May Day Night Ride

This Thursday is May Day, May 1, and it happens to be my birthday.  I'll somehow, through no talent of my own, have amassed 3 dozen years on this planet and survived.  Just goes to show that natural selection is really not even a thing anymore.  

On that subject, a big night ride is most certainly on for Thursday night as long as whatever this weather pattern we're about to observe in the next 3 days doesn't wash us out into The Atlantic Ocean. Which appears to be 50/50.  I like those odds.  

Shooting for some action on the mountain, weather and trail dependent.  Likely a 3,000 foot climb or so, beers and birthday cake at the top, and then a long descent back to reality.  Meeting somewhere near Blue Ridge School at 8 PM.  2.5 hours, I'm guessing, though if you lack the legs you could easily sneak out with less.   But, as Tesla professed, you gotta have the heart.

Let me know if you're in and I'll get you the coordinates.  

The clock only runs one way: up.  

Thunderstruck.

Thunderstorms today.  It's like Spring is holed up in a cheap hotel with his old mistress Winter, sweating out the details, but Summer is getting close and she wants in.


AC/DC.  It's starting to get a little sad.  

I saw AC/DC in concert exactly once, and that was in Paris in the very pivotal, shaky year of our lord, 2000.  At first, I was thrown off and a little unsettled that a greasy rock event like AC/DC might not be able to muster the right amounts of destruction in a city as chic as Paris.  But I was mistaken, and the greaser rock fans and hardmen of the generation immediately before mine came out and stood before me with a real sense of immediacy, and they shot cannons on stage, and swung around on Hell's Bells, and generally annihilated the very face off the place  At one point, right as they started into Thunderstruck, I actually was a little scared because the sheer pandemonium of it all had reached such a level that it seemed like the venue itself was going to come apart.

The morning after the Paranormal last year, I was milling about cleaning some things up, and I looked up and I saw a zombie lurching across the yard, falling apart, shuffling and crippled but still obviously bent on violence in the normal way that undead things are, and I was frightened into paralysis for a moment.  A second later, I realized it was only Ian, and he was egregiously hungover, and he needed help pushing the bike-lab van out of the muck that had formed.  Relief.  Sort of the same as the relief I felt when that AC/DC show didn't destroy the universe.  I'm glad to have been there, in both cases, but I'm still shaken.

I mention those two things in parallel because of the resemblance I see in them today: it's actually kind of nice to not be dead yet (or undead) but to no longer have to worry about maintaining a semblance of ferocity either.
I guess what I'm saying is that I want to retire.  The eventuality of no longer having to give a shit is, quite honestly, something I was born to do.  It has not been a good week.

shoulda' been a cobbler

Now then, since it's the day before Foxfield, I feel I need to remind you, the masses (all 31 of you), not to ride on Garth Road tomorrow.  Or Millington.  Or Reas Ford or Woodlands or pretty much anything out that way.  If you do, you're making a bet, and it's a disconcerting one.

I've been wrong about so many things.  Zombies, careers, and aging rock bands to name just a few.  But I'm right about this:  Ride East tomorrow.

Or, I reckon, go ride in Tennessee with the rest of the 100 miler crew.  Still risky.  Still a big effort.  Probably about the same amount of puke in the road as Foxfield.  Similar on so many levels.

Or do what I do these days, and just ride after everyone else in the universe has gone to sleep.  It occurred to me, last week, that I had been for four really solid rides.  3 of them were after 9 PM, and one was on the trainer at the gym.  I'd actually gone 9 days without riding in the daylight.  C-ham mentioned that he thought he might have a moonburn on the back of his neck.  In a way, I find a lot of joy in that.

One thing I love about night riding: bike repairs while night riding.  You're still mountain biking, after all, but you can't see as well.  Something about those nighttime fixes always makes me smile.  Maybe it's the dexterity required to fix a chain via headlamp.  Maybe it's the budweiser.   In the spirit of darkness, I'll drop a few photos here and get off the air.

It is never too late.

Up, up, up.

Ride Your Bike.

A month away from the blog tends to go pretty fast when you ride as slowly as I do these days.  It's true that the clock only runs one way.  It's especially true that the longer you're out there, the faster it gets away from you.  But I'm punching back in here for a brief moment with some wisdom from the youth of today, and it goes like this:  

You ever go riding with one of those guys that just won't shut up and pedal?  Wants to talk gear.  Mess with his tire pressure.  Tell you all about his job.  Infuriating.  

RIDE YOUR BIKE.  

Brevity.  It's the secret to so many things.  Shut up and ride for a change.  

Up, up, up.  

250

Thank God you don't get your news here.  Otherwise, you'd just now be finding out that CRCer, BRC employee, and local hardwoman racer, Mary Syrrist, was hit by a truck on Tuesday morning, and she's in the hospital.  Which, you probably don't need a news source to tell you anyway, sucks a whole lot.

I am pretty out of touch; I don't ride road bikes anymore, and I don't actually know Mary.  But I do know 250 and Owensville, the intersection where she was hit.  It was a poorly conceived intersection, even 25 years ago before there was the kind of East-West traffic between Charlottesville and Crozet that there is today.  In my earliest memories of that crossing, I'm in the back seat of my neighbor's dad's car, on the way home from a middle school dance out in Crozet, and I'm, I guess, 10 years old, and we're listening to the radio and goofing off in the back seat, and it's dark out, and there's a woman standing between crumpled hunks of steel and broken glass on the north side of the intersection, bleeding.  I thought I saw a turn signal, she screams.

Development and traffic, of course, haven't made things any better out there.  A few years later, just one intersection to the West of that spot, at Tillman and 250, my buddy pulled out in front of a pa-diddle, totaling his brand new Civic and damn near getting himself killed.  One intersection to the East and a year after that, my friend Todd hit an 8-pointer doing 55 mph in his old Volvo, and neither of them - the deer or the Volvo - ever ran again.

So it was with real suspicion that I listened to cyclists, the year I moved back to Virginia, when they estimated that the safest way out of Charlottesville via bike was 250.  How could that be?  The answer, sadly, is it's the lesser evil.  Try riding from town on Garth, Avon, Earlysville, Old Lynchburg, or most other roads out of town, or - God forbid - 20 north or south, and you'll think to yourself that you'd rather be on 250 right about now.  Traffic volume aside, at least 250 has a wide shoulder.

If you pick the right route through these roads, you can ride a metric century or so past a dozen markers, maybe more now, mostly flowers and crosses and trinkets and notes, and the solemness of such a ride feels a little bit like you're rolling through a cemetery, except that those markers aren't graves, they're where shit actually happened, and you're standing on the spot where lives changed and ended.

I love road bikes.  Something about the sleek lines, the weight and feel, the emphasis of stiff-yet-smooth design in most modern carbon frames; these are beautiful machines.  And road riding, between the self-reliance and the sheer speed of it, is maybe the nearest approximation that we humans can get to actually flying.  But safe?  No.

Someone told me that there are, today, 3 accidents/month at the intersection of Owensville and 250.  West of there, I imagine that number goes way down, as traffic tapers and the roads become decidedly more rural.  But safe?  No.

Dale Earnhardt.
Tom Simpson.
Kristof Goddaert
Scud.
Speed ain't safe.  Never has been.  And really, innovate however much you want, but it can't be.

But safER?  We can do that.
There is progress right here at the local level.
Writing your congressman.  Signing petitions.  Wearing your helmet.  I really do believe these things can make a difference.

Alternatively, you can go the other way and take the fight - head on - to one questionably piloted truck at a time.  Sorry as I am, I do hope Mary put a dent in that son of a bitch.

Most importantly, and even if you don't believe things can change, you can still make a difference for Mary and her family right now, during what I imagine is a really tough time.  I'll trail off here with this message from all around fast lady and do-gooder, Sarah Gran.

Ride safe, and do what you can.

From: Sarah Gran

Friends,

As many of you have heard, this week Mary Syrrist was in a serious bike accident and hospitalized at UVa.  She will be going back home soon but her injuries, which include several broken bones, will take a while to heal.  The most common response I’ve heard from people when talking about this is a desire to help in some way.

One way you can help is to sign up for bringing a meal to them.  I’ve set up an account on Meal Train which makes it pretty easy to pick a calendar day and commit to bringing Mary, Chris and their two kids a meal.  Just use the following link to sign up:

  http://www.mealtrain.com?id=md7ejum96kot

Additionally, they could use some help in the following:

• Childcare for Max (age 4) or Sylvia (almost 2).  Max is in school M-F 9:00-5:00 so the most help is needed for Max on the weekend and evening hours.  Sylvia anytime during the day as she is not in school or daycare right now
• Diapers and baby wipes: Size 5
• House Cleaning and Laundry:  Please coordinate with me if you are interested in helping with household tasks or paying for a cleaning service
• Relay Foods Gift Certificate  https://www.relayfoods.com/

Please feel free to share this email with others who may be interested in helping.

I am available to answer any questions you may have about what the family needs.  

On behalf of Mary, Chris, Max and Sylvia, thank you for your continued support during this difficult time.

Sarah Gran

Until there's sun, at least there's the moon.

Sunny days and warm temperatures have returned, but take heed; Ol' man Winter giveth and he taketh away.  And this Winter, he's a greedy bastard.  The Worm moon - the last full moon of winter - will be high in the sky for a night ride tonight (though not technically peaking until Saturday.)  And C-ham, though many times frostbitten and hypothermic, still has one good, frozen, 20-something degree night ride left in him before we bid adieu to this winter and move on into Spring (or amputate a few of his toes.)

So let's do it.  The forecast is for clear skies and 29 degrees at 8 PM.  Shooting for 1.5 hours of Frozen, snow free, Flo Lakes singletrack.  Precise meeting location TBD, so if you're in, say so, and I'll get you the coordinates and pack you some extra socks.  

Up, up, up.  

Melt, you big bastard. Melt.

Up, down, up, down down...

Not much in the way of riding and blogging here over the last few weeks, mostly because there hasn't been much in the way of riding or blogging.   The non-riding forces of the world have conspired against me, a few of those forces being:

Snow
Cold
Illness
Travel
UVA hoops on TV
Trail work
Regular Work
The Boomtown Metropolis known as Toledo,Ohio
More Work
And now, the most recent saboteur, a hurt back.

I'll spare you the long-winded explanation (I would likely get out of breath), but basically, this is my current state of exercise and fitness:



But, enough of all that, I'm turning the proverbial corner and swinging a leg back over the bike today, tomorrow, and hopefully Saturday, provided I don't tear something and spill my stuffings all over the floor.  Which is 50/50.

Other people, though, have certainly been on it.  Qwadsworth, in particular not only has his winter shit together on the bike, but his writing has come a long way as well.  So tune in over there, I beg you, at least for a little while so that Winnie the Pooh and I can attempt to cobble some semblance of fitness back together before it's "race season," whatever that is.

Because a boy's gotta have a role model, and let's face it, his options around the house are a little limited these days.  

Notably, on the subject of racing, this just in from Marky Mark:
The O’Hill Meltdown is March 22^nd: https://www.bikereg.com/net/ohill-meltdown There are two open categories that do not require a USAC license. All other categories require an annual or day of license. Really hope to see many locals out there!  Also, I've developed a really terrible case of crabs, and I'm looking for home-remedy ideas so I don't have to face my doctor again.  Hit me up off list if you have any questions.  

So, if you've got the early season legs, or some gasoline, there's that opportunity for you, which is nice.

Also, as you may not know but probably do and will be annoyed that I'm re-posting this here because you've seen it about 100 times already, the bike swap is this weekend at BRC.  You'll note that they called it a "velo" swap over there on big blue, which is French for "insanely cheap, solid gear, so don't miss out."

The French.  Love them or hate them, but you gotta admit: that creep can roll, man.

Eye on the prize, sports fans, however small that prize may be.

Up, up, up.