To begin with, I am quite proud of the fact I prepared Thursday night for Saturday’s 200 kilometer brevet. I always end up doing the details until 11:30 p.m. on Friday night—which makes me pretty groggy at the start Saturday morning. Thursday I was packed and ready. Gentle Readers, this is quite remarkable.
I turned down offers for beer at the Frog and Firkin, or Gentle Ben’s, or some other watering hole with the lads. The brevet season has begun! So, as incredible as it may seem, I went to bed at 9:30 Friday night. Oh yeah, it had been a long week, so like, yeah 9:30 I can’t believe this!
I felt I should shave Saturday morning—for the Randonneur that is not quite as fast as the Mikes, the Gerrys, and the Daves—looking good is important.
While shaving, the can of shave cream fell off the little shelf-thing and thumped one of my toes. It hurt, Gentle Reader, and to my surprise, it began to hurt quite a bit more, and then to my surprise again, I saw blood was spurting out.
So I will ride the 200 with 9.5 toes. No problem. I just need to use some kind of mental power to make the toe shut the hell up and stop complaining! I wrapped it with tissue, got dressed, threw a few things in the car, got my cup of coffee in the go-mug—and was out the door.
Not much of a drive. I had to stop at IHOP to go to the bathroom. IHOP is right out there off the highway—very little wind. This is a good sign! Because I knew there would be about 60 riders at the Round Trip Bike Shop in Casa Grande, it was the best tactical move I could have made. There’s a bathroom at Round Trip but it’s about as tight in there as an Italian cycling shoe.
Wow, like there’s all the Randonneurs—cool bikes, svelte Randonneuse, and many an ancien I’m sure. And of course, a welcome site—Steve with my brevet card and cue sheet. That saves me a few minutes and gives me time to do a check of my gear. A quick hello to RBA to let her know I’m here (they always wonder if I’m really gonna show) and I’m ready to roll. Lots of people I don’t know—and happy to see lots I do. I’m looking for Paul Layton because I promised I’d try to take a few photos of him on the recumbent. With only a few minutes to start, the camera malfunctions—not sure why—and no time figure it out because the group is rolling--its 7:30 a.m.
Steve is up talking with Steve Atkins. I’m talking with John Heller, and Cathy—I’m hearing familiar voices… Gerry and Dave—and looking for Shock and looking for John K, and Mick and others I know I saw on the list of riders. And before you know it, we’re really moving—I take a look to see where Steve is, and then the light is yellow and we say we’ll go thru it—but a rider suddenly stopped and I had to swerve and make a quick turn to keep from crashing into them. No big deal—its just a red light. And I’m with friends. But the group is flying and Steve’s in the group quickly disappearing down the road. I tried for a few miles to catch up but thought better of it. My hope would be that the pack I was in would eventually catch up and in the long run, we were only a few minutes behind.
I was amazed to see how strong John Heller and Cathy Rice were riding. Cathy in particular has been doing spin classes and she can move! John of course likes to ride in his groove and it’s a good pace as well. I chatted with a few very pleasant fellows, one from Seattle I believe, the other from Colorado, and a chap from San Diego riding a Rivendale Romulus—or what I’ve always thought to be a dream bike. “They don’t tell you how much they weigh…” And here it struck me that a lot of these guys from California, Colorado, Washington, and other such localities, are riding some pretty amazing bikes.
On the way to Coolidge, you can see the Casa Grande Ruins from a few miles out. Father Kino visited the ruins in November of 1694, making a note on his brevet card how funky and old it was. It was a ruin even back then. What’s kind of poignant is all these years later is Wal Mart across the street—it’s kind of like today’s version of what the Indians were doing over at the ruins. Before they were ruins. Go figure.
Every Christmas, pranksters decorate Father Kino's horse, Electrolyte...I saw Steve heading out to the controle, and he said he’d meet me at the car. This was good because it took some of the pressure off to try and catch up, plus, the group I was riding with was doing me just fine. John Kolacz was at the controle and I was glad to see him—he got with our group and he and Cathy, and John Heller and me rode pretty strong back to Round Trip Bike Shop. Cathy was always up front leading the group—I have got to go to spin class, mes amis!
At the controle, I got the camelback our of the car but decided to keep my warm gear on because it just didn’t seem like it was warming up that much. And besides, I felt comfortable and could stow it in my handlebar bag if I needed to. Steve waited for me, thank goodness, and going out to Indian 15 we had Steve, John K, John H, Cathy, and myself. This would be a good thing because there’s always a headwind. This day, there was a tailwind!
What can I say about this 39-mile fast ride out to the controle? My head was clear for a change, instead of keeping it tucked down to fight the wind—I looked for the mustangs I’d seen before, and I looked out at the mountains. It was a beautiful day—and a pace line keep things going. However, I wasn’t without problems. I had to stop to take a leak and I think I remember we all kind of split up. I just remember John K and John H and Cathy going faster and faster, while I had to slow down and try to recover from legs cramps starting to creep up. Steve pulled me along and we gained some momentum…
We soon passed John and Cathy, who had stopped to take a rest and do a repair. John K had ridden up ahead, and then we figure we’d all meet up at the controle. Other riders were on their way back. I can’t say I recognized all of them, but we did see Paul and we commented on how fast he must be going. We began to see other riders, and there was the telling sign of a headwind. You could just see it in the faces of the riders and their position on the bike. But the controle was sooner that we expected—by about 7 miles. This way too good to be true! And I was actually feeing good now. Usually after riding 40 miles into a headwind, out of food and water, the controle seems 100 miles away.
I threw a few wraps in my pockets to eat on the way, filled the water bottles, and we got ready to roll. John and Cathy were having a mechanical problem with Cathy’s bike—a derailleur I think—and before he rolled out, Bryan Gibbons did a repair (which in the end saved them and they finished just a few minutes after us) so, as hard as it was to do, John K, Steve and I took off without them into the head wind.
Riding into the headwind, the three of us kept a tight pace line. A few times I tired and thought Steve and John were going to drop me. John rode very steady and we all took turns in the front. Two in pace line is okay, three is very good—soon we were gaining on another rider. We picked up Sal. He was very happy to see us and now we had four in our pace line. Gentle Reader, you don’t know how happy we were to have the pace line we did. We tamed the headwind that afternoon! A few times, each of us felt like we were going to get dropped. You would go off the front to rest in the back, and the wind would push you back so that you would have to struggle for a few minutes to catch up—that’s how much effort we were putting into our return to the finish. I found myself struggling and then the pace line would slow just enough for me get back in line.
About three miles from the finish, John had a flat. A cut on the tire so that would mean a bit more of a fix. I could see Steve and Sal wanted to keep going. In a way I did too. But Sal jumped off his bike and he and John went to work fixing the flat and booting the torn tire. It took some time, but we were rolling into town and in good spirits—just taking our time, everyone happy they’d finished.
Steve had to take off back to Scottsdale, but the rest of us had dinner at Cracker Barrel, which I have called until now, “Crap in Barrel” because you go in there and everybody eating there looks obese and sick, the food sucked. But this time the food was actually pretty good. Dave Glasgow had joined us and he believes my cramps are because I’m not putting in enough calories to sustain my efforts to push a big 6 foot 2 carcass down the road. Note to self: order some Hammer Gel.
At home, I still had the legs and energy to un-pack the car and put everything away and start laundry. It was 9:30 in the evening and I was soon in bed, falling asleep, and thinking about what I have to do the get ready for the 300K.
Allure Libre!
