The Trip, Day Six

Day six already! Amazing how leaving Putney last Thursday seems both recent and long gone, but that's how mixed vacations go. Today I finally settled into one location, Charlottesville, although after tomorrow, J.Dukes and I are off to Chincoteague for some surfing and shirtless wild pony chasing. Today brought some swimming and some running, as the weather was Pacific Northwest all day. But tomorrow I've got big plans: and 80 mile ride down around Scotsville, in the James River Valley. The flood-like rains currently coursing down have me worried about wet roads, but with temps in the 60s (take that, Vermont), things'll dry out quickly. The road rash is healing, courtesy a dip in the UVA pool today (gross for everybody else, but disinfectant for me!), and I'm ready for some real training hours tomorrow. 6, if everything goes to plan!

A Short Bike and Traveling Story (The Trip, Day Five)

This is a bike story. I’ve told it so many times as not a bike story, but I was reminded today that it was, in fact, a bike story, and so I’m here restoring it to its proper place. I realized it was a bike story (or remembered this fact, actually) today, as I drove from New York City to Charlottesville, Virginia, with two surfboards and a bike on the roof of my small car. People react to toys on top of a small car the same way they react to small, cute children. They light up themselves, as if the promise of someone else’s fun reminded them that they, too, would have extravagant fun at some point in the future. When I pulled up to the toll booth in the Delaware Water Gap at around 9:30 AM, the toll collector took my money, looked at the equipment dominating my car’s rooftop, smiled and said: “Have a good time, man.” Later that day, after two surprisingly good tacos in Mechanicsville (burg?), PA, while re-caffeinating at a gas station, a sunburnt, crew-cut man approached my car, pointed to the two boards and said “I was just in the DR for two weeks. Where you headed?” I told him C’ville, then Chincoteague, and his face creased into its burnt lines. He said he’d noticed my Vermont plates, and we commiserated about this year’s snowfall, which has been prodigious.
So as I pulled back onto the highway, I remembered this story, which, as I said above, I’d forgotten was a bike story. It takes place last summer, one day before my sister’s wedding, and begins in Portland, Maine.
It was a hot day, at the end of July, and I hadn’t gone for a run that day. My parents had left me a long list of things to do, clothes to pick up from the tailor’s, food to cooler and pack in the car. I tossed my new bike on the roof, hoping to enter a weekly time-trial that takes place on Thursdays in Duxbury, MA, where the wedding was taking place. In addition to wedding clothes, food, cooking equipment, I had running clothes, my swimsuit, a bike, and all my riding stuff. I left the house in Portland sweaty, tired, un-walked, and stressed. As I pulled out of the driveway, my gas indicator came on.
Forest Avenue, in Portland, is the place you go when you need something, and you’d rather get it cheap: Inexpensive do-it-yourself car wash places, Rite-Aids, Jiffy Lubes. There are stop lights every hundred meters, the traffic is awful, and everyone is procuring his cheap (sorry, inexpensive) item as fast as possible, so as to avoid all the other cheapskate shoppers. It is, in short, a strip, and I figured I could find a gas station somewhere among its tuxedo rental shops, its detailing shops. I saw a Mobil sign on the other side of the street, and even though Forest Ave is not an easy place to get to the other side, I dove across the oncoming traffic and stopped in front of the pump.
As I opened my door to get out, I got that sense that this was a full-service joint. Having someone else pump my gas for me is difficult for me. It offends some puritanical vestige hardwired into the reptile part of my brain. I wonder what to do while someone is doing something for me I could easily achieve myself. It’s like having someone brush your teeth for you, and just as embarrassing. The man approaching my car looked in his early fifties, with a curly mess of blond hair, bad teeth, and half crazy eyes. Since I had my door open and my foot on the ground, trying to express an affect of “Hey, never mind, man, take it easy, I can pump my own gas,” I didn’t think I could just shut the door again as Crazy Eyes had beaten me to the pump. So I pretended like I just wanted the door open for, you know, air.
“Hi,” Crazy Eyes said.
“Hi there,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” he said. He eyed my bicycle while slipping the hose’s nozzle into the waiting hole. “That’s a nice bikc.”
It was a nice bike, but I certainly don’t want to brag about my bike to anyone, least of all a friendly gas station attendant.
“Yeah, it’s a good one. It does what I want it to.”
“You a serious biker?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said.
“I had this friend once,” he said, one hand still on the pump, the other circling in the air, “Who went to the Olympics for cycling. All he cared about were ball bearings. Ball bearings! He was nuts about them. Spent thousands of dollars on them, back in the 60s, too. Got beautiful ones. That’s all he cared about, though. Bearings.”
As he spoke, Crazy Eyes looked back and forth between me and the bike. He seemed to want to keep talking, so I indulged him.
“Do you ride?” I asked, lamely.
“Me, no. I used to run. Ran a lot. I can’t run any more. I got something wrong with a muscle in my leg. A deep muscle. Called the piriformis. real hard to stretch it out. Can’t do anything for it.”
He knew what a piriformis was. I was impressed, and had one of those backlashes I get when I assume someone doesn’t know these things, and then does. It’s a good reminder of how one isn’t the only sentient being on the planet.
“How’d it happen?” I asked, now interested.
“Oh, working here at the shop. So I can’t run now, but that keeps me fit. You know, putting tires on, carrying stuff. It’s hard. But it helps, and I’m 73.”
I goggled. 73! He was blond, fit-looking, and tan. I’d pegged him for middle fifties at the latest.
“73!” I said. “I thought you were, like, 56 or something. 73. No way.”
“It’s because I didn’t stop doing anything,” he said. “You know, I had friends—like the bike guy!—I had friends that loved doing things, like running, biking, you know. But they stopped. They got wives, husbands, kids, all that stuff, and they ended up stopping. In their 30s or 40s. I don’t know. I just kept doing it.”
“Wow,” I said. He looked down at me and then at the bike.
“You look like a nice young man,” he said (he actually did say that). “I’ll tell you something. Never stop doing what you love. No matter what you do. I had friends that stopped, and they ended up unhappy. But I didn’t. So don’t stop, no matter what, don’t stop doing what you love.”
I paid him, and tried to tip him surreptitiously, but of course it felt awkward and forced. He turned away, our interaction finished. I pulled out of the gas station and onto Route 295, heading south. I got out my phone and called my friend Jesse.
“Hey listen,” I said. “The universe just gave me a gift.”

The Trip, Day Four

Day four came early, with a 5:00 AM wakeup call. Grits, coffee, PowerBar Endurance, a pair of bibs underneath my skinsuit, leg warmers, base layer, skinsuit, jersey, jacket, balaclava, lobsterclaws (my sister calls those cameltoe gloves—eeesh), booties: the full cold weather racing regalia. Sadly, it all came for nought, as I got taken out by a guy who couldn't hold his line at the bottom of a hill. Yes, first race of the year, first crash, and I didn't shave high enough (who shaves his hips, anyway?!) to leave the abraded area bald. My buddy, Tyson (he of the year-round leg shearing), never does Cat 3 (or, god forbid, 3/4 races) any more, and I think I'm now of that mindset. I didn't do the 1/2/3 race because it was the first race of the year, I wanted to score some points, I wasn't sure of my form, blah, blah, blah. So I entered the 3/4 race.

As Hunter S. Thompson once said: "It seemed important at the time."

So this guy swerves into me, sticking his derailleur firmly through the spokes of my front wheel. I now have to go to my mechanic (happily, he's the best mechanic in the Northeast—goes by Daq Woods at The West Hill Shop in Putney; check him out some time) and say "Daq, could you rebuild this Zipp 404 for me? Some Cat 4 idiot destroyed it." The wheel wasn't totally tacoed, but 6-8 of the spokes were ripped cleanly in half. I walked back across Central Park to the start line to retrieve my jacket, and made it to the Park's east side just in time to see my field come past me, starting its last lap. Tellingly, there was an 8 rider pileup as they came around an easy, sweeping corner. Never again for me in the 3/4 races. I swear. Everything's a bit tore up: my hip, my bibs and skinsuit, gloves, leg warmers, my bar tape.

I miss cyclocross season. There you only had yourself to blame.

The Trip, Day Three: Shaving Day

Yeah, I know I didn't get to a "Part Two" for yesterday's post about the Carney, Sandoe and Associates job fair in NYC. I figure you got kind of a picture of it, so I'll just add two details from interviews subsequent to that post:

A) Head of English Department (?) who talked about the school's history for 25 minutes, then outlined the benefits program (!).

B) Head of school who asked me, in all honesty, with his own iPhone sitting there on the table in front of me, to "Describe to me what the iPhone movie of you teaching a class looks like."

Other than that, the people I talked to were great: excited about education and about bringing a good person to his/her school. Of course, when you're the interviewer, you get to be normal and balanced. It's the other side, the "Please love me and value me" side that looks pathetic and creepy the way all seekers of love/affirmation look.

Anyway. I got in two lovely workouts today, both in Central Park. My hamstring was acting up, so instead of the 8 x 1:00 fartlek intervals, I did 8 efficiency intervals, basically running swiftly with good form, but not pushing it. Then I did my recovery run for the week, bringing my run time to 1:15. After two amazing tacos from my favorite taco shop in Manhattan (La Esquina, at Cleveland and Lafayette just north of Chinatown) and two cups of coffee with one of my best friends, Damien, I headed back to the park for 5 laps (30 miles) of Central Park riding. The C'Dale, as expected, rides like a dream. Back to my cousin's apartment, it was time to shave, even though most Belgian PROs (and my crazy teammate, Tyson) won't shave the day before a race because it's "fatiguing."

I love that first shave of the year. The aformentioned Tyson shaves throughout the winter, because he claims that his legs start to itch. I like not having to worry about it for a few months, but that first shave back is truly a bitch. I had help this time from Aki's shaving post at Sprinter Della Casa, and used disposables rather than my Mach 3. Hard to say if they helped, since I didn't have an electric to take care of the hedge trimming aspect of legs that hadn't been shaved in months. Still, I got it done, and the first race of the season goes off tomorrow. There are almost 60 guys signed up for my race tomorrow (incredible, really, for a 3/4 race that starts at 6:30 AM on the second day of March), so I'm ready for some good racing. My legs may be a bit tired, but I think I've done the head work to nab a result tomorrow. I'll let you know then.

The Trip, Day Two, Part One

I've got about 36 minutes to kill until my next interview, so I thought I'd jump on here and briefly post my impressions of the Carney, Sandoe and Associates NYC job fair. Pretty much it's an assemblage of desperate semi-professionals (educators can't ever really erase that harried air from their appearances, which is why I say semi-professional; no matter how closely the men hew to the groomed, bluc-blazer-khaki-pants look, the women to the inoffensively presentable (more black pantsuits than, well, an election party hosted by DAR 30-somethings), there's always something askew, like radical, radio-tower jewelry, or suits that fit just a bit too tightly) trying not to appear desperate. There's this whole row of slot-files along one wall, where schools leave interview notices. Everybody, and I mean everybody (me, too), check these "mailboxes" with sickening regularity, all while trying not to appear as if they're checking their mailboxes. Just like their appearances, it lends the giant convention room in which we huddle a nervous, hen-like feeling. I've seen more forced smiles here than at the dentist's office.

In short, it's a pretty sad state of affairs. The interviews attempt to be personable (except for one interviewer, who shouted at me for twenty minutes about his school's history and then, without leaving any time for answer, plunged into a description of the school's benefits. It was like being bought a series of drinks by someone whom you don't know and think you don't like (and the drinks are bad, too)), but are conducted at one of several hundred slim picnic-style tables. People do all the things people do when they're trying not to be nervous but can't pull off any serious work or reading (crosswords, the sports pages, chatting emptily, chewing their nails off and staring malignantly at the floor, blogging). I just returned from a soulless meal at one of those ubiquitous New York "Gourmet" delis, of the botulism-fraught salad bars, where other desperate teacher types rubbed elbows with construction workers who swore happily and talked about money.

The guy in the chair next to me just fronted like he was going to nap (!).

The Trip, Day One

Following in the footsteps of blogs such as Mud and Cowbells and Sprinter Della Casa, here's my 2008 cycling trip log. Day one was pretty nondescript: taught all morning at the Put-put, packed for two hours (packing for 16 days, 4 sports, and 10 job interviews=difficult), put the surfboards on the car, the bike in the back (the C'dale is still too young to go on the roof on a windy, salty day), and headed out for a short ski. It was one of those perfect snow days: dry, fast, cold, and beautiful. I could only spare an hour, but I looked longingly out at the trails as I walked back to the house. Then it was in the car and off to NYC, for the first 4 days of the trip and my job interviews. Run-of-the-mill ride down: awful traffic in Hartford (and so many people in the carpool lane passing the jam—people must be getting better about ride-sharing), crazymen on the Merrit, and then that final, always new rush down into Manhattan. Currently residing on the bed-couch of my first cousin, once removed (Harvey, an all-around marvelous guy who likes P.G. Wodehouse (he's already offered any of his library for loan), hiking, and the Wesleyan Cardinal), I'm typing here entry and watching, quizzically and over Harvey's wife's shoulder, some show that's perhaps called Lipstick Jungle? There's a character on it (female) that I swear is acted by a man. Welcome back to New York. Tomorrow: job interviews and a return to one of my old favorite training grounds: Central Park.

The New Dream

This weekend, anchored to my couch and sick, I seriously geeked out on the bike blog scene. Of primary recent interest to the addict-level bike crowd, I learned, was the North American Handbuilt Bicycle Show (NAHBS). I checked out a bunch of the pictures on BKW (see previous post), and then went over to the website and plunged into the list of exhibitors. At first I expected to flit through a couple of the framebuilders' websites and then leave the handbuilt bicycle crowd forever.

And I saw these.





































It was one of those profound moments, not unlike your first tri, or crit, or cross race, when you realize that this is something you've always wanted, but just hadn't known about yet. When I saw these bikes, I couldn't imagine buying something off the rack. Don't get me wrong, I'm still in love with my (used) Six13 (I'm psyched that it's used, in fact; too much new stuff out there), but the thought of owning my own bike. A bike that no one else has, and has been built for me only. I've suffered through two cross seasons on bikes that didn't quite fit right, and I think I know what I'm gonna do for next season (or the season after that; many of these guys have long lead times for a custom bike).

Dream on.