On some good advice that these days of winter are for relaxing a bit and letting the muscles grow supple, I spent last week riding to the Metro, taking the Red Line downtown, and reading my book for a little while in the morning and evening. I figured it wouldn’t be as frantic over the holidays as I remembered, and it wasn’t. In fact, it was pleasant enough that I’m doing it again this week and reading some more. This is the first time in two years I’ve taken the Metro to work instead of riding my bike. It feels a little bit like I lost something, but that something might have been a chip off my shoulder rather than anything important.

Other than that… what’s to say? It’s not that life hasn’t been interesting, after all the holidays have been a swarm of family and friends and events and food, the kids astonish and nourish me in new ways just about every day, there’s some bike and non-bike projects in the works, and there’s no shortage of current events to ponder aloud (or at least to ignite vehement reactions). I just haven’t been interested in writing about any of it.

Unless I become suddenly inspired, this right here’s the year-end wrap-up:

• I should finish the year with about 4050 miles and 131035 not-feet* of climbing.
• Number of rides is a less precise stat, because I’ll list a ride like “Farmers’ Market and Back” as a single ride, whereas the ride to work and the ride home are two, both because they’re broken up by a whole day of sitting and because it makes it easier to use different routes. The number of rides I’ve recorded for the year stands at 558, but there’s a few days left yet to cross 560 for the year.
• My weekly averages came out to approximately 10 3/4 rides a week for 77 miles and change. The biggest week was 189 miles and a little over 11400 not-feet of climbing, which was the week in August of the Livestrong Challenge. That month was my biggest with almost 625 miles.
• I put over 1575 delightful miles on Cledus (the Long Haul Trucker) this year, which is pretty cool. Cooler still was that Nigel, my Trek 930 based Xtracycle, racked up 1925 miles, and logged over 61k not-feet to Cledus’ 54k. No wonder I had to replace his Fat Franks this year, they got all wore out from kicking everyone’s ass all the time.
• I’m not sure how many miles we put on the car this year, but I’m almost positive it was well under 4k miles. Gotta verify it, but that’ll definitely deserve its own toast on New Year’s Eve.

* MapMyRide.com’s elevation statistics are horribly inaccurate, I’m certain that a year’s worth of GPS data from the same rides would yield an entirely different number. But since MMR was my method of measure throughout the year, it is at least consistently inaccurate. Or it’s not.

So there’s the tale of the tape. Pretty good year! I don’t know if I’ll beat those numbers next year, or if I’ll keep numbers for that matter, but this was worth doing and knowing. Even though it sure felt like I was piling on miles before and during the century, those only accounted for 500-600 of the total. The vast majority of the miles I rode this year were just to work and back, with a regular ride to the market on Saturdays. Pity the cyclist that thinks of those miles as “junk”!

Other things to remember and be thankful for this year:

• I lost a good bike. I miss you, buddy.
• I gained a couple more. I love you all.
• The Bike Clinics at Mt. Pleasant Farmers’ Market (and then at Bloomingdale, 14th and U, and H St.) were incredibly successful this year, more than anyone could’ve guessed. Estimates indicate we may have helped as many as 800 people get their bikes back on the road, and that’s pretty darn cool.
• Every day my wife proves to me how smart I was to marry her, and my children demonstrate to me that there’s nothing that could have adequately prepared me for the experience of raising children.
• And then there’s y’all. Or yinz. Or youse guys. Whatever ya call yourselves, thanks for tuning in. I’d probably write this stuff down somewhere, and bookmark these Internet oddities, but it’s much more satisfying to talk to you than just to myself, and there’s less annoying reverb.

I think that’s enough to call it a year, don’t ya think? Feel free to drop a comment about something awesome or not so awesome that you did, or were just in the path of, this year. And when it gets close to midnight on Thursday night, when I raise a glass to the end of this year, consider it hoisted in your direction.

Cheers!

Honk my hooter, look at what happened last night on the ride home from work.

I was just reading a post from a normally indefatigable friend of mine who’s struggling with motivation to keep racing. My guess is that, rather than a surrender, this is a small crisis of conscience that will burn off whatever doubts she has about taking it to the next level, because she’s a bad-ass and everything she’s written about it thus far has been excitement and fire and joy.

But it did get me thinking about my relationship to cycling, and the things I’ve accomplished this year, and where I want it to go from here. I’ve logged about 4000 miles this year, most of them commuting miles, but at least a thousand of them were training for and riding my first century back in August.

As I began training for that ride, I’d thought I might be taking my first step towards getting into serious road riding. I put in pre-dawn miles and went after hills and thought about how heavy my bike was and how thick my tires were. I ate little blocks of gummi caffeine and sugar, occasionally found someone else going fast to trade drafting duties with, and wondered if I should get serious and trade the pedal clips for real cycling shoes and clipless pedals. I thought about joining a club and riding a featherweight bike in a paceline on Saturday mornings, and derided myself for having a triple crank.

Some things have become clear to me since then, most notably that performance road riding’s not my cup of tea. Occasionally I take on something that seems big and challenging out of curiosity or to prove something to myself, or in the case of the Livestrong Challenge because I wanted to do something good and difficult. But the truth is that I just don’t have much of a passion for pushing the envelope, my competitive fire doesn’t burn all that hot, and that anything that starts feeling like Serious Business loses my attention. I’m bliss-driven.

For example, I’ve gone weeks without making it out to a disc golf course, but I’ll still get up at 5:00 a.m. a few times a week to head out to a field with a stack of Rocs or Teebirds for an hour or so before work. There’s a peripheral motivation to become a better disc golfer and a stronger competitor, but that’s not really why I do it. I do it because I love throwing discs, I love shaping lines in the sky and watching the disc follow them. If there were no courses nearby, I’d still get out to a field because I love the snap of the throw and the shape of the flight, and I experience a lot of perfect moments doing it.

The perfect moments I have on bikes are blissful and joyous, very few of them have involved much suffering. The best rides I’ve had this year have been on partly cloudy days in the mid-60’s, flying down brick alleys on 60mm balloon tires with my hands wrapped around a pair of Albatross bars. I love riding my Xtracycle with my daughter to her school. I love wrenching on our bikes and building wheels and tuning drivetrains until they’re quiet and smooth. I love bunny-hopping and off-street bike trails and saying Good Morning to crossing guards on my way to work and cranking and rolling and flowing with traffic and breathing the air and having nothing but the sky above me the whole time. My brass bell is one of the prettiest tones I can think of. Sometimes, I like to go slow.

There’s a hundred things that make me smile about being on a bike, but there’s not a single one of them that a heart-rate monitor would make any better for me. Sometimes I wish that weren’t the case. Sometimes, I think it would be awesome to be driven to achieve peak performance, to measure my effort by my perseverance and endurance, to conquer and win. And I enjoy watching folks with those qualities struggle and grind and endure, I’m amazed by their superhumanity (as well as their humanity) and take delight in their performances. But the only measures of my cycling experience that really motivate me are grins and laughs.

I realized that I wasn’t dissatisfied because my Long Haul Trucker was the wrong bike for how I wanted to ride, but rather that I wasn’t doing the kind of riding I truly love doing (for which the Trucker actually is perfect). I put the fenders back on, the clips came off the pedals (though I may pick up a pair of these or these for traction), and it’s getting mustache bars at the earliest opportunity.

I also picked up a beautiful Paramount Series 3 earlier this year, and had plans to outfit it for road riding. But I think I’m going to put riser bars, platform pedals, and 28’s on it instead. I may not have room for a serious road bike in my stable, but I can make room for a zippy street bike. Especially if it’s fun to ride.

Ever wonder what it would look like if God rode to work on a bike?

(h/t to the Sweeney to the Stevil)

Here’s a hot tip for those of you with the old-style Xtracycle Free Radicals that don’t have the strap anchors. Xtracycle has some “Classic” Freeloaders, the ones which strap around the frame rather than buckling to anchors, laying around the warehouse and they’re blowing them out for $39/ea. Buy both sides and save a cool hundred bucks!

Sylvie’s super retro Hypalon Freeloaders have been on life support for a while, so I was delighted to take a pair off their hands. And my, doesn’t she look handsome in her new duds. Mm mm mm.

Twilight comes late enough to feel like summer, but the waning daylight is evident, and it’s dark when we put the kids to bed. The transition from summer to fall, however, hasn’t been so much a cross-fade as a knife-switch. It took a while for summer’s dog days to arrive, finally coming in August, but in the span of the last 3 days, it’s gone from sleeping-on-top-of-the-sheets hot to it’s-a-great-day-for-football mild. I half expected to come outside this morning, watch every leaf on our street turn red in thirty seconds, and crash to the sidewalk all at once.

This year’s three-month bivouac at the pool is winding down, and once again the last days inspire both panic and relief. The pool itself is a delight, but it’s the grounds and the community that keep us in its orbit all summer long. We let the kids off leash to run with their toddler cohort, cook on community grills while our kitchen remains cool and un-thrashed, get to enjoy a beer (and sometimes more than one), and mingle with our friends in a pleasant meadow. We don’t even have to arrange to meet anyone. I mean, where else are they gonna go?

On the other hand, it tends to dominate the season. In early June, The missus was frantically trying to get the kids and I out the door. I hesitated, looked back, expressed my need to do something about our unfit-for-habitation living room and said I’d meet them later. “What are you talking about?” she said in disbelief, “The pool’s open! We’ll clean in September! Let’s go!” So, in that sense, we’re looking forward to blowing the dust of our project list and seeing what else there is to do.

One big project did get off the ground, though. The Wife’s other gig has been kick-ass this season. We’ve been blessed with berries and peaches and bread and all sorts of delicious local produce. She also came into this season hell-bent to realize a vision, a bike clinic, staffed with volunteers, who’d teach people about bike maintainence, do some repairs, and generally encourage people to get their bikes on the road. I have to admit, I was skeptical that it could work (and leary of being sucked into it since I already take over the kids on Saturday mornings while she’s market-managing). But lo and behold, smart, motivated people jumped right in, got folks signed up, and the results have been stunning. I worked one Saturday with 2-4 other volunteers, and didn’t stop from the opening bell until an hour after market closed. We’d helped over 30 people tune their bikes, and several of those folks have turned around and become volunteers since then. Meanwhile, some enterprising yoots down ’round the Bloomingdale Farmers’ Market have started up their own bike clinic, which we stopped by on Sunday morning, and it was totally hoppin’.

I gotta say, I’d be proud just to know my wife if I wasn’t lucky enough to be married to her.

Cledus and I had an incredible summer together, logging over 1700 miles and climbing almost 60,000 feet since Memorial Day, bringing my totals for the first two-thirds of the year to over 3100 miles and over 100,000 feet of climbing. Our many miles together culminated in my first ever century, which was far and away the baddest-ass thing I’ve done this year, and raising money and riding for Team Fatty made it even more meaningful. I’ll likely do more centuries, but I’ll always regard that one with a special fondness.

So into fall we go. With school starting, children to transport, backpacks to haul, and layers to carry, the swift-strike of a commute I make on Cledus will be replaced most mornings with the happy rolling melody of Nigel’s fat, creamy tires chewing up bricks, asphalt, and gravel with gusto. To tell you the truth, it’s hard to be sad about the transition when they both put such a big grin on my face. And while I’ve certainly enjoyed racking up road miles, the completion of the big ride and the crisp shift in seasons will mark a return to a more balanced palette of adventures. I’m itchy to throw plastic at metal, which I mostly gave up for training, and longtail camping trips up the C&O are definitely in order now that mosquitoes are no longer part of the experience and there’s enough snap in the air to make the first cup of coffee extra awesome.

Speaking of longtail projects, we’ve convinced more of our friends to take the plunge! They asked what it would take to make it happen, I pointed them towards a beautiful mid-90’s Trek 930 being sold nearby, they wisely jumped on it and pulled the trigger on an Xtracycle kit. And, get this, I’ve got the green light to make an appointment with the powder coater to make the whole rig Taxicab Yellow. (I’m trying to track down checkerboard decals, too, let me know if you’ve got a line on ‘em.) It’s going to be beautiful, and hopefully we’ll get it on the road quickly so we can get them out on the trail sooner than later. They’re excited. I’m excited for ‘em.

All this makes it sounds as if I’m done with road miles. Not so! In fact, another transition is in store as we ride into autumn. I had to face the fact that it’s just not the time or place for me to own a kick-ass single-speed mountain bike. I don’t ride singletrack here, as much as I think I’d like to, so the 4one5 has been relegated to the occasional urban assault, which consists mostly of delighting myself with bunny hops off speed bumps and tearing up the neighbors’ lawns. It needs to be on real trails, wearing knobbies, eating dirt. Meanwhile, I’ve developed an itch for a real road bike. Nothing too fancy, mind ya, but something a little more lithe and a little less linebacker than the Cledus. We’ll have to see what happens.

There’s one more big sunny barbecue left before it’s time to get the long sleeves and hoodies out (or, in the case of my San Francisco brethren, to put them back and get ready for things to warm up). And then it’s harvest and costumes and turkeys and reindeer from there on out.

So whatcha got planned for the end of summer?

When I was packing clothes and tools and nutritional blobs, I almost left without a book. The family wasn’t going to be joining me, and I rarely see a movie these days that doesn’t star Julie Andrews or come from Pixar, so I was looking forward to settling in at the hotel and consuming something with guns and swearing and car chases and whoopie-makin’. Unfortunately, I arrived at my hotel Saturday night to find that my room’s television was malfunctioning. If I hadn’t brought the book, Id’ve been stuck with War of the Worlds (the Tom Cruise version) on network television, with maximum commercial interruptions. I was a little disappointed at first, but after reading for an hour straight I realized that it’s no less rare for me to spend a solid block of time, uninterrupted, immersed in a good book. The linguini was pretty good as well, and the beer was delicious. Beer’s pretty dependable that way.

Rollin’ Out with Jason and Philly Jen

I was up at 4:28 a.m. on Sunday, two minutes ahead of my alarm clock. I got dressed, slammed some juice, joyfully spalmed up, washed my hands, and headed to the Doubletree to meet the morning rollout squad. Thirty of forty of us were assembled out front, including one intrepid rider on an Xtracycle, much to my delight.

Spotting Philly Jen was easy, she was simultaneously effervescent and in-charge (which was no mean feat at dawn’s early light). She also noticed that I’d forgotten to put the provided pink Team Fatty ribbons on my wrist and helmet. That’s right, I got busted for failing to wear enough flair. Again. Before long, The Man himself came out, looking a little dazed but happy to be there. Everyone clicked into their pedals, and sixty snicks later we were rolling the back roads of Blue Bell, PA towards Montgomery County Community College.

Ben and Fatty Arrive at Livestrong Central

The Philadelphia Livestrong Challenge filled up completely, 6,500 riders and runners raised over $3.2 million for cancer research, prevention, and survivor support. By the cut-off date for tallying recruitment goals and contributions, Team Fatty Philly had 197 members (over 170 of which were signed up for the 100-mile ride) and raised over $270,000. Team Fatty Austin has raised over $129,000, and still has two months to go. It’s humbling and gratifying to have been part of such an outstanding effort by so many wonderful people.

We Are Legion

We packed the starting chute around 7:30, and hit the road at 8:00. I was pumped with adrenaline, fueled on pasta and gel, and rode the rollers over the first few miles of the course like I had wings. I knew I couldn’t hold that kind of pace for the whole ride, and that hard work lay ahead, but I was filled with energy and enthusiasm, and coffee and sports drinks. I covered the 9 miles to the first Power Stop station with a quickness and made haste to the porta-potties. Relieved, I got back on the road and settled into a comfortable cadence.

Ridin’ Along at a Medium Pace

Before the ride, I’d had doubts about whether or not Cledus was going to be up to the task. He’s built for loaded touring from Surly’s 4130 CroMoly steel, solid and comfortable. But he’s not light, his handling’s more stable than swift, and 32c tires on him pass for “skinny”.

My doubts were totally unfounded, he was a perfect steed, rode like he was on rails. On the rollers, I’d crank and tuck on the downhills, let Cledus carry the bottom, pedal easy and downshift as I came up to the next crest, and push a little to the top. Someday I may be strong enough to attack a 15% grade on a road bike, but this time, on these hills, I was grateful to have a triple crank and I didn’t walk once. The steel frame, long wheelbase, and solid touring tires made descents easy and filled with joy. I spent a lot of time at 35-40 mph, hit 42.5 mph at least once, and I swear the faster I went, the more at home that bike felt.

I imagine I’ll put together something sportier and closer to a real roadie at some point, but I’ll have that Trucker for the rest of my life if I have anything to say about it. What a sweet, sweet ride that bike is. I’m a lucky guy.

Pennsylvania’s Countryside’s Real Purdy

The early miles were pretty easy. I hit every stop for short rests, filled up on sports drinks, PBJ’s and fruit, and chatted with the volunteers. At around the 28 mile mark, we hit our first really good hill, a 600 foot climb over about 5 miles, with a 150 descent in the middle to break it up. This wasn’t the big one, but it was big enough to put me into low gears for a long time. A line of us would climb and climb, pass a few people walking their bikes, and every so often see someone sitting on the side of the road massaging a knot from a cramped quad or hamstring.

That’s Some Good Work Right There

We hit the top and dropped quickly into a long descent with a couple short steep climbs down to the plains around Pikeville. I was rocketing down one of these glorious roads when I looked up to see a cyclist waving his arms and making signs to slow down. I yelled back to slow, grabbed a couple handfuls of brakes, and came around the slightly wet, hay-bale-softened corner at a cautious speed as a couple other cyclists were assisting someone who’d clearly gone perineum-over-elbows over the guard rail. The downed rider looked muddy and stunned, but conscious and not bloody. Hearing the ambulance coming up the hill was both reassuring and chilling, I kept rolling with a cautious hand on the brakes the rest of the way down.

Headed down into the Woods

I got nervous as I closed in on the 50 mile mark. The map showed the hill heading up to Landis Store rising slowly, then climbing 600 feet or so over the course of a mile. For all the training I’d done leading up to the ride, I hadn’t done anything remotely like that in D.C. and had no idea what to expect. The road started tilting, but at first it wasn’t any harder than the climb back 20 miles back, and even had a few easy descents. Then, around mile 55, the road got steep, and then it went straight up. The heavy parts were 12-20% grades, but every so often they’d mellow to a 5% grade that felt like heaven for a little while. There was bygawd sufferin’, lots of it to go around.

I got out of the saddle, looked up, visualized a long steep staircase, found a climbing rhythm, and ground it out. Every fifth of a mile or so there’d be a sign with a you can do it! or a not much farther! to keep us going, and I appreciated every one of them. About three-quarters of the way up, one of the volunteers in a Devil outfit, complete with pitchfork, urged us on. He did tell us we only had about 50 meters to go, which of course was a lie, but everyone’s got a job to do, right?

The grade dropped to just a few percent at the top, and we could see volunteers in yellow shirts, waving us up, blowing air horns, and shouting to us that we were almost there. We came around the corner, and hit Landis Store at last.

Happy People Coming In To Landis Store

Landis Store was like heaven. Volunteers congratulated us and offered water, hot dogs, soup, Gatorade, pasta salad, trail mix, watermelon, orange slices. There was a misting machine and a country band. One of the riders I’d been chatting with on the way to the climb lived less than a mile away, his kids were there to greet him and he was visibly touched. I stayed too long, ate too much, and enjoyed the party.

Rockin’ the Chicago Schwinn and Toe Clips, How Cool Is That?

Everything after that seemed, if not easy, at least doable and really fun. There were more 6-7 mph climbs, more blazing descents, more folks on their porches waving and smiling, more beautiful Pennsylvania countryside. Somewhere around mile 65, I felt something crawling on my right ring finger for a split-second before it felt like it’d caught fire. I found the sting but not the stinger, so I figured at least the world hadn’t lost another honey bee. About 10 miles from the end, my right inner thigh cramped at the end of a climb, but I limped to the top and rubbed it out on the road. There was just no way I was going to stop at that point, even if I had to pedal with one leg.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Around the Bend We Go

At about mile 90, I thought about the Tyvek ticket attached to my rider bib, redeemable for a cold beer, put a few more watts into the cranks, and reeled in the last few miles. Before long I could see the college, then I was in the chute flying between rows of yellow balloons, then I was across the finish line, and then I was at rest. Someone was trying to congratulate me, I looked up and it was Fatty his own self with a big grin and a warm welcome.

You would think from reading his blog that Elden’s a really nice guy, and that you’d probably like him if you ever met him. You’d think that, but you’d still be unprepared for just how nice a guy he is, and what a joy it is to meet him in person. If he hadn’t put together Team Fatty, he’d still be the kind of person that makes the world a better place just by being in it and showing us how it’s done. But in addition to being a swell guy, he also put together a team of hundreds, coordinated all sorts of contests and events to keep us motivated, and so far has been the driving force behind hundreds of people raising over half-a-million dollars and counting to fight cancer. I’m grateful that he invited all of us to join his fight and to raise money and train and be a part of this, and I’ll be ready to do it again next year.

The Tale of the Tape

I’m still exhausted. My legs are noodled, which I expected. My hands are wasted too, which I didn’t expect, seems like all the climbing worked my forearms to the point where it hurts to squeeze a fist. The total for the day, with the ride from the hotel, the ride, and the ride back to the car (including the wrong turn) was around 110 miles. The course map says the total climb was around 4200 feet, but I heard a guy at the 70 mile mark say his GPS was already showing 6240 feet of climbing, and I’d heard it said elsewhere that the actual total climb was around 8300 feet. That sounds about right.

After the ride Sunday, I overheard a Livestrong volunteer telling a rider about the course. The folks that lay out the courses for the events present them to Lance for approval, and when they got to the Philly course, they mentioned to him that this was, of the four events, the hardest course. They showed him the route and topographical chart, and then pointed out some areas where they could change the route to take out some of the more difficult climbs. He said something to the effect of, “Are we putting on the Livestrong Cakewalk? It’s perfect, make sure everyone signs the waiver.”

I couldn’t have asked for a better first century. Thanks for the challenge, Lance. And thanks for the ride, Fatty.

[UPDATE]: Things I forgot to mention:

• Big, huge thanks again to all of you that made contributions to the Livestrong Foundation. You all are heroes, I just ride a bike.
• The Livestrong Volunteers are, one and all, awesome. This being my first charity ride, my sample size is small, but I honestly can’t imagine any crew anywhere being as enthusiastic, supportive, and dedicated as the folks that shouldered the work of putting this event on so that a bunch of us could run around and ride our bikes.
• Additionally, to the folks at Landis Store, y’all sure know how to put on a party.

Here’s some more stories and photos from other awesome Team Fatty folks, check ‘em out!

• Jason from Albany hits town, and cranks a longtail
• epicmoonflower rides pink tires, has awesome toenails, and provides pics and movin’ pictures.
• Albany Bob hammers roadies on his awesome Gunnar cross bike, and wins wheels. (The Albanians represent!)
• Lizzylou made our awesome bibs, loves cake, and crashes a little (’cause blood smells like victory).
• Pics from Llamahope, Alex Matthews, and a ton of great shots from KevKavPix.

I’ll post more as they become available…