going to have a good job. I used to think life was fair.
I used to think I was a climber.
I thought I was a climber because I could go uphill faster than most of the other people I rode with. No matter that I lived in Austin, where there weren’t any real climbs. At 135 pounds, I was a climber.
Then I met Marco. Marco wasn’t a climber. He weighed about 150, and was my height. He had won the Tour of the Netherlands, and had come to Texas to escape the cold Euro winter.
“You look like a climber,” I said.
“Me? I’m no climber.” And he meant it.
To myself I thought, “Good.” To him I said, “Let’s go up the back side of Jester.”
“Okay,” he cheerfully answered, never having gone up any side of Jester, front or back.
Jester was my domain because I was a climber. The back side of Jester was vicious and steep. In my memory it was a 45 percent grade, six miles long. In reality it was probably less.
We hit the bottom and I looked back at Marco, whose nickname was “The Lung.” Why hadn’t that nickname made an impression on me, I wondered later?
Marco, who would later do the Tour a couple of times racing for Chazal, easily and breezily pedaled by me. I gave it the best effort I’ve ever given anything, but he vanished rather quickly. We regrouped at the top.
“I thought you said you weren’t a climber,” I said.
“I’m not.” And he wasn’t. So what did that make me?
Luckily, I soon forgot about Marco and once he left Texas I became a climber again. Then I moved to Japan. I was the fastest guy up the climb in Shinrin Park, the course they later used for the World Championships in 1990. No one could hold my wheel because I was a climber.
I met a guy who ran a bike shop. He was very small, maybe 120 pounds. “You look like a climber,” I said to Wada-san.
“I’m no climber,” he said.
“Good,” I thought, and took him out to the Shinrin Park climb. We hit the bottom and he dusted me off rather easily.
“I thought you said you weren’t a climber,” I said to Wada-san.
“I’m not,” he said. And he wasn’t.
Fortunately, I forgot about Wada-san and became a climber again. I was a very good climber in Miami, Texas, where there are no people, and in Houston, where there are no hills. Then I came to California. On my first few rides in PV, everyone dropped me. My riding partner, Crabs, was a fat, hairy-legged sprunter who dumped me on every climb.
One day I was talking to Fukdude after we’d gone up Fernwood. He had dropped me early. “Fuck, dude,” said Fukdude. “You’re no climber.”
“I’m not?”
“Nah. You’re too fucking fat. And big. And tall.”
“You’re a great climber.”
“Me? Dude, I’m no climber. I’m just a tall dude. You should forget about climbing and focus on something that fits your cycling body type.”
“Like what?”
“Fuck, dude, I dunno. Drinking, maybe?”
It only took 32 years, but I finally figured it out. I’m no climber. When you look at legit climbers when they’re on the bike, they seem to be sort of your size, but when they get off the bike they aren’t. They’re tiny, squnched up, newt-like mini-versions of real people, little bags of skin stretched around massive lung bags and bony, veiny, spidery legs. None of them have big tummies.
The Donut Ride started today, and after a while the climbers-plus-Davy rolled away. Rudy, Wily, and a couple of other newts vanished. We hit the Switchbacks and it separated out pretty quickly. Somehow I was still with the lead chase group, even though it had some really tiny people in it. “Fuggitaboutit,” I told myself. “You’re no climber.”
Tregillis and his 3-lb. bike faded. Chatty Cathy faded. Suddenly there was nothing left but three or four climbers and me.
We hit the ramp to the Domes and Sandoval punched it. Sandoval is five-foot-five and weighs less than Tregillis’s bike. I leaped onto his wheel, and it was just him and me.
One by one, we passed the suicides who’d started out with Rudy and Stathis the Wily Greek. I had given up all hope. Sandoval is 26, the same age as my eldest daughter. He attacked me a couple of times, displeased with the fat, tubby, wheezing lardball dangling on his wheel. Somehow I hung on.
With a quarter-mile to go, Sandoval got out of the saddle. I matched his pace for a while, and then I didn’t. He vanished around the turn and I got fourth. Which is pretty damned good for someone who isn’t a climber.
END
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Three words
January 31, 2014 § 20 Comments
When I hear a funny noise on my bike I do the following two things: 1) Ignore it and hope it goes away. 2) If it doesn’t go away, hope that it’s nothing serious.
Some noises, though, are harder to ignore than others. This one happened every time I touched the rear brake on my ‘cross bike. Iw was the loudest, most horrific, piercing shriek you have ever heard in your life. It was so loud that it not only hurt my ears, it would startle passing motorists who had their windows rolled up while listening to Led Zeppelin. It was so loud that joggers a block away would jump when I braked. You probably think I’m exaggerating.
You’re wrong.
After about four days the noise kept getting worse. It was such a piercing scream that I started to think maybe it was serious. This led to a problem. If I checked out the source of the noise and found out that something was indeed wrong, I’d have to fix it. If I had to fix it I would end up taking out the three tools in my toolbox — hammer, screwdriver, pliers — and making the problem worse. Then I’d have to take it over to my mechanic, Boozy, and have him laugh at me before replacing all the parts I’d destroyed.
All of this was going through my mind as I hurtled down Silver Spur at 45 mph. A car started to pull out in front of me, and I touched the rear brake, which had the intended effect. The eardrum-shattering shriek frightened the driver into slamming on her brakes. I flashed past, pleased that my early warning system was so effective, but also troubled. What if this unearthly, mind-bending noise meant that the brakes were about to fail? The thought of going down Silver Spur like that without any brakes almost worried me.
I pedaled along PV Drive until I came to a stop sign. Resignedly I got off to inspect the rear brake. Perhaps there were no more brake pads and this was the sound of metal calipers on metal rim? Nope. Perhaps there was something wrong with the brake mechanism itself? I stared intently at the complex, mysterious piece of machinery known as “bicycle brake,” hoping that today, after all these years, its workings would finally make sense and I could somehow fix them. But, like a chimpanzee staring at an x-ray, the brake remained inscrutable.
Next I checked the rim and immediately found the culprit. It appeared that during one of my more energetic chain lubing sessions in which I had enthusiastically lubed the chain, the stays, the tire, my feet, and most of the sliding glass window on the balcony, I had gotten a few quarts of lubricant on the rim. The lube had, over time, picked up filth and gunk from the road, resulting in one side of the rim being completely coated with a thick, black, gooey tar that apparently didn’t mesh well with the brake pads.
The solution seemed simple: Wipe off the crud. I took a finger and ran it along the rim, expecting the gunk to come right off. It didn’t. Instead it smeared and left my finger covered with the tar. Next, I tried it with another finger, then another, until both my hands were black with oily crud, but the quantity on the rim appeared about the same. Over on the roadside was a bush with big leaves, so I went over and collected a few. Then I bent over and started vigorously rubbing the rim with a big green leaf.
At that moment a super pro-looking dude in a pro-looking kit on a bike cruised by on his 10k machine. He glanced at me disdainfully, as if he’d never seen a goofball riding a ‘cross bike with a huge red blinky light in the middle of the day while repairing his bike with some leaves. I expected him so say, “You okay?” but he pedaled quickly by.
The leaves had magical crud-removal properties, and in a few moments the rim was clean. I spun it and clenched the brakes — no squeal. This was the first time I had ever addressed a bike problem and solved it. I hopped on the bike and pedaled after Mr. Rudely. Soon enough I caught up to him. He had those 450-mile-a-week legs of a 20-something dreamer who thinks that if he just rides more and races more he will get a pro contract.
“Hi, there!” I chirped.
He turned his head towards me and made the grimmest half-smile, followed by a slight nod to acknowledge that I existed, sort of. “Nice day, huh!” I eagerly chirped some more. He nodded again, slightly, staring straight ahead. I could tell what he was thinking.
“Here I am on my easy day and I’ve been overtaken by the world champion Fred who repairs his bike with leaves and pedals 15 mph at 150 rpm. This sucks balls.”
I zoomed past, turned onto PV Drive West, and headed up the little bump out of Malaga Cove. At the top I slowed down considerably and Mr. Rudely passed me. I hopped on behind him, figuring it would drive him insane, which it did. Since he was obviously on a recovery day, he wasn’t going to hammer away from me, so he took the opposite tack. He slowed down until I passed him. I laughed to myself. “Nobody beats Wanky in the slows.” So I slowed down until he passed me again.
Now he was really pissed. “Hi again!” I chirped.
He sped up and I hopped on his wheel. Then he realized it was his recovery day, so he slowed back down. As I read the sponsors on his jersey, I wondered if he knew that by being such a prick he was causing me to memorize the name of each sponsor so that I would never, ever, ever buy any of their products? I wondered if it occurred to him that by stopping, or even slowing, to say “You okay?” he and his club and his Orange County shop would have done the best advertising possible? And of course I wondered if it occurred to him that by refusing to even speak to me because of my dorkiness he proved to be an even bigger dork than I?
Seeeeeeeerious cycling
Road cycling has a tradition of snobbery, rudeness, unfriendliness, and contempt for those who are slower and weaker than you. Why? Mountain bikers are glad you’re out on the trails with them. I wish I had a dollar for each time an MTB friend has invited me to try out trail riding. Cyclocross racers are the same. They only want to ride with you and drink beer, and many don’t even want to ride. Track riders are a little more serious, but the ice is easily broken your second or third time out and they will bend over backwards to show you the tricks of the trade.
Not road racers, though. Although there are plenty of friendly, down to earth riders, there is a distinct class of road racing snobs. Whether you’re riding with a mirror, or the expiration date on your white shorts has passed, or you’re working on your bike with an old leaf, they believe you are NOT WORTHY.
That’s when I think about Fields. Fields was the best, the cagiest, the one who trained hardest, and the one who dominated the peloton. But he never looked down on anyone because of the bike they rode or the clothes they wore. And if he passed you on a ride he’d always offer a friendly greeting, not to mention stop if you were stranded with a mechanical on the side of the road. Fields believed that people earned scorn and contempt when they acted like assholes, not when they were out enjoying a bicycle ride.
Mr. Rudely and I did another set of slow – and – pass before he got so angry that he stomped by me on the Switchbacks. I followed at about three bike lengths. When we got to the college the light was red. We stopped. I smiled. “Where are you riding today?”
“What’s that?” he said.
“Where are you riding today?”
He twirled his finger in the air as if circling the PV Peninsula. “Loops.” Then he telepathically communicated something along the lines of please-shut-up-now.
I left him for good this time, touching my rear brake occasionally on the long descent. They were perfectly silent. Maybe I’m not such a bad mechanic after all.
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What you’re really made of
May 7, 2013 § 27 Comments
It is part of our bicycling delusion that we are made of the qualities we reveal “on the bike.” The power meter tells you that you’re a badass (the opposite of which is what? A goodass?) Showing up for the NPR when it’s raining toxic sludge in 40-mph sideways sheets proves that you’re a tough guy, whether or not you’re even a guy. Hanging onto Rudy Napolitano’s wheel for the first 50 yards of his acceleration on the Switchbacks makes you a fighter.
That’s who you are, right? Watt pumper, road tough, and a competitor.
Bicycling may or may not reveal character, but it sure is replete with characters. And the character of those characters, in my experience, is most often revealed not on the bike, but off it.
The cast of characters
G3: I still don’t know what “G3” stands for, and I’ve been riding with this wanker for years.
Stathis the Wily Greek: Only smiles for money.
Little Sammy Snubbins: Baby seal pup who loves to ride his bike.
Stitchface: Cat 4 adventurer who’s already gotten 100 sutures in his face this year.
Anonymous Steve: Generic bicycle rider whose chief characteristic was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Cast of Dozens: Amalgamated Idiots, Inc., a/k/a Usual Donut Ride Crew.
The route
Portuguese Bend is a hallowed part of the Donut Ride. It connects Palos Verdes Estates (a fancy enclave whose denizens’ shit doesn’t stink) with the Switchbacks, the epic 8-minute climb that punctuates this weekly beatdown.
Portuguese Bend is so geologically unstable that a permanent road crew is assigned to the 2-mile stretch of twisting roads, which shift and crack daily. The instability is such that sewer lines are placed above ground and re-paving the entire roadway is done multiple times each year. The crews make weekly repairs to gaping crevasses that open up overnight as this side of the slope slides relentlessly into the sea.
With steep ups and downs, cracks that appear suddenly, narrow lanes, speeding traffic, and a long downhill from the Switchbacks, of course it’s the perfect place for the weekly gaggle of idiots to charge through the area at speeds exceeding 40 mph.
What could possibly go wrong?
The delicately choreographed Dance of the Club-footed Oafs
Cold logic, or even cool reason, don’t live in a peloton (“peloton” is French for “speeding gaggle of imbeciles.”) When you drop off the Switchbacks it’s a straight plunge several miles long to the bottom of Portuguese Bend. You wind up tightly bent into a densely packed anthill of carbon and meat and wires and metal, crammed into a tiny bike lane with livid pickups passing on the left three inches from your bars, your nose jammed up the next rider’s rear end, your front wheel an inch out of the next rider’s spokes, the busted and uneven and pockmarked road rattling your wheels and your frame and your legs and the tiny pea inside your skull but instead of sitting up and braking and letting the crazies dash off to their doom you bury yourself into the heart of the swarming beehive where there’s no escape hatch and the slightest waver will slam you to the pavement or worse catapult you off your bike into the oncoming traffic where Suzie Q whose shit doesn’t stink will mow you down in her Range Rover while talking on her cell phone and sipping a latte, as she’s wholly untrained to avoid catapulting bicycles flying across the road onto her grill which is pretty much what happens in the next instant when Little Sammy Snubbins, tucked deep in the hive at tenth wheel, hits a crack and, because he’s Little Sammy Snubbins and still on the lower part of the learning curve is rocketing along the jarring bumpy roads with his hands loosely gripping the bars instead of clenching them like his life depends on it which in fact it does and the crack that he smacks full-on with his front wheel jolts his left hand off the bars and his right hand steers him t-bone style into the side of Stitchface who, at 40 mph, is hit by Generic Steve full force in the rear, taco-ing Stitchface’s rear wheel and tossing him into the air like a rag doll and hurling his bike and him into oncoming traffic but actually against all odds Suzie Q WAS expecting a flying bike and Raggedy Andy biker to come sailing airborne over into her lane from thirty feet away and she locks up the ABS and doesn’t squash Stitchface like a bug or even hit him but down goes Generic Steve and down goes Little Sammy Snubbins and the Dance of the Club-footed Oafs goes from being a sort of delicately clumsy waltz to a screeching, screaming, clattering, skittering, pandemonic mishmash of smoking rubber and hands filled with maximum brake and, miracle of miracles, no one else chews the asphalt and Little Sammy Snubbins only breaks his bike and Generic Steve barely gets a scratch and Stitchface peels his body off from the pavement and declares himself unhurt even after the shock wears off.
Unfortunately, someone has to be the grown-up
So for the moment the bicycling is over. Everyone stops; well, almost everyone. There are a handful for whom getting in their miles is more important than stopping to see if Stitchface has been gored to death or to find out if Little Sammy Snubbins needs mouth-to-brain resuscitation, and…
…there is no “and.”
It’s now, off the bike not on it, that character is revealed.
The character is revealed of G3 who swings back, gets the riders off the road, orders others to control the traffic, and swiftly calls the rescue wagon with Nurse Jeanette and Nurse Ava to come and haul back the broken bikes and thankfully unbroken bodies.
The character is revealed of Stathis the Wily Greek, who despite his stone-faced demeanor is one of the first to dismount and leap to the aid of the fallen, though he was on Generic Steve’s wheel and narrowly avoided catastrophe himself.
The character is revealed of numerous other riders whose first and only impulse was to stop and help.
And the character is revealed of those who couldn’t have cared less.
The little drama plays out again, reminding us that it’s not about the bike, it’s about what happens on the bike, and what happens off it. The unsophisticated and uninitiated might even go so far as to call it “life.”
Half a wheel is worse than none at all
February 23, 2013 § 25 Comments
I dropped down the hill to meet Geriatric Jedi-in-training. The sunshine from Sunday had turned to overcast and chill. The wind beat helplessly against my insulated long-sleeve jersey but stung my legs and bare fingers.
G-Jit was doing circles in the Golden Cove parking lot to stay warm. We dropped onto PV Drive and headed towards the Switchbacks. The last time I’d ridden with him two years ago he’d been 55 years old and a solid 250 pounds. Today he was a touch under 200 and couldn’t wait to tell me about his new diet.
“Wanky, I know you’re really into diets have you ever heard of the Rocket Coffee Butterbomb Diet?”
I shook my head and stared straight ahead as he wobbled, weaved, dashed ahead, dropped behind, and drew even again.
“Yeah,” he said, “My son in-law has this new Rocket Coffee Butterbomb Diet that provides eight essential vitamins and oil and butter and flaxseed and kale baked into a lump with brown sugar and a pre-brewed intense coffee that you add hot water to, drop in the lump and that’s all you need until your next meal!” He rocketed about five feet ahead and veered out into the lane where he was almost picked off by a passing gardener’s truck.
I saw the headline in the Daily Breeze: “Peninsula Cyclists Hoisted on Lawnboy’s Petard.”
I still hadn’t moved an inch to the right or left and was doing my best to watch the pavement, where I’ve generally found all the action is in cycling, even more so than new diet-acne-male enhancement additives that go in your coffee.
“I think you’re gonna really like this stuff,” G-Jit said, “Even though most people don’t put butter in their coffee, it’s fine.”
As G-Jit dropped back and began to jerk ahead again I reached out and grabbed his jersey pocket. “Dude,” I growled in my best Fields. “Quit fuckin’ half-wheeling me.”
Back in the day
A long time ago, when I started riding with Fields, cycling wasn’t nearly as good as it is now. The equipment sucked, especially the tires. The only thing we had were sew-ups. No one called them tubulars. They were sew-ups, because when you flatted you would stuff them in your jersey pocket and the next day take them over to Cap’n Jack’s.
You’d knock on the door and let yourself in. It was always dark and smelled like rubber, more precisely, like old bicycle tire rubber mixed with freshly smoked herbal remedies. That’s because there were tires everywhere amidst the resiny haze. Hanging on the chairs. Laying on the kitchen counter. Draped on the bed. Coiled next to the toilet. Piled in huge mounds around the ancient Singer sewing machine with the foot pedal.
You’d stagger through the smoke trying not to inhale too deeply and give Cap’n Jack your tire, or tires if you had a few that needed fixing. Then you’d leave. Long after you’d forgotten about the tires you’d go into the bike shop where he worked and Cap’n Jack would say. “Hey! Tires!” and he’d hand you three or four or ten tires. In each one he’d found the leak, cut the thread on the casing, patched the tube, and SEWED THE CASING BACK UP. It was a sew-up.
It was also feast or famine, because his repair schedule went in phases of the moon, or the growing season, or something inscrutable like that. You’d be out of tires and doing some long-ass ride on bad roads with nothing more than a bad spare and a prayer that you wouldn’t flat, and then the next day you’d have so many repaired sew-ups that it would take a year to flat them all. If you were lucky they would even occasionally be some of the same tires you’d left with him.
Cycling back in the day sucked for other reasons. The bikes sucked. They were flexy and heavy and only had a few gears. You had to nail your cleats on the shoes and bind them onto the pedals with leather straps that blackened your toenails and caused them to rot and fall off. The pads in shorts were so thin that they’d scrunch up like toilet paper and chafe the hell out of the whole damned undercarriage.
But there was one thing we had back in the day that we don’t have anymore: We had rules about half-wheeling. Rather, we had a rule: Don’t you ever fucking half-wheel. Ever.
The torched lung teaches best
It was my first ride with Fields. He’d said we were going to “go easy.” I was all jumpy and excited and pumped to be riding with The Legend. As we rolled out past the airport in East Austin, I later realized, my front tire was an inch or so ahead of Fields’s. He pulled even. Unconsciously, I pulled ahead, ever so slightly. Half-wheeling. Fields pulled even, never saying a word, and waited to see if I did it again.
I did.
It was the last time I ever half-wheeled anybody.
Fields then moved his wheel a couple of inches ahead of mine. I pulled even, and he moved an inch ahead. Soon we were battering down the road, into the wind, as fast and as hard as we could. I was down on the drops gasping as I tried to keep even, but each time I pulled level he’d move ahead. Never going down on the drops, never letting his face show the agony, he finally rode away from me as I blew, spectacularly.
A minute or so later he eased up, a tiny speck. I caught up to him.
“You call that going easy?” I gasped.
“Don’t ever fucking half-wheel me again,” he said.
“Half-wheel? I never half-wheeled you!” I was pissed. In my tiny mind, “half-wheeling” meant what most idiots nowadays think it means: Putting your wheel halfway in front of the person you’re riding next to.
Fields looked at me. “You put your front wheel one millimeter in front of mine, it’s half-wheeling. Don’t fucking half-wheel.”
After a little reflection, I got it. And it was the best and most thorough lesson anyone ever gave me on a bike. That, and the corollary: When you teach “The Half-Wheeling Lesson” you have to crack the offender riding on the tops, poker-faced.
Reason to the rule
Half-wheeling is bad because it says “I’m faster than you,” which is always an invitation to throw down and wrecks any semblance of moderation, tempo, or steady pace. If you’re riding in a group, it also throws off the formation by causing the bikes behind to also be uneven.
G-Jit quickly got the message and tried to implement. What he learned is what everyone learns. Riding steadily and even-wheeled at the other guy’s pace takes a lot of concentration and skill. Undeterred, he focused.
As we entered Portuguese Bend the traffic got bad. “Let’s skinny up,” I said.
“Yeah,” said G-Jit, dropping behind.
I nudged the pace up slightly as we rolled through the Portuguese Bend Beach Club. “Hey!” yelled G-Jit. “Want me to get in front of you and pull?”
This is like someone saying “Hey, weakling, want to let a real man take over?”
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s get through this narrow section and once we hit the Switchbacks you can take the reins.” I was steaming.
“Okay!” he said happily.
By the time we came up the bump by Trump National Golf Course I was out of the saddle, gradually upping the pace. We hit the bottom of the Switchbacks and I upped it some more. “Come on up when you feel like it!” I said cheerily. G-Jit just huffed and puffed and wheezed.
This was the best part of the ride. He was on the rivet and I was going to keep notching up the pace until he popped, no later than the first switchback. Unfortunately, things went downhill rather quickly.
Having gassed it too hard, a few pedal strokes later it was now I who was on the rivet. Pride wouldn’t let me slow down or pull over, and G-Jit was tucked neatly into my draft. There was a headwind. Oh, and I forgot to mention this detail: G-Jit had gotten faster than hell and stronger than three oxen in the last two years.
Behind me he sounded like Moby with a harpoon through his dick, but he wasn’t fading. I went from on the rivet to redline to deep purple. Now it was a contest of wills, and each pedalstroke he survived undermined me further and weakened my resolve. If it’s hell sitting on the wheel of someone faster than you, it’s an even worse hell towing someone who gives no sign of cracking.
We rounded the last turn and incredibly G-Jit was still there and fighting like Jack Dempsey. Dude had more guts and game at 57 than I had at 25, and he was still there.
I reached down into hell and kicked once again, downshifting to try and break him mentally. Sometimes, even when you go a touch slower, the vision of the chain clanking down onto the smaller cog is enough to crack the guy on your wheel. I was hoping it worked today, because my bag of tricks had been turned inside out and emptied of everything, including the lint and fingernail clippings.
Two hundred yards from the mailbox he popped and slid off the back. I crested the climb, shuddering in pain, my field of vision invaded by the alien giant black flying saucers that fill your eyes just prior to passing out. A big, slick, gooey spit bridge connected my chin and top tube.
G-Jit caught up to me, fully recovered just in time for me to get the goop wiped away. “Geez,” he said. “I’ve got a lot to learn.” He was riding bar-to-bar with me like a seasoned pro now, without so much as a wobble.
“Yeah,” I said.
And unuttered, I added to myself, “Me, too.”
END
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Hard man’s cookies
December 1, 2012 § 31 Comments
New Girl’s eyes flexed open at 5:00 AM, beating her alarm clock to the punch by half an hour. A broad smile crept over her face.
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for the elastic band on her nightstand, quickly tying her hair into a ponytail. She pulled the ponytail tight and smiled again.
Her clothes were neatly laid out on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. She’d chosen all Donut, and not just because it was the Donut Ride, and not just because it was her favorite kit, and not just because Junkyard, who’d designed it, would be riding with her. She had also chosen it because rain was not only in the forecast, but it was lightly beating down outside her bedroom window, and she’d learned the hard way not to wear white kits on rainy days.
She smiled again.
In a few minutes the oatmeal was bubbling on the stove. It had that roasted smell, like coffee, but more wholesome, with a creamy foaming and bubbling on the top. She loved to watch it swirl and make patterns, but most of all she loved to laugh at it, because oatmeal was so funny.
Here she was, starting each and every day with oatmeal, even though she’d gone out of her way to poke fun at Wankmeister’s FB posts that regularly featured images of gray-as-death oatmeal with raisins bubbling in the top like rabbit pellets. Oatmeal was funny, she decided again, and smiled at the pan. It foamed and bubbled in a way that, if you cocked your head right, looked kind of like it was smiling back at you.
The meeting place
New Girl kitted up and pulled on her clear plastic rain cape. She’d spent thirty minutes in the bike shop picking a rain cape, and went with this one because even though it wasn’t very snazzy, it was clear, and clear was what she wanted so that the Donut Ride logo would shine through, even in the rain.
She went into the garage and ran a cloth over Princess. She’d cleaned it the night before, and she smiled at the sparkling cogs and well oiled chain. “Enough to lubricate it, not bathe it,” Junkyard had told her. It sparkled, just in time to get covered with muck and filth and grime and fun, especially covered with fun.
She rolled out of the garage, each foot clicking with that solid life-affirming lock of pedal on cleat, binding her to the machine, making them one, turning their mutual admiration into codependency. Now, the decisions she made were binding. Now, whatever happened to Princess would also happen to her.
The simple rain beat harder against her, but inside her three skins she was dry and warm and smiling at the shiny, muffled world. The thought of meeting her mates made her push just a little harder. As she came up the slight bump, eagerly looking into the parking lot at Catalina Coffee, her smile fell. The lot was empty.
Calling in sick
New Girl got off her bike and stood under the concrete arch. She looked at her phone; Tumbleweed and Madeline had texted to say they were opting for less rain and more bed. New Girl smiled again and texted back, “OK! I’m at CC and pedaling anyway! HAGD!”
She sat back to wait, realizing that she was early, as usual. Very early, as usual. Her first surprise came when Tumbleweed and Madeline appeared. “Not going to let you ride alone!” said Madeline.
Then Gussy appeared from out of the light rainy fog, his jersey halfway unzipped and carpets of wet chest hair spilling out. He was already laughing. “You can call me ‘Gorilla in the Mist,'” he said, and everyone laughed.
As the other riders appeared, Gussy’s monologue of jokes, tales from the old days, observations on Krispy Kreme, and predictions about how the Donut Ride beatdown would unfold kept everyone grinning. But New Girl grinned biggest, because she was smiling on the inside, too.
With Toronto and Junkyard in formation, they all rolled out for a pre-loop, destined to get them to the start of the Donut with just enough time for coffee and a bathroom break.
Warming up for a beatdown
New Girl loved the pre-loop best of all, even in the rain when everything was shiny and trying hard to jerk her wheels out from under her. The road striping, the BOTS dots, the oily runoff, the slicky leaves and fallen pine cones and magnolia cones all conspired to knock her over, but she smiled her way through it, so happy to be pushing up the little kicker by the golf course that she forgot to talk or chat or do anything other than grin.
Now they were soaked and back in Redondo’s Riviera Village for the final call-up before the massacre. New Girl wheeled up to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and smiled some more as she saw more of her buddies. There’s the Pilot; there’s the Bull; there’s Arkansas Traveler; there’s Sparkles; and oh! Look! Over in the corner looking all sour and out of sorts but really not sour or out of sorts at all…it’s Wankmeister! She smiled big, and he smiled back in his finest Donut morning scowl.
The group pushed out, the rain had stopped, and fifty or so riders filled out the peloton. New Girl smiled at Suze, at Wolfe, at JP, at Dawg, at Marco, at Erik, and at Prez! She thought she might run out of smiles before they hit the first climb out of Malaga Cove, but she didn’t.
New Girl didn’t know it in words, but this is the secret of the congregants of the Church of the Spinning Wheel: The faces, and backs, and bikes, and legs are as familiar to you as you are to them, and with familiarity comes trust and with trust comes the elemental core of us to the surface, our humanity, in other words our belonging to and place in the tribe.
Legs to brain: We’re not part of the tribe anymore
Up the climb out of Malaga Cove, New Girl felt the sting and then the throb and then the fire in her lungs. She wasn’t smiling anymore as she locked onto the wheel in front of her, praying she’d make the climb with the group, hoping that her ride wouldn’t end here as it sometimes did, before it even started.
A split second of inattention and she wobbled, smacking into Junkyard who was alongside her. He gave her a friendly smile, but she was terrified. She’d almost knocked down her best buddy, what was she doing here, she was redlining, she was a hazard to the group, the road was incredibly slick and it had started raining again.
She’d been kicked out the back so hard the week before that by the time she reached Hawthorne, alone, she’d had to pull over into the parking lot of the 7-11 and sob, and here she was again about to get her ticket punched. At the moment of disconnecting, Wolfe, who’d watched the whole mini-drama, reached over and gave her a hard push, gloved in five words of encouragement and faith: “You can do it, dig.”
She dug as hard as she ever had, hanging on by a thread until she was over the bump. She caught her breath as the sucking of the peloton dragged her through Paseo, along the bluffs and the billion dollar mansions with the trillion dollar views that they all got to enjoy for the price of a bike and some pain, until she found herself on Pilot’s wheel. The next big acceleration came through Lunada Bay, and this time the kick was hard and sharp and on top of the several jumps already in the account which meant it was every man and woman for herself, and so New Girl was out of the neighborhood and by herself.
She was still smiling, though, and when Madeline and Sparkles came by they rode a steady paceline up to Trump National, the gateway to the Switchbacks.
As she gathered herself for the big push, New Girl felt her rear tire go soft, then flat. The rain had started up again. The group atop the Switchbacks wouldn’t know she’d flatted and they’d continue on. For the first time that morning her inside smile frowned.
If you have to grow up, be like the Fireman
A handful of people in the South Bay are larger than life. The Fireman is one of them. He looks gruff and road-hardened and ready to take whatever the hell you can dish out and pay you back double then drink you under the table plus beat you in the sprint or give you the lead-out from hell that you’ll remember for a thousand years if you ever manage to come around it, but it doesn’t take anything at all to get underneath the callused exterior and find a heart as large and kind and generous as any, anywhere.
Maybe it’s because his day job involves roadside visits to catastrophic freeway collisions, or because his night job takes him to blazing infernos venting poisonous gas and smoke and death, or because his summer holidays take him to raging wildfires throughout LA County, maybe that’s what explains him, but I think there’s more to it than that; I think there’s something of the man, the husband, the father, the patriarch who opens his door to friends and feeds them from his table until they can eat no more and swallow not another single drop, this is what explains him, he is a throwback to the days of the tribe, he would have been the leader of the clan, the first one to throw the spear or lead the charge or repulse the invading horde, the first one to christen the infant or bless the newly wedded couple or mark the newly conquered ground as hallowed, it’s this, his Stone Age mantle of hunter, gatherer, and leader of the tribe that makes him what he is, the one we all look up to without knowing why.
Which is a fancy, long-ass way of saying he stopped to help New Girl change her flat.
In a flat fucking jiffy.
Then he paced her up the Switchbacks to a new personal Strava record.
Then he continued on his way after perfecting her day and restoring her smile before she could even say “Thanks.”
Mud stockings
New Girl got home from her Donut, legs covered in mud, and after cleaning up she got to work.
An hour and a half later she was knocking on the firehouse door. A burly fireman answered. “Yes?”
“Here,” she said. “These are for you guys.”
“Oh,” said the fireman. “Is it something we said?”
She laughed. “It’s something you DID, silly.”
“You gonna let me in on the secret?”
“No,” she said with the biggest of smiles.
The firehouse dude smiled big, too, the circle now complete.
Wankmeister captures first Donut hill win of 2012!!!
January 21, 2012 § 8 Comments
It was a nasty, rainy, windy, cold Friday night, and FB was alive with the chatter of quitters, fakers, freeloaders, pretenders, and wishful thinkers, all industriously polishing their rusty collection of excuses until each one shone with the brilliance of a diamond.
“I hate to clean my bike!”
“It’s daaaaaangerous!”
“Weather will clear up later…maybe!”
“My periodization calls for an off-day tomorrow.”
“I can’t miss Junior’s indoor kiddie soccer practice!”
“Clarinet recital–Pooky would be devastated if I missed it. They’re only young once, you know!”
“Getting ready for the LAVRA series; track workout tomorrow.”
I smiled grimly at each lame excuse, thin veneer they were to cover the cowering, quaking souls that lay beneath. None of this surprised me. We were in Southern California, the birthplace and stoutest bastion of the fair weather cyclist. Unlike the soldiers of the Great Plains, the warriors of the Northeast, or the sunbeaten marauders of the South, the SoCal cyclist needed only a hint of moisture to send him scurrying back under the blankets.
Rise and rain
I awoke at 6:30, went into the kitchen, brewed a cup of black rat poison, and laced it with cream so heavy that the congealed fat created giant buttery blobs floating on the surface. On cold, rainy days the lard forms a protective layer inside the arterial wall and prevents the blood from getting cold. I drank deeply from the life-giving elixir.
Next I slathered on a thick layer of Crazy Alchemy embro, cutting it with water to speed the absorption into my skin. Within minutes a small wildfire began running from my ass down to my toes. Tipping my hat to the elements I even donned knee warmers. After a quick bowl of oatmeal I was off.
The drop down VdM was wet, windy, treacherous, and cold. Unable to pedal much due to the buffeting winds, by the time I reached the Donut launching pad at 8:00 the turnout was just as I had expected: the hardest of the hard, the toughest of the tough, the dumbest of the dumb, the flailingest of the flail. I stared stonily, turned my bike without so much as saying “good morning,” and rolled out.
Let the pain rain down
I kept the pace stiff all the way to Malaga. Through the stop sign, down the short drop, and then full throttle. The agony I was inflicting was so massive and so sudden that I could imagine the happy smiles of those who had stayed home in bed to quaff Earl Grey tea and munch their strumpets. Would they rather be at home–surrounded by strumpets–or here–surrounded by a freezing rain and a wall of pain?
As usual, no one came to the front. The Big Orange softmen? Not today. The Big Blue teammates? Nix. The strongmen of SPY? Nowhere to be seen. Today’s strategy, to let Wankmeister pull ’til he blew, would fail, and fail miserably.
Through Paseo del Mar and up the Lunada Bay Elementary bump I kept the gas on, imagining the whimpering, crying, pleading, and begging that might have been going on behind. But today there would be no mercy.
Some days you just have it
I stayed on the front through Golden Cove, battling the wind, and without breaking my cadence cruised easily through the sprint. No Perez came shooting by; no one wanted to challenge anything this day. It was written thus in the stars.
By the time I hit Trump my legs were feeling a bit heavy. The cold rainwater had soaked down next to my skin, my feet had become chilled, and a constant drizzle of rain ran down the inside of my rain jacket, down the collar of my jersey, through my undershirt and against my back. No mind. Pain is in the eye of the beholder. However bad I felt, it would have been worse for anyone else. As it had been from Malaga, there wasn’t a single rider who wanted to tangle with Fate.
At the bottom of the Switchbacks I jumped hard. I knew no one would come around, or even think about coming around. I pedaled on, going harder and faster until the only turning wheels and the only hard breathing I could hear were my own. As I rounded the last turn I glanced back. No one in sight. I cruised up to the college and raised my hands to celebrate this unparallelled victory on the Donut Ride.
Oh…did I mention that I was the only one who showed?
Cycling in the South Bay 