Saturday October 20, 2008
Chet Warman dies Monday October 13, 2008 in a bicycle riding accident in Southeast Utah. Joe calls me with the news and I hang up with disbelief. I flew back to Boston. Bo flew back to New York. Joe flew back to Vermont. Chet was to drive the support truck back to Vermont as planned making several stops along the way to visit friends and take advantage of what is touted as the “best mountain biking on the planet” - Moab.
A final entry as I ride through the land of Chet today.
The ride today was organized in memory of Chet. One of Chet's favorite rides was Pittsfield to Silver Lake and back. Chet's sister Nancy is in Pittsfield and Joe is very generous with words, housing and food for all. I drive to Pittsfield. I have my mountain bike, my laptop, some pictures and a CD. I arrive at the Amee Farm in Pittsfield and the parking lot it is full of cyclists. I sit in my car for a couple of minutes and take in the scenery of mountains, trees and barns. I begin to open the door several times but stop myself not wanting to face Chet's death. Till this moment, I have kept the news wrapped in tissue paper away from my heart.
I open the car door and begin to prepare for the 35 mile ride. I start a conversation with the man next to me about air pressure, the age of our bikes and the good weather. Joe and Nancy pull up in the lower parking lot. I walk over to the edge of the ledge separating the two parking lots and wait. I am waiting to say hello to Joe but it is Nancy who looks over and says “Chris, I recognize you from the photos”. I climb down. We hug each other deeply and the sadness spills onto the gravel. It has been nearly a week since I heard the news. I hold Nancy until the two weeks spent traveling across the country with Chet returns and unwraps the tissue paper.
We all gather into the Amee Farm and Joe tells stories about Chet as we pass around pictures. There are about 60 people. I am in disbelief. I was expecting some people but this turnout is amazing. I didn't know Chet very long but I was under the impression that he lived more of a solitary, hermit life. This was not the case and I am looking at a crowd of cyclists ranging in age from 30 to 70. I glance over to Joe and say “for a hermit he had more friends than me”. Joe nods in agreement. Nancy finishes up by thanking everyone for coming and more importantly for being part of Chet's life.
We start to ride. I am in the back of the pack and pedal hard to stay up with the group. It is not long before the pack disappears ahead of me and I am pedaling alone. It is a fantastic cool and crisp fall day in Vermont. I like meeting people but riding alone for parts of today allowed me to reflect and feel connected to Chet and my surroundings. I imagine Chet pedaling on this road and enjoying the mountains and streams. I read the street names “Fort Defiance Hill” and “Mount Hunger Road” and understand why he loved to race up hills.
I pedal along and Chet's words come back to me. “Change gears”. “Always try to pedal with the least amount of effort”. “Change your position in the saddle to find better aerodynamics”. “Change the position of your feet to work different parts of your legs”. “Keep your mind active while riding”.
I catch a couple riders who are slower on the hills. I talk with Doug who is riding a Motobecane road bike. You don't see Motobecane bikes much anymore. Chet had a Motobecane and I ask Doug how he knew Chet. Doug tells me that Chet got him into biking several years ago. When he started riding he bought a bike from Chet and then graduated to this after becoming an enthusiast. I have a distinct feeling there are others in this crowd that Chet brought to the sport.
I meet Diane who is a member of the same bike club as Chet, the Killington Pico Cycling club. I tell her I never heard of the club before the ride but now it is etched into my mind for eternity. I tell her that the etching is so deep that every time I blink I see the back of a Killington Pico Cycling club Jersey. I spent many days riding behind Chet and that Jersey. If someone asks me what the country looks like from a bicycle I tell them that I don't remember much other than the back of this Jersey and Joe's shaved head. One night late in the first week of our riding I asked Chet if he would consider wearing a different Jersey the following day so I could convince myself that I was actually making some progress. He laughed, and then I said it was easier than asking Joe to wear a brunette wig.
Chet wasn't your ordinary person. He was special. If you spent any length of time with him you would not quickly forget him. He had what would be considered unpopular views on some topics and wasn't afraid to let you know if he disagreed with your thoughts. He didn't however insist that you adopt his view but did require that you at least heard what he had to say. He was passionate about what he believed and authentic in ways you don't often find today. Chet's views and opinions were not out of a book or dogmatic. He lived 64 years and similar to these Vermont mountains he pedaled was more pine tree than deciduous.
Most of all my feelings center around Chet's love for people. He wanted equality among people on every level in a way that if any of today's political candidates professed, I would vote for them in a minute. He reminded me on several occasions that he was still a hippie at heart. I believe he was a very sensitive man with deep feelings. Sensitivity of course is vulnerable to being hurt and Chet definitely built some good old fashion New England stone walls to protect himself from the pain people are capable of inflicting on each other. However, if you looked into his eyes when he was smiling, you could still see the wonder, innocence and glimmer of a five year old child.
On the ride back from Silver Lake I start chatting with another rider. His name is Bill. Bill never met Chet and doesn't know anyone else here today. Bill read about Chet in the paper and came out just to be supportive. Can you believe it? I ask him a second time to make sure I have the facts straight. Bill lives in Rutland and moved to Vermont from Massachusetts years ago. He is a dentist and thinks this area is as good as any in the United State. Today, I have to agree with him. Bill and I talk for a couple more miles and then he cycles ahead of me. I think to myself, even in death Chet is still bringing us together with biking – now that is giving.
There is always some time for payback. For all the nights I kept Chet awake blogging by clicking away on the keyboard, tonight he has kept me awake writing this till after 2AM – I miss him.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday September, 29 2008 - Day 15
Monday September, 29 2008 - Day 15
http://ultrabongo.blogspot.com/
We wake up before 7AM. LA is dense with marine layer only I don’t think it is marine layer. I think of wearing a towel over my nose and mouth to protest the air quality but give it up quickly knowing I will be shot down in the streets while donning this garb. Chet goes down to get his morning cup of free coffee and returns upset mumbling to himself “for $300 dollars I should at least get a cup of coffee”. He uses the machine in the room but continues to mumble. If you want to get Chet off to a bad start in the morning 1) screw with his coffee or 2) don’t allow him time to cycle his intestines.
Bo and I decide to go for a run and start at Santa Monica pier heading south. We run past Venice beach and a cadre of homeless every mile. We run at a slow pace for 25 minutes chatting about the trip, the homeless people, the sand and the upcoming furnace creek 508. We agree Joe has trained very hard over the past two weeks and just hope he can remain cool enough to rest a bit over the next couple days before the race. We head into the sand and over to the Pacific. We both dunk a ritualistic hand into the water. It is warm. I spread the polluted salt water onto my face and Bo, much smarter than I wipes his off on his shorts. We walk along the beach and then crank up the pace for the run back to the hotel.
My legs feel a bit awkward running and I wonder how much all this cycling is going to help me when I start my 100 mile run later in the week. I tell myself not to worry and continue to worry. I run deeper into my thighs and feel the soreness from the desert ride the day before. Body warning to brain stem, “take it easy or the other parts have agreed to go on strike later in the week”.
We all eat breakfast together and talk about the current world markets without resolve. I talk with my cousin Greg later in the day and he says “Nice coincidence that you have reached your end the same day the financial markets reached theirs”. We laugh but both know this is not my end nor is it the end of the financial markets.
Our plans for the next couple of days continue to change throughout the morning. By noon it is time to drive to Santa Clarita for the local radio interview. Joe, Chet and Bo will head directly North towards San Francisco after the interview. I have a flight out of LA on Tuesday afternoon and decide not to join them for the interview. This will allow them to get a jump start on their trip North and I will stay with my sister-in-law in LA Monday night.
We drag our packs to the truck and begin to load their belongings. Bo keeps putting my gear in the truck and I keep taking it out. I am not ready to separate but it happens quickly and I am standing in the Holiday Inn parking lot and missing my tribe. Joe calls me later to let me know the interview went well. We hang up and I text him “LA sucks even worse without you all”. They start North and I stare out at the Pacific.
Suddenly I miss everything terribly. The many miles we traveled every day was exciting but the difficulties and displacement of being in a different location each night don’t hit me till right now on the pier. This is it and now they move towards the Furnace Creek 508 and I towards my Grindstone 100. I sit, ass on wood covered Pacific pylons wishing I was going to be staying to crew for Joe during the race. This doesn’t feel right to be leaving after all we have been through together.
My run starts at 6pm EST Friday night. The Furnace Creek 508 starts at 7AM PST Saturday morning. I remind Joe that when I am suffering on Saturday about 10AM EST my only conciliation will be that his is just beginning. Isn’t friendship great.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
http://ultrabongo.blogspot.com/
We wake up before 7AM. LA is dense with marine layer only I don’t think it is marine layer. I think of wearing a towel over my nose and mouth to protest the air quality but give it up quickly knowing I will be shot down in the streets while donning this garb. Chet goes down to get his morning cup of free coffee and returns upset mumbling to himself “for $300 dollars I should at least get a cup of coffee”. He uses the machine in the room but continues to mumble. If you want to get Chet off to a bad start in the morning 1) screw with his coffee or 2) don’t allow him time to cycle his intestines.
Bo and I decide to go for a run and start at Santa Monica pier heading south. We run past Venice beach and a cadre of homeless every mile. We run at a slow pace for 25 minutes chatting about the trip, the homeless people, the sand and the upcoming furnace creek 508. We agree Joe has trained very hard over the past two weeks and just hope he can remain cool enough to rest a bit over the next couple days before the race. We head into the sand and over to the Pacific. We both dunk a ritualistic hand into the water. It is warm. I spread the polluted salt water onto my face and Bo, much smarter than I wipes his off on his shorts. We walk along the beach and then crank up the pace for the run back to the hotel.
My legs feel a bit awkward running and I wonder how much all this cycling is going to help me when I start my 100 mile run later in the week. I tell myself not to worry and continue to worry. I run deeper into my thighs and feel the soreness from the desert ride the day before. Body warning to brain stem, “take it easy or the other parts have agreed to go on strike later in the week”.
We all eat breakfast together and talk about the current world markets without resolve. I talk with my cousin Greg later in the day and he says “Nice coincidence that you have reached your end the same day the financial markets reached theirs”. We laugh but both know this is not my end nor is it the end of the financial markets.
Our plans for the next couple of days continue to change throughout the morning. By noon it is time to drive to Santa Clarita for the local radio interview. Joe, Chet and Bo will head directly North towards San Francisco after the interview. I have a flight out of LA on Tuesday afternoon and decide not to join them for the interview. This will allow them to get a jump start on their trip North and I will stay with my sister-in-law in LA Monday night.
We drag our packs to the truck and begin to load their belongings. Bo keeps putting my gear in the truck and I keep taking it out. I am not ready to separate but it happens quickly and I am standing in the Holiday Inn parking lot and missing my tribe. Joe calls me later to let me know the interview went well. We hang up and I text him “LA sucks even worse without you all”. They start North and I stare out at the Pacific.
Suddenly I miss everything terribly. The many miles we traveled every day was exciting but the difficulties and displacement of being in a different location each night don’t hit me till right now on the pier. This is it and now they move towards the Furnace Creek 508 and I towards my Grindstone 100. I sit, ass on wood covered Pacific pylons wishing I was going to be staying to crew for Joe during the race. This doesn’t feel right to be leaving after all we have been through together.
My run starts at 6pm EST Friday night. The Furnace Creek 508 starts at 7AM PST Saturday morning. I remind Joe that when I am suffering on Saturday about 10AM EST my only conciliation will be that his is just beginning. Isn’t friendship great.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
Sunday September, 28 2008 - Day 14
Sunday September, 28 2008 - Day 14
Blythe CA – One of the first things I learned while riding behind Chet and Joe is not pretty but practical, useful and made many a day go by without me getting upset. Two ways it comes. Either I get a warning or not. When I hear the rider in front of me clearing their throat know I have 2 seconds to look down and accept the wash. Many times I never get hit but taking the chance just isn’t worth it. I hear, I duck. That is my rule. Too many factors of wind direction and different riders to know if it is going to clear me so I put my head down and wait to hear the clearing “haaacktoooey”.
The second is much richer and enjoyable – the farmers blow. The farmers blow comes without warning or pattern change. One minute you are clearly looking at the beautiful landscape in front of you and the next minute you are looking through nostril excretion. No warning, no signal, just someone in front of you needed to clear their proboscis. By the 14th day I am actually enjoying such things and realizing the absurdity of my own musings.
From Blythe CA we go north deeper into the desert. Rt. 62 goes due west and is loaded with boat trailer traffic and 18 wheelers. Joe and I start pedaling and we are moving at 25+ mph. I am joyful that the mountains have prepared my legs well and now the flats seem easy to ride at 20 mph. The heat is over 100 degrees but I don’t notice it directly. I notice it because my feet are swelling into my shoes and my lips also feel a bit premenstrual.
We crank along for an hour alternating the lead every 5 miles. I drink often but don’t feel any sweat pouring off my body. It is an unusual experience when I realize it is evaporating immediately instead of cooling me. I think cool and continue to pedal. The road is long and is as far as the eye can see. Be describes this as spinning. You crank away and look up. Ten minutes later you look up again and it feels like you haven’t made any progress. Between the heat and the landscape he is smart by not riding today. My stupidity is proven many times over and Joe has not choice.
Initially my kneed doesn’t hurt and I am elated. Like our initial speed you would think I would learn one day that change is always nearby. Somewhere into the second hour lefty starts giving my signals of unhappiness. I look for a marker in the landscape to load myself back into the truck and there is none. Miles and miles of road in front of me like one of those pictures you learn to draw in elementary school where the three lines come together in the distance and give the illusion of three dimensions. I am stuck in four dimensions and looking to reduce it to two. No such luck.
My happy go stupid morning is challenged and I begin to realize the severity of the temperature when the water from my camelback is as hot as tea. I mouth some and spit it out. I reach down to my water cage and even the water and young coconut juice mixture we have used throughout the trip turns against us. I taste it and it is spoiled. It tastes rancid and I still don’t believe what is happening so I reach for the other bottle. Someone must have loaded this bottle with horse piss and now I squeeze the second bottle for some relief. The horse had a busy morning. I put my head back down and stick to Joe’s tire. My mouth is dry and I continue to cycle hot camelback water through it. I think maybe it is just my curse but Joe eventually dumps both water bottles onto the ground while pedaling at 23mph and exclaims “now I won’t have any temptation to drink it”. I realize we are both screwed. I look into the distance and see no support truck.
We pedal this way for some amount of time. It could be 15 minutes it may have been 45. Time has it’s own perspective and the heat is now talking to my body without letting me in on the conversation. Our pace slows to 20 mph and then to 15. I take the lead hoping to ratchet up the speed but can’t seem to muster more than 15 mph. Joe takes the lead back and I hear him swearing at his laziness. He cranks very hard to 17 mph for several miles and I tell him we are on a very long uphill. I can see the relief in his body with the confirming news that an external factor is responsible for the current slowness.
We get to the support truck and are both in a foul mood. We ask for water only and drink as much from the truck stock of cool liquids. I pour a water bottle over Joe’s head and instead of providing relief it runs rivers of sunblock into his eyes. He should punch me in the nose and say we are even but just asks for a tissue. We get back on our bikes. We ride and he says “I think our tires are sticking to the hot road”. I agree. We continue to be blow around by traffic passing in both directions.
The trucks and trailers that pass within feet of us are acceptable to my risk tolerance today. Any other day I would show a sense of reason and stop. In order to minimize wind resistance we pedal with our head down looking at the white line and looking up every couple of minute to make sure there is nothing major in our roadside path. The real terror is when I look up and a vehicle on the other side of the road is being passed. Now there are two vehicles coming directly at you at 70 mph. Something deep inside me willies and for a moment I become the deer in the headlights. This happens several times but each time I don’t get any more comfortable and the feeling returns. I tell myself the only way off this road is somewhere in the distance and the faster I pedal the sooner it will happen.
What I fail acknowledge is the second way off this road and that is of a religious nature. Joe must have the same feeling as we pedal frantically. The heat remains like a Kansas wind working on us slowly and progressively. The harder we fight the more we suffer. I try to surrender without success. I try to imagine myself in the cooling Pacific ocean the following day without relief. This sucks. That is my conclusion and my condition.
The Support crew must practice feeding Joe. During his race they will feed him while he rides in order to save time and not break is cadence/rhythm. They pull up next to us trying to feed us water melon but without success. On the fourth attempt I yell “move away you are going to kill us”. The truck disappears into the distance and I realize we are going to kill ourselves without their help. We catch up to the parked truck and beg for food and drink. The support crew in the Air conditioned truck is also having trouble dealing with the heat and they hand us rations through the window. Joe throws a blow by saying “it is not support unless at least one of you gets out of the truck”. Bo goes into a 10 minute rant and Joe is pleased that he has excited him. We get back on our bikes and ride west.
We reach Desert Center and go directly to the Desert Center Family Café. We walk in and the fly’s outnumber the patrons 10 to 1. You can hear them buzzing around. I order a milkshake and full meal. Chet joins me and Bo just goes for the milkshake. Joe doesn’t like the idea of so many fly’s and holds out for a while before ordering a mass of food. We eat, cool down and keep shaking our heads in disbelief. Disbelief of the heat, the traffic, the sticky road, the staff, the 35 minute wait for a sandwich and that the Desert Center has been open 24 hours a day since 1922. Their slogan “You need us a lot more than we need you”.
At the Desert Café there is a single waitress and she don’t take if from no one. We are stacked four across the bar stools and at one point Bo tries to get her attention with a hand wave. She is delivering food to a table and igores him. He gets a little Chinese NYC and tries verbally as she returns past us on our way to the kitchen. “We want”, before he can get the rest of the sentence out of his mouth she brings her hand up in the air and then motions towards him to shut it. He is silenced immediately and I go back to looking down at my eggs. Joe enjoys the show so much he thinks he is going to use some of this sweet Vermont kindness and says “you can come work at my store in VT any time”. She spanks him with “I get that offer all the time” and continues walking past as if his offer were some form of rudeness. Chet and I look quizzically at each other and then back down at our food. We drag our molten bodies up from the stools at the Desert Café, load the truck and head towards LA.
This is how the days go by,
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
Blythe CA – One of the first things I learned while riding behind Chet and Joe is not pretty but practical, useful and made many a day go by without me getting upset. Two ways it comes. Either I get a warning or not. When I hear the rider in front of me clearing their throat know I have 2 seconds to look down and accept the wash. Many times I never get hit but taking the chance just isn’t worth it. I hear, I duck. That is my rule. Too many factors of wind direction and different riders to know if it is going to clear me so I put my head down and wait to hear the clearing “haaacktoooey”.
The second is much richer and enjoyable – the farmers blow. The farmers blow comes without warning or pattern change. One minute you are clearly looking at the beautiful landscape in front of you and the next minute you are looking through nostril excretion. No warning, no signal, just someone in front of you needed to clear their proboscis. By the 14th day I am actually enjoying such things and realizing the absurdity of my own musings.
From Blythe CA we go north deeper into the desert. Rt. 62 goes due west and is loaded with boat trailer traffic and 18 wheelers. Joe and I start pedaling and we are moving at 25+ mph. I am joyful that the mountains have prepared my legs well and now the flats seem easy to ride at 20 mph. The heat is over 100 degrees but I don’t notice it directly. I notice it because my feet are swelling into my shoes and my lips also feel a bit premenstrual.
We crank along for an hour alternating the lead every 5 miles. I drink often but don’t feel any sweat pouring off my body. It is an unusual experience when I realize it is evaporating immediately instead of cooling me. I think cool and continue to pedal. The road is long and is as far as the eye can see. Be describes this as spinning. You crank away and look up. Ten minutes later you look up again and it feels like you haven’t made any progress. Between the heat and the landscape he is smart by not riding today. My stupidity is proven many times over and Joe has not choice.
Initially my kneed doesn’t hurt and I am elated. Like our initial speed you would think I would learn one day that change is always nearby. Somewhere into the second hour lefty starts giving my signals of unhappiness. I look for a marker in the landscape to load myself back into the truck and there is none. Miles and miles of road in front of me like one of those pictures you learn to draw in elementary school where the three lines come together in the distance and give the illusion of three dimensions. I am stuck in four dimensions and looking to reduce it to two. No such luck.
My happy go stupid morning is challenged and I begin to realize the severity of the temperature when the water from my camelback is as hot as tea. I mouth some and spit it out. I reach down to my water cage and even the water and young coconut juice mixture we have used throughout the trip turns against us. I taste it and it is spoiled. It tastes rancid and I still don’t believe what is happening so I reach for the other bottle. Someone must have loaded this bottle with horse piss and now I squeeze the second bottle for some relief. The horse had a busy morning. I put my head back down and stick to Joe’s tire. My mouth is dry and I continue to cycle hot camelback water through it. I think maybe it is just my curse but Joe eventually dumps both water bottles onto the ground while pedaling at 23mph and exclaims “now I won’t have any temptation to drink it”. I realize we are both screwed. I look into the distance and see no support truck.
We pedal this way for some amount of time. It could be 15 minutes it may have been 45. Time has it’s own perspective and the heat is now talking to my body without letting me in on the conversation. Our pace slows to 20 mph and then to 15. I take the lead hoping to ratchet up the speed but can’t seem to muster more than 15 mph. Joe takes the lead back and I hear him swearing at his laziness. He cranks very hard to 17 mph for several miles and I tell him we are on a very long uphill. I can see the relief in his body with the confirming news that an external factor is responsible for the current slowness.
We get to the support truck and are both in a foul mood. We ask for water only and drink as much from the truck stock of cool liquids. I pour a water bottle over Joe’s head and instead of providing relief it runs rivers of sunblock into his eyes. He should punch me in the nose and say we are even but just asks for a tissue. We get back on our bikes. We ride and he says “I think our tires are sticking to the hot road”. I agree. We continue to be blow around by traffic passing in both directions.
The trucks and trailers that pass within feet of us are acceptable to my risk tolerance today. Any other day I would show a sense of reason and stop. In order to minimize wind resistance we pedal with our head down looking at the white line and looking up every couple of minute to make sure there is nothing major in our roadside path. The real terror is when I look up and a vehicle on the other side of the road is being passed. Now there are two vehicles coming directly at you at 70 mph. Something deep inside me willies and for a moment I become the deer in the headlights. This happens several times but each time I don’t get any more comfortable and the feeling returns. I tell myself the only way off this road is somewhere in the distance and the faster I pedal the sooner it will happen.
What I fail acknowledge is the second way off this road and that is of a religious nature. Joe must have the same feeling as we pedal frantically. The heat remains like a Kansas wind working on us slowly and progressively. The harder we fight the more we suffer. I try to surrender without success. I try to imagine myself in the cooling Pacific ocean the following day without relief. This sucks. That is my conclusion and my condition.
The Support crew must practice feeding Joe. During his race they will feed him while he rides in order to save time and not break is cadence/rhythm. They pull up next to us trying to feed us water melon but without success. On the fourth attempt I yell “move away you are going to kill us”. The truck disappears into the distance and I realize we are going to kill ourselves without their help. We catch up to the parked truck and beg for food and drink. The support crew in the Air conditioned truck is also having trouble dealing with the heat and they hand us rations through the window. Joe throws a blow by saying “it is not support unless at least one of you gets out of the truck”. Bo goes into a 10 minute rant and Joe is pleased that he has excited him. We get back on our bikes and ride west.
We reach Desert Center and go directly to the Desert Center Family Café. We walk in and the fly’s outnumber the patrons 10 to 1. You can hear them buzzing around. I order a milkshake and full meal. Chet joins me and Bo just goes for the milkshake. Joe doesn’t like the idea of so many fly’s and holds out for a while before ordering a mass of food. We eat, cool down and keep shaking our heads in disbelief. Disbelief of the heat, the traffic, the sticky road, the staff, the 35 minute wait for a sandwich and that the Desert Center has been open 24 hours a day since 1922. Their slogan “You need us a lot more than we need you”.
At the Desert Café there is a single waitress and she don’t take if from no one. We are stacked four across the bar stools and at one point Bo tries to get her attention with a hand wave. She is delivering food to a table and igores him. He gets a little Chinese NYC and tries verbally as she returns past us on our way to the kitchen. “We want”, before he can get the rest of the sentence out of his mouth she brings her hand up in the air and then motions towards him to shut it. He is silenced immediately and I go back to looking down at my eggs. Joe enjoys the show so much he thinks he is going to use some of this sweet Vermont kindness and says “you can come work at my store in VT any time”. She spanks him with “I get that offer all the time” and continues walking past as if his offer were some form of rudeness. Chet and I look quizzically at each other and then back down at our food. We drag our molten bodies up from the stools at the Desert Café, load the truck and head towards LA.
This is how the days go by,
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
Saturday September, 27 2008 - Day 13
Saturday September, 27 2008 - Day 13
Flagstaff AZ – We get to Flagstaff late and pull right into a Hampton Inn parking lot. We are tired from the riding both bike and car. We need a real meal, showers and some encouragement. We get one of three. The Hampton Inn is booked but there are 15 hotels nearby. The attendant at the desk informs us that all the hotels in the area are booked. The national women’s high school soccer tournament is here in town with us. She points to a slip of paper with a local concierge’s phone number to call. Joe calls and finds out Amerisuite directly across the street has two double rooms. Another group of travelers comes through the door of the Hampton Inn after us and call the same number. They are told there are no more rooms available – phew that was close. Sometimes the “path of the cow” leads to the slaughter house. We jump in the truck and head over to Amerisuite.
Joe and I get up at 4:20AM. I eat an apple and put on several layers of clothing. It is less than 40 degrees outside and I don’t want the cold morning downhill wind chill to force me to surrender like Bo did coming out of Pagosa Springs, CO several days earlier. Joe adds a minimal amount of clothing to his body to handle the morning’s climate.
The sleeping arrangement changed last night so that Joe and I wouldn’t wake up the other crew members with our pre-dawn departure. We will simply slip our room key under their door and when they wake up and eat breakfast they can load all the baggage into the truck and catch us. Shortly before we depart Joe and I realize we don’t have a tire pump between us and wake Chet up for the truck keys anyway. Chet never get’s back to sleep and throughout the day mentions his most unfortunate start
We turn on our front lights, back lights and blinkers. Joe and I head out into the dark. Our day will cover 200+ miles and most of the state of Arizona. We head down a dark road and the new lights work better than the others we had but there continues to be the unexpected bump or hole making us fearfully aware that our limited ability to see the road. We pedal downhill but not at full speed. We are only traveling at 25 mph but we both know a fall at this speed could be crippling or worse.
The downhill is long and I start to think the day is going to be a breeze. I rationalized that we are coming out of the elevated northern Arizona into the flats. As such, we should be pedaling downhill or on flat roads most of the day. “YO”, Joe chimes. I stop. “Flat tire.” He says. He had been riding on it for the last 5 minutes. We pull over and spend 20 minutes changing the tube. Lucky we woke up Chet for the pump. Well, lucky for us – later come to find out sucks to be Chet.
The morning light in Sedona and the surrounding canyons of Arizona is magical. I don’t know much about energy vortex’s or palm reading but after riding through this area around dawn I sense something mystical and remarkable. We stop for a quick breakfast in Sedona and milk has become one of Joe’s staple foods. He keeps saying that hasn’t craved milk in years but can’t get enough of it on this trip. I grab the container of the local brand we have been drinking and am alarmed of how healthy this Southwestern milk is compared to our’s in the Northeast. Triple the protein, double the Potassium and Calcium. I spin the bottle over and see it is fortified milk. I shake my head and shove down another pancake.
In Clarkdale, 25 miles out of Sedona Chet and Bo catch up to us. We have been climbing hills every since Sedona and the sun is starting to crank up the temperature. Chet decides to start riding with us for the remainder of the day. It turns out to be a near terminal experience and also the best riding he will have for the remainder of the trip. The terminal part comes from a climb he didn’t know we are about to undertake on our way to Jerome. Jerome from Clarkdale may as well be OZ from Kansas.
The switchbacks start and the grade is very steep. The road signs start speaking of steep grades and I say, “get ready to go vertical”. During the whole climb my motivational thoughts are that the other side of Jerome must be downhill. Maybe in Colorado this is the case but in Arizona Jerome is only the half way point of the climb.
We finally arrive in Jerome but don’t stop. It is going to be a 200 mile day. We started in the darkness but don’t want to end in the darkness. Joe has become somewhat skeptical. No matter what time we start or stop riding each day we always end up checking into our hotel after 10PM and very tired. Today will be no different.
We pedal from Jerome to Prescott and are hungry and delusional from the heat. We stop at the voters think is the “Best breakfast place in Prescott”. Before we go in Joe says all he wants is an “Italian Sub sandwich”. I go in and talk to the hostess who somewhat agrees they have such a thing. We start to order and are informed there is no such sandwich here. Furthermore, they don’t make ice cream shakes which Chet wakes up every morning simply for the possibility of crossing paths with one. I eat a big and delicious breakfast, Bo is on a diet, Chet eats and Joe goes from polish sausage to French fries looking for the sub sandwich he doesn’t get.
The wait staff is interested in our attire and we start a conversation about where we are heading. One woman tells us the best route and that it is downhill and flat the remainder of the day. I think this comment alone made up for the missing Italian Sub and milkshake. We ride south on 89 through the remainder of town. A mile outside of town I see the street sign for steep grade again and conclude is must be for the downhill coming. We are about the round a corner and I see a heavy man on a touring bicycle fly past on the other side of the road. My brain goes haywire. I go back to the sign. I look back at the guy. I pedal up to Joe and say that I must be confused. We look at each other worried but both know the real answer. Heavy, seemingly out of shape guys don’t fly along the other side of the road coming off long and treacherous up hill climbs. Joe is still not ready to surrender to our fate and says “maybe he just started his ride on the other side of this bend”. I respond, “Yea”.
The rode climbs out of Prescott for miles. I think of the woman who gave us half a set of good directions and realize maybe people don’t know if the road is going up or down while they are driving. Looking at the guard rails I remind myself that some people can’t even comprehend when a road is turning much rather elevation. I curse the gene pool but mostly I am only cursing the gene pond inside my body for thinking it was going to be anything other than what it is.
We climb for another hour and then descend to the Arizona flats. My left knee is started to hurt on the Jerome climb and I find positions and gears which favor less pain. Finally, I can’t find relief on even the flats and drop my bicycle into the truck and keep Bo company. Chet and Joe continue to eat miles and on a 9 mile downhill into a town called Congress, AZ we come across a skateboarder traveling at 20 mph with no armor or helmet.
He is flying down this winding road and quickly flipping the board sideways to control his speed. I think to myself this is very representative of the current markets. This guy is going to Congress on a very dangerous stretch of road with a high probability of failure and any point of failure could result in a complete loss. When we arrive in Congress, AZ and find it is a ghost town with a single gas station for all conveniences that my analogy is confirmed – you can draw the other parallel lines.
We stop for convenience store food and look onto the Arizona flats. There are several major storm clouds dumping rain on the horizon and the wind has picked up to tropical storm category 3 level. The wind is at their back and they are flying at 30+ mph. The irony is that the 30+ mph winds suck them directly into the crossing dust and rainstorm. It is nasty riding but Chet has the “day I have waited a lifetime for”. They are being dragged along beyond speeds that their gears will allow them to pedal. The dust and rain blend into chocolate and slap them from behind. Cardboard boxes are flying through the air and garbage cans rolling in circles. They cross the remainder of AZ as the early settlers did with the promise of something better in CA. Time doesn’t change fools and fools can’t change time.
And this is how the days go by.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
Flagstaff AZ – We get to Flagstaff late and pull right into a Hampton Inn parking lot. We are tired from the riding both bike and car. We need a real meal, showers and some encouragement. We get one of three. The Hampton Inn is booked but there are 15 hotels nearby. The attendant at the desk informs us that all the hotels in the area are booked. The national women’s high school soccer tournament is here in town with us. She points to a slip of paper with a local concierge’s phone number to call. Joe calls and finds out Amerisuite directly across the street has two double rooms. Another group of travelers comes through the door of the Hampton Inn after us and call the same number. They are told there are no more rooms available – phew that was close. Sometimes the “path of the cow” leads to the slaughter house. We jump in the truck and head over to Amerisuite.
Joe and I get up at 4:20AM. I eat an apple and put on several layers of clothing. It is less than 40 degrees outside and I don’t want the cold morning downhill wind chill to force me to surrender like Bo did coming out of Pagosa Springs, CO several days earlier. Joe adds a minimal amount of clothing to his body to handle the morning’s climate.
The sleeping arrangement changed last night so that Joe and I wouldn’t wake up the other crew members with our pre-dawn departure. We will simply slip our room key under their door and when they wake up and eat breakfast they can load all the baggage into the truck and catch us. Shortly before we depart Joe and I realize we don’t have a tire pump between us and wake Chet up for the truck keys anyway. Chet never get’s back to sleep and throughout the day mentions his most unfortunate start
We turn on our front lights, back lights and blinkers. Joe and I head out into the dark. Our day will cover 200+ miles and most of the state of Arizona. We head down a dark road and the new lights work better than the others we had but there continues to be the unexpected bump or hole making us fearfully aware that our limited ability to see the road. We pedal downhill but not at full speed. We are only traveling at 25 mph but we both know a fall at this speed could be crippling or worse.
The downhill is long and I start to think the day is going to be a breeze. I rationalized that we are coming out of the elevated northern Arizona into the flats. As such, we should be pedaling downhill or on flat roads most of the day. “YO”, Joe chimes. I stop. “Flat tire.” He says. He had been riding on it for the last 5 minutes. We pull over and spend 20 minutes changing the tube. Lucky we woke up Chet for the pump. Well, lucky for us – later come to find out sucks to be Chet.
The morning light in Sedona and the surrounding canyons of Arizona is magical. I don’t know much about energy vortex’s or palm reading but after riding through this area around dawn I sense something mystical and remarkable. We stop for a quick breakfast in Sedona and milk has become one of Joe’s staple foods. He keeps saying that hasn’t craved milk in years but can’t get enough of it on this trip. I grab the container of the local brand we have been drinking and am alarmed of how healthy this Southwestern milk is compared to our’s in the Northeast. Triple the protein, double the Potassium and Calcium. I spin the bottle over and see it is fortified milk. I shake my head and shove down another pancake.
In Clarkdale, 25 miles out of Sedona Chet and Bo catch up to us. We have been climbing hills every since Sedona and the sun is starting to crank up the temperature. Chet decides to start riding with us for the remainder of the day. It turns out to be a near terminal experience and also the best riding he will have for the remainder of the trip. The terminal part comes from a climb he didn’t know we are about to undertake on our way to Jerome. Jerome from Clarkdale may as well be OZ from Kansas.
The switchbacks start and the grade is very steep. The road signs start speaking of steep grades and I say, “get ready to go vertical”. During the whole climb my motivational thoughts are that the other side of Jerome must be downhill. Maybe in Colorado this is the case but in Arizona Jerome is only the half way point of the climb.
We finally arrive in Jerome but don’t stop. It is going to be a 200 mile day. We started in the darkness but don’t want to end in the darkness. Joe has become somewhat skeptical. No matter what time we start or stop riding each day we always end up checking into our hotel after 10PM and very tired. Today will be no different.
We pedal from Jerome to Prescott and are hungry and delusional from the heat. We stop at the voters think is the “Best breakfast place in Prescott”. Before we go in Joe says all he wants is an “Italian Sub sandwich”. I go in and talk to the hostess who somewhat agrees they have such a thing. We start to order and are informed there is no such sandwich here. Furthermore, they don’t make ice cream shakes which Chet wakes up every morning simply for the possibility of crossing paths with one. I eat a big and delicious breakfast, Bo is on a diet, Chet eats and Joe goes from polish sausage to French fries looking for the sub sandwich he doesn’t get.
The wait staff is interested in our attire and we start a conversation about where we are heading. One woman tells us the best route and that it is downhill and flat the remainder of the day. I think this comment alone made up for the missing Italian Sub and milkshake. We ride south on 89 through the remainder of town. A mile outside of town I see the street sign for steep grade again and conclude is must be for the downhill coming. We are about the round a corner and I see a heavy man on a touring bicycle fly past on the other side of the road. My brain goes haywire. I go back to the sign. I look back at the guy. I pedal up to Joe and say that I must be confused. We look at each other worried but both know the real answer. Heavy, seemingly out of shape guys don’t fly along the other side of the road coming off long and treacherous up hill climbs. Joe is still not ready to surrender to our fate and says “maybe he just started his ride on the other side of this bend”. I respond, “Yea”.
The rode climbs out of Prescott for miles. I think of the woman who gave us half a set of good directions and realize maybe people don’t know if the road is going up or down while they are driving. Looking at the guard rails I remind myself that some people can’t even comprehend when a road is turning much rather elevation. I curse the gene pool but mostly I am only cursing the gene pond inside my body for thinking it was going to be anything other than what it is.
We climb for another hour and then descend to the Arizona flats. My left knee is started to hurt on the Jerome climb and I find positions and gears which favor less pain. Finally, I can’t find relief on even the flats and drop my bicycle into the truck and keep Bo company. Chet and Joe continue to eat miles and on a 9 mile downhill into a town called Congress, AZ we come across a skateboarder traveling at 20 mph with no armor or helmet.
He is flying down this winding road and quickly flipping the board sideways to control his speed. I think to myself this is very representative of the current markets. This guy is going to Congress on a very dangerous stretch of road with a high probability of failure and any point of failure could result in a complete loss. When we arrive in Congress, AZ and find it is a ghost town with a single gas station for all conveniences that my analogy is confirmed – you can draw the other parallel lines.
We stop for convenience store food and look onto the Arizona flats. There are several major storm clouds dumping rain on the horizon and the wind has picked up to tropical storm category 3 level. The wind is at their back and they are flying at 30+ mph. The irony is that the 30+ mph winds suck them directly into the crossing dust and rainstorm. It is nasty riding but Chet has the “day I have waited a lifetime for”. They are being dragged along beyond speeds that their gears will allow them to pedal. The dust and rain blend into chocolate and slap them from behind. Cardboard boxes are flying through the air and garbage cans rolling in circles. They cross the remainder of AZ as the early settlers did with the promise of something better in CA. Time doesn’t change fools and fools can’t change time.
And this is how the days go by.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
Friday, September 26, 2008
Friday September, 26 2008 - Day 12
Friday September, 26 2008 - Day 12
After the past two days of heavy hill climbing our bodies show outward signs of wear. Chet is limping a bit and dipping a shoulder. I am walking very gently on a sore knee and hip. Joe never walks the same way twice so who knows what his body is going through. Bo’s body has thawed and he is awake early and looking for food.
Chet and I agree this morning should be a cross training routine. We stretch, eat breakfast and then hike up a mountain trail in Telluride. The mountains surrounding Telluride are steep and colored with yellow Aspens against deep green pines. The trail is wide and we climb quickly. Joe starts running and I look over to Chet who is shaking his head. He just can’t seem to get Joe to rest or recover for the coming 200 miles he will pedal on Saturday.
I forgot to mention, yesterday while we were in in Silverton Bo ordered rocky mountain oysters. When they arrived I mouthed to Chet, “does he know”. Chet shook his head – no. I smirk and decide get a video of it. I go through the ingredients in each lunch at the table as if I am a gourmet on TV. When I get to Bo I stop and ask him what is within the fried batter. He says Oysters. I say “yea, from the nearby sea”. My clues go unnoticed. Chet finally takes one and eats it. He starts questioning Bo about the ingredients and their origin. When Bo learns where these fried gems come from he is surprisingly calm. After several minutes he says, “then these must be aphrodisiacs “. I add a comment that Joe should be a little worried as he and Bo are rooming together.
The road between Telluride Colorado and Flagstaff Arizona is much different than any road we have ridden. The traffic passes at 55-70 mph and the shoulder is small. The very noticeable difference is that the traffic participates in what could only be called a passfest. It is a two lane highway and the cars never stay in their own lanes. It reminds me of an ant trail. They head directly for each other all along the route. I am told there is some communication takes place when they run into each other. Joe pedals along the road with his head down to avoid being sand blown. When he looks up he is continually looking at two cars coming at him. One vehicle is in the proper lane on the other side of the road and the second vehicle in his lane.
The road passes through Four Corners. Four corners is where Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona meet. It should be called Four shit because there is nothing noteworthy other than the dust storm that envelopes Joe as he cranks along the flat road. Miles and miles of nothing but pucker, scrub brush and a bicycle rider. With any luck one of the three won’t be there tomorrow morning.
We have been trying to charge most our expenses to Joe’s Amex card. It has been a nightmare from the first day, every day and usually at the most critical point of any day. Last night we are between Ouray and Telluride. We come upon the only gas station even slightly open and won’t make Telluride without a refill. We swipe the Amex card at the pump. “See Attendant”. We go in to speak with the attendant and she says the card will require a special authorization.
This card has been cancelled for months but Joe grabbed it by accident. We have been using it with mixed results for the last 11 days. Joe had a new card sent to our hotel in Lamar, CO two nights ago. We have the new card but since we have been on the phone every day with Amex we decide to see how far we can get on the old card. Amex guaranteed Joe the card was null, void, cancelled and will never work again. That is why we go through the trouble of altering the “path of the cow” for a single night and must plan to be in Lamar to pick up the card.
Joe is on the phone again with Amex and the new card is in an envelope which fell behind the back seat in the cab of the truck. We cannot figure out how to drop the back seat. Joe assures us he has done it before but after 5 minutes of pulling, pushing and prying we resort to reaching arms underneath up to our shoulders. Another 5 minutes and we have the envelope. Open it, tell the Amex representative the card number for authorization. She won’t authorize it because Joe isn’t calling from his home phone number. He explains that we are traveling for 3 weeks and had the card sent to a hotel which is why he cannot call from his home phone number to authorize the card. She puts us on hold and says that for security reasons she cannot authorize the card.
Joe has a 10 minute discussion with her explaining that we not only need gas but will also need to use this card for our lodging. She puts us on hold. Amex authorizes us for $400 of spending for the remainder of the night. In the meantime he has had to use Courtney’s card to pay for gas. This attendant who has watched us pull apart the truck now has to reconcile that Joe’s name is Courtney. Joe is asked for identification and then does his best sales pitch in a plea of trust because they have the same last name.
We get to the hotel and use the old card to pay for the room no problem. This is how the days go by.
Other notable events because I hear Bo’s daughter is actually reading the blog. Tonight we stop for gas. We use the old card and $7.00 exactly into the fill the pump shuts off. The text on the pump says “Stopped See Attendant”. We go in to speak to the attendant while Joe calls Amex again. After 20 minutes Bo just uses the old card in the pump behind ours. It authorizes so I back up the truck while Chet is in with the attendant and Joe is on the phone with Amex. Bo fills the truck and just prior to driving away I glance in the side view mirror and the gas door is open with the gas cap flapping in the wind. I stop the truck and ask Bo who’s side he is on.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
After the past two days of heavy hill climbing our bodies show outward signs of wear. Chet is limping a bit and dipping a shoulder. I am walking very gently on a sore knee and hip. Joe never walks the same way twice so who knows what his body is going through. Bo’s body has thawed and he is awake early and looking for food.
Chet and I agree this morning should be a cross training routine. We stretch, eat breakfast and then hike up a mountain trail in Telluride. The mountains surrounding Telluride are steep and colored with yellow Aspens against deep green pines. The trail is wide and we climb quickly. Joe starts running and I look over to Chet who is shaking his head. He just can’t seem to get Joe to rest or recover for the coming 200 miles he will pedal on Saturday.
I forgot to mention, yesterday while we were in in Silverton Bo ordered rocky mountain oysters. When they arrived I mouthed to Chet, “does he know”. Chet shook his head – no. I smirk and decide get a video of it. I go through the ingredients in each lunch at the table as if I am a gourmet on TV. When I get to Bo I stop and ask him what is within the fried batter. He says Oysters. I say “yea, from the nearby sea”. My clues go unnoticed. Chet finally takes one and eats it. He starts questioning Bo about the ingredients and their origin. When Bo learns where these fried gems come from he is surprisingly calm. After several minutes he says, “then these must be aphrodisiacs “. I add a comment that Joe should be a little worried as he and Bo are rooming together.
The road between Telluride Colorado and Flagstaff Arizona is much different than any road we have ridden. The traffic passes at 55-70 mph and the shoulder is small. The very noticeable difference is that the traffic participates in what could only be called a passfest. It is a two lane highway and the cars never stay in their own lanes. It reminds me of an ant trail. They head directly for each other all along the route. I am told there is some communication takes place when they run into each other. Joe pedals along the road with his head down to avoid being sand blown. When he looks up he is continually looking at two cars coming at him. One vehicle is in the proper lane on the other side of the road and the second vehicle in his lane.
The road passes through Four Corners. Four corners is where Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona meet. It should be called Four shit because there is nothing noteworthy other than the dust storm that envelopes Joe as he cranks along the flat road. Miles and miles of nothing but pucker, scrub brush and a bicycle rider. With any luck one of the three won’t be there tomorrow morning.
We have been trying to charge most our expenses to Joe’s Amex card. It has been a nightmare from the first day, every day and usually at the most critical point of any day. Last night we are between Ouray and Telluride. We come upon the only gas station even slightly open and won’t make Telluride without a refill. We swipe the Amex card at the pump. “See Attendant”. We go in to speak with the attendant and she says the card will require a special authorization.
This card has been cancelled for months but Joe grabbed it by accident. We have been using it with mixed results for the last 11 days. Joe had a new card sent to our hotel in Lamar, CO two nights ago. We have the new card but since we have been on the phone every day with Amex we decide to see how far we can get on the old card. Amex guaranteed Joe the card was null, void, cancelled and will never work again. That is why we go through the trouble of altering the “path of the cow” for a single night and must plan to be in Lamar to pick up the card.
Joe is on the phone again with Amex and the new card is in an envelope which fell behind the back seat in the cab of the truck. We cannot figure out how to drop the back seat. Joe assures us he has done it before but after 5 minutes of pulling, pushing and prying we resort to reaching arms underneath up to our shoulders. Another 5 minutes and we have the envelope. Open it, tell the Amex representative the card number for authorization. She won’t authorize it because Joe isn’t calling from his home phone number. He explains that we are traveling for 3 weeks and had the card sent to a hotel which is why he cannot call from his home phone number to authorize the card. She puts us on hold and says that for security reasons she cannot authorize the card.
Joe has a 10 minute discussion with her explaining that we not only need gas but will also need to use this card for our lodging. She puts us on hold. Amex authorizes us for $400 of spending for the remainder of the night. In the meantime he has had to use Courtney’s card to pay for gas. This attendant who has watched us pull apart the truck now has to reconcile that Joe’s name is Courtney. Joe is asked for identification and then does his best sales pitch in a plea of trust because they have the same last name.
We get to the hotel and use the old card to pay for the room no problem. This is how the days go by.
Other notable events because I hear Bo’s daughter is actually reading the blog. Tonight we stop for gas. We use the old card and $7.00 exactly into the fill the pump shuts off. The text on the pump says “Stopped See Attendant”. We go in to speak to the attendant while Joe calls Amex again. After 20 minutes Bo just uses the old card in the pump behind ours. It authorizes so I back up the truck while Chet is in with the attendant and Joe is on the phone with Amex. Bo fills the truck and just prior to driving away I glance in the side view mirror and the gas door is open with the gas cap flapping in the wind. I stop the truck and ask Bo who’s side he is on.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thursday September, 25 2008 - Day 11
Thursday September, 25 2008 - Day 11
http://ultrabongo.blogspot.com/
Pagosa Springs 7AM – Joe and Bo head out in the early morning light. It is 38 degrees and Joe refuses any offer for gloves or additional clothing. There is no wind in the parking lot and this gives Bo a very false sense of warmth. He is happy to be biking today and Joe has agreed to keep a pace that Bo can maintain. Bo doesn’t know the first 5 miles are downhill and fast. The windchill will most likely be closer to 25 than 35. Chet and I grab some melon from the hotel continental breakfast bar and load the truck.
The planned route today gives Joe and Bo some time together between Pagosa Springs and Durango (about 50 miles of rolling hills). I will join Joe from Durango to Silverton (about 50 miles over two steep passes). Joe will ride from Silverton to Ouray (about 24 miles over one pass) alone and during that time the support truck will drop me in Ouray and I will run back towards Silverton. We will eat dinner in Ouray and drive to Telluride in order to sleep at high altitude (Joe’s request).
Bo didn’t get to ride over Wolf Pass yesterday. He missed the suffering as well as the glory of the 10 mile climb and nine mile 7% grade descent to Pagosa Springs. Talking about it over dinner he is noticeably upset to have missed out on all the action. We remind him his support services were instrumental to our success but he has never seen such steepness and is interested in testing himself.
Chet and I catch up to Bo 15 miles out of Pagosa Springs. He is cold and hungry. We give him a small amount of food and a large portion of encouragement. Chet also gives him some winter riding cloves. His lips are purple and his fingers are not functioning. Bo pedals away and we track down Joe who is wearing minimal clothing and has abandoned Bo. We ride up next to Joe and he is frozen. His lips are moving but the words are not forming properly. It is like he has had several well place Novocain shots. We ask him if he wants gloves or additional clothing and he talks about the wooly mammoth he passed a couple miles back and makes other colorful references to the ice age. In the end, he refuses all support and cracks a couple more jokes. I turn up the heater in the truck and we head back to check on Bo.
We pull over and Bo stops his bike quickly. He says he is feeling light headed and can’t feel his fingers. He is shaking and we ask if there is anything we can do. He says “yes”. Load my bike into the truck. We get him in the truck and give him a dry change of clothes. He says that he surrenders. Unconditional surrender. I take a video of it because I know this moment needs to last forever. He says that being part of the riding crew isn’t worth whatever we are deriving from it. He continues to rub his hands together for the next 45 minutes and muttering random phrases.
We track down Joe and tell him we brought him a present. He sees Bo in the back seat and they have a very colorful conversation. Bo yells that he was abandoned and forced to bike without breakfast. Joe, from his bicycle chides Bo up and down and I think a little under the belly also. Chet and I nearly empty our bladders from laughter and then add some additional nitro to fuel the fire whenever the chance arrives. This will continue throughout the day in many forms.
For instance, I am in the middle of a 14 mile climb and Bo is on the side of the road in the support truck telling me the truck is warm and full of food all I need to do is stop and quit. He is yelling this with a heavy Chinese accent while hanging out the driver side window and pounding his hand on the truck door. This is how the days go by.
Joe is unimpressed with Durango. We eat at a local favorite breakfast spot Carvers Brewery. We walk in and are told there is a wait. The host goes to seat us and Joe immediately says “I want French Toast”. The host says, “I am not your waiter”, turns and walks away. Joe says “everyone working in a restaurant should be a waiter”. I explain to Joe that Durango has locals, who don’t like non-locals telling them what to do or how to do it. He says, “Yea, like I don’t know anything about that”.
During breakfast I convince Chet to come and ride with me between Durango and Silverton. It is one of the most spectacular roads in the country. I tell him Joe is going to blow me away like he did Bo in the morning and I won’t have the sense that Bo did this morning to quit. Chet really just wants to take pictures and relax. He agrees to come along but only at a touring pace (he should have had this term defined better). We leave on 550 North out of Durango. Yep, North, due North on the compass.
For any/all of you bothering to following our route let me digress deeply. First, when I was completing my undergraduate work in college an Indian professor teaching “Operations Mangement” explained a technical phrase “path of the cow”. He was doing research at the GE facility in Indiana where they build refrigerators. The first day on the job he was shown the production facility. The production line went left, right, left again, up down, left, right and all over the place without any rhyme or reason. I am no expert but my professor thought he was and he taught us if you watch cows grazing long enough they have the same random pattern, hence “path of the cow”. Second, finding the largest and longest hills possible is a priority in my nightly routing otherwise we would have been in LA yesterday. Third, gas prices are dropping so we figured we would waste some. Fourth, this is only the training ride. If anyone is interested in preplanned routes Joe will be starting a very predictable and planned route on October 3rd which can be found here - http://www.the508.com/route/index.html
The Durango to Silverton segment goes without incidence. Other than starting at 6,000 feet and climbing over two passes, one at 11,000 feet things went well. After the first pass Chet and I catch up with Joe. He is making phone calls on the side of a mountain. He complains about the length of these climbs and says that Vermont is a better place to train. A rainstorm passes nearby and drops the temperature by 20 degrees. We descend into Silverton on fast wet roads. Chet and I go full speed but Joe is not a fan of twisty downhills at 45 mph. This is the second day in a row that I am descending at 45 mph and the speed limit is 25mph. Chet also likes the speed and cornering. This may be the single example on the trip where Joe exhibits more sanity than the crew.
We eat in Silverton and take many pictures. We are wet and cold. Bo is very happy to see others have suffered like he did in the morning. He also points out that he suffered much worse in the morning. Joe loves the town and we talk about Bo opening a Chinese restaurant in North Carolina. The interesting part of the take out Chinese restaurant will be that there is no phone number or address for the restaurant. In fact, the name is BoJoe or JoeBo depending on who you listen to and the slogan is “don’t call us, we will call you”. We determine with a good list of eaters there will be no need to waste our time servicing the general population.
Chet decides Durango is his riding destination for the day. I decide to ride the remaining 24 miles instead of running from Ouray back towards Silverton. Joe and I head out of town and begin a long narrow ascent. The wind kicks us in the face and we gear down searching for speeds to allow some recovery on these steep climbs. Two bikers are flying down the other side of the road and I tell them they are going the wrong way. We climb, we stand, we sit, we climb. This cycle repeats itself until we surrender to the idea that there is not, and will not be any relief.
The downhill into Ouray has to be the most beautiful road in the world. It twists and winds through very steep ravines and the road surface is new. It is like going down into the Grand Canyon. The colors are vibrant and reek of reds and oranges where man threw these mountains innards onto their tuxedos. Deer are scattered and feeding roadside. The air is cool, crisp. I will never be able to find the right words for someone sitting in front of a computer terminal on the Northeast coast to explain why Google maps or any other program would not route any traveler within 1000 miles of this treasure onto 550. It is called the Million dollar Highway and in my opinion should be upgraded to platinum trillion dollar status.
Ouray creates a problem for Joe. He doesn’t know if he likes Ouray or Silverton better. Chet helps him out and gives him permission to like them both. It works. We enjoy all enjoy a Mexican trout dinner and then go to the Hot springs for some relief from the days riding. It is perfect. We go to a place that has a mineral bath in a cave. Bo is a little confused and I get him to put his shorts on before we enter the water.
Joe pedals for 130 miles today. I don’t know the ascent and descent numbers but they are high. We drive through the darkness to find out way to Mountain Lodge. Somehow these days start early, end late and are filled, correction overfilled. We have taken many pictures and movies over the past 3 days. I will try to upload them tonight and send out a link tomorrow.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
http://ultrabongo.blogspot.com/
Pagosa Springs 7AM – Joe and Bo head out in the early morning light. It is 38 degrees and Joe refuses any offer for gloves or additional clothing. There is no wind in the parking lot and this gives Bo a very false sense of warmth. He is happy to be biking today and Joe has agreed to keep a pace that Bo can maintain. Bo doesn’t know the first 5 miles are downhill and fast. The windchill will most likely be closer to 25 than 35. Chet and I grab some melon from the hotel continental breakfast bar and load the truck.
The planned route today gives Joe and Bo some time together between Pagosa Springs and Durango (about 50 miles of rolling hills). I will join Joe from Durango to Silverton (about 50 miles over two steep passes). Joe will ride from Silverton to Ouray (about 24 miles over one pass) alone and during that time the support truck will drop me in Ouray and I will run back towards Silverton. We will eat dinner in Ouray and drive to Telluride in order to sleep at high altitude (Joe’s request).
Bo didn’t get to ride over Wolf Pass yesterday. He missed the suffering as well as the glory of the 10 mile climb and nine mile 7% grade descent to Pagosa Springs. Talking about it over dinner he is noticeably upset to have missed out on all the action. We remind him his support services were instrumental to our success but he has never seen such steepness and is interested in testing himself.
Chet and I catch up to Bo 15 miles out of Pagosa Springs. He is cold and hungry. We give him a small amount of food and a large portion of encouragement. Chet also gives him some winter riding cloves. His lips are purple and his fingers are not functioning. Bo pedals away and we track down Joe who is wearing minimal clothing and has abandoned Bo. We ride up next to Joe and he is frozen. His lips are moving but the words are not forming properly. It is like he has had several well place Novocain shots. We ask him if he wants gloves or additional clothing and he talks about the wooly mammoth he passed a couple miles back and makes other colorful references to the ice age. In the end, he refuses all support and cracks a couple more jokes. I turn up the heater in the truck and we head back to check on Bo.
We pull over and Bo stops his bike quickly. He says he is feeling light headed and can’t feel his fingers. He is shaking and we ask if there is anything we can do. He says “yes”. Load my bike into the truck. We get him in the truck and give him a dry change of clothes. He says that he surrenders. Unconditional surrender. I take a video of it because I know this moment needs to last forever. He says that being part of the riding crew isn’t worth whatever we are deriving from it. He continues to rub his hands together for the next 45 minutes and muttering random phrases.
We track down Joe and tell him we brought him a present. He sees Bo in the back seat and they have a very colorful conversation. Bo yells that he was abandoned and forced to bike without breakfast. Joe, from his bicycle chides Bo up and down and I think a little under the belly also. Chet and I nearly empty our bladders from laughter and then add some additional nitro to fuel the fire whenever the chance arrives. This will continue throughout the day in many forms.
For instance, I am in the middle of a 14 mile climb and Bo is on the side of the road in the support truck telling me the truck is warm and full of food all I need to do is stop and quit. He is yelling this with a heavy Chinese accent while hanging out the driver side window and pounding his hand on the truck door. This is how the days go by.
Joe is unimpressed with Durango. We eat at a local favorite breakfast spot Carvers Brewery. We walk in and are told there is a wait. The host goes to seat us and Joe immediately says “I want French Toast”. The host says, “I am not your waiter”, turns and walks away. Joe says “everyone working in a restaurant should be a waiter”. I explain to Joe that Durango has locals, who don’t like non-locals telling them what to do or how to do it. He says, “Yea, like I don’t know anything about that”.
During breakfast I convince Chet to come and ride with me between Durango and Silverton. It is one of the most spectacular roads in the country. I tell him Joe is going to blow me away like he did Bo in the morning and I won’t have the sense that Bo did this morning to quit. Chet really just wants to take pictures and relax. He agrees to come along but only at a touring pace (he should have had this term defined better). We leave on 550 North out of Durango. Yep, North, due North on the compass.
For any/all of you bothering to following our route let me digress deeply. First, when I was completing my undergraduate work in college an Indian professor teaching “Operations Mangement” explained a technical phrase “path of the cow”. He was doing research at the GE facility in Indiana where they build refrigerators. The first day on the job he was shown the production facility. The production line went left, right, left again, up down, left, right and all over the place without any rhyme or reason. I am no expert but my professor thought he was and he taught us if you watch cows grazing long enough they have the same random pattern, hence “path of the cow”. Second, finding the largest and longest hills possible is a priority in my nightly routing otherwise we would have been in LA yesterday. Third, gas prices are dropping so we figured we would waste some. Fourth, this is only the training ride. If anyone is interested in preplanned routes Joe will be starting a very predictable and planned route on October 3rd which can be found here - http://www.the508.com/route/index.html
The Durango to Silverton segment goes without incidence. Other than starting at 6,000 feet and climbing over two passes, one at 11,000 feet things went well. After the first pass Chet and I catch up with Joe. He is making phone calls on the side of a mountain. He complains about the length of these climbs and says that Vermont is a better place to train. A rainstorm passes nearby and drops the temperature by 20 degrees. We descend into Silverton on fast wet roads. Chet and I go full speed but Joe is not a fan of twisty downhills at 45 mph. This is the second day in a row that I am descending at 45 mph and the speed limit is 25mph. Chet also likes the speed and cornering. This may be the single example on the trip where Joe exhibits more sanity than the crew.
We eat in Silverton and take many pictures. We are wet and cold. Bo is very happy to see others have suffered like he did in the morning. He also points out that he suffered much worse in the morning. Joe loves the town and we talk about Bo opening a Chinese restaurant in North Carolina. The interesting part of the take out Chinese restaurant will be that there is no phone number or address for the restaurant. In fact, the name is BoJoe or JoeBo depending on who you listen to and the slogan is “don’t call us, we will call you”. We determine with a good list of eaters there will be no need to waste our time servicing the general population.
Chet decides Durango is his riding destination for the day. I decide to ride the remaining 24 miles instead of running from Ouray back towards Silverton. Joe and I head out of town and begin a long narrow ascent. The wind kicks us in the face and we gear down searching for speeds to allow some recovery on these steep climbs. Two bikers are flying down the other side of the road and I tell them they are going the wrong way. We climb, we stand, we sit, we climb. This cycle repeats itself until we surrender to the idea that there is not, and will not be any relief.
The downhill into Ouray has to be the most beautiful road in the world. It twists and winds through very steep ravines and the road surface is new. It is like going down into the Grand Canyon. The colors are vibrant and reek of reds and oranges where man threw these mountains innards onto their tuxedos. Deer are scattered and feeding roadside. The air is cool, crisp. I will never be able to find the right words for someone sitting in front of a computer terminal on the Northeast coast to explain why Google maps or any other program would not route any traveler within 1000 miles of this treasure onto 550. It is called the Million dollar Highway and in my opinion should be upgraded to platinum trillion dollar status.
Ouray creates a problem for Joe. He doesn’t know if he likes Ouray or Silverton better. Chet helps him out and gives him permission to like them both. It works. We enjoy all enjoy a Mexican trout dinner and then go to the Hot springs for some relief from the days riding. It is perfect. We go to a place that has a mineral bath in a cave. Bo is a little confused and I get him to put his shorts on before we enter the water.
Joe pedals for 130 miles today. I don’t know the ascent and descent numbers but they are high. We drive through the darkness to find out way to Mountain Lodge. Somehow these days start early, end late and are filled, correction overfilled. We have taken many pictures and movies over the past 3 days. I will try to upload them tonight and send out a link tomorrow.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
Wednesday September, 24 2008 - Day 10
Wednesday September, 24 2008 - Day 10
http://ultrabongo.blogspot.com/
5AM comes early to Lamar CO and my body get’s out of bed before my brain even fires a synapse. I walk around in a circle trying to orient myself to something. The room is dark because there is no natural light outside and being in a different motel room every night means I am not sure of where the knee bangers are lurking. I circle - there is no wind or hills. If I was smart I would include the bed in my little circle and go back to sleep. After 4 circles there is a loud rap on the door and my little pattern is broken.
We load the car and hit the road. Joe is anxious to get into the Rockies and beat his body against the hills. We get such a fast start no one asks the front desk which way 50 West leaves town and I drive in several circles around Lamar similar to the one’s I was walking in my room. This time the knock comes from the convenience store attendant who doesn’t say anything to me, she simply points. Love it.
The sun comes up slowly revealing outlines and shadows of the mountains. I keep a tight leash on my speed as a second speeding ticket for me today may not be as easy to forget. 30 minutes into the drive Joe starts asking when we are going to be there. He doesn’t even know where “there” is but being in the back cab seat of the truck is torture to him. I look back 10 minutes later and he is sound asleep. We travel through small agriculture based towns and the “pickers” are starting to fill the roads before 6AM.
Monte Vista is just west of Alamosa on rt. 160. Chet, Joe and I pedal 30 miles to South Fork. Joe leads into a 10 mph headwind and he is blasting away at the pedals. I glance down and we are at 25 mph. My legs scream for mercy and several times I try to convince myself to back down and let Bo pick me up. I change positions, crank harder, swear, sweat and curse. When we arrive in South Fork I am on Chet’s back tire. Wolf pass separates South Fork from Pagosa Springs. Wolf Pass climbs 8000 feet over 10 miles. It is stark beauty and windy. Pine trees are interspersed with Aspens and at 7800 ft elevation I am beginning to feel the loss of oxygen.
We start the ascent and I pedal up next to Chet and whisper in his ear “if I drop off, don’t wait for me, I will see you in Pagosa Springs. He smiles and says “I am going to drop off too”. I downshift and fall off to 7mph. Chet remains glued to Joes back tire for as far as I can see them. Then they disappear and I am out in the mountains of Colorado pedaling against a wind, dehydrating and sun burning. This is not a complaint. I take it over stressing about the economy or what the leaders of this great nations will do next – to further screw it up. Trucks pass within three feet of me at 65 mph, bears and mountain lions are within these woods and I still feel safer than at the hands of our elected leaders. I digress.
I see a moose in a meadow and turn around to take a picture. She doesn’t like photographs and dodges back into the tree line. Maybe it was the outfit I am wearing. I turn my focus back to the pedals. It is 10 miles to the Summit and at no point do I want to know how much farther it is. I look only at the speedometer and keep reminding myself to slow down and relax. Altitude sickness is real and we have spend the majority of our time on this trip close to sea level. I don’t want to throw up my two peanut butter and honey sandwiches but my stomach gives me some very clear signals to yield. I stand up on the pedals looking for relief but there is none. Bo is running support from the truck today and he is truly providing world class support with a smile. He pulls into the turn offs and offers water refills and provisions.
At the Summit of Wolf Pass I cross the Continental Divide. Pull my bicycle over to the marker and take several pictures. From here it is 9 miles downhill at 7% grade. Wow. I am at 40 mph quickly and twisting through downhill turns which have cautions signs reading 25mph. The first one I brake to 20 mph and the others I don’t even come up out of my tuck position.
Joe and Chet average 19 mph for the 75 miles we pedal!!!! I manage 16.1. We eat in Pagosa Springs and head to the Pagosa Lodge. We alternate between stretching and the hot tub. We are sore and spent from the climb and exhilarated from the descent. Joe demands more hills for the morrow and to sleep at elevation. I tell him I will see what I can do.
Notable – As we are driving this morning we are stuck in one of our unsolvable discussions and Chet asks Joe if he could be anywhere doing anything right now what would it be? Without hesitation Joe says “I would be with Courtney and our boys, I miss them dearly”.
Two weeks didn’t sound like much time when we were planning this adventure but to the heart it could be a lifetime and for the financial markets it could be long enough for complete failure. And this is how the days go by. From Chet, Bo, Joe and me, we miss you all very much and thank you for making this all possible with your support.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
http://ultrabongo.blogspot.com/
5AM comes early to Lamar CO and my body get’s out of bed before my brain even fires a synapse. I walk around in a circle trying to orient myself to something. The room is dark because there is no natural light outside and being in a different motel room every night means I am not sure of where the knee bangers are lurking. I circle - there is no wind or hills. If I was smart I would include the bed in my little circle and go back to sleep. After 4 circles there is a loud rap on the door and my little pattern is broken.
We load the car and hit the road. Joe is anxious to get into the Rockies and beat his body against the hills. We get such a fast start no one asks the front desk which way 50 West leaves town and I drive in several circles around Lamar similar to the one’s I was walking in my room. This time the knock comes from the convenience store attendant who doesn’t say anything to me, she simply points. Love it.
The sun comes up slowly revealing outlines and shadows of the mountains. I keep a tight leash on my speed as a second speeding ticket for me today may not be as easy to forget. 30 minutes into the drive Joe starts asking when we are going to be there. He doesn’t even know where “there” is but being in the back cab seat of the truck is torture to him. I look back 10 minutes later and he is sound asleep. We travel through small agriculture based towns and the “pickers” are starting to fill the roads before 6AM.
Monte Vista is just west of Alamosa on rt. 160. Chet, Joe and I pedal 30 miles to South Fork. Joe leads into a 10 mph headwind and he is blasting away at the pedals. I glance down and we are at 25 mph. My legs scream for mercy and several times I try to convince myself to back down and let Bo pick me up. I change positions, crank harder, swear, sweat and curse. When we arrive in South Fork I am on Chet’s back tire. Wolf pass separates South Fork from Pagosa Springs. Wolf Pass climbs 8000 feet over 10 miles. It is stark beauty and windy. Pine trees are interspersed with Aspens and at 7800 ft elevation I am beginning to feel the loss of oxygen.
We start the ascent and I pedal up next to Chet and whisper in his ear “if I drop off, don’t wait for me, I will see you in Pagosa Springs. He smiles and says “I am going to drop off too”. I downshift and fall off to 7mph. Chet remains glued to Joes back tire for as far as I can see them. Then they disappear and I am out in the mountains of Colorado pedaling against a wind, dehydrating and sun burning. This is not a complaint. I take it over stressing about the economy or what the leaders of this great nations will do next – to further screw it up. Trucks pass within three feet of me at 65 mph, bears and mountain lions are within these woods and I still feel safer than at the hands of our elected leaders. I digress.
I see a moose in a meadow and turn around to take a picture. She doesn’t like photographs and dodges back into the tree line. Maybe it was the outfit I am wearing. I turn my focus back to the pedals. It is 10 miles to the Summit and at no point do I want to know how much farther it is. I look only at the speedometer and keep reminding myself to slow down and relax. Altitude sickness is real and we have spend the majority of our time on this trip close to sea level. I don’t want to throw up my two peanut butter and honey sandwiches but my stomach gives me some very clear signals to yield. I stand up on the pedals looking for relief but there is none. Bo is running support from the truck today and he is truly providing world class support with a smile. He pulls into the turn offs and offers water refills and provisions.
At the Summit of Wolf Pass I cross the Continental Divide. Pull my bicycle over to the marker and take several pictures. From here it is 9 miles downhill at 7% grade. Wow. I am at 40 mph quickly and twisting through downhill turns which have cautions signs reading 25mph. The first one I brake to 20 mph and the others I don’t even come up out of my tuck position.
Joe and Chet average 19 mph for the 75 miles we pedal!!!! I manage 16.1. We eat in Pagosa Springs and head to the Pagosa Lodge. We alternate between stretching and the hot tub. We are sore and spent from the climb and exhilarated from the descent. Joe demands more hills for the morrow and to sleep at elevation. I tell him I will see what I can do.
Notable – As we are driving this morning we are stuck in one of our unsolvable discussions and Chet asks Joe if he could be anywhere doing anything right now what would it be? Without hesitation Joe says “I would be with Courtney and our boys, I miss them dearly”.
Two weeks didn’t sound like much time when we were planning this adventure but to the heart it could be a lifetime and for the financial markets it could be long enough for complete failure. And this is how the days go by. From Chet, Bo, Joe and me, we miss you all very much and thank you for making this all possible with your support.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Tuesday September, 23 2008 - Day 9
Tuesday September, 23 2008 - Day 9
Joe and I leave the hotel early. It is dark out and the sky is still baring stars. We decide to go without lights and head into Salina. We look around for 140 West but have to ask some early risers for directions. Across the US we have continually been surprised by the number of people who don’t know where anything is located in their area as well as where they are themselves. This morning is no different. A middle aged man in a small car on 140 doesn’t know how to get to 140 (hope his cup of coffee kicked in later in the day. Later in the day I realize he may be suffering from wind disease). After we ask several more people, we discover his error and start cranking down the road.
We expect major headwinds from the forecast but nothing can prepare us for 15 mph winds with 30+ mph gusts. Add to the mix 18 wheeled vehicles traveling at 60 mph and I have myself the Perfect Storm in Kansas. The micro blasts from these trucks are also loaded with pebbles and other debris. We see several dead rattle snakes and crank hard to maintain 10 mph. Joe and I crack some jokes early and then realize the humor isn’t helping. These conditions make drafting dangerous and almost worthless. The wind changes direction and speed so frequently there is never a rhythm to enter a draft.
I am dealing with an invisible demon – the wind. I can hear it and feel it. Joe and I are literally pedaling on an angle. Our windward shoulders dipped to bear the brunt of the Southwestern wind. If someone was watching a muted video of us, nothing would appear unusual except the slowness of our speed compared to our effort and the fact that we are listing like sinking ships. It would appear we are struggling for some reason but not one quickly identifiable.
I think of the people I know who struggle with invisible demons daily. They appear overweight or angry but the outward appearance doesn’t expose the invisible issues they fight. Their outward conditions are only a result of the issue not the issue itself that is what makes it invisible. Food isn’t the problem. The issue is what drives a person to eat when their body doesn’t need food and drink without thirst. The person who is driving too slowly in front of them is not the problem. It is the trigger that allows the “asshole waiting to happen” to explode on the road. These are the invisible demons which anyone watching the muted video of their life would think, “these frames don’t make sense”. But the issues are as solid as the wind pounding Joe and I in the face.
The wind is tempting us to a challenge we are sure to lose if we choose to treat it as a foe. Invisible but not untouchable, not beyond reach or understanding. I have a long day ahead of me and I can fight this wind with gears, effort, persistence and I will still lose – wind never loses. I need to befriend, understand and find what soft spots these gusts will allow. I gear down to push less wind and lose some speed. I adjust my goal of the day from mileage and speed to understanding and learning. I start to lift my head up and look at the deer, cows and horses in the fields. Instead of staring down at my front tire or at Joe’s rear tire I peek at the clouds formations and farms. Nothing changes but now the wind is only one of the several perspectives in my experience.
The noise alone from the wind is distracting. Suddenly, the noise is broken by Joe’s front tire’s death hiss. The air exits quickly and he almost loses control of the bicycle. We pull to the side of the road. Chet and Bo come as Joe is changing his tube and we laugh with them about the wind. Well, they are laughing anyway.
Back on our bikes Joe and I talk about the Wizard of Oz and some other movies. We can barely hear each other and go back to pushing wind. Joe calls a friend of his and just holds the phone up into the wind – it is like saying everything.
Chet leaves driving the support truck to Bo and joins us on the road. It is good to have him along and we all try every way possible to move more efficiently but with minimal success.
When I spend enough time behind another rider I start to learn their patterns. I had to learn little indicators of when Joe or Chet would stand up to pedal. This is important because my front wheel is an inch behind their back wheel or like today I am up close on their leeward side seeking wind protection. When a rider stands up on the pedals their body moves forward forcing their bicycle backward for an excellent accident opportunity. In addition, when the rider is standing and pedaling their bicycle moves side to side.
You would think someone would only stand up and pedal when going uphill but in Kansas we stand up and pedal to get some seat relief. Joe likes to pedal half way into the hill and then stand up without shifting. He will also not stand up at all and just grind them out. This makes things a bit difficult to predict and keeps me guessing. He also kicks his left knee out at times but I don’t know what the hell that is about other than poor riding form. Chet is predictable and uses his gears to do most the work. He is constantly changing gears to maximize his mechanical advantage against the terrain or wind.
Bo. I rode near Bo for about 15 miles the other day while Joe was catching up to us. Bo is a runner. At first I rode next to Bo but he kept swerving into me. Each time I would brake quickly and brace myself to elbow him off if necessary. I thought I would get smart and just stay behind him but his speeds are even more unpredictable. He charges up hill and then coasts down, sometimes. Other times he would pedal half way into the hill and then just stop pedaling until his bicycle was about to fall over and then start again. Chet tried to teach him about gearing but without success.
I get behind the wheel 100 miles from Lamar Colorado and set the cruise control around 80. We are on the back roads of Kansas and I get about 20 minutes into it before a Kansas highway patrol officer traveling East in the oncoming traffic turns on his lights. I pull over. He turns around and gives me a nice little receipt for my driving experience in Kansas.
Joe rides 125 miles for the day in heavy winds. Tomorrow we head into the Rocky Mountains and I am excited for the scenery and downhills. We are running out of time given the number of miles between us and LA. Joe would like to pedal 200 a day until we get there but we continually remind him that his goal is the 508 mile race at the end, not the 3400 miles getting there. Sometimes he pretends to listen and understand this idea and a day or two will pass. Then, he will try to slip another scheme into the plans in order to make the trip to LA even more challenging. Tomorrow we rise at 5AM. Chet just rolled over again most likely looking to find a dream in his pillow.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
Joe and I leave the hotel early. It is dark out and the sky is still baring stars. We decide to go without lights and head into Salina. We look around for 140 West but have to ask some early risers for directions. Across the US we have continually been surprised by the number of people who don’t know where anything is located in their area as well as where they are themselves. This morning is no different. A middle aged man in a small car on 140 doesn’t know how to get to 140 (hope his cup of coffee kicked in later in the day. Later in the day I realize he may be suffering from wind disease). After we ask several more people, we discover his error and start cranking down the road.
We expect major headwinds from the forecast but nothing can prepare us for 15 mph winds with 30+ mph gusts. Add to the mix 18 wheeled vehicles traveling at 60 mph and I have myself the Perfect Storm in Kansas. The micro blasts from these trucks are also loaded with pebbles and other debris. We see several dead rattle snakes and crank hard to maintain 10 mph. Joe and I crack some jokes early and then realize the humor isn’t helping. These conditions make drafting dangerous and almost worthless. The wind changes direction and speed so frequently there is never a rhythm to enter a draft.
I am dealing with an invisible demon – the wind. I can hear it and feel it. Joe and I are literally pedaling on an angle. Our windward shoulders dipped to bear the brunt of the Southwestern wind. If someone was watching a muted video of us, nothing would appear unusual except the slowness of our speed compared to our effort and the fact that we are listing like sinking ships. It would appear we are struggling for some reason but not one quickly identifiable.
I think of the people I know who struggle with invisible demons daily. They appear overweight or angry but the outward appearance doesn’t expose the invisible issues they fight. Their outward conditions are only a result of the issue not the issue itself that is what makes it invisible. Food isn’t the problem. The issue is what drives a person to eat when their body doesn’t need food and drink without thirst. The person who is driving too slowly in front of them is not the problem. It is the trigger that allows the “asshole waiting to happen” to explode on the road. These are the invisible demons which anyone watching the muted video of their life would think, “these frames don’t make sense”. But the issues are as solid as the wind pounding Joe and I in the face.
The wind is tempting us to a challenge we are sure to lose if we choose to treat it as a foe. Invisible but not untouchable, not beyond reach or understanding. I have a long day ahead of me and I can fight this wind with gears, effort, persistence and I will still lose – wind never loses. I need to befriend, understand and find what soft spots these gusts will allow. I gear down to push less wind and lose some speed. I adjust my goal of the day from mileage and speed to understanding and learning. I start to lift my head up and look at the deer, cows and horses in the fields. Instead of staring down at my front tire or at Joe’s rear tire I peek at the clouds formations and farms. Nothing changes but now the wind is only one of the several perspectives in my experience.
The noise alone from the wind is distracting. Suddenly, the noise is broken by Joe’s front tire’s death hiss. The air exits quickly and he almost loses control of the bicycle. We pull to the side of the road. Chet and Bo come as Joe is changing his tube and we laugh with them about the wind. Well, they are laughing anyway.
Back on our bikes Joe and I talk about the Wizard of Oz and some other movies. We can barely hear each other and go back to pushing wind. Joe calls a friend of his and just holds the phone up into the wind – it is like saying everything.
Chet leaves driving the support truck to Bo and joins us on the road. It is good to have him along and we all try every way possible to move more efficiently but with minimal success.
When I spend enough time behind another rider I start to learn their patterns. I had to learn little indicators of when Joe or Chet would stand up to pedal. This is important because my front wheel is an inch behind their back wheel or like today I am up close on their leeward side seeking wind protection. When a rider stands up on the pedals their body moves forward forcing their bicycle backward for an excellent accident opportunity. In addition, when the rider is standing and pedaling their bicycle moves side to side.
You would think someone would only stand up and pedal when going uphill but in Kansas we stand up and pedal to get some seat relief. Joe likes to pedal half way into the hill and then stand up without shifting. He will also not stand up at all and just grind them out. This makes things a bit difficult to predict and keeps me guessing. He also kicks his left knee out at times but I don’t know what the hell that is about other than poor riding form. Chet is predictable and uses his gears to do most the work. He is constantly changing gears to maximize his mechanical advantage against the terrain or wind.
Bo. I rode near Bo for about 15 miles the other day while Joe was catching up to us. Bo is a runner. At first I rode next to Bo but he kept swerving into me. Each time I would brake quickly and brace myself to elbow him off if necessary. I thought I would get smart and just stay behind him but his speeds are even more unpredictable. He charges up hill and then coasts down, sometimes. Other times he would pedal half way into the hill and then just stop pedaling until his bicycle was about to fall over and then start again. Chet tried to teach him about gearing but without success.
I get behind the wheel 100 miles from Lamar Colorado and set the cruise control around 80. We are on the back roads of Kansas and I get about 20 minutes into it before a Kansas highway patrol officer traveling East in the oncoming traffic turns on his lights. I pull over. He turns around and gives me a nice little receipt for my driving experience in Kansas.
Joe rides 125 miles for the day in heavy winds. Tomorrow we head into the Rocky Mountains and I am excited for the scenery and downhills. We are running out of time given the number of miles between us and LA. Joe would like to pedal 200 a day until we get there but we continually remind him that his goal is the 508 mile race at the end, not the 3400 miles getting there. Sometimes he pretends to listen and understand this idea and a day or two will pass. Then, he will try to slip another scheme into the plans in order to make the trip to LA even more challenging. Tomorrow we rise at 5AM. Chet just rolled over again most likely looking to find a dream in his pillow.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
Monday, September 22, 2008
Monday September, 22 2008 - Day 8
Monday September, 22 2008 - Day 8
Chet, Joe and I leave the hotel mid morning. Looks like taking time off means I get to finish my tea before having to climb back into the saddle. The sun is up today making the asphalt a convection oven. We ride our bodies over it to make sure we get evenly cooked. The late start has Joe in a foul mood and he pedals in order to make up for the lost time. I curse the pain, I curse the heat, I curse because the sweat running off my nose never meets the saliva pieces torn from the inside of my mouth as the oxygen depleted air rushing to leave my body.
Joe accelerates again and I vow a limb before I will let myself fall off Chet’s rear tire. Two gnats manage to get caught in our wind stream and before I can exhale one lodges itself deep in my throat. The second one I don’t notice till I try and cough up the first one. I hack twice and when that follows I try to swallow the little beast like a multivitamin. No luck, my mouth is dry and throat wet. I am the Venus fly trap. I reach for my water bottle, tip it back, squeeze and get a puff of air. Empty. Bo filled up everyone’s bottles but not mine. I look back down to put my bottle in the cradle and clip Chet’s back tire.
The moment I have avoided a hundred times over the past week now becomes real. Under normal circumstances this could have played out many different ways but not this morning. This morning I only have one hand on the handle bars as the other is returning the empty air bottle to the safety of it’s cage. In addition, I still have two gnats partially in my digestive track and a partridge in a pear tree. My front tire goes hard right sending Chet’s rear tire right. Chet was drafting tight and slightly to the right of Joe’s rear wheel. Chet’s rear tire right correction makes his front tire turn left directly into Joe’s rear tire. Remember those 120 car pile ups on L.A freeways in the 70’s? Joe’s rear tire heads into traffic and all Joe can do is hold on to his now traffic bound bicycle and try to correct with his body weight.
St. Louis Monday morning traffic is as heavy as any major city now that school is finally back in session. We are on state road 117 West, just past a Shell gas station and Cracker Barrel. I let out a yelp, Chet looks back to check how much time Joe will have before impact with a car and I open the other eye. The clock reads 7:10AM. I wiggle my feet, lift my head off the pillow and check for Chet. He is happily sleeping in the other queen. I close my eyes and pull the covers back over my tired body. We took the day off.
We leave St. Louis Missouri after a Fairfield by Marriot continental breakfast. Actually, there was a make your own waffle iron and I made a perfect Belgian with the assistance of Stacy the continental breakfast attendant. I sit down and Chet and Bo are still going back and forth between conspiracy theory and international polysomething. I eat my waffle and get a peach yogurt down my gnathole before going back to the room to pack for the day.
Joe treats us all to a massage at some local place and we drive most the day from St. Louis to Salina, Kansas without anything notable to note. We stop at Clinton State Park just west of Kansas City for a late in the day swim. Bo goes for a run and I swim and then jog for about a mile. I am training for a 100 mile run which will take place in less than two weeks and thought it would be important to give my leg muscles a little reminder of what is to come. Instead, they remind me that they don’t agree with what I am thinking of doing and they way I am preparing for it.
I make a mental note to run more in the coming days and then stop to stretch. I turn towards the sun and sit down on the ground. I actually go to sit down three times before actually setting my body down. The first pause I think of dirt on my shorts. The second that bugs will bother me. The third pause I laugh at myself for the first two. There I sat for several long moments as the late day sun’s light and heat brought me a deep and thoughtless moment.
The web weather report for tomorrow is for a 14 mph SW wind gusting to 20 mph. We stop to fill up the gas tank and the flags are humming horizontally. I look at Joe and nod over in their direction. He looks at the flags and then back at me. He smiles. I smile.
I have added a couple new pictures and videos to the site – http://picasaweb.google.com/maltomitch/RideAcrossAmerica
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude - Chris
Chet, Joe and I leave the hotel mid morning. Looks like taking time off means I get to finish my tea before having to climb back into the saddle. The sun is up today making the asphalt a convection oven. We ride our bodies over it to make sure we get evenly cooked. The late start has Joe in a foul mood and he pedals in order to make up for the lost time. I curse the pain, I curse the heat, I curse because the sweat running off my nose never meets the saliva pieces torn from the inside of my mouth as the oxygen depleted air rushing to leave my body.
Joe accelerates again and I vow a limb before I will let myself fall off Chet’s rear tire. Two gnats manage to get caught in our wind stream and before I can exhale one lodges itself deep in my throat. The second one I don’t notice till I try and cough up the first one. I hack twice and when that follows I try to swallow the little beast like a multivitamin. No luck, my mouth is dry and throat wet. I am the Venus fly trap. I reach for my water bottle, tip it back, squeeze and get a puff of air. Empty. Bo filled up everyone’s bottles but not mine. I look back down to put my bottle in the cradle and clip Chet’s back tire.
The moment I have avoided a hundred times over the past week now becomes real. Under normal circumstances this could have played out many different ways but not this morning. This morning I only have one hand on the handle bars as the other is returning the empty air bottle to the safety of it’s cage. In addition, I still have two gnats partially in my digestive track and a partridge in a pear tree. My front tire goes hard right sending Chet’s rear tire right. Chet was drafting tight and slightly to the right of Joe’s rear wheel. Chet’s rear tire right correction makes his front tire turn left directly into Joe’s rear tire. Remember those 120 car pile ups on L.A freeways in the 70’s? Joe’s rear tire heads into traffic and all Joe can do is hold on to his now traffic bound bicycle and try to correct with his body weight.
St. Louis Monday morning traffic is as heavy as any major city now that school is finally back in session. We are on state road 117 West, just past a Shell gas station and Cracker Barrel. I let out a yelp, Chet looks back to check how much time Joe will have before impact with a car and I open the other eye. The clock reads 7:10AM. I wiggle my feet, lift my head off the pillow and check for Chet. He is happily sleeping in the other queen. I close my eyes and pull the covers back over my tired body. We took the day off.
We leave St. Louis Missouri after a Fairfield by Marriot continental breakfast. Actually, there was a make your own waffle iron and I made a perfect Belgian with the assistance of Stacy the continental breakfast attendant. I sit down and Chet and Bo are still going back and forth between conspiracy theory and international polysomething. I eat my waffle and get a peach yogurt down my gnathole before going back to the room to pack for the day.
Joe treats us all to a massage at some local place and we drive most the day from St. Louis to Salina, Kansas without anything notable to note. We stop at Clinton State Park just west of Kansas City for a late in the day swim. Bo goes for a run and I swim and then jog for about a mile. I am training for a 100 mile run which will take place in less than two weeks and thought it would be important to give my leg muscles a little reminder of what is to come. Instead, they remind me that they don’t agree with what I am thinking of doing and they way I am preparing for it.
I make a mental note to run more in the coming days and then stop to stretch. I turn towards the sun and sit down on the ground. I actually go to sit down three times before actually setting my body down. The first pause I think of dirt on my shorts. The second that bugs will bother me. The third pause I laugh at myself for the first two. There I sat for several long moments as the late day sun’s light and heat brought me a deep and thoughtless moment.
The web weather report for tomorrow is for a 14 mph SW wind gusting to 20 mph. We stop to fill up the gas tank and the flags are humming horizontally. I look at Joe and nod over in their direction. He looks at the flags and then back at me. He smiles. I smile.
I have added a couple new pictures and videos to the site – http://picasaweb.google.com/maltomitch/RideAcrossAmerica
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude - Chris
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Sunday September, 21 2008 - Day 7
Sunday September, 21 2008 - Day 7
Joe rides 200 miles today. He starts riding early in the morning with Chet from Kentucky and ends with me just east of St. Louis. The hills and long winding back roads of southern Indiana are magnificent for biking. There are plenty of flat sections to get into a large gear and just grind away as well as some formidable hills to hop over and cruise down.
Bo and I have a leisure morning. We load the truck and I convince Bo that Waffle House is an American tradition he must experience. We head over to the Waffle House to eat and drink our bodies full for under $20. Bo picks up the tab but it is not until I get fully educated on world politics. I learned some very interesting factoids from Bo and now see the world differently. I am hopeful that Bo after experiencing Waffle House also sees the world differently.
Shortly after leaving Waffle House we get a text from Joe. He and Chet have eaten $10 worth of food in a gas station in St. Meinrad’s Indiana and they don’t take American Express. Bo and I will need to settle the bill as we move west to catch Joe and Chet. We have told Bo that he should be careful now that we are no longer in the Northeast. Southern and Western towns can mistake his Asian heritage for non-American and treat him harshly if he is not careful. We joke with him about it but there is an element of truth to it and he senses this the further we travel south and west. He goes into the store to pay cash and I stand in the parking lot and watch a man polish his 1950’s car engine to perfection.
At the 100 mile transition point, Bo has taken off ahead and Chet is relieved by me. Joe will not get relief till much later in the day and it is 12:00 AM and I hear them loading buckets of ice into the tub next door which means he still hasn’t found his.
I start riding with Joe and the first 100 miles hasn’t impacted his power or speed. We ride side by side for a while and talk about GMO’s, the corn and soybean fields we see and discuss ideas about “a world for a better tomorrow”. We share a deep desire to help people help themselves. To live their dreams and to leave the world a better place then we found it so that today’s children will also have a place to live their dreams. All this dreaming is making me tired. Speaking of tires, we didn’t kill any today.
I take the lead and start cranking a 25mph pace. Joe clicks in behind me and we start to cover ground. The road west bends north and now I am cranking into a 4mph headwind. It isn’t gusty or blowing just solid. Several dogs bark but I am in the lead and feel safe. If they come after us, they will get a bite of Joe as he is behind me. I pedal into this wind for about 15 miles and then begin to consider it may be a better bet to draft and be bitten by a dog than to lead and be continually bitten on the forehead by this wind. Once again I was looking to get something for nothing.
We ride for miles and several times ride side by side to discuss something or another. On one of these times a white van pulls up behind us. I wave them around but they don’t pass us. I figure maybe it will be turning soon, is out for a Sunday drive or just doesn’t have the confidence to cross the yellow line. The driver rolls down the passenger side window and shouts F%*&^ You, Mother F%^&%. Joe and I say we are sorry and he restarts his van and blasts off ahead of us. I look at Joe and say “I think he was talking to you”. Joe says, “the guy shut off his engine to yell at us”. I laugh. Joe laughs. Only, (hopefully) in Southern Indiana would someone shut their engine off while driving down the road to curse you. Furthermore, he was following us for several miles before he could formulate his magic sentence and get up the courage to present it. This is how the days go by.
We think Bo is ahead of us but after 1 and ½ hours we figure he missed a turn and is lost. We call Chet and put out an ABP for Bo. We continue to crank at 24mph. 20 minutes later on the top of a hill I see a dot and swing my head back to Joe behind me. I nod to the dot and say “it can’t be”. We pedal harder and catch up to the dot. It is Bo. It has been 40 miles since we started the second hundred and Bo has been pedaling at world class (for his age bracket of course) speeds. Joe says Bo took a short cut and we banter around a bit. Bo is also surprised that he has held Joe and I off for two hours. He continues to pedal to 65 miles for the day. Amazing!
It is late in the day. Joe has 185 miles under his belt and I search for something to give him relief. There is silence and the sun is setting in front of us. I tell Joe one of my fav quotes from Ramana Maharishi – “As you are so is the world”. Joe pauses and says he when he returns to Pittsfield he will put “As you are so is the world” on the front of a T-shirt and “now go home and complain” on the back. I laugh hard.
Tomorrow I hear we are taking some rest. I don’t believe it and won’t until tomorrow night when I can hopefully get to bed before 1.
Here is a link to my Picassa Photo album for this trip, Enjoy - http://picasaweb.google.com/maltomitch/RideAcrossAmerica#
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude - Chris
Joe rides 200 miles today. He starts riding early in the morning with Chet from Kentucky and ends with me just east of St. Louis. The hills and long winding back roads of southern Indiana are magnificent for biking. There are plenty of flat sections to get into a large gear and just grind away as well as some formidable hills to hop over and cruise down.
Bo and I have a leisure morning. We load the truck and I convince Bo that Waffle House is an American tradition he must experience. We head over to the Waffle House to eat and drink our bodies full for under $20. Bo picks up the tab but it is not until I get fully educated on world politics. I learned some very interesting factoids from Bo and now see the world differently. I am hopeful that Bo after experiencing Waffle House also sees the world differently.
Shortly after leaving Waffle House we get a text from Joe. He and Chet have eaten $10 worth of food in a gas station in St. Meinrad’s Indiana and they don’t take American Express. Bo and I will need to settle the bill as we move west to catch Joe and Chet. We have told Bo that he should be careful now that we are no longer in the Northeast. Southern and Western towns can mistake his Asian heritage for non-American and treat him harshly if he is not careful. We joke with him about it but there is an element of truth to it and he senses this the further we travel south and west. He goes into the store to pay cash and I stand in the parking lot and watch a man polish his 1950’s car engine to perfection.
At the 100 mile transition point, Bo has taken off ahead and Chet is relieved by me. Joe will not get relief till much later in the day and it is 12:00 AM and I hear them loading buckets of ice into the tub next door which means he still hasn’t found his.
I start riding with Joe and the first 100 miles hasn’t impacted his power or speed. We ride side by side for a while and talk about GMO’s, the corn and soybean fields we see and discuss ideas about “a world for a better tomorrow”. We share a deep desire to help people help themselves. To live their dreams and to leave the world a better place then we found it so that today’s children will also have a place to live their dreams. All this dreaming is making me tired. Speaking of tires, we didn’t kill any today.
I take the lead and start cranking a 25mph pace. Joe clicks in behind me and we start to cover ground. The road west bends north and now I am cranking into a 4mph headwind. It isn’t gusty or blowing just solid. Several dogs bark but I am in the lead and feel safe. If they come after us, they will get a bite of Joe as he is behind me. I pedal into this wind for about 15 miles and then begin to consider it may be a better bet to draft and be bitten by a dog than to lead and be continually bitten on the forehead by this wind. Once again I was looking to get something for nothing.
We ride for miles and several times ride side by side to discuss something or another. On one of these times a white van pulls up behind us. I wave them around but they don’t pass us. I figure maybe it will be turning soon, is out for a Sunday drive or just doesn’t have the confidence to cross the yellow line. The driver rolls down the passenger side window and shouts F%*&^ You, Mother F%^&%. Joe and I say we are sorry and he restarts his van and blasts off ahead of us. I look at Joe and say “I think he was talking to you”. Joe says, “the guy shut off his engine to yell at us”. I laugh. Joe laughs. Only, (hopefully) in Southern Indiana would someone shut their engine off while driving down the road to curse you. Furthermore, he was following us for several miles before he could formulate his magic sentence and get up the courage to present it. This is how the days go by.
We think Bo is ahead of us but after 1 and ½ hours we figure he missed a turn and is lost. We call Chet and put out an ABP for Bo. We continue to crank at 24mph. 20 minutes later on the top of a hill I see a dot and swing my head back to Joe behind me. I nod to the dot and say “it can’t be”. We pedal harder and catch up to the dot. It is Bo. It has been 40 miles since we started the second hundred and Bo has been pedaling at world class (for his age bracket of course) speeds. Joe says Bo took a short cut and we banter around a bit. Bo is also surprised that he has held Joe and I off for two hours. He continues to pedal to 65 miles for the day. Amazing!
It is late in the day. Joe has 185 miles under his belt and I search for something to give him relief. There is silence and the sun is setting in front of us. I tell Joe one of my fav quotes from Ramana Maharishi – “As you are so is the world”. Joe pauses and says he when he returns to Pittsfield he will put “As you are so is the world” on the front of a T-shirt and “now go home and complain” on the back. I laugh hard.
Tomorrow I hear we are taking some rest. I don’t believe it and won’t until tomorrow night when I can hopefully get to bed before 1.
Here is a link to my Picassa Photo album for this trip, Enjoy - http://picasaweb.google.com/maltomitch/RideAcrossAmerica#
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude - Chris
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Ride across America - Saturday September, 20 2008 - Day 5
Saturday September, 20 2008 - Day 6
Joe and Chet start out riding this morning. The roads we have chosen reflect Joe’s most recent comment “I had flat roads”. Chet and I picked a course which runs primarily south and has towns along the way with names like “Greasy Ridge”. Bo and I ride in the support truck for the first part of the morning stopping every couple of towns and waiting. I know what I wrote yesterday that we never follow a route and today I eat every word of it. We follow the route and are in communication with the riders all morning.
The roads are so beautiful I cannot stay in the truck any longer and abandon Bo, and ride back towards Joe and Chet. I catch up with them on a steep long hill, turn around and my legs kick my head for making such a stupid decision. Chet, Joe and I pedal along with me bringing up the rear. We pass through several very back woods towns and pass an Amish vehicle being pulled by a horse.
We are moving through Ohio, back into West Virginia and then into Kentucky. You have to be from the Midwest to understand how this could happen as we continue southwest. Joe keeps asking me if we are in Kentucky and I keep telling him I don’t know what state we are in, keep pedaling. He has never been to Kentucky and if he keeps asking me about it he will never know he was in Kentucky. He will think Ohio borders Kansas. Finally he stops asking and I tell him we are in Kentucky. Fifteen miles later the sign reads, “Welcome to Kentucky”. I shrug my shoulders as if whoever placed the sign made a horrible mistake - and this is how the days go by.
Biking over the years I have come to fear the sound of a barking dog. A porch full got an angle on me one day outside of Bloomington Indiana and I pedaled over other people’s lawns and dale to escape with my life. Ever since, when I see or hear a dog coming I prepare for a fight to the death. The first couple of days, each time a dog would dash for us Joe and Chet wouldn’t break cadence and I would let out a very loud shout. Yesterday, a large dog broke for Joe and I and instead of shouting I just kept pedaling at 22 mph. The dog never had a chance. We blew past it.
What I realized was Chet and Joe are used to traveling over 20 mph and most dogs can’t keep up. I am used to pedaling around 15 mph and most dogs looking for a quick nip can get to 15 long enough to chunk my calf. So today, I am Mr. confidence when a dog comes off the lawn in pursuit. He doesn’t get to me but he also doesn’t miss by much. Now another thought quickly enters my theory. Joe doesn’t bother about the dogs because 1) he is traveling fast and 2) there is always a rider behind him who will get bit first. Dogs are smart hunters they go after the slow or weak prey at the back of any pack. In today’s pack that is me.
Within the first 10 miles this morning Joe’s back tire wheezes a death breath and goes flat. We turn the truck around and help Chet fix it. Later in the day Joe starts blowing tires like bubble gum and we have to get his wheel worked on in Huntington, West Virginia. Yep, that is the “We are Marshall” Huntington. We grab lunch in town and then go to the Huntington bicycle center. It is owned and run by a guy who has some very interesting but not unusual ideas. We have to listen to most of them in order to get a half dozen more tubes and the wheel checked out. We leave the store and venture into Kentucky!
It has taken Joe a mere 5 days to figure out he is now living on a bicycle. He says this several times in the past two days and each time it seems to calm him into the saddle for another 20 or 30 miles. I tell him I am going to make a song out of it or at least a poem and I will, just not tonight. If any of you reading would like to start it, as I said earlier, I am much better at drafting.
By popular demand I am going to put a couple of pictures on the blog tonight. Tomorrow or Monday I will send a web link to all the pictures and video I have taken.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Ride across America - Friday September, 19 2008 - Day 5
Friday September, 19 2008 - Day 5
Ok, Chet should get out of his bed right now and punch me in the back of the head. He is 60+ years old and every night he tries to sleep and I keep one light on and tap the keys. He tosses and turns and I tell him I am almost done but almost is relative and dreams don’t come easy to the exhausted. In addition, this morning at 4AM the alarm clock went off. He silenced it somehow only to have it blare again. Tonight, he said his throat was starting to hurt. I said that mine hurt yesterday but after sticking around for a day of training it decided to find a weaker host. I hope he gets some rest. We are all running on minimal sleep.
Joe and I start out pedaling after Chet and I agree go over the days riding route –trying for some sanity. At the first turn Joe and I find the road studded with rocks and immediately re-route. Chet and Bo are in the truck and there is no cell reception for miles. We play this cat and mouse game every day. We plan a route and then screw the support crew by changing the route as we ride for any number of reasons, or sometimes for no reason at all. This gives whoever is the support crew for that leg of the ride fits.
Every evening we plan our route for the following day. Every morning we review the route. Every night we have traveled a different route. Today it was a studded rock road and a girl in the back woods convenience store of West Virginia who couldn’t tell me what the name of a major road was less than 5 miles away but insisted we take 250 North instead of South. South we went and threw sanity out with the bath water.
We are out of PA!!! We went from PA to WV and found WV to have two specialties, tobacco and beer. From WV we crossed the Ohio river and it was a celebratory moment. I took picture of the “Welcome to Ohio” sign as I drove the truck across the bridge. Bo, Chet and Joe were pedaling far ahead of me at this point. Chet fixed Bo’s bike so that the brake doesn’t rub and he cranked for 40+ miles today. He would have gone further but blew a tire.
Shortly after Bo’s tire gives it’s dying breath/wheeze he calls Joe looking for Chet and I to come with the support truck. Joe tells him that he doesn’t have my cell number and Bo thinks he is just being tested. Joe hangs up the phone. Bo calls back and says “I am not kidding, I have a flat tire”. Joe hangs up immediately. This goes on several more times and Joe stops answering Bo’s calls. Bo continues walking is crippled bike down the road shaking his head.
Chet and I catch up with Bo and ask him why he let the air out of his rear tire. He is a bit upset at this point so we back off and load him and the bike into the truck. This is how the days go by. Meanwhile Joe is pedaling and taking down a telecommunications satellite with amount of Blackberry traffic he is generating. I know if I gaze out the window tonight I will see the satellite falling to earth, think it a shooting star and make a wish. This is also how the days go by.
The mighty Ohio River is lined with large belching facilities. Some discernable by their nuclear reactor cylinder shaped stacks. Others are refining something but we don’t stop to inquire. The tub boats push large barges of coal up and down the river. It is a magnificent site and frightening at the same time. Wall street jumps around with blips and dips. This land we are traveling through is made of solid steele things that haven’t moved in years and are not going to move anytime soon. It really balances my perspective on how myopic America is focused on how the financial markets are performing but the majority of people and businesses are pounding away faster than my heartbeat on the uphill.
We eat dinner at Applebee’s in Marietta OH. Joe has never been to an Applebee’s and we drive the staff a bit crazy with bring me a couple more of these requests as we find the food a favorable match to our hunger. From Marietta, we start another night ride on Rt. 50. If anyone ever tells you to ride your bike at night stop listening to them because they have flipped their bozo bit. Joe and I load up our lights, blinkers, water bottles and shorts with Chamois butter (fancy French term for crotch lubricant).
We start pedaling and the darkness overtakes us. Joe’s light is terrible at best but we don’t let that deter us from cruising down the shoulder of the road at 25 mph. We spot a deer off to the right and it bounds off into the woods– random boring fact. After running into and over several things we decide to ride side by side and join our lights in order to increase visibility. This works better but we start to realize that we are very visible but cannot see much debris on the road. We decide we need a much better system before doing any more night riding. Great but we still have 10 miles to go before we reach Athens OH. Two miles short of Athens on a particularly dark stretch Joe’s tire wheezes it’s death breath and we stop to change the tire.
I have an e-mail from Joe tonight with the following message – Tonights blog needs to touch on:
Trucks in penn.
Appleby's
The economy
Nuclear power plants
Wind
And the greatest weather ever.
If anyone would like me to expand upon these topics on a further blog or at another time let me know.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
Ok, Chet should get out of his bed right now and punch me in the back of the head. He is 60+ years old and every night he tries to sleep and I keep one light on and tap the keys. He tosses and turns and I tell him I am almost done but almost is relative and dreams don’t come easy to the exhausted. In addition, this morning at 4AM the alarm clock went off. He silenced it somehow only to have it blare again. Tonight, he said his throat was starting to hurt. I said that mine hurt yesterday but after sticking around for a day of training it decided to find a weaker host. I hope he gets some rest. We are all running on minimal sleep.
Joe and I start out pedaling after Chet and I agree go over the days riding route –trying for some sanity. At the first turn Joe and I find the road studded with rocks and immediately re-route. Chet and Bo are in the truck and there is no cell reception for miles. We play this cat and mouse game every day. We plan a route and then screw the support crew by changing the route as we ride for any number of reasons, or sometimes for no reason at all. This gives whoever is the support crew for that leg of the ride fits.
Every evening we plan our route for the following day. Every morning we review the route. Every night we have traveled a different route. Today it was a studded rock road and a girl in the back woods convenience store of West Virginia who couldn’t tell me what the name of a major road was less than 5 miles away but insisted we take 250 North instead of South. South we went and threw sanity out with the bath water.
We are out of PA!!! We went from PA to WV and found WV to have two specialties, tobacco and beer. From WV we crossed the Ohio river and it was a celebratory moment. I took picture of the “Welcome to Ohio” sign as I drove the truck across the bridge. Bo, Chet and Joe were pedaling far ahead of me at this point. Chet fixed Bo’s bike so that the brake doesn’t rub and he cranked for 40+ miles today. He would have gone further but blew a tire.
Shortly after Bo’s tire gives it’s dying breath/wheeze he calls Joe looking for Chet and I to come with the support truck. Joe tells him that he doesn’t have my cell number and Bo thinks he is just being tested. Joe hangs up the phone. Bo calls back and says “I am not kidding, I have a flat tire”. Joe hangs up immediately. This goes on several more times and Joe stops answering Bo’s calls. Bo continues walking is crippled bike down the road shaking his head.
Chet and I catch up with Bo and ask him why he let the air out of his rear tire. He is a bit upset at this point so we back off and load him and the bike into the truck. This is how the days go by. Meanwhile Joe is pedaling and taking down a telecommunications satellite with amount of Blackberry traffic he is generating. I know if I gaze out the window tonight I will see the satellite falling to earth, think it a shooting star and make a wish. This is also how the days go by.
The mighty Ohio River is lined with large belching facilities. Some discernable by their nuclear reactor cylinder shaped stacks. Others are refining something but we don’t stop to inquire. The tub boats push large barges of coal up and down the river. It is a magnificent site and frightening at the same time. Wall street jumps around with blips and dips. This land we are traveling through is made of solid steele things that haven’t moved in years and are not going to move anytime soon. It really balances my perspective on how myopic America is focused on how the financial markets are performing but the majority of people and businesses are pounding away faster than my heartbeat on the uphill.
We eat dinner at Applebee’s in Marietta OH. Joe has never been to an Applebee’s and we drive the staff a bit crazy with bring me a couple more of these requests as we find the food a favorable match to our hunger. From Marietta, we start another night ride on Rt. 50. If anyone ever tells you to ride your bike at night stop listening to them because they have flipped their bozo bit. Joe and I load up our lights, blinkers, water bottles and shorts with Chamois butter (fancy French term for crotch lubricant).
We start pedaling and the darkness overtakes us. Joe’s light is terrible at best but we don’t let that deter us from cruising down the shoulder of the road at 25 mph. We spot a deer off to the right and it bounds off into the woods– random boring fact. After running into and over several things we decide to ride side by side and join our lights in order to increase visibility. This works better but we start to realize that we are very visible but cannot see much debris on the road. We decide we need a much better system before doing any more night riding. Great but we still have 10 miles to go before we reach Athens OH. Two miles short of Athens on a particularly dark stretch Joe’s tire wheezes it’s death breath and we stop to change the tire.
I have an e-mail from Joe tonight with the following message – Tonights blog needs to touch on:
Trucks in penn.
Appleby's
The economy
Nuclear power plants
Wind
And the greatest weather ever.
If anyone would like me to expand upon these topics on a further blog or at another time let me know.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
Thursday September, 18 2008 - Day 4
Thursday September, 18 2008 - Day 4
Anyone who has crossed Pennsylvania’s latitudes is familiar with the word never-ending. On a bicycle there is no word for it, just a deep unsettled feeling. My thought today was that the Amish settled in PA out of desperation. History is not my field of expertise but I speculate they were headed for Indiana, became tired and settled in PA. If they would have made it to at least Ohio they could have had electricity – my theory anyway. Then again the Amish didn’t have Joe leading the wagon or they would have made it to CA. We are becoming desperate but Joe likes his Blackberry and it needs electricity to live. We will get through PA.
Chet and I are joined by Bo for the best continental breakfast I have ever eaten at the Hampton Inn, Williamsport, PA. Joe miraculously is not the first one up banging on hotel doors. He arrives late but is quick to catch up with three bagels and some orange juice mixed with warm water - ??. Part of his self improvement mission on the trip will be to chew his food more. Well, this breakfast falls a bit short because between the three bagels I believe only one had some teeth marks in it before it disappeared.
Chet, Joe and I begin to pedal towards Penn State. The ride starts well. The pace is moderate and I am enjoying the countryside. Joe has had some nostalgia on the trip thus far with Cornell, seeing the house he grew up in and a catholic school he attended somewhere 30 miles south of Ithaca for a year. He has been inquiring if we are going through Scranton because he remembers enjoying BMX camp for a week in that area. Joe inquires several times if we will be in the Scranton area and looks sheepishly disappointed when I tell him “No” and it is East of us so we are not detouring through it either. On Rt. 45 West in the middle of nowhere (Woodward) today we come across the camp.
Joe excitedly pedals down to the main office and has several conversations with the staff who somewhat remember him. They are preparing for the BMX Nationals this weekend and a helicopter is filming two of the top BMX riders in the country. We are not allowed to view the filming and get back on the road. Joe remembers his time at the camp and how he broke his arm but stayed the remainder of the week and continued to ride – big surprise(he hasn’t changed a bit).
Now start the hills, then some wind, then some sprint races between Joe and Chet. I am huffing and trying to catch my breath and reel in these two so I can get back to drafting. The roads are lined with PA farms and mountains. I struggle with my legs. Yesterday’s mileage is felt and I keep looking down to see if the others have played a joke on me and tightened my brakes. They haven’t, my legs are just that tired. Too bad Chris – I try hard but the people won’t come out of their houses and throw me a pity party in PA so I pedal.
We get to Penn State and eat a full lunch. We don’t spend time looking at the campus and start hunting for an ice bath. Joe’s wife Courtney was a renowned soccer star some years earlier and with a phone call gets us into the Penn State training facility. Next thing we know we are alternating between a 52 degree tub and a 110 degree tub. Total body shock.
We leave Penn State and my body is all confused. It doesn’t know whether to sweat of shiver. I get a little of both going and then I get nothing. Complete rebellion and all I can do is pedal as if everything is ok. After dinner we decide to do some night training. Joe and I dress up like aliens and head off into the night down a PA state road. I ask Chet and Bo to make sure Joe get’s full credit for the Darwin award on this idea. Pedaling at night is a strange combination of faith and fear. Anyone who has done it knows what I mean and if you haven’t you should because the peacefulness and darkness make for a uniquely enjoyable experience.
We arrive at our destination, Chet and Bo have been battling a discussion regarding the state of the world to death. It started at dinner a couple nights ago and whenever we all eat it resurfaces, gathers steam and could be the main reason Joe would rather be on a bike seat than eating or in a car seat.
Tomorrow, we aim to do what the Amish could not – leave PA and head into Ohio. I will miss PA as it has very bike friendly drivers although no one seems to be able to give directions or elevations with any accuracy – just like the news lately.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
Directly from Joe - So today started out interesting;
We have been out of touch, but in touch enough to know the world was ending. Well the world I have lived in for a few years anyway, Wall Street.
Chris (my teamate on this trip) would say it doesn't look any different in the parts of the country we are riding through? It doesn't look like the world is ending here?
Countless emails have streamed in:
1) "It must be nice"
2) "Turn around the world is falling apart"
3) "Rome is burning"
4) "where are you"
We have my blackberry on 24/7 and unless I'm going downhill at 45 mph you'll get us. So far we think it has been a major bonus not being around, I think we got very lucky on timing!
The day started out a little late today after 3 buttered bagels each. We hit the road in PA and found Big Earl's bike shop 20 miles into the ride. Chet tried to talk me into buying a recumbant, Big Earl tried to talk us into turning around, said we were going straight into the wind, bo tried to talk us into getting him a bike.
We worked our way to State College PA none of us knowing if that's where Penn State was. On the way we passed a camp I went to one summer 27 years ago!! It was so random it was uncanny.
We made it to Penn State, yes it was there, and Courtney (my wife) final four captain soccer made 1 call and has us brought into the Penn State athlete "repair" room where we got hot and cold plunges and repaired!
We were back on the road and worked our way south west.
Tomorrow is Ohio. Important things to note:
1) We have seen TONS of outdoor wood burning furnaces for sale everywhere.
2) Fresh egg prices go down the further west we travel.
3) Genetically modified seeds become more prominent the further west we travel and saw NONE in Vt.
Overall this is an AWESOME way to travel. Legs hurt.
Anyone who has crossed Pennsylvania’s latitudes is familiar with the word never-ending. On a bicycle there is no word for it, just a deep unsettled feeling. My thought today was that the Amish settled in PA out of desperation. History is not my field of expertise but I speculate they were headed for Indiana, became tired and settled in PA. If they would have made it to at least Ohio they could have had electricity – my theory anyway. Then again the Amish didn’t have Joe leading the wagon or they would have made it to CA. We are becoming desperate but Joe likes his Blackberry and it needs electricity to live. We will get through PA.
Chet and I are joined by Bo for the best continental breakfast I have ever eaten at the Hampton Inn, Williamsport, PA. Joe miraculously is not the first one up banging on hotel doors. He arrives late but is quick to catch up with three bagels and some orange juice mixed with warm water - ??. Part of his self improvement mission on the trip will be to chew his food more. Well, this breakfast falls a bit short because between the three bagels I believe only one had some teeth marks in it before it disappeared.
Chet, Joe and I begin to pedal towards Penn State. The ride starts well. The pace is moderate and I am enjoying the countryside. Joe has had some nostalgia on the trip thus far with Cornell, seeing the house he grew up in and a catholic school he attended somewhere 30 miles south of Ithaca for a year. He has been inquiring if we are going through Scranton because he remembers enjoying BMX camp for a week in that area. Joe inquires several times if we will be in the Scranton area and looks sheepishly disappointed when I tell him “No” and it is East of us so we are not detouring through it either. On Rt. 45 West in the middle of nowhere (Woodward) today we come across the camp.
Joe excitedly pedals down to the main office and has several conversations with the staff who somewhat remember him. They are preparing for the BMX Nationals this weekend and a helicopter is filming two of the top BMX riders in the country. We are not allowed to view the filming and get back on the road. Joe remembers his time at the camp and how he broke his arm but stayed the remainder of the week and continued to ride – big surprise(he hasn’t changed a bit).
Now start the hills, then some wind, then some sprint races between Joe and Chet. I am huffing and trying to catch my breath and reel in these two so I can get back to drafting. The roads are lined with PA farms and mountains. I struggle with my legs. Yesterday’s mileage is felt and I keep looking down to see if the others have played a joke on me and tightened my brakes. They haven’t, my legs are just that tired. Too bad Chris – I try hard but the people won’t come out of their houses and throw me a pity party in PA so I pedal.
We get to Penn State and eat a full lunch. We don’t spend time looking at the campus and start hunting for an ice bath. Joe’s wife Courtney was a renowned soccer star some years earlier and with a phone call gets us into the Penn State training facility. Next thing we know we are alternating between a 52 degree tub and a 110 degree tub. Total body shock.
We leave Penn State and my body is all confused. It doesn’t know whether to sweat of shiver. I get a little of both going and then I get nothing. Complete rebellion and all I can do is pedal as if everything is ok. After dinner we decide to do some night training. Joe and I dress up like aliens and head off into the night down a PA state road. I ask Chet and Bo to make sure Joe get’s full credit for the Darwin award on this idea. Pedaling at night is a strange combination of faith and fear. Anyone who has done it knows what I mean and if you haven’t you should because the peacefulness and darkness make for a uniquely enjoyable experience.
We arrive at our destination, Chet and Bo have been battling a discussion regarding the state of the world to death. It started at dinner a couple nights ago and whenever we all eat it resurfaces, gathers steam and could be the main reason Joe would rather be on a bike seat than eating or in a car seat.
Tomorrow, we aim to do what the Amish could not – leave PA and head into Ohio. I will miss PA as it has very bike friendly drivers although no one seems to be able to give directions or elevations with any accuracy – just like the news lately.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
Directly from Joe - So today started out interesting;
We have been out of touch, but in touch enough to know the world was ending. Well the world I have lived in for a few years anyway, Wall Street.
Chris (my teamate on this trip) would say it doesn't look any different in the parts of the country we are riding through? It doesn't look like the world is ending here?
Countless emails have streamed in:
1) "It must be nice"
2) "Turn around the world is falling apart"
3) "Rome is burning"
4) "where are you"
We have my blackberry on 24/7 and unless I'm going downhill at 45 mph you'll get us. So far we think it has been a major bonus not being around, I think we got very lucky on timing!
The day started out a little late today after 3 buttered bagels each. We hit the road in PA and found Big Earl's bike shop 20 miles into the ride. Chet tried to talk me into buying a recumbant, Big Earl tried to talk us into turning around, said we were going straight into the wind, bo tried to talk us into getting him a bike.
We worked our way to State College PA none of us knowing if that's where Penn State was. On the way we passed a camp I went to one summer 27 years ago!! It was so random it was uncanny.
We made it to Penn State, yes it was there, and Courtney (my wife) final four captain soccer made 1 call and has us brought into the Penn State athlete "repair" room where we got hot and cold plunges and repaired!
We were back on the road and worked our way south west.
Tomorrow is Ohio. Important things to note:
1) We have seen TONS of outdoor wood burning furnaces for sale everywhere.
2) Fresh egg prices go down the further west we travel.
3) Genetically modified seeds become more prominent the further west we travel and saw NONE in Vt.
Overall this is an AWESOME way to travel. Legs hurt.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Riding across America to train Joe for the Furnace Creek 508 Day 3
Wednesday September, 17 2008 - Day 3
Ithaca, NY – First and only real interest I have ever had in Ithaca, NY was Moosewood restaurant. Years ago when I was scouring for good vegetarian food alternatives Moosewood had one of the few cookbooks readily available with tasty alternatives. I always wanted to eat at the restaurant but will have to come back another day for the opportunity. In the meantime, I still believe they have one of the best philosophy statements going, see for yourself - http://www.moosewoodrestaurant.com/collective.html
We wake early to hunger. The restaurant in the hotel does not open for a half hour so we head into town to see what Cornell students eat for breakfast. Joe spent part of his youth in Ithaca and has an amazing story of how he was able to get Cornell University to accept him. He gives me some of the details as we head down for Bagels and smoothies. We cross several bridges and the gorges and waterfalls are something to see if you don’t come in after dark and leave with the sunrise.
Joe and I leave the hotel and it is cold. My fingers feel it first and then my body goes into shivers as we glide down ½ mile of steep grade. We go past the house Joe grew up in and I am sure between the University and the house he isn’t thinking about the 100+ miles we need to pedal today. He talks to me about his youth as we weave through traffic. We get onto route 13 South and start cranking. It isn’t long before my legs remind me that drafting is my specialty. I get behind Joe and try to become an aerodynamics engineer. The sun is up but the temperature refuses to rise except in my thighs which begin to rage heat up the first hill.
Hill after hill we traverse south to get out of the Ithaca region. Just as I begin to adjust the road opens up and we start down a long valley. The road has some dips and small hills. We crank on the pedals and are moving along at over 25 mph.
Towns pass by and I look across deep green farms and mountains. Fantastico!! In one town Joe slows quickly and says “haircut”. Short hair is less wind resistance although the length of fur on my mug is only growing. Joe goes into a barber shop that has a single chair, single barber and single bathroom. I won’t say if the cut was good or not but Chet was next in the chair and I started riding south again before the scissors pointed in my direction.
I draft Joe and the smell of the haircut to my large intake nose is too much. I pull ahead of Joe and take the lead. Better to have burning legs than broken breathing apparatus.
Chet and Bo have driven far ahead and are pedaling back towards us. Bo doesn’t get far and returns to the truck. We meet up with Chet and he is amped up to do some speeding. He leads and we crank hard. No complaints, he is taking the headwind and I am doing everything I can to keep up to Joe and him again.
In the last 5 miles of the day I pop another rear tube. We stop to change it and Chet gives me a well needed lesson or two about changing tires. I have much to learn. We spend the remainder of the daylight looking for a bike shop and find it shortly after closing time. Today is a memorable day for many reasons and I am grateful I was given the day and now I am even more grateful to hop in bed and end it.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An update directly from Joe - Finally we hit flat ground!!!!
Now I see how Andy Weinberg was getting so many miles in during his ride last year from Illinois to Vermont.
The wind doesn't hurt either when its at your back!!! Chet decided to drive ahead and peddle to Chris and I. He looked like a high speed sailboat approaching us...
We stopped to get haircuts today, we then stopped again to get milkshakes, we then stopped again for burgers and again to hear about Goldman Sachs 35 percent plunge!!!
We did a lot of stopping but we still made it close enough to see the ohio clouds in the background!!!
Important to note: don't talk politics with Chet or chines restaurants with Bo.....
Ithaca, NY – First and only real interest I have ever had in Ithaca, NY was Moosewood restaurant. Years ago when I was scouring for good vegetarian food alternatives Moosewood had one of the few cookbooks readily available with tasty alternatives. I always wanted to eat at the restaurant but will have to come back another day for the opportunity. In the meantime, I still believe they have one of the best philosophy statements going, see for yourself - http://www.moosewoodrestaurant.com/collective.html
We wake early to hunger. The restaurant in the hotel does not open for a half hour so we head into town to see what Cornell students eat for breakfast. Joe spent part of his youth in Ithaca and has an amazing story of how he was able to get Cornell University to accept him. He gives me some of the details as we head down for Bagels and smoothies. We cross several bridges and the gorges and waterfalls are something to see if you don’t come in after dark and leave with the sunrise.
Joe and I leave the hotel and it is cold. My fingers feel it first and then my body goes into shivers as we glide down ½ mile of steep grade. We go past the house Joe grew up in and I am sure between the University and the house he isn’t thinking about the 100+ miles we need to pedal today. He talks to me about his youth as we weave through traffic. We get onto route 13 South and start cranking. It isn’t long before my legs remind me that drafting is my specialty. I get behind Joe and try to become an aerodynamics engineer. The sun is up but the temperature refuses to rise except in my thighs which begin to rage heat up the first hill.
Hill after hill we traverse south to get out of the Ithaca region. Just as I begin to adjust the road opens up and we start down a long valley. The road has some dips and small hills. We crank on the pedals and are moving along at over 25 mph.
Towns pass by and I look across deep green farms and mountains. Fantastico!! In one town Joe slows quickly and says “haircut”. Short hair is less wind resistance although the length of fur on my mug is only growing. Joe goes into a barber shop that has a single chair, single barber and single bathroom. I won’t say if the cut was good or not but Chet was next in the chair and I started riding south again before the scissors pointed in my direction.
I draft Joe and the smell of the haircut to my large intake nose is too much. I pull ahead of Joe and take the lead. Better to have burning legs than broken breathing apparatus.
Chet and Bo have driven far ahead and are pedaling back towards us. Bo doesn’t get far and returns to the truck. We meet up with Chet and he is amped up to do some speeding. He leads and we crank hard. No complaints, he is taking the headwind and I am doing everything I can to keep up to Joe and him again.
In the last 5 miles of the day I pop another rear tube. We stop to change it and Chet gives me a well needed lesson or two about changing tires. I have much to learn. We spend the remainder of the daylight looking for a bike shop and find it shortly after closing time. Today is a memorable day for many reasons and I am grateful I was given the day and now I am even more grateful to hop in bed and end it.
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An update directly from Joe - Finally we hit flat ground!!!!
Now I see how Andy Weinberg was getting so many miles in during his ride last year from Illinois to Vermont.
The wind doesn't hurt either when its at your back!!! Chet decided to drive ahead and peddle to Chris and I. He looked like a high speed sailboat approaching us...
We stopped to get haircuts today, we then stopped again to get milkshakes, we then stopped again for burgers and again to hear about Goldman Sachs 35 percent plunge!!!
We did a lot of stopping but we still made it close enough to see the ohio clouds in the background!!!
Important to note: don't talk politics with Chet or chines restaurants with Bo.....
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Riding across America to train Joe for the Furnace Creek 508 - Day 2
Tuesday September, 16 2008 - Day 2
Amsterdam, NY – We decide that I will ride with Joe for the first part of the day and Chet will ride with Joe for the remaining miles to Ithaca, NY. We crank due west out of Amsterdam into a perfect morning. The temperature is 60 and the sun is gathering some distance from the horizon behind us. In the morning Chet and I mapped a course but from our experience yesterday we agree the support truck will remain relatively close to the riders.
I chose a back road turnoff early in the day to get some of the cornfield and mountain overlook views I missed yesterday while staring at the back of Chet’s bike. We turn on “Hickory Hill” and it goes almost vertical immediately. Joe looks over at me and I shrug. We climb the first hill and I am optimistic the word hill in the name meant one otherwise they would have named the road “Hickory Hills”. Kabong – it is up and up and up. We climb and I just keep going through gears until I run out and then resort to using my body weight on each pedal. After several miles we crest the top and are treated to beautiful views of farmland and mountains.
We are going to meet Chet and Bo after 25 miles but the town we decide to meet in is not on the trucks atlas. Chet and Bo drive around in circles looking for the town and Joe and I start moving west again. We cat and mouse through several more towns till mile 40 where we all meet and are able to replenish food and water. We decide to meet and change riders around mile 60 and Joe and I are cranking on the pedals again.
I stick closely to Joe’s back tire and begin to fall behind on the hills. I usually catch up with Joe on the downhills or flats as he is talking on his phone or using his blackberry. My legs are not sore from the day before but they are also not fresh. I stick to his back tire and try not to run up into him during speed changes which happen often considering the number and steepness of the hills. My mind is complaining and noisy this morning and then after a while there are fewer voices. I tell myself some of the complainers got tired and went back to bed – that is an alarm clock and before I know it the whole group is back complaining in a Dolby chorus.
Joe biked these roads last year and says to me as we start up the first hill, “there will be 100” of these today. The voice in my head thinks – is that supposed to be encouragement (later I came to realize it was the most encouraging thing he could have said knowing what lay ahead). The number was understated.
At mile 60, Chet takes over riding with Joe and other than another 10 miles late in the day I have the remainder of the day off. I get some food and as much drink as my stomach will hold. I start driving the truck and find nothing but long steep hills. The truck is downshifting to maintain speed. Joe and Chet are cranking up and down these hills at speeds I cannot maintain on flat ground. Bo left mile 60 well in front of Chet and Joe. He is riding with regular tennis shoes on Joe’s old road bike. Joe and Chet overtake him just as I am driving up. Bo will continue for another 10 miles and then join me in the truck to talk about the many places around the world he has lived.
Joe and Chet ride another 90 miles and ascend over 10,000 feet. Bo and I drive several towns ahead to wait for them and are surprised how quickly they catch us. Twice they cover the distance so quickly we don’t expect them and they pass by us without us knowing.
We arrive in Ithaca and eat a feast made for kings. We talk politics, economics and banter a bit. Our bodies are tired but our minds still quick with wit.
While choosing a route for Wed we are careful to pay attention to the topography. Tomorrows roads look to have fewer hills, but then again it’s a two dimensional map I am using and I don’t know how well I would sleep tonight knowing tomorrow may be more difficult than today.
Amsterdam, NY – We decide that I will ride with Joe for the first part of the day and Chet will ride with Joe for the remaining miles to Ithaca, NY. We crank due west out of Amsterdam into a perfect morning. The temperature is 60 and the sun is gathering some distance from the horizon behind us. In the morning Chet and I mapped a course but from our experience yesterday we agree the support truck will remain relatively close to the riders.
I chose a back road turnoff early in the day to get some of the cornfield and mountain overlook views I missed yesterday while staring at the back of Chet’s bike. We turn on “Hickory Hill” and it goes almost vertical immediately. Joe looks over at me and I shrug. We climb the first hill and I am optimistic the word hill in the name meant one otherwise they would have named the road “Hickory Hills”. Kabong – it is up and up and up. We climb and I just keep going through gears until I run out and then resort to using my body weight on each pedal. After several miles we crest the top and are treated to beautiful views of farmland and mountains.
We are going to meet Chet and Bo after 25 miles but the town we decide to meet in is not on the trucks atlas. Chet and Bo drive around in circles looking for the town and Joe and I start moving west again. We cat and mouse through several more towns till mile 40 where we all meet and are able to replenish food and water. We decide to meet and change riders around mile 60 and Joe and I are cranking on the pedals again.
I stick closely to Joe’s back tire and begin to fall behind on the hills. I usually catch up with Joe on the downhills or flats as he is talking on his phone or using his blackberry. My legs are not sore from the day before but they are also not fresh. I stick to his back tire and try not to run up into him during speed changes which happen often considering the number and steepness of the hills. My mind is complaining and noisy this morning and then after a while there are fewer voices. I tell myself some of the complainers got tired and went back to bed – that is an alarm clock and before I know it the whole group is back complaining in a Dolby chorus.
Joe biked these roads last year and says to me as we start up the first hill, “there will be 100” of these today. The voice in my head thinks – is that supposed to be encouragement (later I came to realize it was the most encouraging thing he could have said knowing what lay ahead). The number was understated.
At mile 60, Chet takes over riding with Joe and other than another 10 miles late in the day I have the remainder of the day off. I get some food and as much drink as my stomach will hold. I start driving the truck and find nothing but long steep hills. The truck is downshifting to maintain speed. Joe and Chet are cranking up and down these hills at speeds I cannot maintain on flat ground. Bo left mile 60 well in front of Chet and Joe. He is riding with regular tennis shoes on Joe’s old road bike. Joe and Chet overtake him just as I am driving up. Bo will continue for another 10 miles and then join me in the truck to talk about the many places around the world he has lived.
Joe and Chet ride another 90 miles and ascend over 10,000 feet. Bo and I drive several towns ahead to wait for them and are surprised how quickly they catch us. Twice they cover the distance so quickly we don’t expect them and they pass by us without us knowing.
We arrive in Ithaca and eat a feast made for kings. We talk politics, economics and banter a bit. Our bodies are tired but our minds still quick with wit.
While choosing a route for Wed we are careful to pay attention to the topography. Tomorrows roads look to have fewer hills, but then again it’s a two dimensional map I am using and I don’t know how well I would sleep tonight knowing tomorrow may be more difficult than today.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Riding across America to train Joe for the Furnace Creek 508
Monday September, 15 2008 - Day 1
We start the journey of several thousand miles a bit later than we thought given the volatile market conditions today. In addition, the weather is equally volatile with winds commonly 25 mph and gusting to 50 mph coming directly out of the West. Chet, Bo, Joe and I are eager to get on the road and start pedaling west. We take several pictures at Joe’s house, load the truck and we are off.
The winds pound into the lead bicycle relentlessly making the first 20 miles seem like 50. Fortunate for Chet and I, Joe is in the lead and we are drafting closely behind. The wind changes often and at times I am less than 3 inches off Chet’s back tire and unable to find any pocket of smooth air. Drafting is new to me and I almost crash into Chet’s back tire at least 150 times. I am amazed at the amount of constant focus necessary to keep my position close enough to enjoy the draft but not ride up into Chet’s back tire causing him, me or both a quick trip to the pavement.
Bo drives the truck to our destination city Amsterdam, NY. There he will wait for us to arrive or call for help. It is his day to drive and given the winds and pace I think it would have been better if I stayed in the truck keeping him company.
Chet and Joe, start to pull away from me on the hills. Both are in better shape than I and each time they pull ahead the wind becomes my focus. I try hundreds of positions but none seem to provide much relief. Upon further investigation, getting off the bike is the only way I will get relief. This is not an option. The support truck is at the destination many miles away and this is the training I have chosen.
On a big downhill I am catching up to Joe and Chet and suddenly - Pop, hisssss. My back tire goes flat. I move to the shoulder of the road and take off my rear tire. I pull out my spare and it has the wrong valve and will not fit through my rim. I ask Chet if he can help and he gives me his spare tube. I look for my pump but have left it in the truck. Chet gives me his and we are back into the wind.
We were warned about the wind when biking East to West and some even went so far as to apply the term “fools”. After about 50 miles I am becoming less concerned with the wind and more concerned with the never ending hills. One after another and I don’t know what I was expecting but we are crossing several mountain ranges and Joe likes to pedal really hard up the hills. I figure out after 75 miles that downhill is my specialty. Joe and Chet wait for me patiently and keep reminding me that after several days of this I will be in shape.
We stop at Stewart’s convenience store in Saratoga Springs for some food and to fill our water bottles. The demands of the day have Chet drinking Chocolate milk and joe eating a bagel with cream cheese. I start a conversation with an older man in the parking lot who assures me the route we have chosen from Saratoga Springs to Amsterdam is mostly flat. I hold onto this thought like a nugget of gold. Five miles later on a long uphill I throw the nugget of gold into the oncoming traffic and spit.
We arrive in Amsterdam with the night. Bo is waiting in the Wal Mart parking lot and we are relieved to step off the pedals. We stretch and pound the tension and acid from the day out of our muscles. We drink coconut juice in celebration and head for some Chinese food. Overall it has been a good first day. No wrecks and no injuries. I have a new appreciation for time. Some of the minutes today passed so slow I think they were going backwards. Time for some rest….
We start the journey of several thousand miles a bit later than we thought given the volatile market conditions today. In addition, the weather is equally volatile with winds commonly 25 mph and gusting to 50 mph coming directly out of the West. Chet, Bo, Joe and I are eager to get on the road and start pedaling west. We take several pictures at Joe’s house, load the truck and we are off.
The winds pound into the lead bicycle relentlessly making the first 20 miles seem like 50. Fortunate for Chet and I, Joe is in the lead and we are drafting closely behind. The wind changes often and at times I am less than 3 inches off Chet’s back tire and unable to find any pocket of smooth air. Drafting is new to me and I almost crash into Chet’s back tire at least 150 times. I am amazed at the amount of constant focus necessary to keep my position close enough to enjoy the draft but not ride up into Chet’s back tire causing him, me or both a quick trip to the pavement.
Bo drives the truck to our destination city Amsterdam, NY. There he will wait for us to arrive or call for help. It is his day to drive and given the winds and pace I think it would have been better if I stayed in the truck keeping him company.
Chet and Joe, start to pull away from me on the hills. Both are in better shape than I and each time they pull ahead the wind becomes my focus. I try hundreds of positions but none seem to provide much relief. Upon further investigation, getting off the bike is the only way I will get relief. This is not an option. The support truck is at the destination many miles away and this is the training I have chosen.
On a big downhill I am catching up to Joe and Chet and suddenly - Pop, hisssss. My back tire goes flat. I move to the shoulder of the road and take off my rear tire. I pull out my spare and it has the wrong valve and will not fit through my rim. I ask Chet if he can help and he gives me his spare tube. I look for my pump but have left it in the truck. Chet gives me his and we are back into the wind.
We were warned about the wind when biking East to West and some even went so far as to apply the term “fools”. After about 50 miles I am becoming less concerned with the wind and more concerned with the never ending hills. One after another and I don’t know what I was expecting but we are crossing several mountain ranges and Joe likes to pedal really hard up the hills. I figure out after 75 miles that downhill is my specialty. Joe and Chet wait for me patiently and keep reminding me that after several days of this I will be in shape.
We stop at Stewart’s convenience store in Saratoga Springs for some food and to fill our water bottles. The demands of the day have Chet drinking Chocolate milk and joe eating a bagel with cream cheese. I start a conversation with an older man in the parking lot who assures me the route we have chosen from Saratoga Springs to Amsterdam is mostly flat. I hold onto this thought like a nugget of gold. Five miles later on a long uphill I throw the nugget of gold into the oncoming traffic and spit.
We arrive in Amsterdam with the night. Bo is waiting in the Wal Mart parking lot and we are relieved to step off the pedals. We stretch and pound the tension and acid from the day out of our muscles. We drink coconut juice in celebration and head for some Chinese food. Overall it has been a good first day. No wrecks and no injuries. I have a new appreciation for time. Some of the minutes today passed so slow I think they were going backwards. Time for some rest….
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Pittsfield Death Division 2008
It’s early on a cold Saturday morning in February 2008. I’m heading due west out of Boston on a training run for the Holiday Lake 50K++, an ultramarathon in Virginia. Just before starting up a long hill near Boston College, I notice several women running on the other side of the street. I cross the street, accelerate and begin to stride past them. As I crest the top of the hill, my ego casually glances over my right shoulder to see how much of a gap I have created, only to find all three of them directly behind me. I ask them what they’re training for and we run the remainder of the 15 miles together. When we arrive back at MIT in Cambridge I meet others in their running group and am adopted by my newfound running family.
Several weeks later, Audrey, one of the women in this running group sends me an e-mail with a link to www.peakraces. Reading through the site quickly, I am drawn to the Death Division because it seems shrouded in mystery and adventure.
My 2008 spring calendar is full of running events and I don’t really focus on training for the death division other than doubling my daily push-up, sit-up and squat routine. From time to time, I sign onto the Peak site and read some of the training suggestions with some combination of disbelief and awe. I don’t mention the event to many people; to those I do tell, all I can really convey is that it’s going to a weekend of uncharted suffering. Interestingly most people are satisfied enough with this answer not to inquire further.
Each time race director Andy Weinberg publishes an e-mail I drive over to Home Depot and purchase more equipment. After all, what is a person to do when the equipment lists read – “Mandatory Gear - Helmet (bicycle, football, hockey, motorcycle) or Construction Hard Hat, Ball Point Pen, Tape Measure, Lights - Headlamp, Batteries for Lights, Egg. Optional Gear - Hand Saw, Duct Tape, Hand Loppers/Pruners, Hatchet, First Aid Kit, Backpack, Food, Bicycle, Extra Eggs, Bug Spray, Life Jacket.”?? Later, the list expands to include several hard stone carving chisels – another foray to Home Depot. Several weeks before the event, I break down and buy the Camelbak HOSS backpack I had been ogling at Wheelworks. Loaded with the mandatory gear, my pack weighs a little over 30lbs.
Heather and I take Friday off work and drive up to Pittsfield VT through intermittent rain. We arrive at Casa Bella early in the afternoon so that I can get an hour or two of much needed rest. Heather has invited a girl friend from high school who currently lives in VT to join us for Friday night. The keepers of Casa Bella ask several times how the three of us are going to sleep in the single bed. It takes several attempts for me to explain that I will not be sleeping on Friday night. Heather dresses in running gear and heads out for a run. I jump into the bed for my sleep.
Five minutes later or just as I begin to relax, there is a knock on the door and Susan informs me through the door that Heather’s friend has arrived – so much for my nap. I meet Tina and her boyfriend Skye and we chat in the living room of Casa Bella until Heather returns from her run.
We all walk over to the general store and run smack dab into Andy Weinberg and his ice cream eating family. Andy is brimming with excitement and gives me a quick synopsis of the events leading up to the registration at 9PM. I ask about the race course a bit but he is unwilling to give much information other than it is going to be challenging and several of the later stages aren’t completely finished but most likely no one will get to them anyway.
We return to Casa Bella and I begin to pack my bag and prepare for the race. Heather, Tina and I eat a wonderful meal at Casa Bella and I cannot resist one of my all time favorite desserts – panna cotta.
When I head over to registration at 9PM, the rain has returned and dense fog has set in for the night. The general store is bustling with people. I sign in and receive my number, 745. My number is then also written on my body and the number 207 is written on the nape of my neck. I walk over for my interview in front of the camera only to find it is a series of disclaimer questions to which I answer “Yes” several times out loud and “shit” several times in my head.
Looking at the other entrants, I find myself intimidated by their gear. Several have shovels and woodsmen saws lashed to their packs. I have no shovel and my saw in comparison is for cutting soft birthday cake. Suddenly, I feel unprepared and wish I had thought more about what I may need during the next 24 hours. I am also wearing long pants and a jacket, while most the others are outfitted in shorts and t-shirts. I hate being cold but seeing the others I make a mental note to shed a layer or two of clothing before we start at 3AM.
We gather into the front of the store for a race briefing. We are asked to produce the eggs that we were required to bring. We are thanked for bringing the eggs and informed the eggs will be used for our morning breakfast and enjoyed by all. We hand over our eggs and their cases. One person has their egg securely packed in 12 inches of Styrofoam. He births it from his pack and he would have won the whole race had it involved dropping an egg from an airplane – no such luck. As for me, I gladly hand over my water tight, shock proof $18 egg protector purchase from the Kittery Trading Post in Kittery Maine made weeks earlier for this occasion.
Next we are informed we will need to complete several practice drills before the official 3AM start. We are instructed to grab our gear and go outside where stacks of wood await us. Some stacks have three pieces of wood but most have four. “Pick up a stack of wood and follow me” says Joe, one of the race coordinators. We turn on our headlamps, pick up the pieces of wood and start marching down the side of the road into the dark fog. With cars passing us at 55 miles per hour, it occurs to me that we may get into the death part of this fairly quickly.
We cross the road and march directly into a 10 foot wide, 25 foot long trench. As cold water reaches my knees I hear someone say “so much for my keep the feet dry strategy”. I think to myself, if that is my only regret this will be an easy race. We leave the trench and bushwhack right into the woods and begin to ascend a very long and steep hill. We stop several times to wait for slow walkers. During the waiting periods we are told we are not allowed to drop our logs to the ground. We can squat to rest but have to keep our logs off the ground. My arms are burning and the local mosquito population has found its way to our blood donor clinic. We are being devoured by these insects and can do little but shake our body parts to limit the number of bites.
After trudging through the mountains for an hour or two, we arrive at the top of a steep trail. The rain has made the footing very slippery. We fall with the logs in our arms and our knees take the full weight, into the mud, into the rock, into the downed timber, into whatever is beneath. Several people are gathered in the center of the trail. I approach, am handed an egg and told that if I break the egg at any point I will need to return to this place and get another. Now I am no hen, but I am as dedicated from this point forth to protect my precious little egg.
By placing the egg in the middle of my roll of duct tape and taping up both sides, I create a nest. I place the tape roll deep into in my pack, pick up my logs and head back down the hill. Falling up hill was gentle, falling downhill is not as easily recoverable and several people are walking back up the hill for their replacement egg as I descend. We stop at another manned area and are given a large plastic bag. I think body bag myself but don’t say a word to anyone. We are also allowed to drop a log. I am conserving everything for what is ahead. We follow Joe further through the woods to a lake.
We spread out around the edge of the lake and have to count off. I am number 21 which means blackjack in a casino, but I am in the woods of Vermon which 21 simply means stupid. There is a large spotlight on us and it feels like I am in some kind of prison. We are told to drop our gear, take out everything in our packs for inspection and then get into the water up to our chest. When we are all in the water something starts swimming towards us from the other side of the pond. Some say it is a snake, others a turtle and others a moth. It never swims close enough to me for identification but it clearly has some scared. We stay in the cold water for 15 minutes. Before getting out, we are required to fully submerge. Cold, very cold. I hate being cold. My body trembles and the chill running up my spine shakes my whole body. We stuff our gear back into our bags and are allowed to drop another log before we start marching down the mountain to the Aimee Farm.
We march to a very large barn – which is basically base camp for the remainder of the race. We will complete tasks and return here several more times. There is a large fire in the fire pit. I walk over and try to hold back the convulsive shivers which now come and go with greater frequency. I tremble and stare into the embers. Our support crews have been waiting here since 9PM. They were told we would return any minute but it is already past 1AM. Apparently they too are being tested.
We are told to hurry up with these last practice events so that we can get some rest before the official 3AM start. Mentally, I am still curious and amused. Physically, I am very cold and starting to fatigue. Heather feeds me some sandwiches we prepared the night before and offers a couple words of encouragement. I stare at her and shake my head side to side.
We are told to drop our back packs.
In front of us is 25 feet of mud traversed by barbed wire immediately followed by a large hill of dirt also strung with barbed wire. We are now instructed to crawl through the mud, over the hill and down the other side. We are told we will have to crawl through this obstacle three times – although there is not truth in these words, I cling to them. I crest the top of the hill and start crawling down the other side. The bushes are loaded with thorns – ouch. Some break off into my knees but I was fortunate enough to put on my work gloves and my hands are protected for the moment. We crawl down the hill on all fours and into a culvert which has more barbed wire strung over it. I am on my hands and knees in the creek. The water is actually warmer than I expect and the mud feels soft. My body welcomes the softness of the mud. We crawl to a corrugated metal drainage pipe and then into the pipe.
I think it is about 20 feet long. It is not soft like the mud, not inviting. I drop to my belly and pull myself along through the muddy water with my elbows. As I drop out of the pipe I find myself under a log bridge. I crawl through more nasty and then through another garden of briar and scratch to find myself back at the barn.
We are divided into teams of three. Each team is to mix three 5 gallon buckets of concrete. We are shown a pile of sand and given instructions on where to find the 90 pound bags of concrete. I grab three buckets and the other two on my team work on the other ingredients. I have to fetch water which means going back down to the culvert. I make two trips. We also put some large rocks into the mixture. The mixture is inspected and we pour all three buckets into what seems to be a foundation for a hot tub or some structure which will be adjacent to the barn. With my bucket empty I ask Andy what is next and he says, “the start of the race”. It is 2AM.
Heather and I make our way to the car. I am shaking and muddy to the core. I put a blanket down on my car seat and she drives me back to Casa Bella. I stumble out of the car and we walk up to the front door, take our shoes off, and shed some of our muddy clothing. We walk up two flights of stairs and Heather turns on a very hot shower. I spread my clothes out on plastic bags on the floor in the hallway. Tina wakes up and I don’t feel terrible until I see the way she is looking at me. I walk into the bathroom and in the mirror witness my state of being. Not pretty. I shower and absorb as much warmth as possible. Return to the room. Scrape together a second pair of race clothing. I didn’t prepare for this and have to make some decisions I hope I will not regret later in the day. I lie down on the floor and pull a blanket over me. It is 2:25AM. Tina sets her phone alarm for 2:45. Any other day, twenty minutes of sleep wouldn’t be worth it, but I am thankful to lay my head on the hard wood floor.
I don’t know what wakes me or if I was ever asleep. I hear Heather say, “it is time to go”. I get up. I put on dry clothing but don’t have a second pair of shoes so I step back into the wet and muddy trail runners.
It is 3AM when we arrive at Aimee Farm. There are people hustling about in all directions. I walk directly back over to the fire, step onto one of the rocks to draw some warmth into my feet.
We are instructed to get a 5 gallon bucket and load it with sand. My fully loaded number without my back pack is 207. This is the number on the nape of my neck. I weigh 165. My bucket load will be at least 42 pounds for the remainder of the race.
With the race officially started, we crawl back under the barbed wire with our backpacks and our new friend: the five gallon bucket loaded with sand. We are told that we will be weighed at random times during the race and if our weight is not the same as the number on our neck we will have to repeat our last task-- maybe something worse.
Squirming under the barbed wire is much more difficult with my pack and bucket. I get snagged several times and quickly discover the people who test the clothing at North Face haven’t done this type of testing. My bright orange techno, breathable, water resistant jacket is no match for the barbs. At one point a single barb has my shoulder and I can’t move. I try to back the barb out and it only sets the second barb deep into the fabric and the skin beneath it. I grab the jacket and give it a big old fashion yank. I am free; the fabric is shredded. Freedom doesn’t feel great but it is better than the alternative at this point. Down the back of the hill and into the culvert I crawl. I remind myself that this is the second of three times I have to do this. Ration is great short term medicine. I push my bucket through the pipe and we are led to the river.
The field is starting to spread out. Although there has already been some attrition, I am not thinking race but merely completion. I am focused on not earning the distinction of being the first person to die in a Death Division event. Let someone else be the famous donkey.
Moving downstream over very slippery rocks with my backpack and bucket full of sand is a great place to make a movie. The river is shallow for the most part which isn’t ideal. My feet smash into rocks trying to find traction. Several times I fall into the water. These are not gentle, ease-yourself-into-the-water falls; these are try-to-save-yourself-and-your-bucket, ankles-over-ears falls. Every so often gravity wins and I cannot tip toe on enough slippery rock to gain my balance and down I plunge again.
On one fall I manage to smash my knee directly into a rock. I stop. A deep scream goes through my Being like when you get hit up under the bearings and there is nothing to do but stand there and grimace with pain. I swear at myself for not being more careful and then remind myself to take it easy. The next step I fall completely backwards into the water. Bucket goes one way, me and the back pack go another. That’s what happens when you take it easy in the Death Division. My bucket starts to float downstream, otherwise I may have just stayed seated for a minute to question what I am doing. Furthermore, it is still dark out so each step is a mystery. I grab the bucket which now is half full with water. I dump out the water quickly and see some of my mandatory weight also fall into the river. More curses. I take a couple of river rocks to make up what is lost and then add a couple more for good measure. I am not going through this again – little do I know.
I emerge from the river and head through a field to a barn. Here we are to chisel our race number into marble. The catch – the number is not going to be chiseled into the marble but all the marble around the number is to be chiseled away at a depth of ¼ inch. Later I learn that this is called a relief – whoever named it that should be digging coal in hell forever. The technique is to put the sand from my bucket into the black plastic bag we were given the night before while carrying our stack of wood. This bag is to absorb the shock of me chiseling on the marble. If I crack the marble I start over. I pull out my Home Depot chisels and get to work among the other racers. My number is 745. It is not the easiest but also not the most difficult.
My true relief is that we have to carve our numbers in the rock instead of the profiles of our faces like Mt. Rushmore. In order to get my nose to scale in stone as hard as marble would have caused an irrecoverable delay in my time not to mention a very large number of broken tablets. Maybe next year we can carve the 10 commandments carry them to the top of the hill and all be holy – this must be easier than carrying the wooden cross up the mountain. Moses or Jesus?
I chisel away, adjusting my technique as I go. Marble is harder than I ever thought or maybe I am just weak and my talents crude. Several racers were here before me and finish quickly. I chisel harder, I am happy I picked a thick piece of marble because I can really bang on it. I ask a judge if it is enough. He says “done” and writes on the back of it. I ask Andy for my next task. Andy says “go back through the river and return to the farm”. I start to walk away and he says “and don’t forget your number”. I look at my large thick piece of work and shake my head. More curses. I load the “relief” into my backpack, grab my bucket, and begin to jog through the field. A volunteer offers: “Slow down. It’s going to be a long day”. Buddy, it’s already been a long day.
Back into the river and I start upstream. The darkness has given way to some light, but I barely notice. I can now see all the rocks in the river but it doesn’t help my footing. I fall several more times and make what feels like hamburger of my feet and shoes. When I get back out of the river and start walking towards Aimee Farm I am convinced my toenails have all been ripped off and are now stabbing my feet – ouch. I think I should take off my shoes and remove some of the rocks and my toe nails but I know that once they are off I will not be able to get them back on. I crawl back through the pipe, the culvert and under the barbed wire.
The next task is to take 20 large logs from the pile. 10 of them I have to saw in half; the other ten I need to quarter with an axe. I set up my 20 logs and get to work. The grill is working and they are serving eggs on toast. I alternate arms while sawing and also start sawing with my whole body to give my arms a break. When my arms no longer work I start quartering and then back to sawing. When both seem too difficult I go and get an egg sandwich. I take some time to eat this sandwich. It is the only pleasure I have had for hours and I savor each bit. Now that my stomach is active I realize I am very hungry and start eating a Clif Bar. I get back to work and put the other half of the bar on a log. I bury the axe into the next log and it absorbs the axe. I lift the axe handle high with the log attached and smash it onto the top of another log to free the axe head. Just prior to impact I see the remaining half of my Clif breakfast and then no more – the people who test Cliff bars don’t do that type of testing. For a brief moment I chuckle that I am the first person not a star trek mission to vaporize half a Clif Bar – Oh how I enjoy destruction.
We have to stack all this wood on a palette which we retrieve from a pile of palettes on the other side of the barn. I stack my wood. Heather shows up and offers me food and drink.
Next task, fill my bucket up with sand again. Go to the river, this time go upstream. There will be a house on the left with people in the yard, they will tell me what to do. Back under the barbed wire and through the culvert – routine at this point. I enter the river and within minutes my aching feet beg for me to go slow or stop. I try to be gentle in their already tendered state but it only unbalances me further and I fall again. The river is actually beautiful and on any other day would be a pleasurable soak. I trudge over the rocks – I make up new curse words.
The house on the left is a mile or two up. At this point both distance and time are distorted by pain, lack of sleep, bites and other factors. I walk out of the river and am instructed to dump my bucket of sand on the tarp -- cool. Now I have to roll in it – not cool--and then go lay down in the river for 5 minutes. I miss the roll in it part and go right over to the river. The ladies count down my time and I return to the yard. I am offered a bucket with pieces of paper in it. Each piece of paper has a number that corresponds to a log in the yard. I tell the volunteer to pick one for me. I would not be able to forgive myself if I chose a number which corresponded to a 2 foot in diameter log. He picks 29. I go over the search for 29, find it and drag it into the clearing. There are four other racers already sawing away. One has a very large log, another has a small log. Me and the fourth guy medium – about 12 inches in diameter.
There are 4 marks on the log where I am to saw through it. Before my saw touches the log a band of ferocious mosquitoes are on me. I alternate killing mosquitoes and cutting wood. I get much more satisfaction killing the insects but I don’t think it is a qualified task so I let them bite away and focus on the log. Maybe next year one of the tasks will be to kill 100 mosquitoes on your body. I finish one cut and a racer finishes his last and heads off up the road. I crack a joke or two with the other racers and spectators. I finish the other three cuts and ask for my next task.
Take my bucket and go up the road till I see a house on the left with people in the yard. I grab my bucket and walk for a couple hundred yards and then convince myself that I am a runner and as such should run to the next house. I start to jog and my legs let me know immediately that all the events leading up to this moment and the pack on my back are too much. I don’t listen and open my stride a bit convincing myself that if it is too much I will soon find myself on the ground. Ultra events are interesting for me as they make me more mentally flexible – a life lesson that comes through these types of experiences for me. I would rather glean them from a book but I haven’t been able to find that book yet. I come upon a barn on the left. There is the racer who is in first place and he is running while completing his task. “See I told you so” I tell my legs, it is possible.
This next task is to go around into the barn and fill my 5 gallon bucket with hay from the sheep stall, come back around the front of the barn, climb the 8 foot ladder and dump the hay into the dump truck – 30 times. I take off my backpack and jacket. I start to run between the stalls and the truck. The hay is moist and ripe. Each time I get to the top of the ladder and dump the bucket I throw the bucket back to the ground and climb down. This little act gives me some joy until while dumping the bucket on my trip number 19, I drop the bucket in the truck and have to jump into the back of the truck and retrieve it from the sheep-soiled hay.
I finish with this task and run back to the house on the river. Several hundred yards prior to reaching the house I run into Heather and she informs me that she will be joining me for the remainder of the event. I smile.
As we run back downstream to the farm she feeds me peanut butter and honey sandwiches and I worry that she is going to hurt herself on the rocks. We fumble around and laugh. It is all I can do to block out the foot pain. Back through the pipe, the culvert and under the barbed wire.
I am instructed to drop my backpack. I say thank you. I am then handed an egg. Mentally, I retract my thank you.. I have to carry the egg and now take all the wood from my palette and stack it neatly in a pile 50 yards away. Done.
Next task, go to a pile of trimmed pine trees and find two. Build a cross using no more than 8 wraps of duct tape. I go to the pile and spend too much time trying to find the smallest trees. I construct my cross. I fill my bucket again with 42 pounds of sand. I am to take the cross, the bucket, my back pack, my egg and my sorry ass under the barbed wire, down through the culvert, (get to skip the pipe because the cross won’t fit through), and then climb through a slippery stream bed to the top the mountain on the other side of the river. At this point if they had asked me to get that cross through the pipe, I would have thought of a way to do it.
I drag everything under the barbed wire, down the hill through the culvert and then try to lash the cross to my back with rope unsuccessfully. I end up hanging the bucket from the cross and carrying the cross over my shoulder. I use the rope to hold the cross together because if the 8 wraps of duct tape fail I have to return to the Aimee Farm for more tape. Heather is with me and Joe has decided that he should accompany us to the top of the mountain. Heather and Joe talk and I walk with my load behind them.
The trail goes right up a small creek fraught with slippery slabs of rock and overhead trees. Half way up Joe goes ahead and I start to travel very slowly. I walk a couple of steps and then rest. A couple more steps and rest again. Heather encourages me but we soon have to trudge through waist high stinging nettle and I become very frustrated. It is demoralizing me and I get testy. Twice I am almost pulled backwards by all my gear or the cross becoming stuck on an overhanging branch. Both would have resulted in a very long hospital stay or the first to die a Death Division event.
I begin to groan each time I pick up the cross. Then I hear noise coming from the woods adjacent to the stream. I look over my shoulder and here comes this guy who is taking 10 to 15 steps between each rest. I ask him if he wants to pass and he declines. When it becomes very apparent I am holding him up I step aside. He goes right past – WOW.
Instead of being inspired I find myself drained, tired and my legs are in a nettle fire that I can’t even describe. I trudge on for some unknown period of time until I hear Joe’s voice calling through the woods. He is calling “Chris” but he is actually looking for the person who was far ahead of me. He must have missed a trail marker and continued in the wrong direction. Joe is trying to get him back on the course.
The trail breaks from the stream and becomes single track. I move at a greater speed now but still can’t see the top the mountain.
When I do see the top I am moved inside, but still cannot gather much more strength. The last 200 yards is through briar and a small scree field. Meanwhile, Heather has asked me for my sister Carrie’s number and she apparently has dialed Carrie on her cell phone. Heather puts the phone to my ear and I mumble something. Or so I’m later told—I have no recollection of the call.
I reach the top. I am told that I have to dig a whole and plant my cross. I pull out my hatchet and get right to work. The guy who marched right past me with his cross is standing there watching me. His name is Stever and I am wondering why he isn’t onto his next task. He is taking a little break, eating pretzels and hydrating.
I plant the cross about a foot into the hard rocky soil, slam a couple of rocks to brace the base, check if for stability, walk over and force down a couple of pretzels. I have no appetite but allow myself for the first time to think about crossing the finish line. I look across to view the other mountain tops and for a minute I feel no pain and absorb the view. I pay for the lapse almost immediately as I hear the next task.
We have to go back down the mountain to a half-way point. There is a New England rock wall. The task is to carry my body weight in rocks from the wall back up to my cross. I can take as many trips as necessary. I look at Stever, he looks at me. We repeat the instructions as if they are not real or coming from some distant voice. We empty our packs and start back down the hill.
I stop and let Heather know she can stay on top of the mountain as we will be returning here several times. She just smiles and falls right in behind me. Her legs are visibly bitten, bruised and battered. There is blood and rash covering what is exposed and I am sure her sock covered ankles are destroyed like mine. She smiles. I smile. Down we go.
Stever is leading the way and I notice the single track is wet, rocky and hazardous in places. I didn’t worry much climbing up the trail because I was moving so slowly but now I will need to be sure about my footing or risk a nasty fall. We follow the signs to the rock wall but walk right past it and spend 10 minutes backtracking. We load our packs with rock and then gather additional rocks in our hands.
The walk back up the mountain is difficult but knowing we will need to make several trips brings additional complaints from my body. Stever leads the way and I follow closely on his footsteps. We reach the top and dump our load at the base of our respective crosses without much conversation other than a couple of grunts and groans trying to estimate the number of trips it will require. We look at our rock piles, shake our heads and head back down the mountain.
On the way down we run into a couple of cross-bearers heading up. They, perhaps thinking we are on our way down to the finish, smile and show signs of happiness. We exchange “good job” and continue. The sighting of the others quickens our step. We reach the rock wall again and increase our load. On the way up, we stop several times to rest and catch our breath. I try to keep my heart rate below 150 knowing the end is nowhere in sight and my legs are burning deeply with each step from the steepness of the climb. I focus on Stever’s heels and when I am leading I look directly at the ground in front of me. Heather continues to offer cheer and provide critical food and hydration provisions.
Stever mentions that all he wants is a Snickers bar and Heather volunteers to run all the way back down the mountain to base camp, find his cooler and retrieve the necessary item. She runs off and Stever and I continue our pilgrimage from our crosses to the rock wall.
Heather returns on our fourth and final ascent. She runs up on us with ease bearing food treasures. We wait till we drop our load and partake of the snacks before asking for our next task. Joe takes me over to my rock pile and lets me know that I would have had another full trip because while I was down picking up a load of rock one of the other racers was about to use some of the rocks I brought up from the wall to stabilize the base of his planted cross. Joe weighs our haul. Stever and I have now completed the task of hauling our body weight in rock to the top of the mountain. In addition, we learn some racers have started arguing about the race, the course and its integrity. Joe is visually troubled and we silently take in some of the drama. Looks like the Death Division is becoming a tribulation for its leaders as well as the racers – how fitting.
Next, we are to take our 5 gallon buckets down the back side of the mountain. Under another barbed wire arena to a stream. Fill the buckets with water from the stream and return. Stever, me and Heather are now given a guide/chaperone to make sure we don’t skip any of the obstacles. The guide has a dog named Buddha and the dog likes to run into our knees as it runs circles around our little party.
We go down to the stream without incident. The bugs are becoming even more aggressive and a single hit doesn’t even deter their biting. We start talking a bit since the trail is wide and there seems to be an end in sight. We get to the stream and actually have to slide down the inside of another pipe to the place we fill up our water. Stever goes through and gives a big Wahoo!! We fill the buckets and start our ascent. We are moving uphill when we come across Chris who was in first place by a large gap for most the day. He is heading down the hill with his head down. We spend a couple of minutes listening to how he spent 3 or 4 more hours dragging his cross across hill and dale before he abandoned the cross and returned to the Farm. I feel very bad for him. He would have taken first place but now he is not even going to finish. I think of how easy it is to lose focus or make a small mistake which has a major impact. We move on and up.
Joe has given very specific instructions for how full he expects the buckets to be with water. The trail is steep and untamed, almost immediately we begin to spill water. We discuss our dilemma. We decide that should cover the top of our buckets to avoid being told we have lost too much water and being sent back for another bucket full. I take off my jacket and use it to close off the top of my bucket. Stever only has a long sleeve shirt on. If he takes it off he will surely be eaten alive by the swarm of bugs which are currently using us as a buffet. He takes it off and wraps it around the top of his bucket – I grimace knowing the price he will pay.
We get to the barbed wire with our 50 lbs of water and Stever has a great idea. Instead of trying to drag our buckets while on our bellies under the uphill barbed wire field we will stand up between the barbed wire, move the bucket, lay down and crawl and then repeat this for the entire barbed wire field. This greatly lessens the possibility of dumping our bucket or dislocating our shoulders trying to move 50 lbs of water while on our bellies. Before we begin, I walk around the back of Stever and kill a dozen mosquitoes on his back. No words are spoken but I am not just killing them to help his sanity, these same mosquitoes would most likely have started their meal with him and then headed over for my sweet blood. The ones I crushed on him, I crush for both of us. I feel better. I drop into the mud on my belly and start crawling.
Heather and our guide continue chatting as if they are on a gentle stroll through Vermont’s rolling hills. Heather’s thigh is now showing a bruise the size of Beirut. She shares her story with us. While running down the mountain to get our snacks she lost her footing and took a NASCAR style crash. Looking at her leg, I am sure whatever she landed on or bounced off is also in bad shape.
We negotiate the barbed wire with our water load and it gives us some positive energy. We pick up the pace and start walking fast. We hear voices coming down the trail and it is the second group of runners. We consider taking our shirts back off our bucket so they will have to find their own creative advantage. We don’t. They pass by us and comment on the good idea. Once out of sight, we begin to jog with our 50 pound water buckets.
We reach the top of the mountain and are very proud that the water level in our buckets is close to the top. We approach Joe for verification but he is more focused on the race drama issues which are gaining momentum. Stever and I each I pour our bucket of water onto our planted crosses and body weight of rock. We turn and high five each other and then high five Heather. We listen to Joe struggle with race details. Stever, Heather and I wait patiently and then become impatient.
Stever and I chat and agree there is no reason to compete for first place. I am relieved and would have settled for second without regret. I believe Stever felt the same way and although he would have been a formidable competitor I like it much better that we have bonded during these difficult hours and will be able to finish together.
It is clear now that if nothing changes Stever and I will be the first two across the finish line. We have gained a solid margin from the others but we have also been standing around for some period of time and from other endurance experiences I know that I cannot afford to sit or remain unfocused for long. I am running on adrenaline alone and if my body is allowed a little rest I may not be able to restart it. We are on top of the mountain, the view is magnificent but no longer my focus. Joe walks over and has Stever and I fill up our 5 gallon buckets with our respective sand loads.
Joe dumps a several more rocks in each of our buckets as a parting gift and gives us a smile. Our remaining task is to get back to the finish line at Aimee Farm. I shake Joe’s hand and tell him I grateful for the adventure and challenge. I grab the handle on my bucket and haul it onto my back – a method of carrying it which isn’t ideal but works. Stever, Heather and I are off again down the mountain.
In relief that we are on the final descent, we begin talking and not paying attention to the trail markers. We become disoriented and find ourselves at several trail crossings. We follow a trail downhill for about 500 yards and still don’t recognize anything. Heather says that we should go back up another trail which will definitely get us to the main trail. Stever and I look back up the hill. Something deep inside of me refuses any suggestion if it involves an ascent. Stever and I decide that going straight down the mountain will eventually put us back in the river. From there we can decide which way to go.
Time is relative and Stever and I are becoming alarmed that we may be passed by the other racers. Whether I’m first or second place means little, but fourth or fifth place would haunt me. Heather is about 100 feet away walking up the trail and trying to convince us to follow. Without delay, and in unison, Stever and I drop right off the trail edge into the bush. We are now running down the side of the mountain with 50 plus pounds of dirt and rock in our buckets on our backs. We jump over some fallen trees and run right through others. We are frantic and worried that we will run into the other racers and have a death match finish on our hands.
We trip several times but never completely fall. At times I am running through waist high ferns and know the consequences of a rock or fallen tree that I cannot see – hospital and months of therapy. We run. Heather catches up with us and she can’t believe that we are bushwhacking full speed down the mountain.
We hit the river and can’t recognize enough in either direction to make a decision. More panic. Stever recognizes a field to the left and we jump in the river. Ouch, my feet on the rocks again. I move slowly and painfully. I won’t be able to stay in the river long given the condition of my feet. In addition, we are in a hurry and the slippery rocks make a fall at this point inevitable and possibly crippling. Heather advocates we travel down the river. I head for the other shore and splash right up the steep river bank. I can smell the finish but don’t know which way the wind is blowing – not a good feeling.
We head downstream and start running again through the woods. I run across a large decoy of a Canadian goose. Heather is moving down the river and trying to coax us back in but I am in full panic mode. We travel for close to a mile before seeing something we recognize. We look across the river trying to determine if the other racers have passed us while we were lost off course. We start to jog up the quarter mile trail to the Farm. We slow to a walk and realize if they have passed us we will not be able to catch them in the remaining distance. We also continue to look over our shoulder for the whole quarter mile knowing that if we were sighted it would motivate the other racers.
Back through the culvert and ditch. Stever is leading the way and I get stuck in the culvert. I have to drop my pack and my bucket seems heavier than ever. My body is now water logged and I stop for a second to rest. I giggle. I am stuck in a drainage pipe – my mother warned me when I was a child that I could get stuck in these things and here I am. Thanks Mom. Stever is out and waits on the other side of the culvert. He could easily head up the hill without me, go under the barbed wire and finish first, but instead he waits. A spectator sees him and begins calling to the others at the finish line. Stever ducks down in the weeds in order to not attract attention. I drag myself through the remainder of the pipe. We climb the hill together. We are relieved to hear that we are still leading and soak in the moment. Then onto our bellies, dragging our packs and 5 gallon buckets to the finish line.
Andy greets us as we stand up and we are awarded with applause and some cheers. I hug Stever, I hug Heather. I drink and eat pizza. We talk to some observers and are amazed at our own stories. We receive the Death Division hammer awards and are very honored. We also receive necklaces which are hand made and very very cool in a Death Division way.
I feel good, but within 15 minutes my body starts to stiffen and then shake. I eat more pizza but the shaking takes over. We chat a bit more with others and then I tell Heather that if she doesn’t get me into a warm shower soon I may expire. My race is over but her support role is not. We exchange numbers with Stever and I give Andy my rock chisels telling him to find a good home for them. I look back over the scene, the barbed wire, the stacked wood, the fire pit and the mountain. I am very grateful to finish and think of the others still on the mountain. When asked if I will do it again next year reply “maybe”.
Monday morning, I wake to soft sheets and climate control in my apartment. I am a very different person than the one who entered the Pittsfield General Store Friday night. Physically, my neck, waistline and ankles are swollen with insect bites. My right foot is deeply purple with bruise and I ache in places a body should never ache. I have lost five pounds over the weekend from the Vermont Woods Diet. Each of these small payments, a reminder of my weekend spent living without limitations.
Several weeks later, Audrey, one of the women in this running group sends me an e-mail with a link to www.peakraces. Reading through the site quickly, I am drawn to the Death Division because it seems shrouded in mystery and adventure.
My 2008 spring calendar is full of running events and I don’t really focus on training for the death division other than doubling my daily push-up, sit-up and squat routine. From time to time, I sign onto the Peak site and read some of the training suggestions with some combination of disbelief and awe. I don’t mention the event to many people; to those I do tell, all I can really convey is that it’s going to a weekend of uncharted suffering. Interestingly most people are satisfied enough with this answer not to inquire further.
Each time race director Andy Weinberg publishes an e-mail I drive over to Home Depot and purchase more equipment. After all, what is a person to do when the equipment lists read – “Mandatory Gear - Helmet (bicycle, football, hockey, motorcycle) or Construction Hard Hat, Ball Point Pen, Tape Measure, Lights - Headlamp, Batteries for Lights, Egg. Optional Gear - Hand Saw, Duct Tape, Hand Loppers/Pruners, Hatchet, First Aid Kit, Backpack, Food, Bicycle, Extra Eggs, Bug Spray, Life Jacket.”?? Later, the list expands to include several hard stone carving chisels – another foray to Home Depot. Several weeks before the event, I break down and buy the Camelbak HOSS backpack I had been ogling at Wheelworks. Loaded with the mandatory gear, my pack weighs a little over 30lbs.
Heather and I take Friday off work and drive up to Pittsfield VT through intermittent rain. We arrive at Casa Bella early in the afternoon so that I can get an hour or two of much needed rest. Heather has invited a girl friend from high school who currently lives in VT to join us for Friday night. The keepers of Casa Bella ask several times how the three of us are going to sleep in the single bed. It takes several attempts for me to explain that I will not be sleeping on Friday night. Heather dresses in running gear and heads out for a run. I jump into the bed for my sleep.
Five minutes later or just as I begin to relax, there is a knock on the door and Susan informs me through the door that Heather’s friend has arrived – so much for my nap. I meet Tina and her boyfriend Skye and we chat in the living room of Casa Bella until Heather returns from her run.
We all walk over to the general store and run smack dab into Andy Weinberg and his ice cream eating family. Andy is brimming with excitement and gives me a quick synopsis of the events leading up to the registration at 9PM. I ask about the race course a bit but he is unwilling to give much information other than it is going to be challenging and several of the later stages aren’t completely finished but most likely no one will get to them anyway.
We return to Casa Bella and I begin to pack my bag and prepare for the race. Heather, Tina and I eat a wonderful meal at Casa Bella and I cannot resist one of my all time favorite desserts – panna cotta.
When I head over to registration at 9PM, the rain has returned and dense fog has set in for the night. The general store is bustling with people. I sign in and receive my number, 745. My number is then also written on my body and the number 207 is written on the nape of my neck. I walk over for my interview in front of the camera only to find it is a series of disclaimer questions to which I answer “Yes” several times out loud and “shit” several times in my head.
Looking at the other entrants, I find myself intimidated by their gear. Several have shovels and woodsmen saws lashed to their packs. I have no shovel and my saw in comparison is for cutting soft birthday cake. Suddenly, I feel unprepared and wish I had thought more about what I may need during the next 24 hours. I am also wearing long pants and a jacket, while most the others are outfitted in shorts and t-shirts. I hate being cold but seeing the others I make a mental note to shed a layer or two of clothing before we start at 3AM.
We gather into the front of the store for a race briefing. We are asked to produce the eggs that we were required to bring. We are thanked for bringing the eggs and informed the eggs will be used for our morning breakfast and enjoyed by all. We hand over our eggs and their cases. One person has their egg securely packed in 12 inches of Styrofoam. He births it from his pack and he would have won the whole race had it involved dropping an egg from an airplane – no such luck. As for me, I gladly hand over my water tight, shock proof $18 egg protector purchase from the Kittery Trading Post in Kittery Maine made weeks earlier for this occasion.
Next we are informed we will need to complete several practice drills before the official 3AM start. We are instructed to grab our gear and go outside where stacks of wood await us. Some stacks have three pieces of wood but most have four. “Pick up a stack of wood and follow me” says Joe, one of the race coordinators. We turn on our headlamps, pick up the pieces of wood and start marching down the side of the road into the dark fog. With cars passing us at 55 miles per hour, it occurs to me that we may get into the death part of this fairly quickly.
We cross the road and march directly into a 10 foot wide, 25 foot long trench. As cold water reaches my knees I hear someone say “so much for my keep the feet dry strategy”. I think to myself, if that is my only regret this will be an easy race. We leave the trench and bushwhack right into the woods and begin to ascend a very long and steep hill. We stop several times to wait for slow walkers. During the waiting periods we are told we are not allowed to drop our logs to the ground. We can squat to rest but have to keep our logs off the ground. My arms are burning and the local mosquito population has found its way to our blood donor clinic. We are being devoured by these insects and can do little but shake our body parts to limit the number of bites.
After trudging through the mountains for an hour or two, we arrive at the top of a steep trail. The rain has made the footing very slippery. We fall with the logs in our arms and our knees take the full weight, into the mud, into the rock, into the downed timber, into whatever is beneath. Several people are gathered in the center of the trail. I approach, am handed an egg and told that if I break the egg at any point I will need to return to this place and get another. Now I am no hen, but I am as dedicated from this point forth to protect my precious little egg.
By placing the egg in the middle of my roll of duct tape and taping up both sides, I create a nest. I place the tape roll deep into in my pack, pick up my logs and head back down the hill. Falling up hill was gentle, falling downhill is not as easily recoverable and several people are walking back up the hill for their replacement egg as I descend. We stop at another manned area and are given a large plastic bag. I think body bag myself but don’t say a word to anyone. We are also allowed to drop a log. I am conserving everything for what is ahead. We follow Joe further through the woods to a lake.
We spread out around the edge of the lake and have to count off. I am number 21 which means blackjack in a casino, but I am in the woods of Vermon which 21 simply means stupid. There is a large spotlight on us and it feels like I am in some kind of prison. We are told to drop our gear, take out everything in our packs for inspection and then get into the water up to our chest. When we are all in the water something starts swimming towards us from the other side of the pond. Some say it is a snake, others a turtle and others a moth. It never swims close enough to me for identification but it clearly has some scared. We stay in the cold water for 15 minutes. Before getting out, we are required to fully submerge. Cold, very cold. I hate being cold. My body trembles and the chill running up my spine shakes my whole body. We stuff our gear back into our bags and are allowed to drop another log before we start marching down the mountain to the Aimee Farm.
We march to a very large barn – which is basically base camp for the remainder of the race. We will complete tasks and return here several more times. There is a large fire in the fire pit. I walk over and try to hold back the convulsive shivers which now come and go with greater frequency. I tremble and stare into the embers. Our support crews have been waiting here since 9PM. They were told we would return any minute but it is already past 1AM. Apparently they too are being tested.
We are told to hurry up with these last practice events so that we can get some rest before the official 3AM start. Mentally, I am still curious and amused. Physically, I am very cold and starting to fatigue. Heather feeds me some sandwiches we prepared the night before and offers a couple words of encouragement. I stare at her and shake my head side to side.
We are told to drop our back packs.
In front of us is 25 feet of mud traversed by barbed wire immediately followed by a large hill of dirt also strung with barbed wire. We are now instructed to crawl through the mud, over the hill and down the other side. We are told we will have to crawl through this obstacle three times – although there is not truth in these words, I cling to them. I crest the top of the hill and start crawling down the other side. The bushes are loaded with thorns – ouch. Some break off into my knees but I was fortunate enough to put on my work gloves and my hands are protected for the moment. We crawl down the hill on all fours and into a culvert which has more barbed wire strung over it. I am on my hands and knees in the creek. The water is actually warmer than I expect and the mud feels soft. My body welcomes the softness of the mud. We crawl to a corrugated metal drainage pipe and then into the pipe.
I think it is about 20 feet long. It is not soft like the mud, not inviting. I drop to my belly and pull myself along through the muddy water with my elbows. As I drop out of the pipe I find myself under a log bridge. I crawl through more nasty and then through another garden of briar and scratch to find myself back at the barn.
We are divided into teams of three. Each team is to mix three 5 gallon buckets of concrete. We are shown a pile of sand and given instructions on where to find the 90 pound bags of concrete. I grab three buckets and the other two on my team work on the other ingredients. I have to fetch water which means going back down to the culvert. I make two trips. We also put some large rocks into the mixture. The mixture is inspected and we pour all three buckets into what seems to be a foundation for a hot tub or some structure which will be adjacent to the barn. With my bucket empty I ask Andy what is next and he says, “the start of the race”. It is 2AM.
Heather and I make our way to the car. I am shaking and muddy to the core. I put a blanket down on my car seat and she drives me back to Casa Bella. I stumble out of the car and we walk up to the front door, take our shoes off, and shed some of our muddy clothing. We walk up two flights of stairs and Heather turns on a very hot shower. I spread my clothes out on plastic bags on the floor in the hallway. Tina wakes up and I don’t feel terrible until I see the way she is looking at me. I walk into the bathroom and in the mirror witness my state of being. Not pretty. I shower and absorb as much warmth as possible. Return to the room. Scrape together a second pair of race clothing. I didn’t prepare for this and have to make some decisions I hope I will not regret later in the day. I lie down on the floor and pull a blanket over me. It is 2:25AM. Tina sets her phone alarm for 2:45. Any other day, twenty minutes of sleep wouldn’t be worth it, but I am thankful to lay my head on the hard wood floor.
I don’t know what wakes me or if I was ever asleep. I hear Heather say, “it is time to go”. I get up. I put on dry clothing but don’t have a second pair of shoes so I step back into the wet and muddy trail runners.
It is 3AM when we arrive at Aimee Farm. There are people hustling about in all directions. I walk directly back over to the fire, step onto one of the rocks to draw some warmth into my feet.
We are instructed to get a 5 gallon bucket and load it with sand. My fully loaded number without my back pack is 207. This is the number on the nape of my neck. I weigh 165. My bucket load will be at least 42 pounds for the remainder of the race.
With the race officially started, we crawl back under the barbed wire with our backpacks and our new friend: the five gallon bucket loaded with sand. We are told that we will be weighed at random times during the race and if our weight is not the same as the number on our neck we will have to repeat our last task-- maybe something worse.
Squirming under the barbed wire is much more difficult with my pack and bucket. I get snagged several times and quickly discover the people who test the clothing at North Face haven’t done this type of testing. My bright orange techno, breathable, water resistant jacket is no match for the barbs. At one point a single barb has my shoulder and I can’t move. I try to back the barb out and it only sets the second barb deep into the fabric and the skin beneath it. I grab the jacket and give it a big old fashion yank. I am free; the fabric is shredded. Freedom doesn’t feel great but it is better than the alternative at this point. Down the back of the hill and into the culvert I crawl. I remind myself that this is the second of three times I have to do this. Ration is great short term medicine. I push my bucket through the pipe and we are led to the river.
The field is starting to spread out. Although there has already been some attrition, I am not thinking race but merely completion. I am focused on not earning the distinction of being the first person to die in a Death Division event. Let someone else be the famous donkey.
Moving downstream over very slippery rocks with my backpack and bucket full of sand is a great place to make a movie. The river is shallow for the most part which isn’t ideal. My feet smash into rocks trying to find traction. Several times I fall into the water. These are not gentle, ease-yourself-into-the-water falls; these are try-to-save-yourself-and-your-bucket, ankles-over-ears falls. Every so often gravity wins and I cannot tip toe on enough slippery rock to gain my balance and down I plunge again.
On one fall I manage to smash my knee directly into a rock. I stop. A deep scream goes through my Being like when you get hit up under the bearings and there is nothing to do but stand there and grimace with pain. I swear at myself for not being more careful and then remind myself to take it easy. The next step I fall completely backwards into the water. Bucket goes one way, me and the back pack go another. That’s what happens when you take it easy in the Death Division. My bucket starts to float downstream, otherwise I may have just stayed seated for a minute to question what I am doing. Furthermore, it is still dark out so each step is a mystery. I grab the bucket which now is half full with water. I dump out the water quickly and see some of my mandatory weight also fall into the river. More curses. I take a couple of river rocks to make up what is lost and then add a couple more for good measure. I am not going through this again – little do I know.
I emerge from the river and head through a field to a barn. Here we are to chisel our race number into marble. The catch – the number is not going to be chiseled into the marble but all the marble around the number is to be chiseled away at a depth of ¼ inch. Later I learn that this is called a relief – whoever named it that should be digging coal in hell forever. The technique is to put the sand from my bucket into the black plastic bag we were given the night before while carrying our stack of wood. This bag is to absorb the shock of me chiseling on the marble. If I crack the marble I start over. I pull out my Home Depot chisels and get to work among the other racers. My number is 745. It is not the easiest but also not the most difficult.
My true relief is that we have to carve our numbers in the rock instead of the profiles of our faces like Mt. Rushmore. In order to get my nose to scale in stone as hard as marble would have caused an irrecoverable delay in my time not to mention a very large number of broken tablets. Maybe next year we can carve the 10 commandments carry them to the top of the hill and all be holy – this must be easier than carrying the wooden cross up the mountain. Moses or Jesus?
I chisel away, adjusting my technique as I go. Marble is harder than I ever thought or maybe I am just weak and my talents crude. Several racers were here before me and finish quickly. I chisel harder, I am happy I picked a thick piece of marble because I can really bang on it. I ask a judge if it is enough. He says “done” and writes on the back of it. I ask Andy for my next task. Andy says “go back through the river and return to the farm”. I start to walk away and he says “and don’t forget your number”. I look at my large thick piece of work and shake my head. More curses. I load the “relief” into my backpack, grab my bucket, and begin to jog through the field. A volunteer offers: “Slow down. It’s going to be a long day”. Buddy, it’s already been a long day.
Back into the river and I start upstream. The darkness has given way to some light, but I barely notice. I can now see all the rocks in the river but it doesn’t help my footing. I fall several more times and make what feels like hamburger of my feet and shoes. When I get back out of the river and start walking towards Aimee Farm I am convinced my toenails have all been ripped off and are now stabbing my feet – ouch. I think I should take off my shoes and remove some of the rocks and my toe nails but I know that once they are off I will not be able to get them back on. I crawl back through the pipe, the culvert and under the barbed wire.
The next task is to take 20 large logs from the pile. 10 of them I have to saw in half; the other ten I need to quarter with an axe. I set up my 20 logs and get to work. The grill is working and they are serving eggs on toast. I alternate arms while sawing and also start sawing with my whole body to give my arms a break. When my arms no longer work I start quartering and then back to sawing. When both seem too difficult I go and get an egg sandwich. I take some time to eat this sandwich. It is the only pleasure I have had for hours and I savor each bit. Now that my stomach is active I realize I am very hungry and start eating a Clif Bar. I get back to work and put the other half of the bar on a log. I bury the axe into the next log and it absorbs the axe. I lift the axe handle high with the log attached and smash it onto the top of another log to free the axe head. Just prior to impact I see the remaining half of my Clif breakfast and then no more – the people who test Cliff bars don’t do that type of testing. For a brief moment I chuckle that I am the first person not a star trek mission to vaporize half a Clif Bar – Oh how I enjoy destruction.
We have to stack all this wood on a palette which we retrieve from a pile of palettes on the other side of the barn. I stack my wood. Heather shows up and offers me food and drink.
Next task, fill my bucket up with sand again. Go to the river, this time go upstream. There will be a house on the left with people in the yard, they will tell me what to do. Back under the barbed wire and through the culvert – routine at this point. I enter the river and within minutes my aching feet beg for me to go slow or stop. I try to be gentle in their already tendered state but it only unbalances me further and I fall again. The river is actually beautiful and on any other day would be a pleasurable soak. I trudge over the rocks – I make up new curse words.
The house on the left is a mile or two up. At this point both distance and time are distorted by pain, lack of sleep, bites and other factors. I walk out of the river and am instructed to dump my bucket of sand on the tarp -- cool. Now I have to roll in it – not cool--and then go lay down in the river for 5 minutes. I miss the roll in it part and go right over to the river. The ladies count down my time and I return to the yard. I am offered a bucket with pieces of paper in it. Each piece of paper has a number that corresponds to a log in the yard. I tell the volunteer to pick one for me. I would not be able to forgive myself if I chose a number which corresponded to a 2 foot in diameter log. He picks 29. I go over the search for 29, find it and drag it into the clearing. There are four other racers already sawing away. One has a very large log, another has a small log. Me and the fourth guy medium – about 12 inches in diameter.
There are 4 marks on the log where I am to saw through it. Before my saw touches the log a band of ferocious mosquitoes are on me. I alternate killing mosquitoes and cutting wood. I get much more satisfaction killing the insects but I don’t think it is a qualified task so I let them bite away and focus on the log. Maybe next year one of the tasks will be to kill 100 mosquitoes on your body. I finish one cut and a racer finishes his last and heads off up the road. I crack a joke or two with the other racers and spectators. I finish the other three cuts and ask for my next task.
Take my bucket and go up the road till I see a house on the left with people in the yard. I grab my bucket and walk for a couple hundred yards and then convince myself that I am a runner and as such should run to the next house. I start to jog and my legs let me know immediately that all the events leading up to this moment and the pack on my back are too much. I don’t listen and open my stride a bit convincing myself that if it is too much I will soon find myself on the ground. Ultra events are interesting for me as they make me more mentally flexible – a life lesson that comes through these types of experiences for me. I would rather glean them from a book but I haven’t been able to find that book yet. I come upon a barn on the left. There is the racer who is in first place and he is running while completing his task. “See I told you so” I tell my legs, it is possible.
This next task is to go around into the barn and fill my 5 gallon bucket with hay from the sheep stall, come back around the front of the barn, climb the 8 foot ladder and dump the hay into the dump truck – 30 times. I take off my backpack and jacket. I start to run between the stalls and the truck. The hay is moist and ripe. Each time I get to the top of the ladder and dump the bucket I throw the bucket back to the ground and climb down. This little act gives me some joy until while dumping the bucket on my trip number 19, I drop the bucket in the truck and have to jump into the back of the truck and retrieve it from the sheep-soiled hay.
I finish with this task and run back to the house on the river. Several hundred yards prior to reaching the house I run into Heather and she informs me that she will be joining me for the remainder of the event. I smile.
As we run back downstream to the farm she feeds me peanut butter and honey sandwiches and I worry that she is going to hurt herself on the rocks. We fumble around and laugh. It is all I can do to block out the foot pain. Back through the pipe, the culvert and under the barbed wire.
I am instructed to drop my backpack. I say thank you. I am then handed an egg. Mentally, I retract my thank you.. I have to carry the egg and now take all the wood from my palette and stack it neatly in a pile 50 yards away. Done.
Next task, go to a pile of trimmed pine trees and find two. Build a cross using no more than 8 wraps of duct tape. I go to the pile and spend too much time trying to find the smallest trees. I construct my cross. I fill my bucket again with 42 pounds of sand. I am to take the cross, the bucket, my back pack, my egg and my sorry ass under the barbed wire, down through the culvert, (get to skip the pipe because the cross won’t fit through), and then climb through a slippery stream bed to the top the mountain on the other side of the river. At this point if they had asked me to get that cross through the pipe, I would have thought of a way to do it.
I drag everything under the barbed wire, down the hill through the culvert and then try to lash the cross to my back with rope unsuccessfully. I end up hanging the bucket from the cross and carrying the cross over my shoulder. I use the rope to hold the cross together because if the 8 wraps of duct tape fail I have to return to the Aimee Farm for more tape. Heather is with me and Joe has decided that he should accompany us to the top of the mountain. Heather and Joe talk and I walk with my load behind them.
The trail goes right up a small creek fraught with slippery slabs of rock and overhead trees. Half way up Joe goes ahead and I start to travel very slowly. I walk a couple of steps and then rest. A couple more steps and rest again. Heather encourages me but we soon have to trudge through waist high stinging nettle and I become very frustrated. It is demoralizing me and I get testy. Twice I am almost pulled backwards by all my gear or the cross becoming stuck on an overhanging branch. Both would have resulted in a very long hospital stay or the first to die a Death Division event.
I begin to groan each time I pick up the cross. Then I hear noise coming from the woods adjacent to the stream. I look over my shoulder and here comes this guy who is taking 10 to 15 steps between each rest. I ask him if he wants to pass and he declines. When it becomes very apparent I am holding him up I step aside. He goes right past – WOW.
Instead of being inspired I find myself drained, tired and my legs are in a nettle fire that I can’t even describe. I trudge on for some unknown period of time until I hear Joe’s voice calling through the woods. He is calling “Chris” but he is actually looking for the person who was far ahead of me. He must have missed a trail marker and continued in the wrong direction. Joe is trying to get him back on the course.
The trail breaks from the stream and becomes single track. I move at a greater speed now but still can’t see the top the mountain.
When I do see the top I am moved inside, but still cannot gather much more strength. The last 200 yards is through briar and a small scree field. Meanwhile, Heather has asked me for my sister Carrie’s number and she apparently has dialed Carrie on her cell phone. Heather puts the phone to my ear and I mumble something. Or so I’m later told—I have no recollection of the call.
I reach the top. I am told that I have to dig a whole and plant my cross. I pull out my hatchet and get right to work. The guy who marched right past me with his cross is standing there watching me. His name is Stever and I am wondering why he isn’t onto his next task. He is taking a little break, eating pretzels and hydrating.
I plant the cross about a foot into the hard rocky soil, slam a couple of rocks to brace the base, check if for stability, walk over and force down a couple of pretzels. I have no appetite but allow myself for the first time to think about crossing the finish line. I look across to view the other mountain tops and for a minute I feel no pain and absorb the view. I pay for the lapse almost immediately as I hear the next task.
We have to go back down the mountain to a half-way point. There is a New England rock wall. The task is to carry my body weight in rocks from the wall back up to my cross. I can take as many trips as necessary. I look at Stever, he looks at me. We repeat the instructions as if they are not real or coming from some distant voice. We empty our packs and start back down the hill.
I stop and let Heather know she can stay on top of the mountain as we will be returning here several times. She just smiles and falls right in behind me. Her legs are visibly bitten, bruised and battered. There is blood and rash covering what is exposed and I am sure her sock covered ankles are destroyed like mine. She smiles. I smile. Down we go.
Stever is leading the way and I notice the single track is wet, rocky and hazardous in places. I didn’t worry much climbing up the trail because I was moving so slowly but now I will need to be sure about my footing or risk a nasty fall. We follow the signs to the rock wall but walk right past it and spend 10 minutes backtracking. We load our packs with rock and then gather additional rocks in our hands.
The walk back up the mountain is difficult but knowing we will need to make several trips brings additional complaints from my body. Stever leads the way and I follow closely on his footsteps. We reach the top and dump our load at the base of our respective crosses without much conversation other than a couple of grunts and groans trying to estimate the number of trips it will require. We look at our rock piles, shake our heads and head back down the mountain.
On the way down we run into a couple of cross-bearers heading up. They, perhaps thinking we are on our way down to the finish, smile and show signs of happiness. We exchange “good job” and continue. The sighting of the others quickens our step. We reach the rock wall again and increase our load. On the way up, we stop several times to rest and catch our breath. I try to keep my heart rate below 150 knowing the end is nowhere in sight and my legs are burning deeply with each step from the steepness of the climb. I focus on Stever’s heels and when I am leading I look directly at the ground in front of me. Heather continues to offer cheer and provide critical food and hydration provisions.
Stever mentions that all he wants is a Snickers bar and Heather volunteers to run all the way back down the mountain to base camp, find his cooler and retrieve the necessary item. She runs off and Stever and I continue our pilgrimage from our crosses to the rock wall.
Heather returns on our fourth and final ascent. She runs up on us with ease bearing food treasures. We wait till we drop our load and partake of the snacks before asking for our next task. Joe takes me over to my rock pile and lets me know that I would have had another full trip because while I was down picking up a load of rock one of the other racers was about to use some of the rocks I brought up from the wall to stabilize the base of his planted cross. Joe weighs our haul. Stever and I have now completed the task of hauling our body weight in rock to the top of the mountain. In addition, we learn some racers have started arguing about the race, the course and its integrity. Joe is visually troubled and we silently take in some of the drama. Looks like the Death Division is becoming a tribulation for its leaders as well as the racers – how fitting.
Next, we are to take our 5 gallon buckets down the back side of the mountain. Under another barbed wire arena to a stream. Fill the buckets with water from the stream and return. Stever, me and Heather are now given a guide/chaperone to make sure we don’t skip any of the obstacles. The guide has a dog named Buddha and the dog likes to run into our knees as it runs circles around our little party.
We go down to the stream without incident. The bugs are becoming even more aggressive and a single hit doesn’t even deter their biting. We start talking a bit since the trail is wide and there seems to be an end in sight. We get to the stream and actually have to slide down the inside of another pipe to the place we fill up our water. Stever goes through and gives a big Wahoo!! We fill the buckets and start our ascent. We are moving uphill when we come across Chris who was in first place by a large gap for most the day. He is heading down the hill with his head down. We spend a couple of minutes listening to how he spent 3 or 4 more hours dragging his cross across hill and dale before he abandoned the cross and returned to the Farm. I feel very bad for him. He would have taken first place but now he is not even going to finish. I think of how easy it is to lose focus or make a small mistake which has a major impact. We move on and up.
Joe has given very specific instructions for how full he expects the buckets to be with water. The trail is steep and untamed, almost immediately we begin to spill water. We discuss our dilemma. We decide that should cover the top of our buckets to avoid being told we have lost too much water and being sent back for another bucket full. I take off my jacket and use it to close off the top of my bucket. Stever only has a long sleeve shirt on. If he takes it off he will surely be eaten alive by the swarm of bugs which are currently using us as a buffet. He takes it off and wraps it around the top of his bucket – I grimace knowing the price he will pay.
We get to the barbed wire with our 50 lbs of water and Stever has a great idea. Instead of trying to drag our buckets while on our bellies under the uphill barbed wire field we will stand up between the barbed wire, move the bucket, lay down and crawl and then repeat this for the entire barbed wire field. This greatly lessens the possibility of dumping our bucket or dislocating our shoulders trying to move 50 lbs of water while on our bellies. Before we begin, I walk around the back of Stever and kill a dozen mosquitoes on his back. No words are spoken but I am not just killing them to help his sanity, these same mosquitoes would most likely have started their meal with him and then headed over for my sweet blood. The ones I crushed on him, I crush for both of us. I feel better. I drop into the mud on my belly and start crawling.
Heather and our guide continue chatting as if they are on a gentle stroll through Vermont’s rolling hills. Heather’s thigh is now showing a bruise the size of Beirut. She shares her story with us. While running down the mountain to get our snacks she lost her footing and took a NASCAR style crash. Looking at her leg, I am sure whatever she landed on or bounced off is also in bad shape.
We negotiate the barbed wire with our water load and it gives us some positive energy. We pick up the pace and start walking fast. We hear voices coming down the trail and it is the second group of runners. We consider taking our shirts back off our bucket so they will have to find their own creative advantage. We don’t. They pass by us and comment on the good idea. Once out of sight, we begin to jog with our 50 pound water buckets.
We reach the top of the mountain and are very proud that the water level in our buckets is close to the top. We approach Joe for verification but he is more focused on the race drama issues which are gaining momentum. Stever and I each I pour our bucket of water onto our planted crosses and body weight of rock. We turn and high five each other and then high five Heather. We listen to Joe struggle with race details. Stever, Heather and I wait patiently and then become impatient.
Stever and I chat and agree there is no reason to compete for first place. I am relieved and would have settled for second without regret. I believe Stever felt the same way and although he would have been a formidable competitor I like it much better that we have bonded during these difficult hours and will be able to finish together.
It is clear now that if nothing changes Stever and I will be the first two across the finish line. We have gained a solid margin from the others but we have also been standing around for some period of time and from other endurance experiences I know that I cannot afford to sit or remain unfocused for long. I am running on adrenaline alone and if my body is allowed a little rest I may not be able to restart it. We are on top of the mountain, the view is magnificent but no longer my focus. Joe walks over and has Stever and I fill up our 5 gallon buckets with our respective sand loads.
Joe dumps a several more rocks in each of our buckets as a parting gift and gives us a smile. Our remaining task is to get back to the finish line at Aimee Farm. I shake Joe’s hand and tell him I grateful for the adventure and challenge. I grab the handle on my bucket and haul it onto my back – a method of carrying it which isn’t ideal but works. Stever, Heather and I are off again down the mountain.
In relief that we are on the final descent, we begin talking and not paying attention to the trail markers. We become disoriented and find ourselves at several trail crossings. We follow a trail downhill for about 500 yards and still don’t recognize anything. Heather says that we should go back up another trail which will definitely get us to the main trail. Stever and I look back up the hill. Something deep inside of me refuses any suggestion if it involves an ascent. Stever and I decide that going straight down the mountain will eventually put us back in the river. From there we can decide which way to go.
Time is relative and Stever and I are becoming alarmed that we may be passed by the other racers. Whether I’m first or second place means little, but fourth or fifth place would haunt me. Heather is about 100 feet away walking up the trail and trying to convince us to follow. Without delay, and in unison, Stever and I drop right off the trail edge into the bush. We are now running down the side of the mountain with 50 plus pounds of dirt and rock in our buckets on our backs. We jump over some fallen trees and run right through others. We are frantic and worried that we will run into the other racers and have a death match finish on our hands.
We trip several times but never completely fall. At times I am running through waist high ferns and know the consequences of a rock or fallen tree that I cannot see – hospital and months of therapy. We run. Heather catches up with us and she can’t believe that we are bushwhacking full speed down the mountain.
We hit the river and can’t recognize enough in either direction to make a decision. More panic. Stever recognizes a field to the left and we jump in the river. Ouch, my feet on the rocks again. I move slowly and painfully. I won’t be able to stay in the river long given the condition of my feet. In addition, we are in a hurry and the slippery rocks make a fall at this point inevitable and possibly crippling. Heather advocates we travel down the river. I head for the other shore and splash right up the steep river bank. I can smell the finish but don’t know which way the wind is blowing – not a good feeling.
We head downstream and start running again through the woods. I run across a large decoy of a Canadian goose. Heather is moving down the river and trying to coax us back in but I am in full panic mode. We travel for close to a mile before seeing something we recognize. We look across the river trying to determine if the other racers have passed us while we were lost off course. We start to jog up the quarter mile trail to the Farm. We slow to a walk and realize if they have passed us we will not be able to catch them in the remaining distance. We also continue to look over our shoulder for the whole quarter mile knowing that if we were sighted it would motivate the other racers.
Back through the culvert and ditch. Stever is leading the way and I get stuck in the culvert. I have to drop my pack and my bucket seems heavier than ever. My body is now water logged and I stop for a second to rest. I giggle. I am stuck in a drainage pipe – my mother warned me when I was a child that I could get stuck in these things and here I am. Thanks Mom. Stever is out and waits on the other side of the culvert. He could easily head up the hill without me, go under the barbed wire and finish first, but instead he waits. A spectator sees him and begins calling to the others at the finish line. Stever ducks down in the weeds in order to not attract attention. I drag myself through the remainder of the pipe. We climb the hill together. We are relieved to hear that we are still leading and soak in the moment. Then onto our bellies, dragging our packs and 5 gallon buckets to the finish line.
Andy greets us as we stand up and we are awarded with applause and some cheers. I hug Stever, I hug Heather. I drink and eat pizza. We talk to some observers and are amazed at our own stories. We receive the Death Division hammer awards and are very honored. We also receive necklaces which are hand made and very very cool in a Death Division way.
I feel good, but within 15 minutes my body starts to stiffen and then shake. I eat more pizza but the shaking takes over. We chat a bit more with others and then I tell Heather that if she doesn’t get me into a warm shower soon I may expire. My race is over but her support role is not. We exchange numbers with Stever and I give Andy my rock chisels telling him to find a good home for them. I look back over the scene, the barbed wire, the stacked wood, the fire pit and the mountain. I am very grateful to finish and think of the others still on the mountain. When asked if I will do it again next year reply “maybe”.
Monday morning, I wake to soft sheets and climate control in my apartment. I am a very different person than the one who entered the Pittsfield General Store Friday night. Physically, my neck, waistline and ankles are swollen with insect bites. My right foot is deeply purple with bruise and I ache in places a body should never ache. I have lost five pounds over the weekend from the Vermont Woods Diet. Each of these small payments, a reminder of my weekend spent living without limitations.
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