The Adventures of RandoBoy

Promises are Made to be Eaten

2012-01-27T04:53:00.000-08:00

I have a tactic that gets me through the tough times on long, tough rides. It's one of the tools that I pull out about two-thirds of the way through the ride, when my spirits sink and I need that classic carrot on a stick ... incentive to continue to pull the overloaded cart that my ass has become. And "carrot" is an apt allegory, because the thing that drives me to the ride's completion is often food. Glorious food.

Of course, a real carrot would not do. I can honestly say that nothing that still qualifies as a vegetable has been enough to make me finish a ride. I do love me some french fries, but those are about as much a vegetable as ketchup is (and the ironic thing about that episode is that the tomato is a fruit).

No, for any honestly epic ride, I am a junkie for junk foods.

On hot rides, I scream for ice cream ... although ice cream only acts as the foundation. Two scoops served over brownies, with slices of banana and pineapple, and liberal doses of chocolate and caramel sauce poured on top. Oh, and some nuts ... and maybe I can put some crushed Butterfinger pieces on top. Ooh, whip cream!

On triple-digit temperature days, that's the kind of carrot that will get you home.

When it's cooler I am craving pizza. I actually designed a permanent route to start and end from downtown Franklin, TN, just so I could easily get to the Mellow Mushroom there. I start planning my toppings around Snow Creek Road at mile 100, fantasizing about spicy sausage and onions ... or maybe ham and pineapple.

Lately, however, I've been going straight to the gutter -- a restaurant that makes few, if any, presumptions of haute cuisine. Man Food for Real Men.

Arby's.

Now, you were probably thinking Hardee's or McDonald's, but Puddy of Seinfeld fame liked Arby's, and Puddy was definitely a Man's Man.

About mile 100 this past Saturday, I promised myself Arby's. I don't break promises, especially when I make them to someone as important to me as I am, so I quickly got cleaned up and loaded up after the ride, pulled out the GPS, and looked up the nearest one.

It was not particularly "near." I had to get on the Turnpike, go south 20 miles, get off the turnpike (and pay a toll), and then drive three miles west to get to an Arby's. But, a promise is a promise.

When I finally got there, my needs were fulfilled. Two Beef 'n Cheddars: Thin slices of (what I can only assume is, and frankly don't care if it is not) roast beef and thick orange gooey cheese product served on a mass-produced bun that makes no pretense of artisanal bakery and such frivolities as "taste." The bun is merely the delivery system for the twin bombs Beef and Cheddar, much like a Titan rocket for an ICBM.

And Arby's Sauce -- a spicy sweet tomato-based concoction that brings out the best tastes of the Beef and the Cheddar. For years, Arby's placed large bottles of this sauce on all of the tables, so you could slather it on your food with abandon. They've cut that back, now, so that you have to dispense your own sauce into little paper cups. Tedious, true, but not nearly as difficult as opening a whole slew of those little foil packets that Taco Bell uses to make their condiments inaccessible.

For two Beef 'n Cheddars, I need nine little cups of Arby's Sauce. The cups must be moderately full, too -- don't just give it one shot from the squirty dispenser, but take care to fill to the brim. Also, make sure that you get 12 paper napkins.

You're then ready to begin ...

Open the sandwich, pour half of a cup of Sauce inside, close it, and take a bite. This initial bite creates a valley into which you can then pour the next layer of Sauce.
Apply sauce and bite. Make sure that you are leaning over the table, since if you are really applying enough sauce then it is going to drip on your fingers and chin.
Wipe your fingers and chin after every other bite. Again, if you're doing this right then a napkin will only last for two wipes, tops. The last bite will be particularly messy ... but it is so worth it since all of the gooey cheesy goodness is now properly saturated with Sauce.

Inevitably, I make little mouth noises while eating my Beef 'n Cheddars. Yes, it's often kind of slurpy sounds, but there's also a lot of "Mmmm..." going on. It rarely bothers anybody sitting more than two booths away.

I ate both of my Beef 'n Cheddars, but could only finish half of my Curly Fries. I refilled my drink for the long drive back to Naples, and headed out to my car. My hunger had again been appeased, and I felt as I would explode in rapturous rupture.

I felt like a happy tick. Mmmm ...

Bringing a Steel Knife to a Carbon Fiber Gunfight

2012-01-24T08:53:00.000-08:00

In Monday's post, I told you about doing a 200K out of Jupiter hosted by the Florida Central region. As I mentioned, this 200K was not like Tennessee 200Ks. For one thing, 84 starters is four times the normal turnout there ... particularly in January. Another difference was the pace, since the lead group finished in under six and a half hours.

Of course, I'm pretty sure that there were a lot of riders that rode at a more conventional pace. Out of 84 randonneurs and randonneuses, there had to be some getting in near the final control closing time ... and some that didn't finish at all. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in the course of 130 miles, even if the terrain is pancake flat and the temperatures absolutely perfect. Also, fighting a headwind for the 60 miles back to Jupiter must have taken a toll on a few folks.

Another difference between Florida and Tennessee brevets was the equipment being used by the riders. For example, the front pack was lead most of the way by four of these:

Of course, a recumbent can be a very fast bicycle, particularly over flat terrain. Getting under the wind is great for Florida brevets.

If you doubt the speed of a 'bent, check out the records at the Sunrise Century in Clarkesville, TN. This ride has been called the fastest century in America. Although the route is not as flat as Florida, the winds are lighter. Doyce Johnson, a friend of mine from the Gran Fondo Fixies 2008 RAAM crew, currently holds the record time on that century at 3:44:55. He did this riding a recumbent in the elite peloton.

I only counted half a dozen recumbents Saturday. Most of the bikes looked more like this:

Now, I'm used to showing up at brevets with a bicycle that hits the middle range on randonneuring convention. I consider my titanium Lynskey touring frame the perfect mixture of comfort and speed, particularly riding on Continental GatorSkin tires on my 32- and 36-spoke count Mavic Open Pro rims and Shimano Dura-Ace hubs. My handlebar bag on the front holds all of the stuff that I might need on a 200K, and I can always put my Arkel TailRider on the rear rack for longer rides when I might need more tubes or room to stow spare clothing. And I may not need that little chainring on my triple crank often, but when I need it then I am really glad to have it.

There were usually a couple of aggressive racing frames at Tennessee 200Ks, but you also had a lot of lugged steel frames with down-tube or bar-end shifters. Most bikes had GatorSkin or Armadillo tires, and 700x25c was considered narrow. Riders might or might not have brought their lights and reflective gear on these rides, even if they were sure that they would finish before nightfall. Stuff happens, but above all you finish the ride. It's usually better on a brevet to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

The riders Saturday were not as concerned about this, and instead focused on speed. Slip through the wind. Ride light ... although this probably only mattered when we were crossing bridges. Most frames were carbon fiber, as were many saddles. I didn't see a single Brooks B-17 saddle out there. Racing wheels were prevalent, although most of them had good stout tires mounted on them. Frame pumps were rare. Almost everybody had a fairly large saddle bag -- as in the above picture -- to carry the tools and tubes we typically need. About a third of these had a folding tire attached, which was smart given the poor condition of Florida bike lanes and shoulders.

Taking a back seat was self-sufficiency. Given the turnout, this was logical. If something broke that you couldn't fix, odds were that another rider with the right tool or part would be along in a minute. The faster you were, the better your chances of encountering that helpful rider. And, probably more important, the faster you were the easier it was to stay with a group for those 60 miles back into the wind. Riding three hours at 20 mph in a paceline is much easier than riding four hours at 15 mph all by yourself ... but that does fly in the face of the whole "self-sufficiency" thing.

So, these bikes were probably good choices for Saturday's ride. I was happy with the comfort of a touring frame and good Terry saddle ... but then, I wasn't out to break any records. If I want to do under 6:30 at this event next year, I'll bring the Bianchi and a Max Watzz mindset.

It will be interesting to see what everyone brings to the 300K and 400K, if I ride them. With the right group, a 300K without lights here is possible, but a 400K in less than 14 hours is hard work. Personally, I would not want to do 250 miles listening to the hum of a carbon fiber wheelset.

A 200K Like No Other

2012-01-23T08:10:00.000-08:00

It had been four months since I last rode a brevet, and it was time for me to get back into "real" randonneuring ... as opposed to just going out and doing an ad hoc 125-mile-plus ride. The Central Florida region of Randonneurs USA was holding a 200K this past Saturday out of Jupiter, FL -- just under three hours drive on the east coast -- so I headed over there for the fun.

Since I turn 53 this Friday, a 200K brevet also allowed me to get in that "twice-my-age" mileage ride that I've been doing for about 10 years on the weekend before or after my birthday. I may still get in another 106 miles this coming Sunday by doing a t-shirt century here in Naples, but now it's entirely optional.

When I got to the hotel where the ride began, I could not believe the size of the crowd.

Tim Bol, the Regional Brevet Administrator (RBA), told me later that there were 84 starters. In Tennessee, we never had more than 20 starters for any brevet that I could remember.

As I rolled up await rider instructions, I talked briefly with a bevy of Bachettas. I was wearing my Gran Fondo Fixies jersey, and the leader of this group remembered us from RAAM in 2008, where he had raced. As you would expect from someone of that caliber, he pulled the lead group for most of the ride, finishing in six hours and 29 minutes.

Since it was a big crowd, there was a big fast pack at the front as we started. The sun had been up for almost an hour, but traffic was still manageable.

As we rolled north, we had a light wind at our backs. The pace remained high at the front, and the group thinned down to about 30 riders or so.

Tim had put together an excellent route, going through some lovely state parks and secluded residential areas. Since the route paralleled Hwy A1A most of the way, cars didn't much bother with the secluded smaller roads that we were on.

We even had some shady spots, biking beneath the boughs of beautiful Banyan trees.

The speed remained fast, as you would expect in a group seeking a sub-seven-hour 200K. While it was not too difficult to sit in on this pack at this pace, it was a little unnerving when we would blow through red lights and stop signs, and barely miss little old ladies in pedestrian crosswalks. Obviously, I was able to still enjoy the view -- or I wouldn't have taken all of these pictures -- but moving along like this was not what I did brevets for.

The lead group split about two miles from the first control, since about half of us were not willing to run the red light over US1. A few of us nonetheless hammered our way up the road after the light changed, and had just about caught back on when we got to the control.

All of the controls were at parks manned by RUSA volunteers. This was also very different for me, as Tennessee typically used convenience stores for controls, staffed by clerks who have to find pens. Tim had coolers full of cold Gatorade, water, and soft drinks; bags of chips and pretzels; and lots of cookies. It was pretty easy to get your card signed, top off bottles, eat something, and get back out. Other than the card-signing thing, it was more like the rest areas of a fast t-shirt century.

I purposely did not jump out with the recumbents and the fast group when they soon went back out. I was not looking for that kind of personal best ride, and wanted to enjoy the view instead. I pulled out on my own, and slowly formed a group of riders who had missed or fallen off the pace of the lead pack.

About a mile from the control, we passed the four recumbents fixing a flat. Soon, we entered another state park as we passed a nuclear power plant.

Suddenly the recumbents came by us, having fixed their flat. I thought that we would all jump on as we rolled through the park, so I did. In a few minutes, I realized that I was the only one from my group to do so.

Team Bachetta cruised north at about 27 mph through the park, and caught back up with the lead pack just before Fort Pierce.

As we hit the Fort Pierce Inlet (where you can just see the small container ship in the above picture), I decided to go back to my plan from the previous control and slow down a bit. This gave me a chance to enjoy the scenery.

Obviously, Fort Pierce is a boat town. The route went past a huge dry stack marina. Note the bow of the speed boat sticking out of the wall in the picture below.

There were also lots of boats in "real" docks ...

... and sailboats on moorings.

Of course, I had to stop and pull out my route sheet for the first time that day, since I now had no idea where the turns were. At least in this way it was more like a normal brevet, since I had to actually navigate for a while instead of looking for arrows on the road.

We went past the National Navy UDT (Underwater Demolition Team) SEAL Museum. I had to get a picture of this for the RandoDaughter's boyfriend.

About here another group of riders came by, and I jumped on.

They were still doing a fast pace, but were not as driven as the lead group. For example, they would slow down for pedestrian crosswalks when we got to the beach.

That was good, because there were a lot of pedestrians out by this time. It was almost 11 am as we hit the top end of the route -- almost 70 miles in three hours -- where the control was.

We pulled in just as the lead pack was pulling out. There was a lot of scrambling to catch up -- unlike the SEALs, there was none of that "No Man Left Behind" crap here.

Again, the control was manned and fully stocked. I drank a Diet Coke, ate a bag of pretzels and a cookie, filled my bottles, and grabbed another bag of pretzels for the road. When the next big group rolled out, I went with them.

We started out with a pretty large pack, most of which was a randonneuring group that called themselves the Crazy Amigos. They were a lot of fun. Even though we were working pretty hard trying to maintain 20 mph into a headwind, they still joked and chatted some at intersections and stop signs.

This group was also a little better about slowing down in congested beach-town areas.

Although it was a fairly calm day by Florida east coast standards for January, the wind made us work pretty hard as we rolled alongside the Indian River. Fortunately, the beautiful water on one side and the stately homes on the other made for great views.

We had picked up some folks from the lead pack on Indian River Road, and thus had from 15-20 cyclists. Apparently, this was frustrating to a lot of the cars here. I felt a little bad for them, but this should not have been a road for anyone trying to get anywhere fast, since it's really an exclusive neighborhood of older homes on a secluded, scenic road. Eventually, a Sheriff's deputy passed us with his lights flashing, hollering something at us.

I found out later that they will tickets cyclists for not riding single-file on this road, and by Florida law they can do that if you're impeding traffic. As you can see, we were single-file. After he got ahead of us, he pulled over and got out. As we were passing, he was calling at us to "Get off the road."

We didn't. Maybe he wanted us to get on the shoulder ... or better yet the sidewalk. The above picture gives you a good view of those options. He probably meant for us to all pull into somebody's yard and wait for the cars behind us to go through, but that can be even more dangerous on this kind of road.

Pretty soon we came to an intersection with US1, and a dozen cars swept past us to return to the speed that they considered their right. This is the downside of living in paradise: You get blind to the beauty that is around you every day, so you spend your time scurrying instead of meandering and gawking. Slow down. Enjoy the view.

Not far past this we came to the penultimate control, where Tim had boxes of pizza. I scarfed a couple of slices and sat for a minute, watching a lady play with her dog at a nearby fountain. The dog was trying to bite the columns of water shooting up, and it was a hoot.

I also drank two more Diet Cokes and refilled my bottles. I knew that I was a little dehydrated, since it had taken far too much work to eat a bag of pretzels on the road earlier. I wasn't making enough saliva, and ended up having to swallow lumps of chewed pretzel mush. The break gave me a chance to drink and chat some with Tim -- we were trying to remember what ride we had done together where we had previously met. I also got a little more information about the upcoming Florida brevets.

Soon, the Amigos were ready to go again, and off we were off to climb over some more bridges.

Ten miles out from the control, we were just on the pace to finish the brevet in under seven hours when some debris in the road caused the pack to swerve and hit their brakes, and two bikes went down. Both riders had only minor scrapes, but one had blown out his tire badly enough to need a boot. Half of the pack went on, in search of that fast time, but I stayed with the Amigos who were helping the downed rider boot and repair his tire.

As we got going again, we slowed down a bit to make sure that the boot would hold. We were retracing our northbound route at this point, and everyone -- not just cyclists -- was out enjoying an extraordinary day.

As we neared Jupiter, the pack was just down to the Crazy Amigos and me.

About two miles from the finish, I fell off the back to spin my legs out and rest. This also gave me a chance to get a decent picture of the Burt Reynolds and Friends Museum, which I had seen early in the route.

From there, it was up and over one last bridge to cross the Intracoastal Waterway.

My finishing time was still under 7:30, and I felt pretty good about it. My legs were tired, but not unbearably so. Most importantly, I had met some really nice folks and had my first introduction to Florida randonneuring. Of course, if this is what a normal brevet is like in Florida, it may take me a while to get used to it.

The Most Incredible Bicycle Route Ever

2012-01-20T08:56:00.000-08:00

I found a new route Monday that has got to be the most fun thing that you could possibly ever do on a bicycle ever. And those two "evers" are not a typo -- it was just that good a route.

Even better, it was SOPA-compliant. It didn't use anybody else's intellectual property at all ... and that's tricky around here where every decent cycling road has markings from being on somebody's t-shirt century. I avoided that problem by making it a ride done only in my own mind, and while you would think that the limited size there would make for a very short ride, I found it was quite roomy. Like it's barely been used and almost free of clutter. Who'd of thunk?

Obviously, not me.

I would love to tell you about the ride, but that would force me to use things called "words." Other people have probably already used these words, so that might constitute a SOPA violation. Instead, just imagine that best ride in the world in your own head, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Imagining it now? Hmmmm ... isn't it nice? Watch out for that ... oh, never mind. You saw it.

Wow. Wasn't that fun? And my legs still feel fresh. I may ride this route every day, from now on. Or at least until I get a saddle sore from sitting on the sofa.

What I Want for My Birthday

2012-01-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

I was talking with someone the other day about one of the causes of the problems that cyclists here in southwest Florida have with cars. It all came down to a lack of predictability.

"They have no idea what we're going to do," my friend said. "They see racers run red lights and stop signs. They see guys on beater bikes on their way home from work at 8 pm with no lights, getting on and off the sidewalk. They see retirees on beach cruisers going to the coffee shop, pedaling against traffic as if they were out for a walk."

"To people in cars, we're just idiots on bicycles, and we're unpredictable."

This is even more true here during the tourist season. Friday was a great example. I was on my bike, noodling around and running some errands. I came to a four-way stop where there were already cars waiting to my left and right. They all stopped and looked at me as if I might roll through without stopping, so I made a point of being a good citizen. I came to a full stop, and even put a foot down. The car on my right then went through, which is how four-way stops are supposed to work.

At this point, I had the right of way to go through the intersection. But, rather than stick to the rules, the car on my left went, followed immediately by the car behind him. He wasn't going to wait for anybody. Then, the second car on my right started inching forward, so I just jumped on the pedals to roll through and around everybody.

If I hadn't, I might still be there. But, in doing that, I probably left a couple of drivers shaking their heads saying, "Stupid bikes. Can't follow the law. Grumble. Grumble."

A couple of blocks further, I came to another four-way stop. Again, I stopped completely. There was a car coming up to the stop on my left. I assumed that he was going to obey the sign and stop, so I started up. He did a "California rolling stop" through the intersection and just missed me, and then he honked at me as he sped away.

It was then that I got a brilliant idea for what I want this year for my birthday: A hologram projector.

Now, my birthday is still a couple of weeks away, so you've got some time. I couldn't find one on Amazon, but I've seen them in lots of computer games and in Star Wars. You may have to invent it, but how hard could that be?

All I know is that I want one.

It's got to run on DC power -- preferably with "AA" batteries, since I need to mount it on the bike. And I would like to be able to switch between about half a dozen projected images. When turned on, it would cloak me and my bicycle, making us look like something else.

When noodling through neighborhoods, I want to switch on the hologram projector so I look like this:

People expect these to be moving slowly ... maybe stopping at each mailbox. They wait to pass until it's safe. They behave nicely, because that may be their postal person at the controls, and if they are mean to their postal person then they may suddenly stop getting those Victoria's Secret catalogs.

Here's another one that would work nicely:

Again, frequent stops. When cars pass these, they give lots of room. Folks also don't tend to tailgate them, since these trucks don't tend to leave a pleasant aroma in their wake.

When riding out in the back country, I would use this one:

Most country folk are patriotic, so they might just pull over and salute. Others would be worried that I was a scouting group from the Feds investigating that recent massive purchase of nitrate-based fertilizer. Hopefully, they would then lay low, since I can't put up much resistance to an armed response from my bicycle. Best I can do is Shock and Ouch.

For most of my riding, however, I would use this one:

You think anybody's going to pass this bad boy too closely on Vanderbilt Beach Road? You think anybody's going to pass this bad boy at all on Vanderbilt Beach Road?

RandoBoyScout Part II: Return of the Middle Ring

2012-01-13T04:42:00.000-08:00

I was just kidding yesterday. There's no bear in this story, although there could have been since Florida has Black Bears. They're protected, of course, so if one had wanted to eat me it would have been my ecological duty to be devoured. This is why you're supposed to sleep with a sprig of parsley on your belly when camping in Florida.

Last post, I described my trip up to Caloosahatchee Regional Park to camp overnight. I didn't say this outright, but you hopefully read between the lines: It was a blast! About the only way that it could have been better would be if somehow there had been no cars on the road with me, but even that was only an issue on a few of the busier roads when someone would pass me close enough to rock the bike. Otherwise, the weather was great, the people were nice, and the country was beautiful.

I slept fairly well Tuesday night. The ThermaRest is not quite as cushy as the worst hotel bed you've ever been in, but is better than a rock wall next to the Trans-Canadian Highway. I awoke a few times, and even got chilly after midnight. When I got up to use the (very nice) bathroom at the campground about 5 am, I briefly considered packing up and starting south. I had gotten a good eight hours of sleep at this point (if you put it all together) and felt good, but opted to wait until daylight instead.

I almost regretted that decision when the wind started moving the trees a bit just before sun-up, followed by a brief rain shower. I went ahead and began packing inside the tent, however, and the rain ended before I got out. It was only after I had begun breaking down the tent when I remembered that I had not yet taken a picture. So, here's a shot of the partially disassembled tent:

After a hot shower, I got dressed and finished loading everything back on the bike. I was on the road just after 8 am.

The wind had died down, so I made good time to the convenience store on Hwy 31. I had a quick cup of coffee and a sausage croissant, and then continued south.

Hwy 80 wasn't as busy as the day before, and Orange River Boulevard was quiet but for school buses heading back to the barn on Leonard Boulevard. As I was going the same way, I saw a lot of these buses. Fortunately, they all passed nicely -- a good thing, since when you're on a bike a school bus passing you at 60 mph has more "road suck" than just about any vehicle.

It was also on this stretch that I saw more markings for another club ride. Apparently, there's a route just for some guy named Ike.

The wind came up as I got to Gateway, but it didn't really begin blasting until I returned to Treeline Avenue. I was ready for "Second Breakfast" anyway, so I stopped for a break at the Dunkin' Donuts just past Daniels Parkway.

As I headed towards Southwest Florida International Airport, the wind was mostly in my teeth. Passing cars pushed the wind around, so I was forced to maintain a pretty tight line in the right-most third of the bike lane and grip the handlebars more than I care to do while trying to stay low under the wind. That evening, my shoulders were as sore as they get from a tandem tour.

I was glad for the half-mile break on Estero Parkway, where I cut over to the west side of I-75.

On a clear day you can see ... well, about as much as you see from here.

Then it was another 20 miles into the wind on Three Oaks Parkway. I looked down at the bike computer to see that I was going 12 mph and thought "I may not be working hard, but I'm working hard enough to go faster than this."

So I did something that I haven't done in months: I shifted to the middle chain-ring. It was a pleasant surprise to see that the front derailleur still worked.

Now, this did not make me faster. In fact, it probably made me slower. But I knew that I had two hours to ride less than 30 miles, and a few of those would be going west on Vanderbilt Beach Road where the headwind would be gone. Shifting chain-rings was almost like shifting my brain. This wasn't a race, or even a brevet. There was no closing time for the next control -- I was just riding home. If I was late for my 2 pm conference call, it was no big deal.

I was a bike tourist, with big panniers and a bedroll on the back of my bike to prove it. This gave me the right to go just as slow as I wanted.

Of course, I was still happy when I finally saw this sign:

From here it's a few miles going west (off the wind), followed by more sheltered roads south through Pelican Bay. I was home in time for my conference call, but was glad to be able to use the mute button. Otherwise, everyone would have been treated to the sounds of RandoBoy devouring a bunch of food.

So, was it fun? Yes! Will I do it again? Damn straight! I may have to change the front fork on the Lynskey so I can put a rack on it (it's carbon fiber, and that's supposedly a no-no), but otherwise I felt like I had the right gear in the right place on my bike, and enjoyed a generally comfortable ride. The tour that I'm considering will have a few more hills, but I think that if I keep my daily mileage requirements down to a proper level I will be okay.

I may have to figure out a way to carry a small cooler, however. The parsley got a little wilted on the way home.

RandoBoyScout

2012-01-12T05:38:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about what kind of "goal event" to do this year, and one of the options is a long self-supported tour. It will differ from other tours that I've done in the following ways:

It will be really long. Like maybe 1,000 miles all told. Thus, it will probably take at least two weeks.
Since two weeks of hotels is expensive, there will be camping. That means sleeping in a tent probably two out of every three nights.
Since RandoGirl does not like to sleep in a tent and doesn't get much vacation in her new job, I may fly solo. We will save her two weeks for more plush destinations (i.e., ones that don't require inflating mattresses and fending off marauding mosquitoes).

To be honest, this is something that I have been working up to for a few years -- buying the camping gear when it goes on sale, targeting my bicycle purchases towards something that can handle the load. This is actually why my Lynskey has mounts for a rear rack.

While route scouting last week, I discovered that there is a campground up near Alva, about 65 miles from our home. Since the weather has been perfect (even by southwest Florida January standards) and I had an open "day" in my schedule, I decided to try out my bicycle camping setup by riding up Tuesday afternoon, camping overnight, and riding back Wednesday morning.

I say "day" because I actually had two half-days. Tuesday morning, I had meetings and work up to noon, and Wednesday afternoon I had more meetings. That's how semi-retirement works.

OK, first, for all of the bike nerds that read this blog, I've got to show you my setup.

Yep, that's the DynaHub on the front. I brought my E-Werks to charge my cell phone, although I didn't need it. Didn't need the headlamp, either, but I really wanted to bring all the stuff that I might need. Real-world test and all that.

Does the ThermaRest make my bike's butt look big?

The side view. If it looks back-heavy, it was. Pretty quickly, I decided that I've got to find a way to put a rack on the front of this bike, and move some of the load up there. Any time that I would stand, I had to be very careful not to rock the bike much or it would get more swishy in the back than a hootchie-cootchie dancer. Gee-haw, you betcha!

I took the usual way north, using the bike lanes on Vanderbilt Beach and Livingston. The wind out of the south pushed me briskly along, and I was soon into Lee County.

Just beyond this, I passed a group of cyclists headed north. Two of them were actually not with the rest of the group, and they joined me in riding up to Coconut Point. They were interested in where I was going and what my plans were, and I found myself riding a little harder than I needed to while with them. I enjoyed the company, but was glad to turn off for lunch at Panera.

While parking my bicycle at the restaurant, a lady came by to also ask about my bike setup. Her teenage granddaughter was with her, and she told me that the granddaughter's mother had once done a summer bicycle tour of New England, camping along the way. "You just can't do that kind of thing any more," she said. I hope that she's wrong.

Fed and rested, I was soon back on the road going north. Just past the airport, I cut east to go through Gateway, as I had done a few weeks ago. This route is a little longer, but avoids a couple of truly horrible roads that lie on the direct route.

From there, I picked up the Everyone Rides route through Lehigh Acres and Buckingham. You have to get on the shoulder of Hwy 80 -- a speedy six-lane -- for a mile or so of this, so I took a break and stopped at Manatee Park.

I even went over and looked at the manatees (manati?). All you can see is their noses when they poke them up in the air. They hang out here because there's a power plant just upstream, and this time of year they like the warm water that comes from the cooling towers.

A little further up the road I stopped at Publix and bought a sandwich, snacks, and fresh drinks to go. I jammed all of this into my panniers, and then went up 31 to North River Road. There were all kinds of road markings here.

There are two parks up here where you can camp. The first one has campsites on the river, and they've got a bunch of facilities. But it's $24/night, and I was trying to keep it simple.

As you can tell from the shadows, it was getting late by now. Another four miles finally got me to Caloosahatchee Regional Park about 5:30 pm. I quickly picked a campsite, signed some papers, paid my $12, set up my tent, slathered on some bug repellent, get everything off the bike and into the tent, and zipped myself in. It was dark then, so I don't have any pictures of the campsite. Trust me when I tell you it was very nice.

After calling RandoGirl to tell her that I had arrived unscathed, I finally ate my sandwich and settled in with a nice book. The campground was so quiet that you could hear cows lowing in a field almost one mile away. I laid back and watched 1,000 mosquitoes attempting to batter through the netting of my tent, feeling like Sauron under seige by a bunch of puny humans.

I fell asleep early, thinking that if the forecast was right, my ride back would be against a fierce headwind. Would I make it back to Naples before the rain came? How would the traffic be in the morning? Little did I know that these were the least of my troubles, as the feral eyes of a two-ton brown bear silently watched me from the woods.

To be continued ...

Hanging Out With a Fast Crowd

2012-01-07T05:39:00.000-08:00

I had a couple of New Year's resolutions regarding this blog. First, I'm going to try to write more regularly this year. Second, I'm going to keep the posts shorter.

The end.

Yeah, you knew I couldn't keep it that short.

Anyway, I haven't written much lately because, frankly, there hasn't been much to say. Not that I haven't been riding my bike -- I have. I ended up with 9700 miles for the year, as planned.

But the rides have been short, by RandoBoy standards, and didn't take much time. Most of my riding at the end of the year was fast because I was with the Naples Velo group -- a super-strong crowd -- doing some well-known routes.

Now, the upside of this kind of hammer-fest is that I now feel really strong. Mostly, I can now hang with these guys for most of the route, although it hurts ... sometime a lot. My inner Max Watzz is ecstatic.

Downside? The rides themselves don't feel real. It's almost like when you travel somewhere in a car on an interstate highway. You cross hundreds of miles of plains and forest, but it all blends together. You remember crossing the Mississippi River, or seeing the Chicago skyline, but they're almost postcard images. You have no recollection of the smell of diesel from the barges or the sun glinting off a skyscraper.

Riding with a fast crowd on a bicycle like this is not as intimate a form of travel. It's almost as if it gets Doppler-shifted into something else.

This past Thursday highlighted the difference. I headed north for 20 miles with the Naples Velo folks, zipping along between 22 and 24 mph in the early morning chill. At Coconut Point, I left them to get breakfast at Panera Bread. At that point in the ride, the scenery was mostly the back wheel of the guy in front of me.

My legs were sore from the hard work, so I took my time eating a scone and coffee. By the time I got back on the route north, the Naples Velo riders were probably back at Fit & Fuel. With nobody to pull me along, I spent the next 110 miles by myself. This meant that I didn't have to keep myself six inches behind the next wheel, but it also meant that I could sit up a bit and enjoy the view.

The wind was blowing a steady 10 mph out of the northeast, so it was slow going up to the end of the bike lane, over a couple of busier roads, and on into Lehigh Acres. From there, I picked up the Everyone Rides route which I had done in December, following the markings on more sedate roads up to the Caloosahatchee River.

I headed east on North River Road to Alva, stopping at the park on the way there. They have campsites available, and I think that this would make a great place to use as an overnight destination to test my bike camping rig setup.

Eventually, the route brought me back to busier roads, and I was soon rolling south towards the airport again. The wind was fully at my back, so it was easy to cruise at 20 mph. If I was still with the fast crowd, we would have been doing 30. But if I was with the fast crowd, I would not have been able to stop at McDonald's 20 miles from home to eat a sorely-needed burger and fries.

The fast rides are really fun, and the Naples Velo members are super-nice. But, on the road with them, it's generally all-out go-fast riding. They may pause at the top of a bridge and admire the view, but otherwise you stop for a few minutes at the turn-around point, or sit afterwards and enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning sun while you talk about the ride or what's going on in life.

It's a wonderful world, and we owe it to ourselves to experience it as fully as possible. Ordinarily, a bicycle is the best way to do this ... but not when all of your rides are wrapped in a cocoon of paceline-powered speed. Even if it means riding solo, I plan to regularly break free of the pack and get intimate with the road again.

Keeping it Short

2011-12-19T15:07:00.000-08:00

Gonna make it. Yep. That 2011 goal I set? Back in January? You know, to keep the overall mileage for the year to less than 10,000? Yep. That one.

Gonna make it.

Wasn't all that hard, really. Cold winter. Then crashing on my hip. Kept going, of course, but the hip ... Well, you know.

Still did a bunch of long rides. January 200Ks. A windy 300K in February. A really fast 400K early March. North Florida makes that easier, even going over the highest point in the state. Then tried to do another. Hip held up okay but ... well, other things acted up.

Then May and June. Cut back some to race. And come July and August I was busy getting ready to move to Naples.

Then late September was The Move. And getting the house ready for furniture. Had to cut back on miles as I figured out some routes. The mileage started getting back to normal.

It actually got back enough that I was tempted earlier this month. Looked at the log. Did the math. Ride 400 miles a week for the last four weeks, and I'd be there. Five-digit-bike-mileage. Fourth year in a row.

No freakin' way.

Don't wanna. Just don't. Don't wanna do it just for the sake of the number. Gotta break the chain, you know? Gonna happen sooner or later. Do it now, and it won't sting as much when I fall short the year I turn 85.

9,700 miles for 2011 will have to do.

'nuff said.

Judge Dread

2011-12-09T13:01:00.001-08:00

I've told you before that, in my experience around cars, you can't judge a book by it's cover (although you can book a judge to read excerpts from her book cover). The BMW that swerves over on you today will look just like the one that stopped to offer help last week while you were fixing a flat. Your best bet is to instead watch for driver behavior that indicates that he/she is under the impression that their time is more valuable than anybody else's. To these people, you are nothing more than a speed bump ... sometimes literally.

One thing that I've discovered here in Florida, however, is the wonderful way that the state has of offering insight into the soul of the being behind the wheel. They do this by offering 120 -- yes, 120 -- specialty plates. And you may think that this is a lot, particularly since Tennessee only had 90 (and still no Share the Road plate), but I've read that Maryland has 700 specialty plates. One for every resident.

Florida has 36 for its various colleges and universities, and nine more for professional sport teams. There's one for every branch of the service, and for the Boy Scouts. There's not one for Girl Scouts, although I hope that somebody gets that going. Maryland is laughing at us.

Most specialty plates promote the driver's private passions. Mine is, of course, predictable:

And, as befits a half-flooded peninsula, there's stuff for the fishermen:

This one says, "I catch fish but don't kill them. Torturing them is enough for me."

This one says, "I catch the swordfish that the last dumb peckerwood tossed back, and I eat the hell out of that mother."

This one says, "I like to eat fish that thrive on nuclear waste from Cape Canaveral."

This one says, "Shoot, man, the ones eatin' poop from Sarasota are much tastier."

This one says, "Y'all are too picky. I like to catch and eat fish from anywhere. They're yummy. Nom, nom, nom."

Now, if you think that these plates are only on the back of extended cab Ford F-350's, you are wrong. They're on the back of Chevy trucks, too. From a cycling perspective, however, I find that these guys usually pass when it's safe, and move over enough. One thing about fishing -- you gotta have patience.

Other plates, however, I watch out for. Like this one:

Most of these people are psycho. Not the Alfred Hitchcock kind of way, but the way in which people say one thing when they mean something entirely different.

"Choose Life." Okay. I like life. I like to live. As best I can recall, I've enjoyed living a whole heck of a lot more than I ever enjoyed being dead. I plan to keep on living for as many years as I can.

I also like to "choose." Take me to Shoney's big breakfast buffet and I am all about the choice. Being able to choose means that you are free, right? And people like freedom ... well, except maybe the Taliban. From what I hear, they are "anti-choice" on a lot of stuff.

Now, if you look into the organizations behind these specialty plates, you'll find that the money from the sale of the plates supposedly goes to support adoption services for unwanted pregnancies. That's a great idea. If people would just stick with that, they'd be literally helping people "choose life."

But we get a lot of nut-jobs down here in Florida who tend to take it a little further, and these folks all have this specialty plate. They don't just want you to choose life -- they want you to choose not to have a choice about life. We've seen them picketing on the side of the road for literally miles. Most of them were really old, waving signs, yelling at the cars.

They were probably the scariest bunch of foaming-at-the-mouth old farts that I have ever seen in my life. Virulent grandmas ... worse than zombies. Definitely against freedom. Might even have been some Taliban in there.

These are the kind of folks that love nothing more than to judge.

"Look at that hussy! That skirt is barely below her knees!"

"Look at that bum begging for money! He's probably not even a veteran. I'll bet he lost his legs by getting drunk and falling asleep on the railroad tracks."

And, of course, "Look at that idiot on that bicycle. Wearing tight clothes -- it's of the devil! He should get a job so he can afford a car."

So I watch out for cars whose plates say "Choose Life," but who really mean "Choose My Way Or Die." They believe (oh, boy, do they believe!) that their time is much more valuable than mine -- and not just because they don't have much of it left. They have Important Things To Do, rather than frivolously pedaling along the back roads of this gorgeous planet on a slow bicycle, intimately enjoying every moment to its fullest.

That's not the life that they would choose for me.

The Restorative Powers of Toffee

2011-12-08T05:57:00.001-08:00

You think to yourself, "Self: You've been riding long distances for a few years now. You know a few things. You know what a tire feels like when it's going flat. You know when you need to take a layer of clothes off, or put a layer on. You know to drink regularly, even when you're not thirsty. And you damned sure know to continuously eat so you don't bonk."

Self chuckles and says, "Yep, yep, I know all that stuff. Gosh." And chuckles again.

In case you haven't noticed, Self is a moron.

So, Wednesday was another excellent weather day here in southwest Florida. Temperatures would stay in the mid-70's all day, with a light breeze out of the southwest. I had a lull at work again (odd how I seem to manage those once a week), and few enough tasks around the house that I could get out just after 9 am.

I went north on the bike lane in my neighborhood, enjoying the last of the morning chill. That morning, the weather report had been of snow showers back in Nashville. Poor things.

After a couple of miles of neighborhood bike lane, I continued north through Pelican Bay. Although there is no bike lane here, traffic is light on the divided four-lane roads, and the speed limits are strictly enforced. The cars are used to seeing all kind of cyclists in here, making for a hassle-free setting.

On one side of the road you get manicured golf courses and villas. On the other side are high rises lining the beach. Not a bad place to ride a bike or take a walk.

From there, it was back to a bike lane on Vanderbilt Beach Road ...

... and then turn in to the bike lane on Livingston ...

... which becomes Imperial Parkway when you cross into Lee County ...

.. and then Three Oaks Parkway before it ends at Alico Road. That's almost 19 miles of bike lane. At this point, Self would say, "Jeepers."

You can see on the other side of Alico where they're building more. Eventually, this thing may go all the way to Fort Myers, which would be pretty cool. If there's a downside to this, it would be that it's pretty mind-numbing. I mean, take another look at the last four pictures. Bike lane next to two or three car lanes. Straight. Level.

Zzzzzz.

As I've said before, it is ridiculous that Florida is one of the states where it is illegal to ride a bike while listening to Primus's live version of "Tommy the Cat" on your iPod. I've never heard of anyone getting a ticket for it, of course, but if it ever happens I hope they protest it to the Supreme Court. Doing a solo century is one thing, but doing it while being forced to listen to nothing other than noisy cars passing you is cruel and unusual punishment.

Anyway, from Alico you cross under I-75 (again, with a bike lane) and continue north on Treeline Avenue. I would show you a picture, but it's almost identical to any of the Livingston pictures.

For fun, I stayed on one of the standard routes there and went east towards the airport.

There's about a mile of this route where you're on the shoulder with cars rushing to make their planes, but it's a wide shoulder so it doesn't suck that much. Then, you turn on an access road that goes towards the freight terminals, putting you on a much quieter road. There are some trucks here, but truck drivers are folks who drive for a living (I guess that's why it's part of their job title), so I've rarely had any problems from them.

I think UPS had more planes going in and out than any of the airlines did. Santa Claus must be coming to town.

The road markings got a little hazy at the end of this stretch, thanks to construction on Daniels Parkway. Once I figured it out, however, I was back on Treeline. At this point, I'd been about 40 miles, so I stopped to refill my bottles. I had not eaten much for breakfast, so I also got a candy bar. Had I just bought three candy bars, things would have been better.

Topped off, I continued north on Treeline, following the marked route again. It cuts east through a huge planned community, where I saw natives riding strange contraptions past ancient burial mounds.

Actually, I think these were more examples of the "people want to live by the water" style of development prevalent here in Florida. The developers give the homeowners what they want by moving a few hundred tons of dirt. Where the dirt was, water pours in. You can then use the dirt to eventually build up the road beds. It's really so simple that it's smart ... although you do have to wonder how the animals that used to thrive on those miles of flatness are adapting to their new aquatic and mountainous terrain. Judging by the volume of dessicated tortoise shells littering the bike paths, I would guess that it's not going well for them.

This took me to the planned community of Gateway.

There are bunches of developments and office complexes in Gateway, so I think that this is supposed to be the Gateway To Prosperity for the area between Fort Myers and Lehigh Acres. I just kept thinking that it was a gateway drug to golf addiction.

As I went north through Gateway, I started to get hungry. I also started to lose the road markings. If there was a turn for the airport route, I never saw it. I did find a new set of arrows, so I used them for a while. When they continued to coax me further east and inland, I pulled out the GPS and found the quickest way back to Treeline. It wasn't fun or pretty, but it worked.

After a few miles of busy roads without bike lane or shoulder, I was glad to be back in the land of mind-numbing simplicity.

But now I was really hungry. I considered stopping at a convenience store, but kept thinking how good a sandwich from Panera would be. There's one at Coconut Point, just off the route, and it's so nice. Why waste time and calories grabbing another 100 Grand bar from that 7-11? Sure, it's right next to you, and you're hungry, but you can hold out until Panera.

That was Self talking again. I'm starting to hate that guy.

I continued south, enjoying bike lanes through Miromar Lakes and past Gulf Coast University, then taking another bike lane on Estero Parkway back to Three Oaks. I finally got to Panera about 1:30 ... 70 miles in to my ride. I parked the bike at the rack and went in, getting more than the usual stares from the lunchtime crowd (What? Everyone doesn't walk in here wearing spandex?). It was not until I went to the rest room later that I realized why: My face was covered in crusty salt and dirt. I looked like Lawrence of Arabia ... but without the blue eyes.

I was kind of woozy standing there, so while they made my sandwich, I scarfed down a big toffee nut cookie. Then I found a table outside where I could eat my sandwich and drink lots of Diet Coke. Half an hour later, I was restored and ready to destroy your puny planet.

Well, maybe not that restored.

Ah, Yes. This is Why We Moved Here.

2011-12-01T15:21:00.001-08:00

I've been whining a lot lately about bike lanes and cranky drivers ... so much that I may have given my loyal reader (hi, Mom!) the wrong impression about cycling in Naples. It's really very nice -- you just have to pick your routes carefully. Of course, ask any one who's ever tried to ride a bike down Old Hickory Boulevard in Brentwood, or Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta, or Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa and they'll tell you the same thing.

For example, I finally figured out a decent route from Naples east into farm country. This is a good route to have when the wind is out of the north -- which it often is -- because it means that you can do a century that doesn't require 50 miles of pain.

Thursday, the wind was out of the north. A cold front had blown through, so it was almost chilly ... perfect riding weather. Since I didn't have any work commitments -- at least, none that I could work on until some other issues were resolved -- it was the perfect opportunity to try out my inland route.

Between the cold and trying to get some things lined up for later in the week, I wasn't able to leave the house until almost 11 am. This meant that I would only have six good hours of daylight to ride my century ... and I somehow needed to stop along the way for lunch. Since the wind was not my enemy for most of the route -- at least, not my mortal enemy -- this was not too tricky. Another plus to riding Florida's flat terrain.

My route started as most of my developing routes do: North through Pelican Bay to Vanderbilt Beach Road. On Vanderbilt Beach, you can go east for 10 miles to the end, with a bike lane the whole way. Then, you cut south towards Golden Gate Boulevard through the Estates. Golden Gate also has a bike lane, plus it's interesting to go through the Estates. If you've never been there, I think this is where all of the really rich folks in Naples live. They must be rich, since they don't waste a lot of their money on their houses or cars.

When the bike lane ran out, I turned back north on Wilson Boulevard to Immokalee Road, then almost immediately hung a right on Randall Boulevard. I was following the orange "T" markings of the local Thanksgiving route at this point, and they had picked good roads.

A left on Everglades Road took me up to Oil Well Road. Things finally quieted at this point, and I was able to get some pictures. There's still a lot of construction there, since this road is being widened to six lanes. Here's a picture of the piles of dirt that they were scooping out of a field nearby, and which they are then slowly grading into the new roadbed to build it up.

Just past this there was a huge steam shovel at work.

As with any digging in Florida, where the dirt had been there was now a lake. When they finish the wider road, it should have a multi-use trail on both sides. It will probably be very pretty since there will be a lot of new lakes.

It was nearing 1 pm when I finally got to Ave Maria.

They've put out their Christmas landscaping there, as you would expect. Publix was even using Christmas colors on their sign.

One thing about Ave Maria: There is no premise of political correctness about "the Holidays." It's Christmas. Period. Lots of Santa stuff, sure, but it's mostly about Jesus's birthday ... or, at least, the date to which they moved Jesus's birthday to draw in the folks that worshipped the winter solstice. And the Druids come in there somehow, too. I don't know. But, hey, who am I to knock anyone for moving somebody's birthday? RandoGirl's birthday is the day after Christmas, but I once had a surprise birthday party for her in June! We wanted to do a pool party. Boy, was she surprised!

Anyway, I stopped for lunch at a place off the town square, across from the big church. Here's a picture of the nave of that church.

Kind of looks like the Pope's hat, don't you think?

I had a really good toasted turkey wrap at the restaurant there. The owner came out and talked to me a bit, and said that she gets lots of cyclists coming up from Naples.

I took Camp Keals Road back down to Oil Well Road. The east side of this road is literally miles of orange groves. I am so looking forward to biking past this when these are in bloom and the air reeks of orange blossoms.

There are always birds at the spillway at the end of this road, and they always fly away when I stop there.

I continued east on Oil Well Road, crossing Florida 29. Past there, you move into cattle country.

A lot of folks don't know this, but cattle is a major industry in Florida. My grandfather's uncle -- I think that makes him my Great Uncle -- was a cattle baron in the 19th century in Florida. His name was Captain Francis A.Hendry, and Hendry County is named for him. My dad used to have some great stories about him, and if half of those were true he was a rapscallion in the grand southern tradition.

Later, I spooked a few more flocks of birds.

I was a little over 50 miles when I was given a sign.

At some point, I had left Collier County. It was time to turn my life around ... or, at least, my bike. Otherwise, I was not going to get home by dark.

As befits anyone leaving prison, I took the straight and narrow path. I could see the few vehicles that were out there long before they caught up with me, and they all gave me plenty of room when they passed. You could tell that this road was mostly used by nice Florida farmers, who tend to take the "live and let live" approach to driving.

I stopped to take off my arm and knee warmers just before I crossed Florida 29. The wind was now mostly behind me, making the 70-degree day very comfortable. The roads along here were all full of flowering purple clover, and the day had turned perfect.

Ordinarily, I don't like out-and-back routes, but I pretty much stuck to the same roads on the way back. The wind stayed slightly behind me, making it easy to cruise along at over 18 mph. Soon, I was back in Naples, stopping at Panera for a big recovery cookie, and back in my driveway before 5 pm. It had been an excellent day to be out on a bike, and I had ridden an excellent route.

I may have to go back to prison again.

This Lane is My Lane

2011-11-27T07:46:00.001-08:00

Naples and the Florida beach towns nearby have a lot of bike lanes. They are a blessing and a curse.

Obviously, it's nice to ride your bicycle in the bike lane. You feel safer there, as if that solid white line -- or maybe the dorky little sideways cyclist icon -- will somehow keep motorists from running you down. And the bike lanes here actually go somewhere, unlike those in other states that get you halfway down a busy road, and then leave you there with cars zipping by at 55 mph. Here, you can use lanes to bike into old downtown Naples, out to the beach, or even to the airport.

But, being along the edge of the road as they usually are, is a bit of a curse. That is where the pavement is usually worst, and where bits of broken glass and other junk collects. In Tennessee, I used to get a flat tire about every other month. In Naples, it's at least once a week.

Bike lanes get bicyclists. That's a big blessing ... and a small curse. Naples has pretty much hit that "critical mass" point at which bicycles are sufficiently ubiquitous that motorists cannot ignore us. We're here, we steer, get over it.

But we sometimes get a traffic jam in those bike lanes -- or maybe a better word for it is culture clash. We have the hammerhead triathletes pushing the 30 mph speed limit trying to pass the beach cruisers going so slow that they would fall over if they weren't tricycles. We also get a lot of bike salmons -- people on bicycles that think that they are pedestrians, and insist on riding against the flow of vehicular traffic. A head-on altercation between these and the guy in the speedsuit doing 30 breaks at least one collarbone and dings the hell out of someone's handlebar basket.

And then there are the pedestrians in the bike lanes. Naples gets as wide a spectrum of runners as it does cyclists -- from marathoners who look like they were carved from a leftover beef jerky to hefty power-walkers cradling Sony Discmans (Discmen?) keeping time to Olivia as they Get Physical.

Sometimes the runners don't have a sidewalk, or don't want to run (or power-walk) on the sidewalk. Usually, I have no problem with this. There are just a few bike lanes in Naples that are labelled "Bike Only," and those seem to be on roads that are busy enough that it would be truly treacherous for the bicyclist to have to weave in and out. So long as runners stay out of those Bike Only lanes, we should all be able to get along. Of course, I've heard a lot of other cyclists yell at runners to "get out of the lane," but I think that's analogous to cars yelling at us to "get out of the road." It just goes to show that you don't have to drive a car to be a dick.

However, the biggest curse of the Naples bike lanes is that they are gilded cages.

You see, between the bike lanes and bike routes with "sharrows," it's relatively easy to ride somewhere ... so long as you just want to get coffee, ice cream, or stop at a convenience store. But if you want to ride your bike to Home Depot or the dentist, you're going to have to get back on the "real" road.

When I leave the bike route and get back on "real" roads here, however, I get a bad feeling from the cars. "What are you doing out here, you idiot," they seem to say. "Why aren't you on Gulf Shore Boulevard where there's a bike lane?"

Because my dentist is over here on Immokalee Boulevard, I want to tell them. And I need a package of stainless steel self-tapping 5/16" screws. Or maybe it's just because I am RandoBoy, and I've got to ramble a little further from home than the bike lane will allow.

Now, it's possible that I'm just being over-sensitive. Maybe the bike lanes and Share-the-Road signs keep cars further away than I'm used to, so that when I go out on other roads the cars feel closer than normal. Maybe it's no different than it was on Franklin Road in Brentwood -- I've just gotten spoiled.

But it doesn't feel that way. It sometimes actually feels openly antagonistic.

I appreciate the bike lanes. Honest I do. I appreciate that the fine taxpayers of Florida were willing to give up a little bit of pavement just for cyclists -- well, us and pedestrians -- and paint a line and the dorky icon. I'm one of those taxpayers now, and am more than willing to have my contributions go to build bike lanes, along with whatever other pork program our fine elected officials deem worthy.

But my taxes also go to build those "real" roads, and I have just as much right to those roads as the cars do. Keep your car out of my bike lane, and I'll keep my bike off your interstate. But don't go acting as if I should limit my cycling to a few hazard-filled hand-me-downs, and that I should then thank you for not running me down on those.

The Me Show

2011-11-19T03:34:00.001-08:00

I tried something Thursday, just for fun. I feigned Facebook diarrhea.

To be honest, I was being a bit of a smart-ass ... well, maybe more than "a bit." Like far too many people, I am "on" Facebook, which means that I have a log in and go in there every once in a while to see what folks are posting. However, I have a theory: 100 years from now, when America is talked about as "that once great Empire," much as we consider the British and Romans today, there will be dozens of History doctoral candidates writing papers that place the blame of our fall squarely -- and rightfully -- at the time that we wasted on Facebook.

"Yeah, I had a sustainable energy solution in 2012, but I had to post this grainy video I shot with my phone of this dude eating 25 Cadbury eggs in an hour."

We will be like the Greeks then: Broke.

Anyway, here's my Facebook posts for the day.

Someone needs to do a t-shirt ride for Restless Leg Syndrome. I am so there.

Thursday at 3:59am near Naples, FL

Woke up. Saw some sunlight. Out of bed.

Thursday at 6:24am near Naples, FL

I also posted some pictures, with the following captions:

Yummy

I need a haircut

Calendar is clear this morning. Looks like a good opportunity for a long bike ride.

Thursday at 7:28am near Nashville

Until I get the espresso machine fixed again, it's French press or nuthin'

Fed and walked the dog. Now she's happy.

Coffee with Carol on the lanai. Not sure if that tree is supposed to die -- but it seems to be its destiny.

Why do FB posts from my iPad think that I am in Nashville, while posts from my iPhone know that I am in Naples?

Thursday at 7:32am near Nashville

Hmmm ... which bike to ride this morning?

... and what to wear?

Getting some cash. My bank is less than a quarter of a mile from our house.

Thursday at 8:10am near Naples, FL

Nice pumpkin muffin at Fit & Fuel Cafe to feed my ride.

Thursday at 8:52am near North Naples, FL

Wild pig road kill. Welcome to Florida.

Grabbing a Twix and fresh Gatorade at the 7-11. Didn't they have a team once?

Share the Road plates for our cars

The day went on from there, of course, but I just couldn't keep posting stuff to Facebook. I obviously lack the level of narcissism required for chronic Facebook diarrhea.

Thinking about it later, however, I came to the realization that Facebook is every individual's opportunity to write, direct, and star in their own reality show. You only air the highlights, of course. Does anybody really want to watch you sleep ... other than creepy people? And, you edit out the stuff that reflects poorly upon you. Nobody ever posts something like, "Just spent half an hour sucking up to my boss, pretending to be fascinated with 'Dancing with the Stars.' He says he might give me a bigger cubicle."

Then I thought more about it, and decided that the only thing that could possibly be more lame would be to regularly write a blog about yourself. You'd have to be a real loser to do that.

I Don't Have to Be Faster Than the Bear ...

2011-11-13T04:09:00.001-08:00

... just faster than the mosquitoes.

Sorry that I've been away so long. Moving chores and work finally quieted down sufficiently for me to do a ride worth telling you about.

One of the first rides I did while we were moving here was to take US-41 down to Everglades City and Chokoloskee. It was scenic, but kind of boring and the traffic was not pleasant. Also, when you ride almost 20 miles in any direction in Florida and then retrace your route back, you're going to have a headwind for at least half of the ride ... maybe the whole way. It's just the way Florida works.

But I liked Everglades City as a destination, and wanted to plan it as part of a 200K loop from Naples. So, when a couple of riders here told me about a route to Ave Maria, I pulled out the maps and found an easy way to plot what I needed. Thursday, I was finally able to test it.

A lot of rides around here use Vanderbilt Beach Road to go west. It's busy, of course, but has a good bike lane.

There are also so many routes that use this road that the drivers are fairly accustomed to bicycles.

I'm not sure what the "M" route is, but it mostly followed my way to Ave Maria. You would think that, if it was the Ave Maria route, it would be "AM," but that might confuse people into thinking that they can only go that way in the morning. They might not have wanted to do just "A" since people would think it's only for the A group riders, for clubs that split into A, B, and C groups.

After going well inland on Vanderbilt Beach Road, I zipped north a couple of miles on Collier Road. Here, you have a multi-use trail, but Collier Road was not horribly busy and would have been fine.

Collier took me to Immokalee Road, which has six lanes for cars and two for bikes. It also has a multi-use trail at points, but there were enough car lanes that I never felt crowded in the bike lane. I get the impression that this road serves partly to get produce out to the coast from the inland farms, but is primarily to get people in to the casino on the reservation in Immokalee.

Traffic finally quieted down when I turned on Oil Well Road. This looks like it will soon have six lanes for cars and two for bikes, but is currently nice and quiet once you get away from Immokalee Road.

For miles, you get the feeling that you're out in the middle of nowhere. Then you get a break between the trees and realize that just beyond them are huge farms and orchards. At one point, I could see at least a full square mile of orange trees.

Eventually, you turn off Oil Well Road and enter the manicured realm of Ave Maria.

I won't go into the history of Ave Maria or what the plan for it is. Suffice to say that somebody has a vision, and it's one of those "If you build it, they will come" kinds of things.

But if you come, you'd better bring a full tank of gas, since this station ain't open yet.

This is the huge church in the middle of the town square. All around it were shops and condominiums. Just off to the west is the college campus. You can see this church from a mile away.

Fortunately, they had a full-service, operational, Publix. It was just like any other Publix in Florida, right down to selling beer and wine ... although the Catholics have never been as sticky about alcohol. I bought a fresh bottle of water, used their bathroom, and went on my way.

I took Camp Keais Road back south to Oil Well Road, then continued east to Hwy 29. I'm not sure whose route that I was on, but there were still road hickeys out. For some reason, however, they did not apparently want to ride the 35 miles on Hwy 29 down to Everglades City.

There is a store where Oil Well Road hits Hwy 29, and the above marking was indicating that I should go to that. I probably should have, because once you head south on Hwy 29, you are on your own for a long, long way.

Fortunately, the road has a good shoulder. It has these weird raised spots on the white line for much of it -- probably to keep cars from running off the road. Instead of rumble strips, they're like rumble pimples.

At one point I actually came across some trees that were changing color. In Florida! Imagine that.

Much of the road goes through the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. There are miles and miles where the road is fenced off, so that panthers don't wander into the road. There are also some nice underpasses, just so that they can get from one side to another.

I didn't see any panthers, of course. But at least I didn't see any road kill panthers.

The wind was somewhat behind me on most of this stretch, so I was doing 22 mph and barely working. I knew that I would have to pay for it eventually, but sure enjoyed it while I had it.

When you come to I-75, you're almost halfway down this long stretch. There are some trucks on this road, but they seem to be heading for the interstate. South of it, the road is more quiet.

There's a nice sign to remind you of how far you have to go before you can fill your bottles.

There are also signs to tell you to slow down for panthers. I was very careful.

The further south you go, the swampier it gets. When you can see the radio tower, you know that you're almost to US-41.

I got to Everglades City about noon -- almost 70 miles in less than four hours. Eating a sandwich at Subway, I began to think that it would not be difficult to do this 200K in less than eight hours, even riding solo.

The wind, however, had other ideas. It made them very clear to me as I began my way northwest on 41.

Those of you who know how to read clouds probably recognize that as the leading edge of a high pressure cell. That usually means that winds are roughly out of the north down my way. So, I slogged along at 15 mph for the next 18 miles, doing my best to tuck low.

I did pass through some pretty spots, of course. This is a planned community along one of the canals that manages the water flow in the Everglades.

There are even some good-sized sailboats at the marina, so there must be deep-water access.

Finally, I got to San Marco Road. I stopped at the store for more water, and then headed southwest for a few miles. It was a nice break, and allowed me to work my climbing legs as I headed over the bridge on to Marco Island.

The marina on the far side of the bridge still has lots of room for the snow birds.

Past the bridge, the road started north again. You get a quiet stretch for a few miles -- other than those crazy gopher tortoises -- and then stop at a convenience store for one last bottle fill. Then, it's dead north on busy Collier Road for about 10 miles, followed by mostly dead north on busy US-41 for 10 miles.

After that, I felt like road-kill tortoise myself.

All Cats are Gray in the Dark

2011-10-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

They don't build them like they used to. In this case, that's not just a cliche with a dangling participle, it's been a pain in the butt for me during the past two weeks.

You see, we bought a 40-year-old house down here in Naples. It's on a quiet street in a great neighborhood, with stores and restaurants and the beach and really good coffee all within an easy bike ride. And there's a group down here that does a lot of non-easy bike rides, too -- the kind of fast stuff that keeps my inner Max Watzz happy -- and their standard routes pass very close by.

But the house is 40 years old. And it's no virgin.

Some of the problems are just because we need technology that wasn't around back then, like broadband. Other problems are because, as Chinua Achebe pointed out, Things Fall Apart. When things fall apart in the tropics -- which Naples technically is -- then things can deteriorate fast.

Anyway, since RandoGirl has corporate housing until the end of the month, we've been getting things fixed in the new house. We're also getting a lot of rooms painted, and a lot of new flooring and carpeting put in, and some stuff re-wired, and some stuff re-plumbed. When it's all done, we will have a great house.

About now, you're probably asking, "So? Why do I care? Isn't this blog about cycling?"

Patience, grasshopper. We're getting to it.

This morning, I had to let the flooring guys in about 9:30. Since I really, really wanted to do some hard efforts on the time trial bike, I decided to get up and ride when the sun wasn't quite up.

I'm tooling along down the bike lane on Crayton Road heading for my time trial road. For those that don't live here, Crayton is a cycling artery for any route that heads towards the older part of Naples. There are quite a few cars on it, but it's got a good bike lane and everyone seems to get along.

Except for this morning, of course.

I was just past Park Shore Drive when a car pulls up next to me with a young man and a woman in it. They roll down their window and ask me to pull over. Well, maybe "ask" isn't the right word. There was definitely a demanding tone, with overtones of indignation.

Now, like most people, I'm a non-confrontational kind of guy. I like to think that we can all talk through whatever problems we might have with one another. But I'm also a good-sized guy, and people don't usually yell demands at me with indignation. I'm probably more the size guy that people either forget about the thing, or run me over. Since I was on a quiet neighborhood road and in an accommodating mood, however, I pulled over.

Whereupon the guy and his girlfriend both start to yell at me that I had just run a red light and that they had to swerve and brake to keep from killing me, and that I had no business to yell at them back there.

What? Did I fall asleep back there or something?

So, I'm trying to get them to clarify, because there is a light on Park Shore Drive, but it was green when I went through. I had seen another cyclist a couple of hundred yards ahead of me, and was wondering if that's who they meant to be yelling at. But they were sure that it was me, and that I yelled at them for almost hitting them when I was in the wrong by running that red light. They said that I should be thanking them for slamming on their brakes and not hitting me.

We went on with this for about a minute -- them venting, and me telling them that I had idea what they were talking about. Then they drove on, and I headed off to do my ride.

But the whole thing kept bugging me. I don't run red lights on my bicycle -- although I have been known to wait through a few just to discover that the weight sensor doesn't detect me, and then dash through when it's completely clear. And I don't yell at motorists unless they are starting to pull out in front of me and I need to make my presence better known. Or if they're being total butt-wads and blasting their horn at me or passing way to close or swerving over as if they're going to run me down.

No, I'm the guy that regularly smiles and waves at passing cars. I signal my turns and stops, and wave cars through when the road ahead is clear for them to pass.

I'm the good guy!

But, I suspect that the angry kids just saw a cyclist going the same way as the one that they had almost hit, and assumed that I was him. So, I was taking the heat for somebody else's error.

No, it wasn't fair. But it's something that all cyclists should keep in mind the next time that they are out riding. When a bunch of us is riding three abreast down a two-lane road and cars start backing up behind us, or when we run a red light or stop sign, or when we jump up on a sidewalk and almost mow down somebody with two bags of groceries heading for the bus stop ... these are the things that give us all a bad name. And if you flip off the car that's been behind your paceline for the last two miles when he floors it to get past, you're not just being a bad ambassador for our sport. You're making it less likely that the driver of that car is going to be as patient when he comes upon another paceline one mile down the road.

Gator Country

2011-10-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was the first weekend of October, and the first Canadian high pressure cell moved in. These high pressure cells are harbingers of the Canadians themselves, and I've been told to expect license plates from Alberta province within the next few weeks.

Reportedly, the Canadian high pressure cells are more welcome here in southern Florida than the Canadian overlords who summoned them. A number of folks here in Naples breathed a collective sigh when the humidity finally fell to below sauna levels ... or it sounded like they did. You can't really hear people breath when you're under water, and it had felt like that prior to the front's arrival.

Saturday was nice. Sunday was glorious. Monday I decided to play hooky and do a long ride.

One of the local bike shops here had a route that went from Marco Island to Chokoloskee. For those of you unfamiliar with southwestern Florida geography, Marco Island is south of Naples, and basically signals the end of a discernible coastline. There's a beach there, but it's mostly canals meandering through mangroves at the edge of the Florida Everglades. If you consider coastal Florida towns "civilization," then Marco Island is the end of civilization for a couple of hundred miles, until you get near Miami on the east coast. That's kind of where civilization starts up again ... if you can call Miami "civilization."

There are two roads that run between Marco Island and Miami: I-75 (this part is called Alligator Alley), or US 41 -- also called the Tamiami Trail, since it connects Tampa and Miami. Law enforcement frowns upon riding a bicycle on any interstate highway, and it really isn't all that much fun. So if you plan to bike east from Naples, you're pretty much stuck with US 41.

I rode to downtown Naples, first, to get a coffee and some breakfast. It was a little after 8 am when I then got on to US 41 for the 12-mile stretch to Marco Island. This part was fairly busy, with six lanes of a traffic, but it also had a bike lane. So long as you watched out for cars doing stupid things, like right-hooking you as they pulled into Publix or pulling out into you from a side street, you were okay.

Since I didn't want to go too far on this first trip, I decided to continue straight down US 41 towards Chokoloskee, rather than turn down Collier Road and go through Marco Island. That was dumb. Not that Collier Road heading out to Marco Island is exactly "quiet," but that part of US 41 was busier than the rest. Next time, I'll know better.

Past San Marco Road -- which is the "return" road from Marco Island -- things were a little better. US 41 is just two lanes there, and the shoulder isn't very good, with those little raised reflective plastic things glued to white chevrons along much of it. But it was quiet enough and straight enough that you could see the cars coming and only get on the shoulder when necessary.

Now, I've biked across some boring terrain, but it doesn't get much more boring than the 15.7 miles on US 41 between San Marco Road and Carnestown. Most of the entertainment there consisted of dragon flies -- it was like some kind of Biblical locust swarm of them. And, as you rode along dodging them, you couldn't help but think, "What do dragon flies eat that there could possibly be so many of them out there?" Yeah, that's right: They eat mosquitoes. I'm pretty sure that if you got a flat tire in that stretch, you would be drained of blood before you could get your tire levers out of the seat bag.

And I know what you're thinking: Did you see any alligators? Nope. None. Neither going down or coming back. Dead or alive. There were signs saying to slow down and watch out for Florida panthers, but I never saw any of them either. There was also a sign for a gopher tortoise crossing. Nothing.

Eventually, I got to Carnestown -- which is a gas station and an Everglades Park Information Center -- and turned south on County Road 29. About four miles later, I was in Everglades City.

The folks that named this town have grand aspirations. Dragon flies outnumbered people by a billion to one. But it does have a nice Subway and lots of airboats. If you ever want to extensively tour a swamp, you could do worse than to book a hotel room in Everglades City.

Passing through this metropolis, I continued on County Road 29 another four miles to Chokoloskee. This town turned out to be a bedroom community for those who can't stand the hustle and bustle of Everglades City.

From a map, you might get the idea that you're on the southern tip of Florida. Actually, there's big expanses of open water here, but it's very shallow. The horizon is more mangroves. The beach is ... well, just look at it.

The area is obviously a fisherman's paradise, judging from the number of boats, fishing poles, and sun-baked people there. It's the kind of place that Versus would tape a show that wasn't being narrated by Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, or Bob Roll.

Since I have hated to fish ever since I was forced to do it with my dad, brothers, uncles, and cousins off the bridge out to Fort Myers Beach, I spent about five minutes roaming the streets of Chokoloskee, and then headed back north. After a sumptuous Subway sandwich in Everglades City, I retraced my route and was on US 41 going northwest just before noon.

This time, I had pulled my iPhone out and was listening to music -- right earbud only! I wished that I had brought my dorkoscope -- the rear-view mirror that mounts on the right arm of my sunglasses -- since the tunes did make it a little harder to hear cars coming from behind. Fortunately, traffic going this way was even lighter, and it took less than 45 minutes to make the turn on San Marco Road.

I had a glorious tailwind for the next five miles on this rather quiet road. Mangroves and canals were on both sides of the road, and they even had platforms for nests on the tops of the power-line poles.

After crossing a bridge over the channel -- the only climb on this ride -- I came into San Marco Island proper. I stopped at a store, filled bottles with ice and Gatorade, and then fought a cruel crosswind up Collier Road. Traffic on this section was also a little crazy, and the shoulder came and went.

It was after 2 pm and getting steamy as I came back into Naples and the bike computer rolled into triple digits. I had survived my little swamp sojourn without being eaten by alligators, panthers, or gopher tortoises. ... although I had picked up a few mosquito bites on my back. I also now had a good appreciation of how it can be more difficult to do a solo century on dead flat terrain than it had been in Tennessee, since my legs rarely got a chance to coast down any hills and my nether regions had enjoyed only sporadic saddle breaks.

Mostly, though, I now had hope that there may yet be some roads down here for a cyclist to explore. It's certainly possible to find roads that go nowhere -- I just may have to be willing to suffer that same road back to somewhere.

You Can Check Out Any Time You Want ...

2011-10-07T06:11:00.000-07:00

There is a place, half-way up Hogpen Gap on the Six Gaps Century in Dahlonega, GA. By the time you get there, you've ridden over 50 miles of the century, the last three and a half on this interminable mountain. The last half mile or so has been 15% steep. You come around a corner ... very slowly ... to see more 15% pain ahead.

But what's that, about 100 yards up on the right? Is it a rest stop? Some place with a little shade, a cool drink, and maybe a snack? A chance to catch your breath before destroying what's left of your knees en route to the landing atop this stairway to hell?

You force your legs to turn the cranks as you all but fall in to this respite. You quads are cramping into solid balls of pain, but you manage to lever a weary leg over the bike's top tube and stand a moment, your legs quivering pillars of Shot Blocks. That's when you realize that there is something wrong about the people here ... cyclists staggering around glassy eyed, arms akimbo, drool lapping over their left lip. It is then that you realize that you have entered ...

The Rest Stop of the Damned.

"Brains," moans the man in the Pink Floyd Primal jersey as he shambles past. "I mean, I wish it would rain," he croaks weakly, dried spittle all but gluing shut his sun-burned lips. His eyes spin a little wildly as he turns and limps towards a table full of fig newtons.

A trim triathlete pushing a blue Cervelo walks towards the road and glances uphill. She gasps, barely, as if startled ... maybe the hill glanced back. She levers her right leg up at the knee and clasps her pristine Specialized shoe to stretch her hamstring, then repeats the process for her left leg. She rolls her head, bunches her shoulders, and then shakes out her arms to loosen up. She glances right again, nods resolutely, and takes a step forward.

But the rest stop is not yet done with her.

The next step is slower ... inexorable. The rest stop has turned the asphalt to molasses, and the triathlete is too beaten down to fight it. The last step never comes. She slumps, sighs. Her walk back to the cool shade is faster, but just as painful.

"Have a banana," the genial man in the volunteer t-shirt and baggy cargo shorts says, waving at the table full of fruit. "Make you feel like a new man."

He hands me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. "Get yourself some gatorade and go sit in the shade a bit. Take it easy and rest up." He smiles knowingly. I turn away, suddenly ashamed.

"There's no need to hurry," he beguiles. "Stay here as long as you want."

I top off my bottles, knowing that ice cold water would restore me. I take a long pull ... the water is, at best, tepid. Somehow, coming from the Igloo cooler, it has picked up an odd copper taste, slightly salty. I fear that it has been cut with equal parts of blood, sweat, and tears.

Checking my bike computer, I am surprised that an hour has somehow passed since my arrival at the rest stop. Pink Floyd is out cold in a folding chair. Triathlete chick is lying in the grass with her legs propped up on a tree, massaging her quadriceps. "Another banana?" the crack-dealer-in-training calls to me.

Without conscious thought, I jump on my bike, clip in, and begin pedaling furiously. As I turn up the hill and begin thrusting the crank with all I've got, I think I hear a banshee wail. "Brains," someone cries, as I zoom away.

If "zooming" can be used when you're only going five miles an hour.

Swan Song

2011-09-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

My heart hurts.

Sure, living in Florida is going to be great. We're a quiet two-mile bike ride to the beach. It's warm there in February. Naples is a cycling paradise, with bike lanes all over the place and hundreds of people pedaling everywhere, and I can go diving and sailing again, and RandoGirl's new job is really great.

But there is so much here in middle Tennessee that I have come to love. My friends at the bike club and work. My band, The Kickstands. Trees that change colors.

Hills.

I started to make my goodbyes months ago. We only told a few people at first, but I started going out and riding some of the roads with whom I had developed a love/hate relationship during our six years here. First were my College Grove favorites, Pulltight Hill and Choctaw ... so many intersections down there with turn arrows that I've personally painted. I rode them in the heat, and then again in the rain, and finally on a rare cool August morning under a powder blue sky, the smell of fresh-cut hay redolent on a light breeze.

There were some new roads down there, and I scouted them for the Hope on Wheels century even though I knew that I would not be around for it. They were calm and flat and green, and I hope that the organizers continue to use this route for a few more years.

While down there, we visited some of our favorite stops. The College Grove Grocery, of course, but also Bethesda Market and Marcy Jo's further south. Fresh-baked goodness and warm southern kindness, with ice-cold refreshment when we needed it most.

Even my commute to work became precious. It was harder than ever to fit it into the schedule, but I cherished those days fighting my way down Trousdale towards Harding, sitting at the traffic light sipping my coffee, surrounded by the carbon monoxide flatulence of SUVs.

On time-tight weekend mornings, I used my commute route to a quick stop at Panera, then cut west through Radnor Lake and Percy Priest parks. On a foggy Sunday morning, I hazarded my way down Granny White Pike one last time to Oman, just to do the fierce climb up to the observatory there. As the skies cleared, I retraced my route, continued on south, and finished shredding my legs on North Berry's Chapel and Holly Tree Gap.

There won't be climbs like that in Florida, I told myself. Of course, there aren't many climbs like that anywhere.

Saturday, I did one last ride with the Harpeth Bike Club. Larry Lewis and John Wallace put together a route running from the top of the Natchez Trace up through Kingston Springs, Pegram, and other areas up there that don't even have a name. For the first 13 miles, I stayed with the lead group on a series of short, steep climbs. They stopped at a store then, and I rolled on, thinking that the group would soon catch up.

In Kingston Springs, I passed a graveyard familiar from the first 200K that I had ever done. Rolling on through Narrows of the Harpeth park, there were other reminders of that first tough March ride over four years ago.

The edges of some roads were now sharper, cleanly edged with fresh graveled shoulders laid with the post-Nashville flood repairs.

The road turned upwards again, and I remembered another club ride ... maybe the same route, but on a much hotter day. I bought water at the next store stop and started to wait, but got antsy and soon rolled on. I told myself it was because of an appointment I had that afternoon.

Rolling down to River Road, I started east back towards the city. Usually, I took this road west and on much colder days, since it was part of the Music City 200K that we often ride during winter. I passed by a store that I will always think of with snow on its roof, remembering the time that I rode this route wearing winter boots with chemical warmers over my toes, while Jeff Bauer wore sandals.

Mostly, in the past few months, I've been trying to get in lots of rides with old friends like Jeff, Fredia Barry, Vida Greer, Bill Glass, Alan Gosart, and others. They've all promised to come south to visit when the weather in Tennessee turns cold, and we've promised to come back for the Harpeth River Ride in the spring. There are still good times ahead for us and these great friends, but I will miss being able to have these times whenever I want.

I will miss taking these times for granted.

Back at Kingston Springs, I rolled past the last store stop and turned right on US 70. Soon I was on part of the old Thanksgiving 200K route -- the Turkey Trot -- but going against the usual grain again. Another tough climb up something that's usually a fun descent, followed by a quick descent down something that's always been a tough climb.

Forcing my way over the rolling hills, I thought about my first Harpeth River Ride. It was June of 2005, and we had just moved here from Tampa, FL. I was a little heavier, and definitely not used to climbing that much, but I did the century, anyway. It took me a long time. Nobody knew me when I started, and not many more knew me by the end, but I met a lot of folks that I would get to know much better in the coming years.

Over six years later, I've seen those same people -- and those same roads -- from a lot of different perspectives. Hot, steamy days when their surface is hard and rough, and you retreat to the trees at every opportunity. Cold, wet, dreary days when you're just getting through it all. Those rare wonderful days when you can only feel sorry for whatever life there is on other planets because you just freakin' well know that they ain't got it this good.

We didn't even know that we had it this good.

Singing my swan song to cycling in middle Tennessee for the past few months has brought home to me how much I love these roads and these friends. All have a special place in my heart ... one that I hope to keep alive by memory and regular visits. The pain in my heart is because that place is getting ready to be severed from the Now, and knows that it must survive on mere shards of the Past and the hope of a Future.

To those we leave behind, I envy you this wonderful, wonderful Now. Get out and enjoy it while you can.

Fire and Brimstone Creek

2011-09-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

Back in May, Jeff Bauer and I scouted Big Bottom Road on a dreary Sunday, discovering a quiet shady lane that turned to gravel, rolled past calm streams and quiet farms, and then became paved Brimstone Creek to climb up near Moss, TN. It took a few weeks, but I eventually filed this with RUSA as the Brimstone Creek 200K permanent.

And nobody rode it.

I wanted my last weekend in Tennessee to include a great ultra ride, however, and so I invited a bunch of folks to come out to Cookeville to ride this permanent. Ultimately, Jeff Bauer, Jeff Sammons, and Steve Phillips were able to fit it into the schedule, as we set off Sunday at 7 am from the Key West Inn on Hwy 135.

The first miles of the route follows my 400K, heading north towards Gainesboro. As we passed through Dodson Branch, you could see fog down in the Cumberland River valley.

Somebody -- either the county or the state -- has paved this road on the descent, which made it a lot more fun. Once down by the Roaring River, the morning chill continued to lift as we rolled through the lush pasture.

We were all riding strong. Jeff, Jeff, and Steve all had plenty of leftover fitness from Paris-Brest-Paris, and I have loads of untapped cycling potential, not being allowed to ride much in the past few weeks.

Mostly through course knowledge, I even managed to grab the first four county-line sprints. Jeff Bauer got the rest, of course, since he had long-term power.

We skirted the edge of Gainesboro, staying north on Hwy 135. Just over the Cumberland River, we turned right on Big Bottom Road.

As we zipped down the quiet road, we saw signs saying that the bridge ahead was out. Jeff Bauer and I had seen these signs last time, however, and knew that the road was only out for cars. We had been able to bike over the old bridge easily ... although we saw one or two cars that must have done the same.

Big Bottom has just enough ups and downs to keep it interesting, and Jeff Bauer and I decided it would be really fun on a tandem. When the pavement ended and the gravel began, however, I wondered if the road might not be as much fun for a skittish stoker.

As we neared the old bridge, we saw a new "Bridge Closed" sign, and when we came around the corner we realized that they weren't kidding any more.

The state or county had torn up the far end of the old bridge and begun putting in a foundation for a new bridge. I guess you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

The creek here was obviously too deep to wade, and we couldn't tell how far upstream we would have to go before it became passable ... if it ever did.

Jeff Bauer -- who also climbs -- shimmied out to the edge and declared it manageable, saying we might be able to pass the bikes from one person to the next, drop them to someone at the bottom, and then clamber out. Acrophobic as I am, this idea didn't appeal to me. I frankly had trouble standing near the edge of the remaining portions of the bridge.

So, we retraced our route back towards 135. A gravel "short-cut" near the bottom of Big Bottom Road gave us an opportunity to shave off a couple of miles, plus get in more of our gravel-road fix. The short-cut required a long climb out of the gap, followed by a steep slippery descent, and I thought more than once that it may have been faster -- and easier on our nerves -- to have just stayed on the pavement.

Once back on Hwy 135, the route was simple. We were now on another permanent that uses almost the same route: Honest Abe. These two routes differ only with the Big Bottom/Brimstone Creek section, since Honest Abe follows the old Avery Trace road race route up to Union Hill-Moss Road. The mileage of the two permanents is otherwise identical.

Hwy 135 stayed quiet on the climb out of the river valley, and Union Hill Moss Road is pretty and rolling. There were a number of suicidal locusts in the road, jumping as we went by. When we got to the first control, I found the partial remains of one still stuck in my front tire's spokes.

Steve Phillips took a picture and posted it on Facebook.

We got a sandwich at the control -- Cherry's Grocery in Moss, TN. This store reminds me so much of Mr. Fly's store down in Fly, TN, with the main difference being that Cherry's has gas pumps out front, but doesn't have a pot-bellied stove inside.

The trip down Hwy 52 to Celina was fast, thanks to the gradual descent and a tailwind. We stopped for a quick ice cream at the Dairy Queen, and Jeff Sammons told us that he would need to cut the ride short. He continued down Hwy 53 towards Gainesboro, while Jeff Bauer, Steve, and I stayed on Hwy 52 east to Standing Stone Park.

After crossing the one-lane bridge, you have a tough climb back up, followed by some nasty rollers as you pass through the rest of the park. On the other side, we stopped at our next control, the Hilham General Store, where Jeff Bauer bought me a pickle. I didn't think that I needed one, since I wasn't having any muscle cramps, but the salt perked me up and I pulled us at a fairly fast pace all the way west on Hwy 85 back to Hwy 53 at Gainesboro.

Our control there was the Subway, one mile further west on Hwy 56. I bought a sandwich and wolfed it down to stave off a caloric deficit. We then retraced our route back to downtown Gainesboro, and got back on Hwy 53 to suffer on the steep climb out of town. On the way up, you pass the turn on to Hwy 262 and the "real" Avery Trace, which was once the main road between Knoxville and Nashville.

The next few miles roll through quiet farmland, with one last tough climb on the way to Granville. This portion of the ride has less shade than some of the others, but Granville makes up for it with good ice cream on Saturday's at the H.B. Sutton store. Since it was Sunday, however, we had to make due with a fresh bag of ice and lots of water.

From here, we headed up Hwy 96 -- a cool sun-dappled road leading to a gentle shaded climb that ends at US 70. We took this semi-busy road to Baxter, where we turned on to Buffalo Valley Road towards Cookeville. Jeff Bauer was smelling the barn at this point, and he got up front for a fast pull to the finish.

Maybe it wasn't the ride that I had planned, but it was as good a ride as I could have hoped for ... even with the extra 15 miles. I hope all my friends here make it a regular part of their randonneuring.

Ten ... er, Seven Gaps, 2011

2011-09-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

Early in the season, most cyclists begin planning their training based on this year's goals. For most randonneurs this year, it was ultimately Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP), with a few intermediate things along the way.

When 2011 began, PBP was my goal, too. Then, I crashed and injured my hip, although I didn't realize that it would keep me away from France until spring came. So, plans changed and I decided to race some. Then, we decided to move to Naples, Florida, which meant getting our house on the market and finding a house down there ... so, plans changed.

One thing that I really wanted to do, however, was Ten Gaps. Also known as Bundrick's Revenge, this is a 200K in the North Georgia mountains that has anywhere from 17,000 to 23,000 (depending upon who's computer or software you are using) feet of climbing. Basically, for most of the 127 miles, you're either going up or you're going down ... hopefully on a road.

In 2008, this ride kicked my butt. In 2009, I rode it strong, but still had to walk part of Brasstown Bald. In 2010, I rode it easy, stayed on the bike, and had fun.

So, what was my goal for Ten Gaps in 2011? I dunno. Go. Ride, I guess. Look at the mountains. Enjoy the cool weather. See old friends.

You see, life has just been kind of a roller coaster lately. My fitness is decent, but my weight is above what I like it to be for these tough mountain rides. And I have not been my usual diligent self with my bicycle maintenance.

But, I had the weekend off, and needed to get out of town in case some buyer wanted to look at the house, and I had promised friends that I would drive them down, so I went. We got a late start, and got to the hotel even later, but we made it to the ride start just fine and I felt great as we rolled out of the parking lot. I even pulled most of the first few miles, up to where the real climbing begins at Woody's Gap. Then I decided that I was too warm, and so I pulled over to peel off my arm-warmers, knee-warmers, and vest, while the rest of the lead group headed up.

Ah, well, I thought. I didn't have any goals for this ride this year, so I might as well just ride my ride. I got back on the bike and rolled solo to the top, and then stopped to take a picture.

The sun was up in the valley, but it was still pretty chilly up on top of the mountain. I didn't want to put all of my stuff back on, so I quickly headed down toward Suches. As I started through the rollers there, I began to notice a funny click coming from my bike's drive train -- a little "tick" when the right crankarm hit about the 1 o'clock position. As I focused on it, I began to notice that I could "feel" the tick, too.

This is not a good thing to notice 27 miles in on a 127-mile ride, particularly when you have some really, really tough climbs ahead. As I started up Wolf Pen, I began to think "bottom-bracket failure," and backed off the pace a bit to baby it.

The weather was still incredible -- cool enough to be comfortable, with barely any wind and not even a hint of rain. The swoopy descent down Wolf Pen was a blast as usual, and I began to think how sad it would be not to have such a fun downhill in our new home state.

Other than the troublesome ticking drivetrain, I felt great as I hit the first control. I topped off my bottles and bought a homemade fried apple pie, and then rolled on towards Hog Pen. I finished the pie on the rollers heading to this steep climb, then downshifted to the small chainring to keep the pressure off going up.

Unlike previous times, I played with my bike computer on the way up by seeing just how long I could maintain a very low speed. My record was 30 seconds at 3.5 mph -- very easy on the legs, but tricky on the steering skills.

The roads were full of cyclists, either out training for the upcoming Six Gap Century or riding an organized Gran Fondo with the Georgia Cup series. As I came over the top of Hog Pen, a group of them was approaching from the other side. One of them yelled out, "You're going in the wrong direction," and I yelled back, "The climb is shorter that way."

I saw a lot of other riders struggling up Hog Pen as I zipped my way down, and then turned left towards Helen and the control. Two of our riders were there, and I would have stayed and chatted with them but I was not very tired -- one advantage of soft-pedaling a tough ride like this. I filled my bottles again, bought a candy bar, and headed back out.

Climbing the fourth gap, Unicoi, was the usual slog. It's not a very pretty gap, and the fast motorcycles love to race up and down on it. One fellow on a red and white crotch rocket came within inches of me as he cut inside on a corner on the climb. Three minutes later, he was zooming back down. All told, I saw him eight times as I slowly worked my way up.

At the top, I ran into Gary Carter, visiting from Europe. He had been on our RAAM crew for the Gran Fondo Fixies in 2008, and it was good to chat with him for a minute. We started down the other side together, but he stopped to check on Don Mayne, who was also on our RAAM crew. I was still worried about my drivetrain, where the click had turned into a clunk, so I continued on.

Jack's Gap is the easiest of the 10 gaps on this ride, but I had decided to use this climb to test the bike and see if it would be okay for Brasstown Bald. I could feel the clunk now, and it was starting to hurt my knee, so although I really wanted to go up the 20+ percent grades to the turnaround, I decided it was more important to get back to Dahlonega on my own power.

Jeff Bauer, who had ridden down to Dahlonega with me, was just coming down as I hit the turn. He was on his way to his fastest Ten Gaps ever. I told him what was going on, and that I was going to take the short way back and abandon the ride. He headed left to climb back over Unicoi and Hog Pen gaps, while I continued straight to skip re-climbing those and Brasstown Bald.

Now that I knew where Jeff was on his ride, I decided to slow down and enjoy the beautiful day. I stopped at the store on Hwy 19 and laid down on a bench in the sun to take a little nap. Then I filled my bottles again and rolled on towards Vogel State Park, where the climb back over Hog Pen awaited.

Since I was now going the official Six Gaps way, I was passed by a number of cyclists on this climb. Most of them called out "Good afternoon" and "How's it going" as they passed. I also was passed three times by a sheriff's deputy who was looking for speeders on this twisty road, and thought about telling him that he was wasting his time. He was probably just enjoying the shady quiet woods, because if he'd really wanted to write tickets he would have driven over to Unicoi Gap.

Soon, I was over Wolf Pen, through the rolling woods around Lake Winfield Scott, past Suches again, and climbing the short stretch to the top of Woody. The sun was up when I posed my bike at the top again.

The long easy road down from Woody was a pleasure as always, and I was back at the start about 3:30 pm. I had changed clothes and loaded up the bike when the first of our riders came in, frantically looking for someone to log his time. He had finished in under nine hours -- 8:50 to be exact -- so he had reason to be proud about winning the brevet.

I envied him that -- although I would not have been willing to ride that hard for that long. He had a goal, and he probably had trained hard to turn in a super-fast time on this ride. I didn't mind all that much when my drivetrain fouled up and forced me to DNF on this ride, but I probably should have. Although I enjoyed the ride, with extraordinary weather and gorgeous scenery, something was missing.

We tell ourselves that life is about the journey -- not the destination. But goals are the milestones along the way, and we are goal-oriented animals. It's like shooting a gun when you don't have a target to aim at -- all you're doing is making noise.

Lessons Learned: What to Leave in and What to Leave Out

2011-09-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

I strongly believe that we should learn from our mistakes. Of course, I make a lot of mistakes, so I should be very smart by now ... which, of course, makes no sense. Or at least I don't think that it does ... but what do I know?

Anyhow ... here's what I learned from our Blue Ridge Parkway trip:

Failure to plan is a plan for failure. We came to this idea kind of late, since we had to adjust for all of the other crazy stuff that was going on (we call it "life"). Nonetheless, I spent time working on our route and lodging, and not enough thinking about the configuration of the bike.
This kind of ties in to the above, but you should never do loaded tandem touring on a hilly route (and the Blue Ridge Parkway is nothing if not hilly) without a drag brake. Although we did not get a flat tire -- from overheated rims or otherwise -- worrying about the heat from my caliper brakes ruined much of the potential fun from those descents.
Whenever possible, use both front and rear panniers when touring. The bike just balances better. Although we were able to fit our stuff into the rear panniers, we could have left some empty space and distributed things. Also, it would have left us enough room for extras.
Speaking of extras, when you know that you've got a 50-mile day with no place to stop and get a meal, go ahead and pack a couple of sandwiches, and maybe a spare bottle. A picnic on a long touring day is always nice.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is pretty and well-maintained, but is not really bicycle friendly. At least, not the portions that go through Asheville, and I've heard that the same thing goes for Boone, NC. The park service apparently turns a blind eye to speeders and commercial traffic ... similar to what they do in Tupelo, MS on the Natchez Trace.
The Pisgah Inn is a nice hotel with great views. You might want to eat somewhere else, though.
The Little Switzerland hotel is also pretty nice and has almost as good views, but the food is better.
Just because the sign says "Dead End," don't assume that this means bicycles.
Epic Cycles is a great bike shop.
Since it has a good bike shop, Black Mountain, NC is a place that I would not mind living in, or at least spending a few more days in.
You can take a loaded touring tandem up a gravel road with a three-mile climb.
Your shoulders will hurt the day after you take a loaded touring tandem up a gravel road with a three-mile climb.

That's about all I learned. One of the things that I didn't have to learn, because I've always known it, is that any kind of adventure is better when you've got someone that you really LOVE with you. RandoGirl and I may have been less than happy with life -- and, by inheritance, with each other -- occasionally on this trip, but I would not have had it any other way, and would not want to have done it with anybody else.

The Return Leg

2011-09-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

When last we saw our intrepid adventurers, they had ridden 50 miles, climbing over 6,000 feet with a fully-loaded touring tandem on the busy Blue Ridge Parkway. They barely survived running out of food and drink, and had topped off their tanks again with tasty sandwiches and steak dinners.

Monday, we mostly hung out at Little Switzerland. I awoke early and went to the lobby to watch the sun rise over Marion, enjoying a wonderful conversation about bicycle touring with the night manager of the hotel. He had spent a number of months doing a tour of New Zealand, and his description of this beautiful country merely helped elevate this destination on my bucket list.

I also used the lobby computer to begin planning our return trip to Brevard. Although it would be mostly downhill back to Asheville, I knew that there would be enough climbing to make the trip a lot of work. Also, I was tired of the descents being ruined by the lack of a drag brake and the work required to feather the front and rear brakes, worrying about the rims overheating and melting the glue around the valve on the inner tubes.

At breakfast, RandoGirl and I discussed the new plan for our return. Just as we were finishing, there was a thunk at the window next to us when a bird flew into the window. We went outside to check on him, and he seemed dazed but alive. When we looked again later, he had flown away.

We again did a little laundry -- this time by hand -- but mostly lounged about and read this day. I talked again with RandoGirl's coach, Tracey Drews, who gave me some tips for our return route. We went back to the same restaurant as Sunday for lunch, but this time we were not so demanding. They had Lavazza espresso, so I had a wonderful latte and a piece of pie.

After another excellent dinner, we turned in early again. The restaurant at the Inn did not have breakfast until 7:30 am, so we bought snacks to tide us over so we could leave early.

Tuesday, the plan was to retrace our route south on the Parkway to Hwy 80, then descend there to Marion. It was foggy and a little cool as we rolled out, but there was enough climbing to quickly warm us up. Soon, we were on 80, stopping twice to let the rims cool, before we came to the flatter sections going by the lake, and then turning onto US 70.

As anyone who's biked around Tennessee and North Carolina much will tell you, US 70 is fluky. Parts of it get a lot of truck traffic and can be horrible. However, most of it follows I-40, so the faster traffic tends to get on the interstate instead. RandoGirl found this section to be fine, and really enjoyed zipping along the gentle rollers here at about 20, cars and trucks generally moving way over when they passed us.

Tracey had suggested we veer off for a few miles onto Old US 70, which was very nice. There was one longer climb there, but we rode past a lot of parkland and even took a break at a pull-off with a historical marker and a porta-potty.

Just past this, we came to a sign saying that the road dead-ended ahead. Our directions had us turning left, but we were a couple of miles away from that. We took the right turn, instead, and found our left turn. Unfortunately, though, the left turn here took us on an unpaved road that climbed for the next three miles. Although the grade wasn't too bad and the gravel was fairly hard-packed, some of the pitches were steeper, and we were very happy to eventually rejoin US 70. It was not until later that we discovered that we should have stayed on the "dead end" road, since it was only closed to motor traffic and we would have been able to get by, staying on what is supposedly a very nice, flat, paved road.

Soon, we entered the town of Black Mountain. We were both hungry, and I had seen on Google maps that there was a bike shop here -- Epic Cycles. We found the shop, and had a great time talking to the guys there. They let us top off our tires, told us about the "dead end" road that we should have taken, gave us some route tips, and recommended an excellent place for lunch. They even watched our bike and stuff for us while we walked into the little town and ate.

After topping off our bottles and buying some fuel at the bike shop, we headed on towards Asheville. Our plan had been to stay the night at the same hotel that we had used on our outbound leg, but only if we were there after 1 pm. It was 12:30 when we rolled by, and we both felt pretty good, so we stopped at the same store that we had used last time to get more Gatorade, and then headed back onto the Parkway.

Once again, we had about 10 miles of dodging the Asheville traffic. This was the only time that we saw any law enforcement, when a North Carolina State Trooper passed us. Of course, he has no jurisdiction there, and was technically violating the "no commercial traffic" law of the Parkway himself.

We got off on Hwy 191, taking a series of turns to avoid the hectic traffic along this road. Finally, we reached the more quiet roads southwest of Asheville, and then turned onto Hwy 280 for the last 20 miles to Brevard. This road is supposedly part of a Bike Route, but doesn't have much shoulder. Fortunately, it is a five-lane road and most of the cars seemed comfortable moving over for bikes.

When we finally got to Brevard, RandoGirl and I were starving. We were only a couple of miles from the Carmichael offices, but when we saw an Arby's we immediately pulled in. After pigging out, we leisurely headed downtown to finish our 93-mile day.

Once again, the folks at Carmichael were very nice. The let us use their showers, lent us towels, and pushed drinks on us. We soon got cleaned up and loaded everything back into the WatzzWagon, then headed back to the RandoDaughter's college for another visit. Heading over the mountains, we began discussing what we would do differently next time.

But that's tomorrow's blog ...

The Assault on Little Switzerland

2011-09-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

In the last two installments of our story, I told you how RandoGirl and I ...

Planned a two-week tour on Le Route Verte in Canada
Abandoned that idea when we got an opportunity to move from Nashville, TN, to Naples, FL
Came up with a new plan to do a loaded tour of the Blue Ridge Parkway

Kind of makes you regret wasting your time reading those two posts, hunh?

Anyway, we left Nashville on the last Thursday in August, making a brief stop to see the RandoDaughter at college that evening. By early Friday afternoon, we were at the offices of Carmichael Training in Brevard, NC. RandoGirl's coach, Tracey Drews, had very kindly offered to let us park the WatzzWagon there while we were away. She also gave me some tips regarding the route, and even got one of the other coaches there -- a young fellow named Tristan -- to show us the way out of town.

Yes, he is that thin. He coaches cyclists, and lives in Brevard, NC. C'mon.

Of course, the lead-up to this trip had been hectic. When we got to Carmichael's offices, we had to take a few minutes to print some papers, sign them, and fax them back, since we got an offer on our house that day. And, in the rush of leaving on Thursday, I forgot my nice bright helmet-mounted light for the tunnels. We also hadn't had time to get the drag brake put on the tandem, and had decided at the last minute to just use rear panniers. But, hey, we wouldn't miss any of that stuff, right?

Ha.

By 3 pm we were climbing Hwy 276 through the Pisgah National Forest. We stopped at the falls there, just before the climbing started.

And then we suffered for a couple of hours. If you've ever done a 12-mile climb, you have an idea of what I'm talking about ... almost. Next, do it on a tandem with an extra 45 pounds on a rack on the back. And keep in mind that the extra 45 pounds back there somehow makes the bike vibrate violently when you both try to stand and pedal, so that you can only get four or five strokes of butt-break that shred your shoulder muscles with the effort while taking your heart rate way into the red zone.

Nonetheless, we eventually saw this.

And then it started to rain. Fortunately, we only had three miles on the Parkway before we got to our hotel that night, the Pisgah Inn. By the time we got there, we were fairly wet and very cold, so after we checked in we enjoyed lovely long hot showers and a big dinner.

If you ever get up that way, I really recommend the Pisgah Inn for its lodging. The dinner and next morning's breakfast was less exemplary, but the Inn itself is lovely and the views are breathtaking.

The next morning, we hung around for a while. We knew that we only had 25 miles to go to our next hotel in Asheville, and that most of this was downhill. Also, during the night fog and wind had moved in, along with an occasional spray of light rain.

We finally headed out at 11 am, wearing jackets and warmers. The long descent was not as much fun as it should have been, since I was worried about overheating the rims using the caliper brakes. It would have been much more fun had I just spent the extra hour or so installing the drag brake. It was also a little scary going through some of the tunnels with just a small headlamp on the bike. The day before, we had one particularly long tunnel that drove home why you should at least put in fresh batteries before starting a trip like this. The new batteries that we got at the Pisgah Inn helped a lot, but my very bright helmet-mounted light would have been even better.

The other thing that this day showed us was that the traffic restrictions on the Blue Ridge Parkway are not followed as rigorously as they are on the Natchez Trace. During our three days there, we never saw a Park Service officer patrolling traffic, whereas you see them all the time on the Trace. Instead, we saw lots and lots of cars, motorcycles, and RVs -- particularly around Asheville -- paying little or no attention to the speed limits. We even had a parade of dump trucks at one point ... but I'm sure that they weren't "commercial."

We got off the Parkway onto Hwy 70 in Asheville, riding one mile to our hotel. Traffic on the five-lane road was actually better-behaved than it had been on the Parkway.

We stayed that night at a Quality Inn motel, but they were very nice to us. It wasn't yet 2 pm when we got there, but they let us check in early. We did a couple of loads of laundry, had lunch at a fast-food spot, and RandoGirl found a decent used paperback book at a flea market next door. We then lounged about, had a good dinner at the Italian restaurant of the Holiday Inn next door, and turned in early.

The next day was Sunday, and we wanted to beat the "church traffic" out of town. RandoGirl's stomach was acting up, so she didn't eat much breakfast before we left. I had picked up some snacks and Gatorade at a store the day before, along with a small flashlight to help light up any remaining long tunnels. We never needed the flashlight, since the tunnels from here on were short enough to see all the way through, but we probably should have brought more food.

We started to climb almost immediately. There were brief downhills, but we pretty much climbed for the rest of the morning. Regular breaks helped make it fun.

Not too far from the top, we stopped at a visitor's center. A young fellow named Chris on a Rambouillet randonneuring bike pulled in, and we talked about cycling in the area. He said that he gets spoiled living in Asheville, where he can easily do a morning ride up to Mount Mitchell, as he was doing that day. He took a picture of RandoGirl and I before he headed off to finish his ride.

From the visitor's center we had another long downhill, followed by more miles of climbing up to the entrance to Mount Mitchell. Then, we had another long downhill. We stopped every 4-5 miles to let the rims cool down, and on one of these stops I found a warm rock to sit on and rest my back.

RandoGirl had a serious bonk going on by this time. Eating or drinking anything made her queasy, and none of the usual drugs that I carry were helping. Mostly, she just needed to sit down to a real meal and take a break, but the lack of amenities on the Parkway made this impossible. It was at this point that I realized it would have been smarter to keep the front rack and panniers on the bike. Not only would it have helped better balance the load, but we could have stashed some sandwiches in the extra space before leaving Asheville.

Once past Hwy 80 -- a road well-known to anyone who has done the Assault on Mount Mitchell -- we had a series of short climbs and descents. Not short enough to get a good rhythm on, as with some Tennessee rollers, where you can power a tandem down one and get enough momentum to roll over the climb, but long one- and two-milers. We were counting down the mile markers, and both cheered when we finally saw the turn for Little Switzerland about 2:30 pm.

Rather than heading for the hotel, I went immediately towards the little town there. We parked, went into the restaurant, and demand food -- NOW! After sandwiches, a plate of cheese and fruit, and lots of Diet Cokes, we felt almost human again.

We had to wait a bit for our hotel room at the Inn, but eventually were able to get cleaned up and into dry clothes. RandoGirl took a long bath, and I went next door and bought us some chocolates. That night, we both had steaks for dinner, and decided to change our plans to ride on to Blowing Rock, NC, the next day. We had earned an extra day at Little Switzerland, and maybe a day off the bike as well.

But that's a story for tomorrow ...

Here Come the Complications

2011-09-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's post, I started to tell you about our bicycle tour on Le Route Verte in Canada ... or, at least, the plans for our bicycle tour on Le Route Verte. Because, you see, we didn't get to do that tour.

After Amtrak derailed our bike-shipping plan (Did you notice what I did there with that pun? Am I a witty writer or what?), we had just begun looking into other options when RandoGirl went on a job interview. Actually, it was a second set of interviews, and it was for a job that we weren't sure that she really wanted. But the folks she was talking with totally nailed the second set of interviews, and suddenly we would be moving to Naples, Florida.

Now, I love Tennessee, and I really love all of my cycling friends here in Tennessee. This is a great state, with some wonderful roads and beautiful places. But, it gets cold here during the winter. So cold that roads freeze and there are sheets of ice that make me fall down and go BOOOM when I bike over them. And, yes, Florida gets hot in the summer and it's flat, and there are a bunch of old people there. But, when we visited Naples for the interview, I saw people riding bicycles everywhere. There were bike lanes and multi-use trails all over the city, and they actually go places. Riding a bike there you feel like you may even have some rights to the road. And, of course, there's an ocean down there that is literally perfect for my second-most favorite form of transportation: sailing.

So, yeah, there are things about moving that sucks ... but the good parts easily outweigh the bad ones. Our Tennessee friends will come down to see us (probably during January or February when it's frozen in Nashville), and we will come back to visit them and join them on some of our favorite rides. The bottom line is just that we had always planned to retire in Florida, and this will make that process much simpler when we're ready to stop working in a few years.

Anyway, that's the complication that kept us from doing Canada. Between getting our house in Tennessee ready to sell and finding another house in Florida, being out of pocket in the wilds of Quebec was no longer an option.

However, we knew that we still needed a bike trip this year. RandoGirl had cleared the two weeks with her new employers, who knew that she would need the break (not to mention the time for moving). So we began looking for a shorter, organized tour, only to find that the few domestic ones we could find that would fit our timeline were already booked. I pulled out an old route that I had begun putting together on the coast of Oregon when we finished our Natchez Trace tour in 2009, but that seemed a little complicated, too.

Then, just over a week before the vacation was set to begin, RandoGirl and I both hit upon the perfect solution: The Blue Ridge Parkway.

Like the Trace, the Parkway is run by the National Park Service, with beautiful scenery and a back-to-nature approach that keeps away stores and billboard signs. Also like the Trace, it has a strict speed limit and commercial traffic is forbidden, making it ideal for the touring bicyclist. Or so we thought ...

I quickly plotted out a route that ensured we had decent hotels every night, limiting our daily distance to 50 miles or less. Although we had three straight days of 90-plus miles on the Natchez Trace, I knew that the climbing on the Blue Ridge Parkway would be rough. The first two days were only 25 miles each, with three days of 50 miles each afterwards. The last day I planned for us to ride 100 miles back to our starting location, but as the elevation profile had a lot of descending on this day, I thought it would be a breeze.

That was the plan. Tomorrow, I'll tell you what really happened.

A Touring Machine

2011-09-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

I started planning our August tour in April. When the world was simple.

You see, I'd already told work that I was going to take two weeks of vacation in August for Paris-Brest-Paris. Then, when my messed-up hip decreed that any daily cycling distance over 200 miles was off-limits, I took it as an opportunity. Like my mama always said, "If life gives you lemons, they're probably rotten. You don't get nothin' for free in this world, kid."

OK, mom didn't really say that. If life gave my mom lemons, she would make a really good lemon meringue pie. That's why I was fat as a kid.

Anyway, back to the opportunity. Since I already had the green light from work for two weeks in late August, I decided that I'd better use them. So, RandoGirl and I immediately began planning a nice two-week cycling tour, working from two basis premises:

We wanted it to be self-supported -- just us, carrying panniers with whatever we needed, staying at hotels so we didn't need camping gear.
It needed to be in North America, so we didn't have to ship bikes overseas and lose any days running around airports.

Since we also wanted the weather to be bearable, we immediately hit on the perfect solution: Le Route Verte in the province of Quebec in Canada.

We first heard about this in a Bicycling Magazine article. Basically, it stands for the Green Route, and is a network of cycling-friendly roads, multi-use paths, and hotels perfect for the bike tourist. As the forecast temperatures for the area sounded ideal in late August, we started researching which parts of the Route we wanted to ride.

As we looked into airfare for us and our bikes, RandoGirl hit on another fun option. If we took Amtrak, we could drive to Atlanta and catch a train to New York City. We could then spend a couple of days there, and then catch another train to Montreal and begin our tour. A nine-day loop north and west would give us some great cycling and lovely country. We would then retrace our train route back to New York City and then Atlanta.

Doesn't that sound like fun? An overnight ride on a train, then a couple of days sight-seeing The Big Apple from bikes, and then a long bike tour in the country? Almost too good to be true.

Yeah. You got it.

The first hiccup came when I contacted Amtrak to get clarification on the bicycle-baggage policy. The neat thing about this policy is that, if there's room, you can bring your bicycle on board the train and stow it in the baggage car just like any other luggage ... except that they don't charge you anything for it! Really! When I first heard about this, I started planning all kind of fun touring trips involving trains to cool cities.

So, the bikes could easily get to New York City. How about Montreal?

Oh, no, sir. You can't take them to Montreal.

Because it's Canada, right? No worries -- we'll get off at the border and bike across to Montreal.

No, sir. There's no luggage service on that train.

So, we have to carry on our bikes?

No, you can't carry on bikes. Only bags that will fit in the overhead compartment.

Grrrr. So, now we're trying to figure a way to ship the bikes to Montreal, and forget about the New York City sight-seeing by bicycle stuff. Not a big deal ... just less cool than it would have been.

And that's when life got complicated. More on that in tomorrow's post.

Butter Hollow Road

2011-08-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

I love early Sunday morning rides, particularly during the summer. The weather is usually more pleasant, the roads are empty, and the world is full of grand potentials.

After 10 days off the bike, I had been able to manage a few short rides during the week. Lack of time and the lingering effects of my malady limited me to evening group rides and one commute to and from work. Saturday, RandoGirl and I wanted to spend most of the day with the RandoDaughter, since she heads back to college this week. We had to make do with an early 35 miles down in College Grove.

So, Sunday I wanted to squeeze in 50 miles and be home by 9 am. This meant rolling out at 6 am and sticking to the flatter roads, keeping to a brisk tempo pace. It was a Max Watzz kind of effort, but at a RandoBoy time of day.

I cut through some neighborhoods to Waller, then down to Split Log Road. Just before turning on to Pleasant Hill Road, I saw that the City of Brentwood has finished the multi-use path to that point. You can now get on this path and ride all the way down Split Log Road to Wilson Pike, where you pick up a network of paths that go to Ravenwood High School, Crockett Park, or even the library on Concord Road near I-65. If you like getting around on multi-use paths, this is a great addition.

Unfortunately, I couldn't limit myself to the 15 mph speed limit mandated on the paths, so I went to Clovercroft and turned east towards Nolensville. Just before town, I decided on a whim to turn right on Burke Hollow Road.

Now, I've been riding Burke Hollow Road since we moved here six years ago. It runs all the way to Wilson Pike, about a mile from Arrington, but doesn't get much traffic. It always had the potential to be a good biking road because of this, and could even be a great biking road due to the way that it rolls.

Some roads roll gently, so that you can get into a nice rhythm and big-ring your way down them. Wilson Pike is actually like this. Clovercroft is kind of like this, but the rollers are longer so that you have to be willing to work hard if you aren't going to go to the small ring.

Burke Hollow, on the other hand, has hills that change, and kind of curve around, and are steeper than they look. Heading from Wilson Pike towards Clovercroft, there's one really nasty climb, after which you can almost get a fun two-mile descent -- except there are a couple more hills in there that you have to punch hard or you'll lose all of your momentum. Heading from Clovercroft to Wilson Pike, it's those rollers I was telling you about.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Well, okay, maybe it's a masochistic kind of great, but it always had the potential to be that kind of fun ride. The only thing holding it back was a lack of pavement.

Not that it's a dirt road -- technically, it is paved. But it was not paved very well, The surface was almost Alabama chip and seal kind of rough, with pot-holes custom made to test the warranty on bicycle wheels.

It used to almost be fun to take somebody who was new to the area out on Burke Hollow -- particularly when you'd be riding it a lot and you knew where the latest landmines were -- and let them try to follow your line. Almost. Because everyone knows that it's all good fun until somebody breaks their collarbone.

But, back to Sunday. I had not been on Burke Hollow for a while, so you can only imagine my jubilation when I saw this:

Yeah, that's new pavement. Really, really good and smooth new pavement. And it went all the way -- from Clovercroft to Wilson Pike.

Like butter.

Next time you get held up on your morning commute by a crew of guys out working on a road, don't get mad. Instead, roll down your window and thank them for Burke Hollow Road.

The Seven Stages of Cycling Grief -- Part Two

2011-08-08T16:00:00.000-07:00

When ultra-cycling is what the French would call your "raisinet," what can you do when circumstances take it away, much as the pimply faced usher "appropriated" that box of chocolate-coated desiccated grapes that you bought at Walgreen's and tried to sneak into Star Wars the 14th time that you saw it. Ah, mon raisinets ... mon sweet, sweet rainsets. It was not to be, cheri ...

Anyway, when you remove cycling from ultra-cycling all that you are left with is "ultra." Well, okay, yes, there's also a hyphen, which frankly has no place in this discussion, other than to highlight the void that cycling has left. The hyphen is but a grim reminder of love's labor's lost ... a ghost of what could have been, mocking you much as the pimply faced usher did when you walked out of the theater and he smiled, a bit of chocolate in the corner of his mouth and a dark bit of raisin rind caught between his upper left incisors. May God smite him with a pox of acne that never clears up!

Wow. Some wounds never heal.

Speaking of which, while the golfball-sized lump above my right sit-bone that I mentioned in my last post was shrinking at a glacial pace, I was off the bike. During this period, as I suffered the temporary termination of my favorite pastime, I went through the Seven Stages of Cycling Grief.

Stage One: Scheming

This is where you find some weird way to get around the thing that's keeping you from riding. With a saddle sore, you put some ointment with a pain-killer like benzocaine on it, or you turn your saddle nose so it's a little off-camber, or you put a gel seat cover on, or you try a different saddle entirely or a different bike or a different position. Or maybe you just go out and ride, but remain standing for the whole thing.

If it's the weather that is keeping you away from your bike, you try to cheat that. Three layers of wool and electric socks. Studded tires. Rain suits. Doing double-centuries overnight so you don't have to ride when the apparent temperature is above 98.6 degrees fahrenheit. Five hours on the rollers, followed by a three-week observation period at your nearest loony bin.

Never underestimate man's ability to find some way to cheat the system ... or at least delude himself into thinking that he is.

Stage Two: Ignorance

Ignorance in this case is not bliss. It is, instead, an almost polar opposite, since this is when you ignore the problem in hopes that it will go away. In the case of a physical ailment, it means riding in pain as you follow the old ultra-cycling maxim, "If it will heal in less than a week, ignore it."

We've all done this before. The knee hurts a bit, but we keep going in hopes that it will work itself out. Usually, it does, and we get our seat adjusted next week and it goes away. Sometimes, however, we have to ignore something for that last 20 or 100 or 1,000 miles (RAAM only), and then pay the price next week, or for the next few weeks or months.

Stage Three: Ride-Planning

We all do this one during the coldest days of winter, when the roads are so treacherous that only a fool would venture forth on them. This is when we begin to work on schedules for the coming year. Which 400Ks will we do in April so that we've built up enough for those two 600Ks in May? Will we race this weekend in Alabama or East Tennessee, or maybe go to North Carolina? Can we take a week off for RAGBRAI and still have enough vacation for two weeks at the beach?

I tend to go to Google maps and design routes. Then, when we get another crummy weekend later that month, I get in the car and drive parts of my new routes. If not for lousy weather this past winter, I would never have put Yates Mountain Road on the 400K this past April. As anyone that went up that road in the middle of the night can attest, that would have been a tragedy.

This past week I spent a lot of time figuring out details for RandoGirl's and my Canadian cycling trip. More on that in the next couple of weeks.

Stage Four: Self-Improvement

Sure, you'd rather ride, but weight-lifting and spin classes are almost as much fun, and they build even more strength than mere time on the bike could. That's what Bicycling magazine says, and they couldn't be wrong. Could they?

Another way to inflate that power-to-weight ratio during your off-time is to deflate yourself. You tell yourself a couple of days of dieting with put you back in form. "Self," you say, "since you don't have to eat bunches of carbohydrates to fuel those big efforts, you can just eat celery sticks this week." And self does that for a day or two ... and then it tells you where to stick that celery.

Stage Five: Vicarious Riding

For some reason, I had not yet deleted four stages of this year's Tour from the DVR. They were flat stages, so the first time I watched them I had fast-forwarded through most of the early stuff. The second time, I thrilled to the intermediate sprint lines, Phil and Paul's witticisms, and those great commercials for light beer. The third time, I told myself it was better than nothing. The fourth time, I told myself it was less painful than trying to get back on my bike.

Had there been a fifth time, I would have made myself prove it.

Stage Six: Bike Maintenance

I had one day last week with decent weather, so I cleaned the Lynskey. It was still dirty from the 130-mile ride in the rain that brought on my current predicament, so it took almost two hours to get it nice and clean and well-lubricated again. Then I cleaned the Bianchi. And the Salsa, And RandoGirl's Bianchi. And the tandem.

Did you know that you can actually scrub the side plates off of a bicycle chain?

Stage Seven: Cheating

Yeah, okay, the swelling is not quite gone, but maybe a little bike ride will help enervate the healing process. I think I read that once in Bicycling magazine ...

The Seven Stages of Cycling Grief -- Part One

2011-08-07T05:58:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, Jeff Bauer and I had a really nice long ride together. This week, I paid for it.

We rode from my house, heading down to Franklin to pick up some friends. The rain started early, but it kept things cool as we headed over to the Natchez Trace and down towards Fly. The sun even came out when we stopped at Garrison Creek, and Jeff tried to catch a wayward kitten.

I'm not sure what he would have done with it, however, unless he'd been able to stuff it in his saddlebag.

Leaving Fly, after enjoying the world's best $1 sandwich, it started raining on us again. We took the Fly Gran Fondo route over the unpaved sections of Leatherwood, then down Hoover's Road to Greenfield Bend. The rain came in hard here, and Jeff and I ended up starting our way east towards my house. We had 130 miles in, most of them in rain or spray, when we finished. On the plus side, it kept the temperatures fairly comfortable.

My band, The Kickstands, played a party that night, and then Sunday I flew down to Naples, FL. I started to notice some discomfort in my lower regions Sunday evening, and the flight back early Monday morning was downright painful. Tuesday was agony at work, and I went to the doctor's Wednesday.

Apparently, doing 130 miles in the rain when you haven't done over 100 miles in the past two months can be bad. I now had a golf-ball sized hematoma above my right ischial tuberosity.

If that whole "tuberosity" thing isn't gross-sounding enough, should you go to Wikipedia and look all of that up like I did, you'll see that it really just means that I had a ridiculously swollen bruise on the right portion of my tush that gets compressed when I sit down. And when I say "ridiculously swollen," I am not kidding. When the doctor saw it, he literally said "Oh, my goodness."

You do not want a doctor looking at your tush saying "Oh, my goodness."

Now, Alan Gosart -- one of the sage heads of ultra-cycling (and I don't just say that because said sage head is covered with gray hair, so he almost looks like Dumbledore) -- once gave me a bit of advice regarding swollen things "down there." He said to just go ahead and bite the bullet and stab it with a safety pin.

"If you want to ride your broom, Harry, you'll have to do something about that saddle sore."

"Unless you have magic, Robert, pour rubbing alcohol on everything first."

Sorry. Gotta stop laughing here, first.

Anyway, I should have taken Alan's advice. Instead, I let the doctor torture my taint and go "Oh, my goodness" over it, and then decide to do the medically sound thing: Nothing.

Well, okay, not nothing. He gave me an antibiotic, in case it either is or becomes infected, and he gave me some anti-inflammatories. Then he told me to take hot baths, use a heating pad, and put a warm compress of epsom salts on it.

Great. I've got a thing that makes it really painful to sit at all, and you want me to try to sit in a hot bathtub, or sit on some heating pad? And, let me tell you, it's not much more fun lying around naked on your belly with a salty washcloth drapped over your posterior.

"And I guess that I don't have to tell you," the doctor added, removing his glove with a snap. "Stay off the bike for at least a week."

Well, okay, he probably didn't need to tell me that. There was no way that I can sit on a bike with this thing, anyhow ... probably. Unless I kind of shifted waaaaay over to the right.

And that, my friends, is a perfect example of the First Stage of Cycling Grief: Scheming.

The Solo Century Strategy

2011-07-18T10:55:00.000-07:00

OK, show of hands here. Who out there wants to do a 200K in triple-digit temperatures?

Anybody? Hello?

Lately, in middle Tennessee, that's what we've been getting. Not all day, mind you, but about noon the "feels like" temperature is going to cross over to 100 F (-42 Kelvin, for my Canadian readers).

For normal humans, this is inconvenient. For randonneurs, it is death.

Well, maybe that's overstating it. What it really means is that we either 1) do brevets at weird hours, like starting at 6 pm and riding a double century overnight down the Natchez Trace so we finish the next morning before it starts to get hot, or 2) ride the rollers or trainer inside for eight hours, or 3) not ride and slowly let the endurance that you built up riding in sub-freezing temperatures during the winter leech out until you are incapable of doing more than a measly metric.

Hmmm ... maybe "death" isn't too strong a word.

A lot of my friends -- particularly the guys that are going to Paris in August -- have been choosing option 1. I keep having conflicts of one type or another, usually involving me being out of town for the weekend. Since I didn't ride the rollers or trainer much during the winter, I refuse to resort to that now, so that I have been choosing option 3 the past weeks.

Fortunately, I knew that I was going to spend two weeks at the beach this month, and knew that I would be able to get out and ride long a couple of times then. The first week, I was going to hang out with my brother, John, and my mom, and the second week RandoGirl and the RandoDaughter would join us. Fun in the sun!

But, as you have probably already deduced from my above use of the future imperfect (or is that the past pluperfect?), my plans went to spit. My brother and mom had something else come up, and I needed to do some things around the house, so the two weeks at the beach turned into one week of vacation in town, followed by one week at the beach. Of course, when life gives you lemons, you've got to trade them for limes and take them to the beach to drink with an icy alcoholic beverage. When life gives you a week at home with errands to run, and your endurance cycling fitness has fallen precipitously, you've got to go do a couple of solo centuries.

Now, everybody knows that the shortest brevet is 200K, or roughly 125 miles. But if you can ride 100 miles by yourself -- or, really, anything above 85 miles -- you can go out and do a 200K. I call this the Solo Century Strategy.

I couldn't get to a lot of the house things Monday, and had been forced to blow most of the weekend doing other house things, so when I awoke at 5 am I decided that this was a good day to knock out 100 miles before lunch. Twenty minutes later, I was on the road.

It was a balmy 78 degrees as I headed down through light early morning traffic in to Franklin and on to Long Lane, past the Williamson County agriculture center, and past the now-thick cars looking to get onto I-65 at Peytonsville Road. I wanted to see if Henpeck Market -- the penultimate control on my Dog Meat Permanent -- was open again. As I rolled in just before 7 am, a little over 20 miles into my ride, the place was hopping.

It was completely remodeled, right down to the menu. They no longer have the Tomato-Basil soup, which Peter Lee used to love. They also don't have all of the fresh-baked goods, nor the excellent pasta salad. I was kind of bummed by these changes.

Instead, they have an ice cream bar, and pizzas and hamburgers. I ordered a short stack of pancakes with bacon.

Things change, and you've got to be able to let go of the old stuff and try the new. I'll always miss the old stuff, but I would be willing to ride back to Henpeck Market for more of those excellent pancakes.

From there, I continued west towards Leiper's Fork, taking Bear Creek up towards Theta before turning back south on Sycamore to Johnson's Hollow Road. It was getting hot, and I had 40 miles in, so I picked up the Harpeth River Ride route in Burwood and on to Thompson Station. I topped off my bottles with ice, then headed through Bethesda, over Pulltight Hill, and up to College Grove. I filled bottles again, then went east and north via Rocky Glade, Hill, and Patterson, before turning on to Rehobath Road.

There are some roads that are worth the trouble it takes to get there. Rehobath is one of these. The Patterson end of it was great, but at the other end it comes out on Murfreesboro Road where there is no shoulder and two lanes full of fast cars. Knowing that there was just under a mile of that up ahead, I still had a great time rolling down the smooth pavement of Rehobath and through the gentle shady descent on this lovely quiet lane.

At the Almaville Market, I again topped off my bottles with ice before rolling on to Independent Hill. The heat and my lack of conditioning was getting to me as I climbed this road towards McCanless, promising myself that the break that I would get with the gradual downhill trend on Sanford Road would be worth the steep pitches. It was.

I had met my minimum mileage before I got to Nolensville Road, so I stayed on that up to Brittain, Waller, and then Concord Pass. The bike computer hit 91 when I stumbled off the bike into my garage back home, just past noon. After a shower (and a brief collapse on the bed, forced to a painful end by a nasty leg cramp), I checked the weather online. It was 104 degrees.

Maybe next time I'll just do the overnight double century.

Random Tour Thoughts

2011-07-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

I don't know very many cyclists that don't follow the Tour de France every July. It's the world's biggest bike race, although I don't find it as interesting as many of the spring classics. Most of us could never ride as fast as those professionals do, and probably wouldn't even be very comfortable packed into the tight peleton. I know that I would hate to do one of those climbs through a tunnel of people cheering in my face, throwing water on me, and so forth ... but I guess it's better than having somebody throw tobacco spit on me.

Usually, when RandoGirl and I watch the Tour, we watch it on the DVR. We record the morning's live feed, and then fast forward through the commercials (the dog that buys insurance is very cute this year, and the song is catchy, but after the 10th time in one hour anything gets old). We also fast-forward through the flat stuff, and the commercials that masquerade as features (George Hincapie did not look sincere when he was talking about Easton wheels) and anytime Gogo talks. I'm sorry ... I know that he raced with Kent Bostick, who is kind of local, but Todd Gogulski makes me uncomfortable. He's like the buck-toothed guy at a party that is trying way too hard to make the pretty girl like him. He knows he's the new kid there, and that (unlike Paul and Bobke) he never raced the Tour himself. He seems to know what he's talking about, though, and will hopefully someday get over his inferiority complex.

I've also been watching the Tour this year on my iPad, using NBC's Tour de France All Access app. Last week, I had it on a few days at work, mostly just listening while I "worked." It's the same stuff that they show on Versus, but without the commercials (the dog ones -- you still get the George-loves-Easton ones). There's not much Bobke, which is a bummer, but for that you have to watch the evening show.

What did we ever do before the Internet?

The downside of all this access is that we obviously have too much media on the road with the riders this year. Between motorcycles and cars hitting riders, we also get too much film of riders starting to relieve themselves. Every night, you get a shot of some riders pulling over to the side and Phil says something about how somebody may be in a bit of bother, and then they turn to the side of the road and start to pull down the front of their bib shorts, and the camera moves away just in time. I even saw one guy in a breakaway actually move to the side and -- still riding -- begin to pee. This is why you never touch a bike racer's saddle without putting on nitrile gloves first.

Speaking of television cars hitting cyclists, I'm not really happy with the way that they're dealing with the one that hit Juan-Antonio Flecha and (by proxy) Johnny Hoogerland. Everyone seems fine with the driver's excuse that he had to come over to avoid hitting that tree, but watch the footage and you'll see that there are trees all along that side of the road.

So, he's "surprised" that one tree might come a little closer to the edge of the road? And, rather than maybe scrape the side of his car, he decides to whack Flecha instead? I just keep thinking about the thousands of times when I've been passed by a car in a blind curve, and I've wondered then, "What if there had been a truck coming the other way?" Would the soccer mom with two kids in the back choose to test the collision claims on her Range Rover, or would it be "Bye-bye, RandoBoy."

Johnny Hoogerland seems willing to turn the other cheek (the one that didn't get 20 stitches from barbed wire), but I'm afraid that the car-driving population will watch this and think, "Well, he got through that all right." I'd rather that the car-driving population watch this and think, "From now on, I will make sure that the road is clear before I begin to pass a bicyclist."

A man's gotta dream.

As to the race itself, it's been fun. Contador looks like a spoiled brat, and I'm kind of glad. Paul and Phil talk about his "bad luck," but you make your own luck. Lance won seven straight, and maybe some of that was good luck -- he didn't have any flats during that stretch, but how much of that was due to using the right tires at the right pressure and not riding over broken glass? Lance prepared. He test-rode the course. He had a great team -- both on and off the course. And he had the right equipment.

It's a poor carpenter that blames his hammer. Don't throw your bike into the ditch.

Ten Questions

2011-07-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

One of the keys to becoming a famous blogger is to post at least once a week. As one of the tallest ultra-cycling bloggers in middle Tennessee, I must apologize for falling short of the mark last week. I have two excuses:

I've been really, really busy.
This busy-ness has kept me from riding, which is kind of what this blog is about. Since I didn't have any cool rides to write about, why waste your reading time?

Nonetheless, irregardless, and avada kedavra in perpetuem, there have been a few things going on lately that I could tell you about. In the interest of brevity, however, I'm going to use the literary device known as "Ten Questions with ..." to tell you about them. Bicycling Magazine regularly does this to interview luminaries of the cycling world -- or daytime soap opera stars who recently completed their first t-shirt ride -- because it requires no face-time and can be done via an email exchange with the soap opera stars publicist.

For today's column, the part of soap opera star will be played by RandoBoy (RB). Bicycling Magazine is BM, of course. This explains why every edition has an article telling you how to "Lose Five Pounds Fast," since the magazine is mostly crap.

BM: Hey! What is that supposed to mean?

RB: I mean that people should go ride rather than sit on their butts reading about this great ceviche recipe made by a chef who used to be a Cat 5 racer. You want to lose weight? Stop carrying around some stupid magazine.

By the way, that counts as one of your questions.

BM: Wow. Okay, then. Why have you been so busy lately?

RB: Well, work's been a little busy, but mostly it's house stuff. We've got some major projects going on there.

BM: Can you tell me more about them?

RB: No.

BM: Why not?

RB: Because they're secret. You're running out of questions.

BM: Why didn't you do a blog about Memphis?

RB: I did. The one about not riding most of that week so Max could race Saturday.

BM: But why didn't you write about the race afterwards?

RB: Well, Max barely avoided a crash going into the last kilometer, so he ended up in 18th place. I didn't want to write about that -- it just sounded "whiney."

BM: But didn't he win the time trial?

RB: Yeah, he did okay there.

BM: Okay?! He finished with an average speed over 30 mph, right?

RB: Yeah, but it was just four miles.

BM: Still, that was much better than last year, wasn't it?

RB: Last year, Memphis was his first time trial. This year, he had a time trial bike, the helmet, more experience ... all that stuff.

BM: So, why didn't Max write a blog crowing about it?

RB: Because it's only funny when he barely wins something. It's much more funny when he loses and makes excuses. When he actually does something that lives up to the name "Max Watzz" then ... well, it just isn't as funny.

BM: Well, who died and made you the king of comedy?

RB: Sorry, but you've used up your questions.

To the Comedian in the Truck

2011-06-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

I'm writing today's blog to the guy in the pick-up truck who threw his cup full of tobacco spit juice all over our paceline last night on the Natchez Trace.

Dude! Priceless! That was comedic genius! The way that you managed to get maximum spread from the spew? That, sir, is a blend of artistry and athleticism not often seen from someone with your burly heft. I can only assume that you have been practicing the "spit toss" for years. I would imagine that the timing involved in hitting a group of bicycles moving in the opposite direction at almost 20 mph is tricky, so I hope that you first practiced on a group of pedestrians. Maybe some senior citizens sitting on a bench ... or even better some handicapped children at a bus stop. I'm certain that you and your friends nearly died laughing as you watched kids in wheelchairs cry. I only wish that you could have laughed just a little harder.

With a throwing arm like yours, it's a wonder you never made it to the major leagues. Of course, the system has always been rigged against you. The way that the big-time scouts don't even start looking for talent until you're playing high school ball ... it's a crying shame. Heck, you learned all you needed in seventh grade anyways. Third time was the charm.

Some people in cars are content to merely buzz cyclists, or pull alongside us and honk their horn, or yell "Hey Lance!" or "Bikers suck!" But you, sir, have elevated the art of automotive harassment to a new level -- the initial light contact of a spray of spit and leaf, combined with a lasting residue both visible and olfactory. The joke and its legacy stayed with us for the rest of our ride. You can't imagine just how funny I and my fellow riders found it.

You really can't.

By the way, your brand choice was impeccable. What could possibly be more appropriate than Red Man? The way that it picked up the redolence of your lunch -- fried chicken, fried okra, and Budweiser, right? Plus, the texture and consistency made it all but impossible for us to just wipe the flakes off our faces and arms. Hilarious! You're killing me.

Um, that last is just an expression, of course. Kind of like "you rock!" You aren't really saying that somebody shifts their weight from side to side, like in a rocking chair. So, when I say, "you're killing me," I don't want you to get any ideas. Heaven forbid you get something like an idea.

I mean, that whole "sociopathic tendencies" thing that the guidance counselor in 7th grade went on and on about (second time around ... not that wiener Mr. Cooper the third time through). Well, what did she know? Lots of kids like to play a little rough with their pets. That cat was old, anyhow.

All I wanted to say was, good job. After the passing this week of one of the Comedic Greats, Ryan Dunn, many of us were concerned that humor might lapse again into subtlety and craft, using those stupid "word" things again. Physical humor is an art, and it is at its most pure when we can laugh at the misfortune of others, particularly when it puts them in some form of peril. What if your "spittle missile" had caused a crash that brought us all to the pavement in a mangle of torn flesh and broken bones? Can you imagine how funny that would have been?

You can't? Well, don't strain yourself.

Anyway, I hope that some night you will come by the school parking lot in Fieldstone Farms and entertain us further with your unique brand of comedy. I, for one, would love to buy you a beer ... and maybe a fresh tin of Red Man.

Your fan,
RandoBoy

Give a Max a Day, and He'll Take a Week

2011-06-17T07:39:00.000-07:00

Who would be so stupid as to drive a car over 400 miles, round trip, to ride a bicycle 13 miles? Who would give up what will be a very full day, just to be on a bike for just over half an hour?

Well, of course, there's only one fool who would do that. Max Watzz.

MW: You called?

RB: No, I was just explaining how you've about trashed my week and now you're going to ruin Saturday for me.

MW: I beg to differ, RandoBoob. I will make your weekend glorious, since you will have a front row seat in my beautiful subconscious when I win everything at this weekend's Smith & Nephew Grand Prix in Memphis, TN.

RB: Sure, but to do this we have to drive 200 miles to Memphis on Saturday morning, race four times around a 2.3-mile circuit, hang around for a couple of hours, and then do a four-mile time trial before we begin driving another 200 miles back home. And the courses probably won't even be pretty!

MW: I think you must be injured, since I hear a Waaambulance.

RB: What?

MW: Never mind -- my humor is obviously too refined for your plebian tastes.

RB: Refined?! Waambulance is refined?! You sound like a Frenchman extolling the work of Jerry Lewis ...

MW: The man was a genius!

RB: Whatever. Anyway, because of your stupid race I'm not going to get to ride much this weekend. Plus, to keep your legs "fresh," I've barely been on a bike all week. I had to miss the Tuesday and Thursday night club rides.

MW: I am like a Ferrari -- only probably faster and better tuned ... and maybe more expensive. Either way, I should not be driven to and from work, or forced to carry groceries or Little Leaguers. I should only be used on pristine roads, where my speed and glory can be truly put to the test. A test which, I barely need mention, I will always pass with flying colors.

RB: You're like a Ferrari in that you don't work much. You're more like a Hummer in that you're full of gas ... which you also pass with flying colors.

MW: I've told you before that Recoverite is best when mixed with milk. It's not my fault that I'm lactose-intolerant.

RB: Whatever.

Riding with The Man

2011-06-13T09:54:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday, my bike club -- the Harpeth Bike Club -- hosted their 16th annual Harpeth River Ride.

Earlier this week, I called this a "t-shirt ride." Now, this isn't necessarily a derogatory term -- it just means that this isn't a race, so that there are no awards. Instead, you do the ride and you get a t-shirt. Since most of these rides also feed you lunch, you could call it a lunch ride, but then what would people call their Thursday noon 20-mile mini-race around the office complex with their co-workers?

But my point is that the Harpeth River Ride has now progressed beyond being a t-shirt ride. It is now, officially, an Event.

First off, we had famous people there.

Yep, that's right. That is Kevin Bullock captaining Mark Montgomery on a tandem. Mark is blind, and he finished his first century just three weeks ago with Kevin. They did another metric at the River Ride.

I think the guy next to them is famous, too. Lance Something or other. Kevin had to help him reset his bike computer.

Lance brought Bjorn Selander and Ben King with him, and they all did the century. They even stopped at a couple of rest stops and ate cookies and other goodies, just like real people.

RandoGirl and I did get to ride with Lance for the first few miles, sort of. We were in an elite bunch of about 50 bikes, with other tandems being stoked by riders from the Tennessee Association of Blind Athletes and the United States Association of Blind Athletes, as well as a bunch of Wounded Warrior cyclists from Fort Campbell and some Nissan executives. Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee, Mayor Karl Dean of Nashville, and Mayor Ken Moore of Franklin also rode.

Behind us all were a half-dozen police and state troopers, followed by 1,500 people who paid to ride and were champing at the bit to zoom up and ride with Lance. Since, as I said, Lance and his Radio Shack teammates actually stopped at some of the rest stops, many of them actually did get to meet him. From what I heard, he was very nice and willing to sign stuff.

I mentioned that some Nissan executives were in the pack. Nissan is the main sponsor of this ride, and they do a LOT. They loan us much of their headquarters for the weekend. They got Lance for us. They brought in folks with timing chips, so people could know how fast they rode. They brought in extra t-shirts with Tour of California stuff, and had cool cars for folks to look at while they hung around. Like I said: A LOT.

My friend Bill Glass and I went out early Friday morning and checked the routes, touched up markings, and swept some gravel and debris off a few roads. We got back to Nissan headquarters just before lunch and everybody is running around setting up and it is HUGE. Bigger than any other ride that I have ever seen, including the starts and finishes of the Tour de Georgia.

While I'm there, I check my e-mail, and I see that I've got two messages from folks at work asking if I can get them or their friends into the ride. You see, we capped the ride at 1,500, and we hit that mark Wednesday, and these folks had thought that they could just walk up. You usually can just walk up and register for a t-shirt ride.

But this was an Event. You can't just walk up and register for an Event.

I'd like to tell you what it was like riding with Lance, but I have no idea. We let the TNABA and USABA and Wounded Warriors riders hang out with him up front, and RandoGirl and I rode the tandem further back, keeping an eye on stuff.

Mostly, we rode next to Governor Haslam. He was on a nice new Lynskey that he bought from The Greatest Bike Shop in The Universe, Gran Fondo. And he rode it well. He seemed really comfortable on it, and had no trouble with the pace.

I had assumed that he was there for political reasons -- for Nissan or because he knew that there would be lots of media -- but, as we rode, I got the feeling that he was more there because he wanted to meet Lance Armstrong, but also wanted to ride his bike. We talked about riding in middle Tennessee, and where the good roads are. It's tough for him to get out, but he does every chance that he can. He was telling me about some of the great climbs back home in Knoxville, and we swapped a few stories about routes out that way.

About seven miles in, we pulled off the route and started back towards Nissan. Kevin and Mark came with us, since they were just going to do our 18-mile VIP loop and then go out on the 44-mile route. It was a nice ride, at a good pace, with everybody working just hard enough that we earned some fitness, but not so hard that we couldn't talk.

Back at Nissan, Kevin and Mark headed back out. The governor sent his state trooper escort off, and then asked if we could go out for another 10 miles, since he had about another hour open. There was no media, and Nissan wouldn't care one way or the other. The governor was just another guy that wanted to ride his bike.

We went back out and did a couple of stiff climbs, including McEwen Road by McKay's Mill. Then he had to leave, but he thanked us while his driver loaded up his bike. We even talked about loaning him a tandem to ride with his wife.

It was kind of cool riding near Lance Armstrong for a few miles. But what really made me happy was to ride with the governor of the state that I live in, and have him want to go back out and ride more just for the fun of it. This is my kind of guy -- a person who is going to do something for cyclists just because he gets it. It probably doesn't matter much to him -- which is even more cool -- but he won my vote and RandoGirl's come the next election.

Thinking Inside the Box

2011-06-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

So, last week I was telling you about how Lance Armstrong is coming to the Harpeth River Ride, this being the big annual "t-shirt ride" hosted by the Harpeth Bike Club (HBC).

(In case you're curious, Lance wears a Medium t-shirt. So does Bjorn Selander. Ben King gets a Small.)

I was telling you about it because this ride has been taking up a lot of my time lately. And the sad thing is that I'm probably only going to get to do the first seven miles of it. This is because RandoGirl and I have been assigned to escort Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, Franklin Mayor Ken Moore, and Brentwood Mayor Paul Webb. They've got other appointments that day, not to mention the fact that we need to have State Trooper escorts, so they can't do the full century. Instead, they and a couple of other members of my club will peel off the route just before the century hits open roads and every Fred in a five-state radius tries to prove that he can hang with Lance.

Okay, I'm not bummed about missing that exhibition.

I would like to have ridden the century, however. I helped design it, and it's got some really pretty roads. It would be interesting to see how the pros handle Pulltight Hill, but it would be even more fun to watch them enjoy Choctaw, Flat Creek, or Swamp Road. I like to show off smooth roads with pretty views.

We did ride the other three routes this past weekend, however. RandoGirl and I did the metric route on our tandem, along with Jeff Bauer and Fredia Barry on Jeff's tandem. We did it very fast, since we wanted to finish before the day got hot. That part was fun.

The part that wasn't fun, however, was when we started trying to follow the road hickeys we had put down the previous weekend. That's when we found that they weren't ... well, they weren't very easy to find.

I mean, you could see them if you knew where they were supposed to be and if you looked really hard, but the colors kind of blended in with the road. I had expected that the green and blue markings might be hard to see, but even the yellow and red arrows had somehow faded ... baked off by a week of temperatures in the 90s.

A lot of HBC members were with us, and they noticed the same problems. RandoGirl and I went back out Sunday morning to ride the 21- and 44-mile routes, just to make sure. It confirmed our worst fears -- our day and a half of road-marking was not enough.

Fortunately, the HBC is a great bike club. That afternoon, the great minds of the club had figured out a solution, and the great souls of the club had stepped up to volunteer to implement the solution.

Basically, the fix was to just go back out on the route and spray-paint a white box around each set of arrows. We also added a few more white paint notes regarding route splits, potholes, and upcoming rest areas, just to make sure that riders kept one eye out for white paint on the roads.

RandoGirl and I went out Sunday afternoon and touched up the 21-mile route this way, with the result being that the markings were then very visible. Once this was confirmed by a couple more people, a dozen other club members went out on the routes Monday and finished up.

Problem identified. Problem averted. Thanks to a "remarkable" group of people.

(Sorry. RandoGirl came up with that pun.)

Busy, Busy, Busy*

2011-06-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

I consider it my duty to post at least one blog entry every week. Not that I think you, loyal reader, are breathlessly anticipating my meandering missives -- I don't have Max Watzz's ego. Rather, it's a purgative act for me ... kind of like pulling threads of thoughts out of my brain and stirring them into Dumbledore's pensieve.

Wow. Two literary references before you even reach the second paragraph. It's gettin' deep here.

Anyway, I typically use this blog to describe an interesting ride that I've recently finished. The reason that I haven't written much so far this week, however, is not because I haven't been riding. I've been out most days this week enjoying the sultry mid-90-degree supersaturated atmosphere sitting atop the southeastern United States. But most of these rides have been the usual stuff: Commuting and group rides on standard routes. Also, I've been doing these rides at a different pace, too -- more Max Watzz than RandoBoy -- and there's not much to say about that.

This blog is no place for threshold heart rate and normalized power.

I didn't ride this past Sunday as I had to go mark the Harpeth River Ride with RandoGirl, the RandoDaughter, and my friends Johnny Crow and Karla McVey. It was a messy, hot, arduous, messy chore (yeah, I know that I said "messy" twice -- it was really messy), but we were able to get almost all of four different routes marked in a single day, with only the last 20 miles of the century route left for me to finish Thursday morning.

What made us so fast was also what made it so messy. As I've mentioned here before, I have marked many routes, most lately using a standard that I got from a fellow Harpeth Bike Club member, Keith Walker. Basically, the standard is to always put down three sets of arrows -- the first set being 50 yards from the turn if it is at a stop sign or traffic light, or 100 yards if there is no stop (and thus no other reason that the riders would need to slow down). For the 100-yard kind of turn, you put down double arrows, to make sure that you catch the riders attention. The next of the three sets of arrows is halfway to the turn -- thus either 25 yards or 50 yards from the turn -- and the last set you put down at the turn itself. Then, five to 10 yards past the turn, on the road onto which the rider should now be travelling if he or she is on the route, you put down another arrow.

Here's how it works for the rider. I'm zipping along on the route. I see the first set of arrows and slow down a bit. Then I see the second set, and from there I should be able to see the turn. I signal my turn, and shift right or left in the lane if I can to make it cleanly. At the turn, I see the the third set, and then I roll over one more arrow and therefore know that I am going the right way.

(Of course, this scenario gets blown out of the water when you get some fast guys up at the front and they aren't paying attention. They ignore the markings and miss the turn, and the idiots that have been hanging on for dear life behind them go along. Lemmings to the cliff.)

Anyway. I used this standard last year when I marked the Hope on Wheels routes, and I did not hear about anybody getting lost. Of course, it took me two days -- one of them with help from RandoGirl -- to mark these routes.

So, this year, I made up big arrow-shaped stamps with carpet on them. I also bought big, rubber paint buckets (with rubber lids so we could close them up), and put a gallon of good, oil-based Rustoleum paint in each. The arrow stamps fit right down into the bucket, so you could get load up the carpet "head" with paint. You then pull the stamp out of the bucket and just plop it onto the pavement. Voila -- arrow shaped marking. Move on to the next spot and repeat.

It was quicker than using a stencil, plus cheaper and more ecologically sound than using spray paint. But it was messy. It took an hour to clean the paint off of RandoGirl's car, and another hour to clean it off of me. The clothes went straight into the trash.

The payoff for this, of course, will be next Saturday, June 11, when 1,500 riders come to do the Harpeth River Ride. If all of those riders follows the road markings, and thus stays on their respective routes, I will be ecstatic. Giddy. I may even do the dance of painting joy ... half polka, half clogging, one-third Russian saber dance. Post-dance physical therapy usually requires 4-6 weeks.

Which brings me to the other thing that's been keeping me busy: Lance Armstrong. Yeah, of course I mean that Lance Armstrong.

You see, Lance is coming to the River Ride. I've known that it was a strong possibility for about a month now, but he finally announced it this week. I guess it's kind of a blinding glimpse of the obvious here, but that is HUGE for us.

And this is the other reason that I wanted perfect road markings. Last year, some of Lance's fellow team members from Team Radio Shack did the Harpeth River Ride, and they missed a turn. My friend, Cindy Wall, had to chase them down in a car, and then motor-pace them back onto the route. It was, to say the least, embarrassing.

If Lance misses one of my road markings, it had better be because Jan Ullrich is sitting on top of it and Lance can't see it.

* Yes, I'm a Bokononist

Max Does It Again

2011-05-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's me. Your hero, Max Watzz.

I know you've missed me -- who wouldn't? I mean, I'm around me all the time and sometimes I can't get enough of me. There are times that I like to wear that dorky little mirror that RandoBore rides with on his glasses, but rather than aim it at traffic behind me while biking, turn it so that I am always looking at the thing that I find most beautiful in the world. I won't even make you guess what that thing is, because I know, in your heart of hearts, you think that it's the most beautiful thing, too.

You can't say "Me" without "Mmmmmm."

I proved it again, Saturday, by repeating my victory in the Tennessee State Time Trials. Once again, I was the fastest thing out there ... although, for some reason, they only gave me the medal in my division, Cat 5. Although the other so-called "racers" out there constantly disagree with me, I know that the higher one's Category, the more special you are.

And I am special.

Here's the results. As usual, they got my name wrong -- who is this Robert fellow, anyway?

And here I am, standing in my rightful place, atop the podium.

I must insist on a higher podium next year, as befitting my stature. There should also be French models giving me lions and that kind of thing. They could give me a real lion, too -- I would strike fear into its heart. I would make it meow like a kitten.

I am the king of beasts.

200 Kilometers of Nowhere

2011-05-25T09:07:00.000-07:00

Cyclists regularly spend a lot of time and energy on trips that ultimately go nowhere. We load the bike onto the back of the car, drive out into the country, and then ride a big loop. Maybe we stop at a convenience store, or cruise down some quiet lane with a bunch of friends, or climb over Mt. Somethingorother, but ultimately we end up back at our cars, loading the bike back on the rack, and then driving home.

Friends ask us: Where did you ride this weekend? We tell them the name of the town / mountain / road, or the group that we were with. Or we say that we just did a little training ride from the house. But usually, we went nowhere and did nothing other than enjoy some time on a bike, gain some fitness, and maybe buy another Gatorade and package of cheese crackers at a small country store.

In that regard, this past Saturday was nothing different for me and a bunch of other area cyclists. We went nowhere. The only difference is that we went nowhere five times, and did it to help fight cancer.

The event was the 200K of Nowhere – the middle-Tennessee ultra version of Fat Cyclist’s 100 Miles of Nowhere. The stated goal was to raise money for LiveStrong in honor of our friend, Peter Lee, who cancer killed this past November.

The real goal, however, was to ride 200 kilometers – 125 miles – on great roads, in lovely weather, with nice people. Peter wanted to get more folks out riding brevets, and what better way than to let them “test-ride” a 200K on a great marked course, with access to food and drink at the end of each loop?

Eleven of us signed up for the ride via Twin Six’s website. Many of these riders could not do the full 200K. RandoGirl had decided before the ride that 100 miles was plenty, and Alan Gosart agreed with her after the first four laps. A couple of the riders had other commitments, and were only able to squeeze in one or two laps, or couldn’t come out until late. As a result, only four of us did at least 200 kilometers … but everyone had fun.

A group of six started the ride just after 6 am, from the parking lot at the Community Center in College Grove. Lisa Starmer biked down from her house, but got there just after we had left. She only had time to do one loop before heading back home, but enjoyed the route.

The previous week, I had marked all of the turns on the roads with white chevrons labeled “W.K. LEE” (for Peter, whose Chinese name was “Wing Kong Lee”). Unfortunately, the area is so popular with cyclists that there were other similar markings, allowing riders a couple of opportunities to get slightly lost. Since any of these “missed” turns would eventually put the rider back on the route, however -- albeit with a couple of “lost” miles, it was all good.

In spite of having almost 1,500 feet of climbing – including Choctaw Road and Pulltight Hill – we all finished the first 27-mile loop in just over an hour and a half. Alan and I even had a fun town-line sprint coming in to Bethesda. Everyone topped off their bottles from the coolers in the back of my SUV (the “Watzzwagen”), grabbed something to eat, and rolled back out for another lap. Bruce Miller and Dave Harris had shown up by then, so they joined the fun. RandoGirl and I had a longer stop at the grocery store, buying a couple more bags of ice and such, so we went out a little later to do the lap by ourselves.

Going up Pulltight this time, RandoGirl commented that the RB+RG marking was still there. I had painted it two years ago for a club ride on this road, and so tried to grab a quick picture.

Fail.

Since I knew that I would be passing this way again in a few hours, I did not turn back to try the shot again.

Although the temperatures in Nashville had dropped precipitously earlier in the week, the warm weather was rebounding strong on Saturday. The cicadas were going crazy, dive-bombing us and setting up a low throbbing hum that made me think that a flying saucer was about to attack us with a death ray at any minute. We were glad to get back to the Watzzwagen without an "X-Files moment."

After filling up bottles and eating a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, RandoGirl and I went out on our third loop. The wind was picking up now, but was only a little work going down Bethesda-Arno Road. It was in our face on the long stretch on Comstock Road, but as this road begins with a fairly long climb followed by an even longer descent, wind is usually not a problem there.

As we rode, RandoGirl and I both noticed how, with the way the route twists and turns, you rarely end up with prolonged stretches into any kind of wind. It is an almost perfect mix of sun and shade, flat and hilly. And each of the hills is rewarded by fun downhills with just enough twist to keep it interesting without letting you go so fast as to be dangerous.
On this loop, RandoGirl and I took a five-mile shortcut by staying on Giles Hill Road. This kept her closer to the 100 miles that she wanted, and me closer to the 125 miles that I wanted. It also cut out the tough climbs on Choctaw and Pulltight Hill ... but that was just dumb luck.

Dave Perrault and Alan were waiting for us at the Watzzwagen this time. As we ate and talked, Jeff Bauer and George Hiscox came in, grabbed food and drink, and left again. Alan was having some trouble, since he has not been able to ride as much lately as an ultra-cyclist of his caliber usually does. I sent RandoGirl and Dave back out, and kept Alan company as we started the next loop. Eventually, however, he sent me on my way, and I did another 27-mile circuit. This time, I was able to get the shot going up Pulltight.

I got back to the Watzzwagen just after Dave and RandoGirl. Since she had now finished her 103 miles, Dave and I went out to do one more 22-mile loop. My hip was starting to bother me as we skipped the turn onto Choctaw, climbing Giles Hill again.

Back on Arno-Allisona Road, I told Dave to follow the road markings and took it easy for the last few miles. Pulling into the parking lot for the final time, RandoGirl, Dave, and Alan cheered. I grabbed a Diet Coke from the back of the Watzzwagen, and we all hung out on the tennis courts.

Five minutes later, Vida Greer and Mary Beth Chawan came by. They had signed up for the 200K, but also had to help support the local Tour de Nash ride that morning. Since thunderstorms were just beginning to rumble, they didn't get to stay long, and soon jumped back on their bikes to head home.

About the time that they left, George Hiscox and Jeff Bauer came in. They had been "purists," sticking to the 27-mile route for each of the five loops to do a total of 135 miles. Since each of them is signed up for 1200-kilometer rides this summer -- George in Colorado and Jeff doing the infamous Paris-Brest-Paris -- they needed the extra miles.

Now that looks like a man who is going nowhere for a while.

Bike (Down to Franklin and Then Back Up North) to Work Day

2011-05-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

One of my resolutions for this year was to ride my bicycle in to work at least one day every week ... at least, for those weeks that I plan on coming in to work. I mean, we're going to take a week at the beach in July, but I'm not planning to bike in to the office from there that Wednesday.

So far this year, I've met my goal for all weeks but one, and that time I had a medical excuse. A bicycle-human contact points that shall not be named developed something that the doctors had to put me on antibiotics and anti-inflammatories to combat, and I wanted to heal up enough to do a 400K that weekend. Since I've had a couple of other weeks when lots of people didn't even drive to work, and other weeks when I had already doubled up on my bike rides in to the office, I'm not going to count that week off.

As someone who regularly commutes by bike, then, you can imagine my reaction to the League of American Bicyclist's Bike to Work Week. As an English major and a grammar nut, my initial reaction is to tell them to hyphenate properly ... Bike-to-Work Week. But nobody listens to the English major, just as nobody pays attention to the cyclist on the shoulder of the highway.

Waa-waa, boo-hoo. Somebody call a waambulance.

Back to the point, though. I actually do get a little excited about Bike to Work (sic) Day ... oooh, that makes it a Sic Day ... so I don't have to go to work?

I get excited about ... well, that day ... because there are a lot of people that actually do bike in to work that normally do not, either on that day or on some other day of Bike Week. As a human being (really ... I have papers) I prefer to immerse myself in a society, and a Society of Cyclists is not just good alliteration, it's a safety buffer. If there are other cyclists biking in to work with me, then motorists are more likely to be aware of us, and maybe give us a little more room on the road. Maybe this is because at some point we constitute a Bike Gang, and everyone knows that you can't just have a fight with just one Hell's Angel. You start something with one bicyclist, it's very possible a whole bunch of us will start flailing at you with our vestigial arms, and that will tickle.

So, Friday being ... you know ... the folks at Walk/Bike Nashville asked some of the more experienced cyclists in the area to lead groups of commuters in to downtown. I was the best that they could come up with on short notice, so they got me to lead the group coming in from Franklin.

Now, the RandoCave is not in Franklin. It's actually in East Brentwood, hidden beneath a glacial lake in a dormant volcano. (I won't say any more than that ... too many clues and it won't be a secret lair, eh?) I suppose that I could have put a bike on the back of the Watzzwagon and driven down to Franklin for this, but that seemed contrary to the spirit of the thing. So, I got up ridiculously early Friday morning, and rode my single-speed commuter the 15 miles to Franklin.

Keepin' it real, man.

I have to admit that, on the way, I was thinking that this was a fool's errand. When I lead this ride last year, nobody showed up, and I felt pretty stupid leading myself in to downtown. The whole thing was made even more ridiculous by the fact that I don't even work downtown, and so ended up retracing my ride 10 miles southeast from the capitol before I could begin my workday.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I got to the Starbuck's in Franklin just before 6 am and there was actually a cyclist waiting. Imagine my shock when I realized that it was ultra-cyclist George Hiscox, who lives in Jackson, TN.

George is a high-school physics teacher in Jackson, but was in town for a curriculum conference at the capitol. He had heard that I would be leading this ride, and had stayed the night in Franklin just so he could ride in with me.

After grabbing a coffee refill, we started north on Hwy 31. We were running a little behind, but didn't pick up any other riders until we got to Brentwood. There, Dave Perrault -- another ultra-cyclist -- joined us.

As we continued north, the three of us saw a lot of other cyclists with backpacks heading south, obviously commuting to work. Cars passed us with a decent gap, the weather was excellent, and the world seemed a pretty good place. Soon, we got to the park on Church Street, just down from the capitol building, where Walk/Bike Nashville had a tent with more coffee and Krispy Kreme donuts.

We stood around and chatted with the other riders, periodically telling homeless people passing by that no, they could not have a donut. Then, Mayor Karl Dean came down and gave a speech about bike lanes and greenways and healthy initiatives, and how Tennessee was one of the most obese states in the nation, and that we needed to find alternative methods of transportation. It was definitely preaching to the choir, but there were also news cameras, so hopefully the message will stick with somebody who needs it.

The crowd then broke up as we left for our offices. Some folks actually worked nearby, but Dave works near where he had joined George and I. We rolled back down Hwy 31 for about five miles in light traffic, and then I split for the bike route on Thompson Lane.

Sure, my normal ride to the office is 27 miles shorter, but it was nice having company on the way in Friday, and it felt good to "make a statement" regarding alternative transportation and the rights of cyclists to use the roads. Maybe I'm fooling myself, but it's possible that Friday showed some more folks that they really can get to and from work on a bicycle. One less car is worth one less hour of sleep for me.

Missing the Turn

2011-05-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

I hate missing a turn on a brevet.

For those of you who aren't randonneurs, when you miss a turn on a brevet you usually end up retracing your steps back to where you screwed up, and then get back on the route. We call it "bonus miles." You may be at the control, but if you didn't get there the way you were supposed to get there, you have to go back. On really long brevets, this can mean an extra 20 miles or more ... that's not just 20 miles more in your legs, it's the lost time that it takes you to ride those 20 extra miles. That's hours of sleep that you won't get or -- worse of all -- missing the closing time at a control, and not getting credit for the ride.

Fortunately, this past weekend I didn't ride any brevets, because I missed a lot of turns.

Saturday, RandoGirl and I rode the tandem on the Big Hill Challenge out in Watertown, TN. This is the annual century hosted by the Veloteers, and uses some of the same roads as a 200K that we often run.

It was a drizzly day, but we like to support our fellow cycling clubs, so a bunch of us from the Harpeth Bicycle Club went out. Most of the time, RandoGirl and I were with Jeff Bauer and Fredia Barry on Jeff's tandem, although we did a couple of long stretches either by ourselves or with some other HBC folks. It was just RandoGirl and I when we went up Big Hill Road, and we preferred that since we like to keep our suffering to ourselves. After that, we were chased by possibly every dog in Wilson County as we zipped along the ridge, and thus decided to find strength in numbers for the last 50 miles of the ride.

About mile 90 (I think), it was just the tandems, and we somehow missed a turn. We knew that we had missed it when we got to an intersection and there were no arrows.

Now, again, if this was a brevet, we would have turned around and gone back looking for the correct turn. But this was a "t-shirt ride," and the sign at the intersection said to turn right to get back to Watertown.

So we did.

Of course, the road was a little busy, so we soon started looking for arrows indicating where we were supposed to have turned. About two miles in, we found the painted road markings and turned left, thinking that we were now back on the route.

Maybe we were, and maybe we weren't, but after a couple of miles the route looked familiar. I recognized a turn from our outbound trek in the morning, and kept looking for other arrows indicating "Inbound" or "Return." Nothing. Finally, at mile 100, we pulled out RandoGirl's GPS and checked it, just to discover that we were steadily moving away from Watertown.

Uh-oh.

After a brief discussion, we decided to retrace our route. We then started down another way, thinking it might be the turn that we had missed. The GPS advised against it. So we decided to head back to the busy road that we knew went to Watertown. The GPS said that it would be shorter to make an unmarked left turn. Since the arrows from our outbound route that morning came from that road, we opted to follow the commands of our new robotic master, and turned left.

Eventually, we got back to Watertown, with a nice 111-mile century under our belts. Hooray.

You would think that doing 111 miles on a blustery mid-May day would have been enough, right? Well, Sunday morning Jeff and I drove out to Cookeville -- through lots of rain and wind and unseasonable cold -- to ride.

This time, the goal was to test some roads that I want to use on my as-yet-unfiled Honest Abe 200K permanent. Basically, I wanted to see what a road looked like that Google maps had suggested.

The weather was dismal, so we hedged our bets and drove down to Gainesboro rather that park at the "official" start location in Cookeville. As we turned on the new part of the course, Big Bottom Road (makes you think of that Queen song, doesn't it?), I thought that we had a winner. It was beautiful ... running within sight of the Cumberland river, with just enough roll to make things interesting, and plenty of trees to keep it cool. We could hear the rain start up again at times, but the trees kept us moderately drier as we cycled down the traffic-free road.

About nine miles in, we discovered why the road had been so empty when the pavement suddenly ended. The surface was fairly good, with well-packed gravel, so we kept going. A truck came along, and stopped just past us to move a fallen branch. We talked to the driver, who told us about the bridge that had been washed out and replaced up ahead, and where we should keep watch on the right for some nesting eagles. He then drove on, heading for some early Sunday fishing.

The road was still gorgeous ... just not paved. We shifted down and stayed there, riding more like mountain bikers than randonneurs, avoiding the loose gravel patches and feathering brakes down most of the short descents. We forded one rocky stream, and walked our bikes over two rickety bridges. It was muddy -- as you would expect after three days of rain -- but not so bad that it gummed up our drivetrains or other components.

We continued straight off of Big Bottom Road onto Brimstone Creek Road, and then came to a field where dogs were chasing two horses, trying to get them back to a corral. A lady on a four-wheeler passed us, told us not to worry about the dogs, and then zoomed off after her horses. Just past this, the pavement returned, and one of the dogs trotted after us as we started up a mean one-mile climb. He wasn't looking for trouble so much as he was looking for company, and turned back for home just before we all reached the top.

After rolling past more farms, we soon reached the store that I had planned to use as the control for this route: Cherry's Grocery in Moss, TN. Run by Mr. Cherry and his wife, he fixed Jeff and I an excellent turkey and cheese sandwich, then hung out on the front porch for a while talking about working for a Nashville grocery chain 40 years ago, and a girl that he had met before the war. A customer came in, and we had to roll on down the road, so he headed back inside. We told him we would be back.

There were times on the gravel when I thought that we might have made a wrong turn, but we stuck with it. What Jeff and I found is that sometimes a wrong turn is the right way to go.

Are You Ready to Go Nowhere?

2011-05-12T05:59:00.000-07:00

We are now officially 10 days away from the 200K of Nowhere, where an undetermined number of riders will convene in College Grove, TN, to ride a 25-mile circuit an undetermined number of times (but hopefully at least five, since that's 125 miles ... which equals 200 kilometers, for those that don't speak "metric") in honor of Peter Lee, who passed away from cancer in November. Hopefully, everyone that shows up for the ride has already signed up via Fat Cyclist, and thus the money that they gave will go to LiveStrong to continue the fight against cancer. Hopefully, those folks will also eventually get their t-shirt and race plate (no, I don't have mine yet, either) and some other swag from Fat Cyclist.

That's a lot of "hopeful" and "undetermined" up there.

The weather is also undetermined, as you would expect since we've still got 10 more days and spring weather in the southeaster United States is about the most chaotic environment in nature. It is so chaotic that it could be Kaos itself, and Siegfried would be the weatherman.

Yeah, I'm going old school.

According to Siegfried, via www.weather.com, on May 21 we're looking at a high of 78 degrees and a chance of thunderstorms. Again, we're 10 days out, so this could mean a high of 12 degrees with polar bears carrying machine guns, shooting at us as if we were baby seals. "Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo!"

To which Siegfried would say, "We do not doo-doo in Kaos!"

Gosh, I love that line.

Anyway ...

I've got a pretty solid commitment from about 10 randonneurs, which is pretty good. Since I've got 100 wristbands, we should be covered. I've also got 13 things to give away, which means that everyone gets a prize. I'm going to have my vehicle -- the Watzzwagen -- down there in the parking lot at the College Grove Community Center, with a ton of food and drink in the back. Well, okay, maybe not a ton ... it's a hybrid, after all ... but enough to feed 20 riders. It will be there at 6 am, when whoever wants to start riding can start riding, and will stay there until 7:30 pm. I may also get a bunch of sandwiches brought in about noon. After that, it will be tired and will go home.

Finally, I went out last night and marked the route. There are now white arrows at each turn -- one at least 100 yards before the turn, another 50 yards, and then the last at the turn itself. The first arrow has "W.K. Lee" painted under it, so you'll know that you're following the right set of arrows. There are a lot of arrows down there, because College Grove and Bethesda have the absolute best roads for biking in Tennessee ... maybe even the world ... and I didn't want people to get confused.

I also wanted to put Peter's name all over the route. A bit of immortality, you know? And Peter would like it that people think of him when they ride these roads.

Anyway, if you're coming and you haven't already told me, then ... well, tell me. Leave a comment here, or put something on Facebook for me, or send me an e-mail. If you don't tell me you're coming and things change and you can come, then ... well, come. The more the merrier, and I'll find a way to get you some food or drink if you need it. So long as there aren't more than 100 folks that show up, I'll even give you a wrist band.

Hopefully.

I Am Fred

2011-05-09T10:15:00.000-07:00

I believe that there is an evolution of attitude that accompanies experience, and that this evolution is often disgustingly evident in cycling.

We start as happy idiots, not knowing just how much we don't know. It's all new to us, and it's fun and frightening at the same time. We don't know about biking shorts and lycra jerseys, other than we think that we would look fat in them, and so we don't wear them. We don't know about the drag of wind resistance, or how much easier it is to go uphill on a lighter bike, so we buy hybrids with the biggest, softest saddles we can find. We put our helmets on backwards, get the laces of our tennis shoes caught in our chains, and spin blithely along all day on 25-mile rides. Forrest Gump on a bike.

Eventually, we roam further from the nest. On a 40-mile t-shirt ride, in the middle of a June afternoon when the air temperature is on par with your body's temperature, we realize that we may be missing something. Those blue jean shorts soaked with sweat chaff for the last 10 miles, and riders 10 years older (and 10 pounds heavier) on fancy "racing bikes" roll by, jeering at us with smug cries of "on your left!" Like the six-year-old after five minutes of first grade, we feel an aching need to fit in ... to become, if not one of the "cool kids," at least no longer the freaky dweeb in the front row with the chronic runny nose. So we buy the cycling equivalent of the Abercrombie and Fitch hoodie and Battlestar Gallactica lunch box -- biking clothes and a road bike.

Just as with the hoodie and lunch box, we make early mistakes. Nobody tells the first grader that he has to have a pink Hollister polo shirt under the hoodie, or that string cheese is for losers, just like nobody tells the novice cyclist not to wear his tightie whities under his biking shorts. We buy cycling shoes, and flail our feet at the pedals vainly hoping to hear that magical click. We forget to unclip as we come up to the red light, and do that painful wheel-wobbling slow roll to the asphalt. The riders around you chuckle briefly, but they also help you up. They've been there ... like the freshman pledge scurrying across campus wearing a poodle skirt, you've survived a rite of passage. It is a bond forged in road rash.

During our cycling adolescence we adopt a jaded air. Many of us begin racing, so that we no longer do "bike rides." We do Tempo for two hours at 90% of threshold, or stair-step intervals to push our lactic acid threshold another tic or two. We don't climb a mountain to enjoy the view at the top, but to see whether we can climb it faster than we did last month. Once on top, we zip down the other side ... not for the exhiliration of a roaring descent, but because we don't want to cool down before we reach the bottom, turn around, and climb the mountain again.

Many of us become Mean Kids during this period. We poke fun at the "Freds" in yellow Primal jerseys with big saddle bags swinging pendulously from heavy Brooks saddles ... even when that Fred is passing us on a long climb. We tell ourselves that he didn't race last week, and that our coach wants us to hold something back for next week's crit. We are, ultimately, better than him ... just not faster than he is right now.

Saturday, RandoGirl and I did the Three-State Three-Mountain century in Chattanooga, TN. I started as a Mean Kid.

I don't know how it started. We were standing around at the start, looking at a sea of at least 1,400 cyclists, and I couldn't help thinking, "What a Flock of Freds."

It was a little chilly and a lot of the riders obviously had not been watching the weather reports ... or don't have any cool-weather clothes. There were triathletes in sleeveless jerseys with arm warmers -- never a good look -- and not nearly enough knee warmers in evidence. There were also a lot of riders that didn't know how to mount race numbers.

Hint: The side with the number goes out, and the side with the advertisement goes in.

There were also a lot of Bike Borgs -- folks riding with headlights and tail lights (in spite of it being a sunny day), and with video cameras mounted on top of their helmets and clunky GPS's on their handlebars. They were digitally saving every scene and satellite sounding ... as Jimmy Buffett sang, "taking Polaroid pictures that are never in focus, just to look at when they finally slow down."

But, so what? This was no skin off my nose. So long as they managed to hold their line (and most of them did) so that they didn't crash into RandoGirl or me, what did I care? They were just out for a bike ride, having fun, stopping at rest stops to eat, and forming long lines for the Porta-Potties.

And if they wanted to lay their bikes in the grass, drive-side down, that didn't hurt me.

Eventually, the crowd thinned out a bit. I saw a few friends, including some of Max Watzz's Gran Fondo teammates. They were also just out enjoying a bike ride on a pretty day.

By the second rest stop, near the Tennessee River, I was feeling less mean. Soon after this, we started on some new parts of the route -- a tornado the week before had closed some of the roads, so it was more like the Three-State Two-Mountain 90-Mile Bike Ride this year. We climbed Sand Mountain using a road that was new to me, and I pulled over to take a picture of the valley below.

When we got on top of Sand Mountain, we rolled along for a few miles to another great overlook.

A bunch of riders had pulled over, and everyone had their camera out. We had to dodge cyclists passing by on the road behind us, but we got some beautiful pictures on this spectacular day. I took a picture for one group of five guys, and they took a picture of RandoGirl and me.

At the next rest stop, we caught up with our friend Bill Glass. We finished up the last 30 miles with him, and I got him to take another picture of us on our bikes.

RandoGirl had a goal of 6:30 bike time, and we finished in 5:40. We could have done the "missing" 10 miles in 50 minutes pretty easily, so she made her goal.

At the finish, we had a sandwich and rested. Eventually, a bunch of other riders from the Harpeth Bike Club came in.

Looking at this sea of Freds in their club jerseys, I thought, "These are my people." Perhaps my resentment of all of the Freds in the first few miles of the ride was just a bit of self-loathing on my part -- anger at that child-like part of me that can go do a ride without looking to set a new personal best. The part that has nothing to prove and no enemy to vanquish, but just wants to ride a bicycle over nice roads through pretty scenery, stopping at the rest stops to eat a cookie or 10 and chat with old friends.

Peace comes when you embrace your inner Fred.

Another Chance to Sign Up for the 200K of Nowhere (Sort Of)

2011-05-04T13:07:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot of people (okay, three) ask me if they can still sign up for the 200K of Nowhere. Being a harsh taskmaster (I even have the costume), I tell them, "No! You missed the deadline! You are weak and worthless! Now drop and give me 20!"

Imagine my surprise, then, when I opened my blog reader a few minutes ago and found that Fat Cyclist has re-opened registration for the 100 Miles of Nowhere.

Apparently, Johan Bruyneel -- director for Team Radio Shack -- wanted to do the 100 Miles of Nowhere, but missed the sign-up date because he was out of the country. Fat Cyclist told Johan that he could go ahead and ride, but Johan really wanted the t-shirt and race plate. It's a very nice t-shirt, so I don't blame him.

Anyway, Johan told Fatty that he wanted to get even more people to sign up and do the ride, but that he wanted to donate the money to World Bicycle Relief, a charity that sends bicycles to third-world countries. As a former racer, Johan is more comfortable riding with at least 100 cyclists, and works so much with LiveStrong that he wanted to give money to someone else. Fatty said okay, I'll send you a shirt, and Johan asked what size the t-shirt was, and Fatty said it was a small, and Johan said, no, I've been eating a lot of chocolate lately and that might be kind of snug, and Fatty snickered, and Johan said what was that, and Fatty said nothing, sorry, I was just saying that I'll get you a medium, and Johan said okay.

Phew.

Anyway, the upside for you is that, if you have not yet signed up for the 100 Miles of Nowhere, and want to join us May 21 in College Grove, TN, for the 200K of Nowhere, but you really want a t-shirt and race plate, you've got another chance. The downside is that the money that you donate will not go to LiveStrong to help in the battle against cancer -- the disease that killed our friend, Peter Lee. The other upside is that the money will go to something that, in my humble opinion, Peter would like, so you should still go ahead and do it.

The other downside is ... well, I guess there is no other downside.

Men, register here.

Women, register here.

Do it by 5 pm Nashville time, Thursday, May 5 (Cinco de Mayo, for our friends South of the Border ... or for those of you who plan to drink start drinking Dos Equis about this time). You'll get the t-shirt and race plate. Post a comment in this blog to let me know that you signed up and are coming to College Grove on May 21 -- this way I can make sure I've got enough food and drink for you and the 15 or so other folks that have already signed up. You'll get more free swag from me, and be registered in a drawing for some other prizes.

For more information on the 200K of Nowhere, go here.

Also, a message for Johan: I know that some of your Radio Shack guys will be in the area three weeks after this for the Harpeth River Ride, doing these same roads. If you want, you can come out and do the 200K of Nowhere with us and get a preview. You can stay with me, if you want. Bring Lance if you have to -- the spare room has two twin beds. A little practice descending Pulltight Hill five times might be good for Lance, if he comes out for the River Ride.

Dishonest Abe

2011-05-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

Since Tennessee is the Volunteer state, I feel it is my duty to volunteer support for at least one long brevet every year. In 2009, it was the 600K -- which goes from McMinnville to Tellico Plains, does a loop that includes climbs over the Tail of the Dragon and the Cherohala Skyway, and then heads back to McMinnville. In 2010, I spent three days running up and down the Natchez Trace to support our 1000K. And this past weekend, Jeff Bauer and I provided support for the new middle-Tennessee 400K out of Cookeville.

This weekend was probably the most fun of the three, even though it was possibly the toughest ... at least, in terms of hard work and sleep deprivation.

Not that the riders we supported were hard work -- in fact, they were easy. No, the hard work part of it was because Jeff Bauer and I rode a big chunk of the first 150 miles after we saw the 400K riders off.

The sleep deprivation part started early. I had another commitment Friday night, so I did not get to the hotel in Cookeville until after midnight. The 3-4 hours of quality sleep I then managed to get in set a pattern for the remainder of the weekend.

We had planned for two groups of starters: One at 5 am and another at 6 am. Both groups would still get 27 hours to do the ride, but the 6 am starters would not need lights or reflective gear as long as they made it back to the hotel (at mile 152) before nightfall. Since Jeff and I only planned to ride about 130 miles -- much of this a permanent named "Honest Abe" that I plan to apply for in the coming weeks -- we would "ride light" (or is that "ride light-less?") with the 6 am group.

Jeff knew how late I had gotten in, so he handled most of the work getting the 5 am riders out. I got up just before they left, waved them a bleary "bon route," then took a hot shower, drank some crappy coffee, and got ready to roll out with Jeff and the 6 am crowd.

Except, Jeff and I were the 6 am crowd. Maybe it was my description of the route last week, or Jeff's description of the bottom part of the route last week, but something scared away a lot of the riders. It certainly wasn't the weather, which was almost perfect. Whatever the cause, rather than the 14 cyclists who had registered we had only the seven cyclists who departed at 5 am.

Although it would have been nice to have a big pack pull us into the wind later that day, I must admit that it was more fun just doing the ride with Jeff. We enjoyed the quiet ride out of town, the descent down Hwy 135, and the early morning beauty as we rolled past the river there towards Gainesboro.

The fog was just lifting over the Cumberland River as we crossed it, and temperatures were still cool enough that I needed my arm- and knee-warmers and vest.

The other benefit of it just being Jeff and me was that it gave us the flexibility to get off the route when we wanted. Thus, about 35 miles in, when I suggested we follow a different set of road markings (from the Avery Trace bicycle race route), Jeff said, "Whatever."

Although the "official" roads are very nice, the route that we took was just as pretty. For one thing, it got us to the climb out of the Cumberland River Valley a little earlier, on yet another shady, rock-lined lane.

At the top, the road gently rolled through forest, some of which had obviously been damaged by the tornadoes and storms that passed through here Wednesday.

I knew that this road eventually rejoined the route just before Red Boiling Springs. What I didn't know was just how much it north before angling back down south and west. Thus, when we finally turned right and got back on the official route on Hwy 151, we had picked up an extra eight miles.

But at least they were pretty miles.

We quickly passed through Red Boiling Springs and started up towards Kentucky. Just before the state line, we went by a farm where the tin roof had been blown off their barn during the storms. Sheets of metal were rattling up against the barbed wire fence.

Amidst the devastation, spring was in full bloom. The morning air was rife with the smell of honeysuckle, and lillies were resplendent in almost every yard.

We stopped at the last store in Gamaliel (pronounced "Guh-mail-e-yuh," according to one of our riders, Doug McLarren, who has family in the area). Jeff got a sandwich and I ate a candy bar as we filled our bottles. Then we crossed back into Tennessee to take Hwy 52 through Moss, TN -- the home of Honest Abe Log Homes, and thus the source of the permanent's name -- and on to Celina. We were just passing the first store there when something punctured my rear tire, so we pulled in to change the tube and buy water. We then began working into the wind on sunny Hwy 56, going slowly back to Gainesboro.

We made a quick lunch stop at the Dairy Queen there, then tackled the tough climb up out of town on Hwy 53. The wind was still against us as we fought towards Granville. On the way, we passed Clipper's in Flynn's Lick, where the "Food, Hair, and Fun" sign always gives me pause.

Just past this, a funeral procession passed us. Jeff and I pulled over, removed our helmets and hats, and watched the cars move somberly up the hill to a family cemetery with a great view.

In Granville, we finally ran in to one of our 400K riders, Jon Pasch. He was buying drinks at the store, and told us that he thought that George Hiscox and Tom Trinidad were ahead of him. We watched as he continued down Hwy 53 towards Chestnut Mound, and felt a little guilty as we got on the much nicer TN-96.

Whereas the climb up Hwy 53 is fairly open, TN-96 meanders in the shade along a quiet creek before pitching up for the last couple of miles.

I was pretty tired after this, so Jeff pulled me along down Hwy 70 to Baxter, and then down Buffalo Valley Road and back to the hotel. We had ridden 138 miles, and just barely managed to get in before any of the 400K riders. We quickly cleaned up and ordered pizzas to feed them with, refilling our own hungry bellies as we awaited their arrival.

Pasch came by the room first. Hiscox and Trinidad came in, but went by the office (instead of the hotel room) to get their cards signed. We were a little concerned when they didn't come by the room, particularly as other riders continued to come in, grab some food, change clothes, rest a bit, and then head out. This concern stayed with Jeff and me until I finally caught up with those riders later that night.

I grabbed a brief nap as riders entered and left, and thus felt decent when Dave Harris came in about 7:30 pm. He was the last rider at this point, so I loaded up the Watzzwagen with food and drink, and started driving the route to check on riders.

McLarren had just left, so I soon passed him. Doug Morgan and Steve Phillips came next, just before Sparta. Heading out into the very dark countryside, I was soon climbing the dreaded Yates Mountain Road, where my headlights -- even on the "high beam" setting -- showed a wall of pavement. At the top, I passed Hiscox and Trinidad, and I stopped at the control in Spencer to talk briefly to them. They were concerned about the reported confusion on the road out of town, so they followed me from the control to Hwy 30A.

I caught up with the lead rider, Pasch, on Bone Cave Road. Apparently, Van Buren County had decided to finally put signs on some un-marked roads recently, and taken the opportunity to change the names of those roads. This was causing Jon some confusion, but we were able to straighten things out and get him on route in to Rock Island Park.

Finding a good spot in the park, I parked and waited for the remaining riders. Between their visits, I climbed into the back seat for short, fitful naps. About 2:30 am, I got a very broken call on my cell phone from Harris, so I backtracked the route again to Bone Cave Road to find him. He was tired, but still riding, so I topped off his water and gave him a little food, then started driving back to the hotel. This was a harrowing trip, as I repeatedly slapped my face to stay awake, but I eventually made it. I stumbled into the room just after Pasch came in, then tumbled in to bed for another three broken hours of semi-sleep.

Just after dawn, Phillips, Morgan, and McLarren came in, and we all sat around re-capping our adventures. The sky was looking threatening as we grabbed some "food" from the hotel's "Continental Breakfast." Hiscox, who had finished about 5 am with Trinidad, started to tell Jeff and I a story about a magazine article he had recently read, but between his exhaustion and ours we could not follow the topic.

Harris came in less than an hour after the rain started. All seven of our starters had finished, but none of them too quickly -- a statistic that I interpret as meaning that the route was just challenging enough. The riders all had praise for how pretty most of the roads were, and damnation for how cruel the climb up to Spencer on Yates Mountain Road had been. I took copious notes regarding corrections and clarifications on the directions, and thought about these as I began driving home to Nashville. I also thought about the Honest Abe permanent, and how we could also have an alternate "Dishonest Abe" version. I would need to update the route sheet before submitting either of them.

But first, sleep.

The Rest of the Route

2011-04-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

So, I got the "report" from Jeff Bauer and Jeff Sammons (no relation) for the lower 100 miles of the Cookeville 400K. (I'm thinking of calling this the "Pissing and Moaning 400K" -- how does that sound?)

Here's what they said, with additional stupid comments inserted by me. It's my blog, so I get the last word. Nyah-nyah-nyah.

Sammons: We encountered two road closures. At the intersection of Old Cookeville Road and Burgess Falls Road (166.3 miles), there was a short detour around the construction. Jeff elected to run the blockade and walk over the road construction, but I would recommend the guys just take the detour next weekend. The other closure was at TN-111 (186.9 miles) after climbing the mountain. The road on the other side of TN-111 was blocked with concrete barriers, but that didn't stop Jeff either. We just climbed over the barriers and kept going. I would suggest the guys just turn left on TN-111 and ride the short distance down to control #8 and the intersection of TN-111 and Spring Street. At that time of night, there is hardly any traffic on TN-111.

Bauer: Agreed. The concrete barrier wasn't difficult to portage over, but it might make more sense to follow TN-111 so it's easier to find the Shell station.

RandoBoy: They were working on the Old Cookeville Road/Burgess Falls Road intersection when I scouted this route in January from the car. I'm going to change the route sheet to include the detour, since faster riders might hit this spot during daylight, and local law enforcement may look askance at portaging cyclists.

For those who aren't sure where this is, it's just before you get to Sparta. I'm assuming that the traffic in and out of Sparta was not a problem for the Jeffs. Riders who like to eat regularly may want to get some food there, particularly if it is getting late.

As for the second road closure, I'm going to change the route to turn left on TN-111 and go straight to the control. The added mileage for the other detour will make up for the lost mileage here. It sounds like this will alleviate some of the potential confusion for riders coming in to and leaving Spencer.

Sammons: The climb up Yates Mountain is two miles, not the one mile climb indicated on the cue sheet. Jeff and I walked almost the entire way.

Bauer: Actually, the cue sheet says "steep climbing next mile", which is correct. The early part of Yates was much harder than the latter -- though we were probably too tired to notice.

RandoBoy: Yeah, the worst part is definitely the first mile. Once you get to the cemetery, it eases a bit. Of course, you may have to stop, dig up a corpse, and steal it's legs. They will be fresher than yours at this point.

Sammons: We got all turned around trying to find Control #8 (Spencer) and also leaving town. So you might caution the guys to pay attention coming and leaving town.

Bauer: Spencer was a bit confusing at night even though we both had GPS units.

RandoBoy: I got turned around in a car scouting the route, and I wasn't even sleepy then. Leaving town, pay attention to cue sheet. As Jeff says below, look for the Sheriff's station (and the post office, if you get to the control after midnight and need to mail a post card) as the cue that you are leaving town the right way.

Sammons: And finally, the sign for Laurel Creek Road (193.5 miles), actually says Laurel Cove Road.

Bauer: Actually it was the sign for the Creek that said "Laurel Cove". We didn't see the road sign.

RandoBoy: Again, follow your cue sheet. There aren't that many roads out there, so if you check your mileage at the top you should be okay. The turn for this road is not marked, but it is just before the bridge that goes over the creek.

Bauer: Leaving Spencer, we did not see the sign for TN-30, but once we located the Sheriff's Dept., we just descend down that road. (This was actually a climb on my first infamous TN fleche.)

RandoBoy: If you are on the route, the Sheriff's department will be on your right. Just past this, the road banks to the left and you begin what would be a really fun descent in daylight. Since most riders will get there in the dark -- and there's barely going to be any moon this weekend -- it will be less fun.

Bauer: I would recommend offering dual start times of 5 am and 6 am, with brevet cards printed for each. This will give the slower riders a better option to reach the Spencer control before it closes (Jeff and I arrived at 10pm with a 5am start). It will also make the ride easier to support, as this would cluster the riders closer together.

RandoBoy: I like this idea. The 5 am starters will need lights and reflective gear when they leave, while the 6 am starters won't. Since the route returns to the hotel, everybody would be able to grab their night-riding gear at that time for the southern 100-mile loop ... unless they think that they can do the entire ride in daylight. Riders who like to go "fast and light" will probably opt for the 6 am start.

Bauer: I spoke with the manager at the Spencer Shell and they always stay open until midnight, i.e. never close early. If a rider misses this control, there are some soft drink vending machines a little further down the road.

RandoBoy: When I scouted the route, I spoke to the clerk at the store, who said that they close early if nobody's coming in. From this, I think we can assume that the store will be open until midnight ... but only if the boss is still there.

Thanks, Jeff and Jeff, for this helpful information. Of course, more thanks go to Jeff than Jeff, since Jeff really helped out when he said that thing to me on Saturday, while Jeff just got on my nerves ... I'll leave Jeff and Jeff to fight over which Jeff is the good Jeff and which is the bad Jeff. Equal congratulations go to both Jeffs for being the first riders to successfully complete the Pissing and Moaning 400K. Hopefully, we can run this route again next year or the year after, and I can finish it myself with more pissing and less moaning.

You're In Trouble Now

2011-04-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

I need to start this post with a disclaimer and an explanation.

First, the disclaimer. This post is going to discuss bodily functions. It's a bodily function that all animals perform. If you're queasy about that, go read Fat Cyclist or BikeSnob. They tend to stay away from such distasteful topics.

Still here? Okay, then, now I can give you an explanation. It's regarding the title, and it's a way of broaching the subject about which I gave the above disclaimer. You see, I had to DNF on a 400K this past weekend because I was having urine trouble. Get it? You're in trouble ... urine trouble ... pretty funny, right?

Look, I told you to go over to Fat Cyclist.

Saturday morning, Jeff Bauer and Jeff Sammons (no relation) pre-rode the middle Tennessee 400K, starting from Cookeville. Even though my doctor advised me against riding anything over 100 miles for the next few months, I really, really, really wanted to ride it. Why?

I designed the route, and how could I let anyone else ride something that I had not been able to do?
It's really pretty, with quiet roads and good pavement, but just enough challenge to keep the masochists entertained.
I wanted to be able to write a blog about it, which the folks riding it "officially" next weekend could read to prepare.

We rolled through downtown Cookeville in the dark. with light traffic as folks headed off to work. The sun was coming up as we passed through Dodson Branch, heading for the bumpy descent down to the Cumberland River Valley just out of town. Although a chronic saddle sore had kept me off the bike the entire week, I was feeling very strong. This, and the fact that I knew the route, enabled me to get all of the first county line sprints on this stretch of Hwy 135.

(Okay, sorry about the "saddle sore" thing in the paragraph above. I didn't give you any warning that there were more intimate topics coming ... my bad. Unfortunately, it plays into the story later, so I needed to mention it. Again, it's not to late to click over to Fatty's site.)

After we skirted the edge of Gainesboro, we rolled along the Cumberland River for a few miles. Jeff B. was riding his fixed-gear bike, since he plans to use that for Paris-Brest-Paris this year. At this point, the route was familiar to him, since it follows a 200K permanent that I designed last summer, but have not yet submitted to RUSA. The roads were new to Jeff S., however, but even the normally taciturn Tennessee RBA considered them scenic.

The strong winds from the south pushed us briskly along here, and soon we were climbing back up to Red Boiling Springs. Leaving town, the steep climb around a bend in the road caught Jeff S. by surprise, causing him to drop his chain. This gave me the chance to grab the state line sprint as we crossed briefly into Kentucky for the Gamaliel control.

We now turned southeast, and the wind made the next leg a little more difficult. We worked hard on busy TN-52 E, passing through Moss, TN (home of Honest Abe Log Cabins) and then re-crossed the Cumberland River back into Celina, TN. The day had warmed up by now, although the wind and moderate cloud cover kept the temperatures feeling pleasant. We opted for the Dairy Queen at this open control, and on the way there we passed a buggy of local Amish farmers doing their Saturday shopping.

After a quick milk shake, we continued out of town on TN-52 E. The crosswind continued to buffet us, but we still made good time to Standing Stone State Park. This part of the route was new to the Jeffs, and they enjoyed the descent down to the old stone bridge.

They were not that crazy about the climb back up from there, however. Also, I had placed the information control in the park at the end of Beach Road, so after we climbed all the way back up from the water, we then turned and headed right back down to it.

After a curvy descent down, we rolled along the edge of the water through a lovely primeval forest.

After passing the "beach" and the lodge there, the road continues along a quiet stream for another mile, and then climbs beside a waterfall up to a pond.

Just past this, the pavement of the road ended. We rode another tenth of a mile to the information control, which is a sign at the intersection of the dirt roads there. We stopped to write the answer to the question on our cards, and I took the opportunity to pee.

But, I couldn't.

Now, I'm a 52-year-old male. I watch television, so I've heard of things that can keep a 52-year-old male from peeing. But, for all of those 52 years, whenever I wanted to go pee in a quiet spot in the woods, I've been able to pee in a quiet spot in the woods. Only somehow, Saturday, standing in front of the information control sign ... I couldn't pee.

So, I did what I've done with most of the troubling physical ailments that I've encountered in my life: I ignored it. Physical maladies either get better, get worse, or stay the same, so ignoring them has always been a valid solution for me.

Mounting up to retrace our route back out, I soon caught up with the Jeffs again.

To let you know how cruel this route is, if you look really hard in this next picture, you'll see that stone bridge we crossed over. Yeah, that means that we did climb all the way back up, just to turn onto a road that made us go all the way back down to get some information off of a sign. Then ... yeah. Back up.

I was still feeling very strong and climbed out pretty quickly. Just before I got to the road, my bladder was insisting I give it another chance, so I pulled over and gave it the good old college try. This time, I peed a little, but then it stopped. And when it stopped, it hurt. I'm talking "hurt" in a way that only special parts on people can hurt.

After saying a loud "Ouch," I opted for more ignoring. So I rode on up to the top of the hill and waited for the Jeffs.

I had been drinking a lot on this stretch, and decided that drinking more might help. This is typical guy thinking. If a hose is plugged, we turn the water on higher, thinking that it will blast loose whatever impediment is clogging the stupid hose. I knew that blasting this impediment out of this hose might be very painful, but would it really hurt more than the constant bladder discomfort? Also, I wanted to finish the ride, and this was slowing me down.

I quickly killed one of my bottles, and mentioned to the Jeffs that we should stop at the Hillham General Store for more fluids. By the time we got there, I had finished my other bottle, so I bought a Gatorade and a water and filled up everything, and then drank what wouldn't go into my Camelbak bottles.

After all this, I really wanted to pee, but they didn't have a public restroom. We quickly rolled out, heading southwest on TN-53 S, getting more of a headwind than on any other leg of the ride so far. About a mile down the road my bladder was begging for a break, so I told the Jeffs to go on. I pulled over to try again, only to be rewarded by another dribbling/stabbing-pain episode.

Sighing, I mounted up again and started to hammer to catch up. And thus began a pattern that repeated two more times as I worked into the wind on this road. I would put my head down, ride hard, and then get a phone call from Bladdertown. "Yo, RandoBoy. Need to stop soon." Then I would start looking for a quiet spot, still hammering, until I could pull over and ... nothing. Or, to be honest, something less than satisfactory, ending with a very unsatisfactory pinching pain.

When I hit the end of TN-53 S, the Jeffs were waiting in the shade. At this point, I had to admit to them that there was a problem. Although I could probably finish the ride with regular stops to attempt to pee, I would have to do it alone. If they stayed with me, it could imperil their chances of finishing in time, and if I continued to ride, they would continue to ride with me. Since Jeff Bauer still needed this 400K as a qualifier for Paris-Brest-Paris, I could not take the chance of my problems becoming his.

Heading towards Gainesboro, I told them what was going on, and that I had decided to abandon and head straight back to Cookeville. As they continued west, I went to the local Dairy Queen, where I rested with a hamburger and another milk shake. After a half-hour break, I stopped by the restroom and was rewarded with a happier bladder ... followed by the stabbing pain.

I then got on busy Hwy 56, discovering only then that the really hard wind was coming straight out of the south. After 15 miles fighting this gale on the wide but rubbish-strewn shoulder, I returned to the route on Buffalo Valley Road. I was back at the hotel about 4 pm, where I enjoyed a nice hot shower, changed into street clothes, and drank three diet root beers. The fluid did what fluid does, but that, too, did pass. The pain was still there, however, and stayed with me for the rest of the night.

A little after 5 pm, the Jeffs came in. They had suffered on the constant rolling hills between Gainesboro and Granville, and then on the tough climb up to Chestnut Mound. I got them sandwiches from Subway and beer from the package store as they cleaned up and prepared to do the "lower" 100 miles of the route. We ate as I packed up, and I made them promise to give my loyal readers a report on the remainder of the route. They rolled out into the late afternoon, just as the wind was finally calming, and I got into the Watzzwagen and drove home.

The Jeffs finished the ride successfully, returning to the hotel at 4:30 Sunday morning. Jeff Sammons posted his GPS track here. It ended up being just under 15,000 feet of climbing, thanks to a lot of ups and downs in the first 130 miles, with one good long climb up to Spencer. I was really looking forward to going up on that plateau via Yates Mountain Road, beginning at mile 183. If you look at the elevation profile, you will see why the Jeffs ended up walking the first two miles on this road.

As to my physical ailment, while we were eating our sandwiches Jeff Bauer asked if I had been sitting differently on the bike today. It was then that I realized that I probably had been, mostly to accommodate the inflamed saddle sore that had plagued me that week. This was what had probably been irritating my plumbing, so that the only solution to the problem was just what I had done: Get off the bike. Sure enough, by Sunday morning things were back to normal, and I was even able to do a 40-mile recovery ride with RandoGirl.

I'm glad that my problem wasn't the result of something really bad, but bummed that I didn't get to do my route. I had been looking forward to it as my ultra-cycling swan song for the year, since I will probably limit myself to just 200Ks from here on. The fact that I wasn't able to do this really pisses me off.

Sorry. Couldn't help myself.

Playing Favorites

2011-04-18T10:13:00.000-07:00

We all have favorites, be it dinners that we like best, songs we put in playlists on our iPods, or children that we treat better than the others (you know who you are). If you're a cyclist, you've got a favorite route ... one that you may not necessarily want to ride over and over for eternity, but one that you go to more often than others.

Cyclists in middle Tennessee are pretty lucky. We've got some great spots in which we can ride. I've done most of them, but my favorite area is down around College Grove and Bethesda.

For one thing, it's only about a 20-mile ride from my house, on a nice fun route. (By car it's about 10 miles, but who wants to drive a car to a bike ride?)

Also, it's got perfect roads. There are hills if you want them, with shady climbs up and fun descents down. When you tire of that, there are flat roads meandering along pretty creeks, or beside fields of cattle, corn, and horses. There are a couple of bumpy roads, but they are definitely the exception rather than the rule. Most pavement is pristine ... almost scarily so. As if somebody with a lot of money or a lot of political pull is setting things up, and any day now a bunch of subdivisions will be built there and ruin it.

There are stores that are easy to get to, staffed with friendly folks serving good food ... maybe even great food. The College Grove Grocery has a bakery, and makes some of the tastiest stuff you ever want to put in your mouth. The Bethesda Market has a great bench out front, where you can sit and rest a spell before heading back out to climb Pulltight Hill ... again.

Add to this the fact that everybody down there is friendly. Cars pass nicely, and they wave at you (using all of their fingers). Folks out working in their yard and children playing all call out "Hey" and "Good morning." You feel ... welcome.

Sunday, I lead a ride out that way. We started out going east to Rockvale, then down through Versailles to skirt the edge of Murfreesboro. We stopped briefly at the market on the corner of Midland and Midland-Fosterville, where it had warmed up enough to peel off a few layers of clothing.

We took a few new roads from there, eventually passing south of Eagleville for another brief store stop. The roads had all been nice and flat so far -- perfect for the two tandems in the group. We then turned onto Floyd Road, which I had not been on in a few years. The pavement was smooth, the climbs easy, and the scenery gorgeous.

RandoGirl was riding strong, getting ready for Three-State Three-Mountain next month. I just wanted to get in about 100 miles to see how my hip was doing, and keep some tune in the legs for the upcoming 400K.

At this point, the route got back into some old favorites. Flat Creek. Choctaw. Giles Hill. Comstock. We stopped again at the market in Bethesda, running into a small group of racers that I know, and then came back via Pulltight Hill.

Again, the descent down the far side was a blast, followed by an easy climb on Arno, which led to a long, gentle descent almost all the way to Owen Hill Road. A left on Pinkston, a right on Arno-College Grove, and we were back at the cars. RandoGirl and I had earned the homemade brownie that we got from the Grocery.

It don't get much better than that.

UPDATE

You have one more day to sign up for the 200K of Nowhere, which will use many of these favorite roads of mine. To do this, you have to sign up for the 100 Miles of Nowhere, so that LiveStrong gets some money to fight cancer. That's the disease that killed our friend, Peter Lee, in whose honor we are doing this ride.

Men: Sign up here.
Women: Sign up here.

If you want the great Fat Cyclist swag, and if you want to fight cancer, sign up now. If you can't do this, you can still come out and ride the 200K of Nowhere ... but you won't get the neat t-shirt and race plate, and you won't be entered in the drawing I'm going to have for even more swag.

Quick! Sign Up!

2011-04-11T08:49:00.000-07:00

I'm a dodo head.

Fortunately, Alan Gosart, isn't. He just sent me an email saying that he had signed up for the 100 Miles of Nowhere ... which we ultra-cyclists in middle Tennessee will be doing as the 200K of Nowhere.

How could I have forgotten this? Well, it's been a really busy morning at work. And the air-conditioning at home went out last night. Since we just had temperatures this past weekend in the 90's, that's a major concern.

But, mostly, I'm just a dodo head.

Alan saved me (again). I was just able to go out and sign up, so there's still space. I also signed RandoGirl up. She and I rode much of the route just yesterday, and we were surprised at how pretty it was, the great pavement, the low traffic, and the nice people.

So, if you want to come join us on May 21 ...

If you're a dude, go here.
If you're a dudette, go here.

This is a great chance to have fun, ride with nice people, honor Peter Lee, get some neat free stuff, maybe win some other neat stuff, and pitch in $85 to fight cancer. And if none of those ideas appeals to you, then you're a dodo head.

My Singlespeed Song

2011-04-07T11:07:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful morning for biking in today. The wind had died a bit, and it was just cool enough to need light tights and a jacket. It was the kind of day when you find yourself writing a song to sing to your bicycle.

So, here it is.

Singlespeed (key of Kwikset ... or maybe Yale flat)

Chorus:

Singlespeed! Singlespeed!
You've got all the gears that I need.
You don't have a cassette or derailleur.
No lousy shifters that will someday fail you.

Singlespeed! Singlespeed!
My cadence-agnostic steed.
Let everyone else spin up the steepest road,
While 48-16 makes my knees explode,
Or I'll cross-train into a "walking" mode,
Because I've got just one single speed.

Well, I was riding through the park just the other day
When I came upon some cyclists who'd come out to play.
They were all wearing last year's Tour de France team kits
On new light plastic bikes, they thought they were the s**ts.

I thought I'd join them for a while, just an easy spin.
They took one look at my bike and all begin to grin.
We took a left and started down a long descent.
They shifted up, I couldn't shift, and so away they went.

(Chorus)

(Kazoo solo)

Sometimes friends ask, "Don't you miss having a choice?"
I tell them, "Sometimes, but I don't miss the noise.
I don't miss hunting for the right gear heading into the wind.
The right gear for me is always the one that I'm in."

Maybe long climbs with gears would be a little less work,
Particularly on some routes that we have (thank you, Durk!).
But I've done climbs with and without gears often enough
To know that it's how you attack the hill that makes it so tough.

(Chorus)

(Bassoon solo, fade out)

Maybe I've been living in Nashville too long ...

Reminder: Set Your Alarm on Monday!

I've gotten loads of replies regarding the upcoming 200K of Nowhere. If you want to join us -- and get as much neat swag as possible -- then you will want to sign up for Fat Cyclist's 100 Miles of Nowhere.

Since I want to get money to LiveStrong (I don't care if he doped or not! The foundation still does good stuff!), then I am using Fatty's ride for my own insidious needs. You give $85 to Fatty, and he gives it to LiveStrong. You get the tax break, lots of great swag from Fatty, and some pretty good swag from me, too. All of this to honor our friend, fellow randonneur Peter Lee, who passed away last November from cancer.

So what's the downside? There is none! You just need to be sure to go to the following site as early as you can on Monday, before Fatty's "ride" fills up:

http://www.fatcyclist.com/

You may even try going to this site, just in case Fatty doesn't put the link in himself, and hunt around for the right place to sign up:

http://www.twinsix.com/

As soon as I hear that sign-up is available, and where it is, I will post a blog entry here.

Or here.

Announcing the 200K of Nowhere

2011-03-30T05:13:00.001-07:00

As anybody who’s ever had any kind of trouble in a relationship (in other words, everybody who’s ever had any kind of relationship … which I hope could be further shortened to just “everybody”) knows, men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Now, sure, this is a gross simplification, not to mention a physical impossibility. Venus is covered with clouds of sulphuric acid, which is very bad for a woman’s complexion. Men could be from Mars, however, since scientists have recently detected trace amounts of methane there, and we are notorious for our ability to produce this (preferably at night, in bed, and then pulling the covers up over our wives’ head … take that, you weak Venusian!).

My point, however, is that John Gray was (grossly) generalizing when he wrote that “Martian” men and “Venusian” women react differently to certain events. The classic example is tragedies: Women will just go ahead and be sad for a bit, while men run around trying to “fix things.” While I know a lot of women who are “Martian” at these times, and a lot of men who are “Venusian,” I must admit that I am a classic Martian when bad stuff happens.

The best example of this is when my friend and fellow randonneur, Peter Lee, was dying from cancer in November. We all focused on “doing things.” We helped his family as best we could and cheered him on when he was working to beat the cancer. When the end was near, we all jumped into planning and organizing mode – tying up business issues, updating his Will, planning the funeral.

(Of course, two of the best organizers throughout this were RandoGirl and Fredia Barry. In particular, Fredia was more Martian and Venusian than just about anybody, juggling business issues with compassion and sensitivity throughout. John Gray would probably say that Fredia is from Jupiter. He’d have to give her a whole new book.)

Since business is not one of my skills, my role in most of this was court jester. When Peter was in pain, I told him jokes. Since my jokes are very bad, the pain of hearing them distracted Peter from the cancer. Fortunately, he did enjoy hearing from all of us about long rides that we had just done, or rides from years past, or rides that we were planning. As regular readers can attest, I like to yammer on endlessly about these kinds of things, so it was easy for me to help in this way.

Near the end, I told Peter about a ride that I was planning for this spring. I wanted to do something that would honor Peter, but since I am a Martian it also needed to fix things. It needed to be an easy way for cyclists to try their hand at randonneuring, and maybe also raise money to fight the disease that was killing Peter.

I told him about the 100 Miles of Nowhere.

If you’ve ever looked over on the right side of my blog’s home page, you may have noticed links to a couple of blogs that I read regularly. One is Bike Snob NYC, who now writes a regular column for Bicycling Magazine. The other blog that I regularly read is Fat Cyclist.

Fat Cyclist is Elden Nelson, a blogger in Utah. If you’ve never read his blog, you should. He may even be funnier than I am. (Okay, just kidding! We all know that’s not possible.) Anyway, Fatty’s wife, Susan, battled cancer for a number of years, and he blogged about that. Many of these blog posts are heart-wrenching. Most have flashes of humor wrapped in pain. All of them are inspiring.

Since Fatty is also Martian, he dealt with Susan's illness by trying to fix cancer. Even though she passed away over a year ago, he continues to fight by raising money for such folks as the Lance Armstrong Foundation (a logical tie-in for someone who blogs about cycling and cancer). He has four "Team Fatty’s" in different cities that have regularly been the top fundraisers for Livestrong. He is what they call, in charity circles, a cancer-fighting money-raising machine.

Fatty can do this because

He’s likeable. You really should read his blog. If you only have time to read my blog, then move some things on your schedule so you can read his, too. Emphasis on the “too.”
He’s passionate. I can’t imagine fighting cancer for five years with RandoGirl. I won’t imagine it, actually. It makes me really sad, and that’s Venusian.
He knows how to get companies to donate swag. Big companies, with really good swag.

So, if I didn’t have your attention with talk of Peter and helping to fight cancer, I hope that I now have you hooked with the mention of swag. Because, after all of this la-de-daa and folderol, I am announcing …

The 200K of Nowhere!!!

Yes, this is your chance to ride a real brevet (sort of) just like your randonneuring heroes, without all of the hassles of nasty weather (I hope) and getting lost (probably) and … well, okay, all of the other hassles are still there. Of course, you still have to ride a bicycle 125 miles, but it’s really just the same 25 miles done five times. That’s why it’s a “200K of Nowhere” ... Peter just didn't think that a mere 100 miles would do.

It’s on some very pretty, very smoothly paved roads down in very quiet College Grove. Some of those roads are even moderately flat … if you like that kind of thing. And there will be a rest stop with snacks and cold liquids ... the same rest stop, you will just hit it five times. And, when you come in, there will be somebody there to also mark your brevet card … just like what your randonneuring heroes do on a real brevet.

(I’m having just too much fun with that phrase: Randonneuring heroes. Who’d of thunk?)

This event will be “part of” Fatty’s 100 Miles of Nowhere. The quotes are because I’m not sure that Fatty knows that I’m doing this, although ultimately he doesn’t need to. (I’ve sent him a couple of e-mails warning him, and so long as less than 100 Nashville cyclists swoop in and grab all of the open spots, he probably won't care.)

Anyway, to sign up for the 200K of Nowhere you just sign up for the 100 Miles of Nowhere here. You must do this on April 11 – and do it first thing that day, if you can. Registration will be open until April 18, but Fatty usually only allows 150 people, and once it’s full … it’s full.

(By the way, if you clicked the above link to sign up early, you saw last year's page. I'm assuming that they'll use the same page this year. If you don't sign up in time, the page that you'll see on April 12, 2011 will probably look like the above-linked page. Wow, was that confusing!)

Anyway, if you sign up for the 100 Miles of Nowhere, you should then post a comment on this blog letting me know that you're coming for the 200K of Nowhere. Make sure you do this, so I can get enough snacks and drinks for the rest stop. Then, come to the parking lot of the College Grove Community Center and start riding about 7 am on May 21. The “control” will be open until 7:30 pm, so you have 13-and-a-half hours ... just like a "real" brevet. If you can’t ride 125 miles, that’s okay, too. Do as many 25-mile loops as you can.
It will cost you $85, but you get

Event t-shirt designed by Twin Six
Banjo Brothers seat bag
Winchester Bar
PRO Bar
DZ Nuts chamois cream sampler
Some other stuff

Not enough for your $85? Well, Fatty usually also has some door prizes that are pretty good, so you could win one of those. And, to put some skin in the game, everybody that signs up is in the raffle for the following goodies:

Light and Motion Vis 360

Due to my stupidity and impatience, I ended up with two of these for Christmas. I've been using one all winter and absolutely love it! My ride in is bright, thanks to the headlight, and I am very visible, thanks to the flashing taillight. It mounts on my helmet, but weighs next to nothing. I charge it off my laptop at work, so it doesn't run out of juice.

I've only got one of these. Whoever gets this is going to start regularly commuting on their bike, and their yearly mileage will quadruple. Maybe.

Pearl Izumi Convertible Glove/Mitten

I bought three pairs of these last month, and the extra-large ones are too big for me. They're really comfortable, lightweight gloves with this nifty pocket on the back of the palm. The pocket holds a windproof reflective mitten-thing. You pull the mitten-thing out and over your fingers, and suddenly your gloves are now mittens. For me, they're good down to the low 40's by themselves. You put liners on under them, and you'd be cozy at about every temperature range that you get in Tennessee.

Again, I've only got one pair, and they're XL.

Assorted Arm-, Knee-, Leg-, and Head-Warmers

Vida Greer from Gran Fondo (a.k.a., the Greatest Bike Shop in the Solar System, Run by the Greatest People in the Galaxy) gave me 10 pairs of assorted warmers from "eleven 81" for this event. They're all still in the package, so I haven't tried any of them, but they look great. And you can never have too many pairs of knee warmers.

Finally, everyone gets one of these:

No, not a manly forearm (eat your heart out, Popeye). Everyone gets a commemorative band. One side says, "Peter W. K. Lee" and the other says "RUSA 4001." That was Peter's Randonneurs USA number ... kind of like a social security number, only we put it on brevet cards rather than paper we give to identity thieves.

Still not enough for your $85? Did I mention that the money goes to fight cancer? And that this is for Peter Lee? Well, if that isn’t enough, then you aren’t from Mars or Venus. You crawled out of Uranus.

My Hip is Square

2011-03-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

So, Monday I was telling you all about how my hip was kind of clunking towards the end Saturday's 400K in Florida. It's been doing this on long rides ever since my "unintended dismount" in January. At the 200K in Memphis two weeks after, it started hurting about mile 80. At the 300K we rode the last weekend in February, it held off until mile 150.

But Monday I noticed that when I put my hand on that hip and walked, something was slipping in there with every step. I'm no doctor, but I remember enough high school anatomy to know that it ain't supposed to do that.

So, I went to see my doctor. He agreed -- I'm not a doctor. But he also sent me to get an MRI.

It turns out that, when my hip smacked the ice, it did not break any bones. That was the good news. Unfortunately, when you hit something as solid as a thick layer of ice over an asphalt base -- particularly with about 220 pounds of force (that's not just me ... I'm including the bike and my laptop and stuff ... so it's probably more like 230 pounds ... jeez, I'm fat) -- something's got to give. In my case, what gave was apparently a bit of tendon.

Again, there's good news: It doesn't seem to be really "torn," or even pulled loose from the bone. It just seems a little frayed in one spot. The doctor said that if I take it easy with it, there should be no long-term debilitating damage. He even said that I can still ride a bicycle ... I just have to stop when it begins to hurt.

Most cyclists would call this common sense. But randonneurs have a term for stopping a ride before the finish. We call that a DNF. As in "Did Not Finish." In other words, "Failed."

I've DNF'd on rides before. You second-guess it for years after. "Why did I give up so easily? I should have stuck it out and finished."

My first DNF was on the Georgia 600K. It was 100 degrees and I was suffering from sunstroke after about 250 miles. My second DNF was on a cold 300K here in Tennessee, where I stopped after 100 miles. I'd had stomach flu for the past three days before and still couldn't eat or drink anything ...but who needs food or drink on a 190-mile ride?

Those DNFs still hurt. You rode all that way for nothing?!

So, here's my choices:

Keep going on my qualifying rides for Paris-Brest-Paris and ignore my doctor's advice. When the hip starts to hurt, ignore it and hope that the tendon doesn't shred the rest of the way.
Keep going on my qualifying rides for Paris-Brest-Paris and follow my doctor's advice. When the hip starts to hurt, stop riding and get somebody to carry me and my bike back to the start.
Forget Paris-Brest-Paris and just ride my bicycle the way normal people ride. Do only short brevets for the rest of the season and hope that everything heals up for next year.

OK, so obviously I've really only got option 3. I'm too young to cripple myself and too proud to DNF any more. I'll skip PBP this year, and maybe do a tour with RandoGirl instead. There's always 2015, you know. Live to fight another day.

I still feel like a failure.