When I came home from the ride today, some 5 ½ hours after I left, stumbling into the house like a drunk, clothes spattered in mud, my wife indicated that I had wasted another day.  Now, she’s partly right on this count as I have limited time with the family-I mean we all do I suppose-so pick your poison.  Mine just happens to be this sort of existential experience I gather being on the bike for unusually long periods.  I have a picture on a shelf in my study of the start of a late season race in 1985 in Connecticut.  It was my first Cannondale bicycle.  They were just introduced a couple of years before.  The concept of aluminum was fairly new then.  I was racing and working for them.  I took a lot of heat racing an oversized aluminum, US made bike in a sea of Colnago’s, Masi’s, Merckx and Pinarello’s.  These were not just the names of bicycles.  These were the great men of cycling.   When I was to travel to Europe a few years later to race for a season in Belgium, Cannondale’s still weren’t allowed under UCI rules.  So I had picked up an Atala frameset made out of Columbus SLX tubing.  

My Cannondale had those waterbottle cages that were velco and the bottle had a patch on it as well!  It’s a Fall afternoon with the sun at a steep angle.   I am just clipping into my cleats.  The Campagnolo track pedals had this little tab on the underside of the pedal when you scraped your shoe against it, the pedal cage elegantly flipped up and in you went. I would tighten my leather Binda toe straps in a revolution or two.   It was a hilly road race and I remember I had just gotten new shoes, they were leather Duegi’s with wooden soles.  They were wooden because you had to actually nail your cleats on to the soles.  In those days, you would ride for a day without cleats and the pedals would leave an indentation on the wood and you would align your cleat to this mark and nail it on with a hammer and tacks. I am wearing a leather hairnet in the picture, looking a bit like an old footballer-but we all did.  I still have the strap from my hairnet somewhere in the basement, the rest of it lost to sweat and crashes.  The photo captures my first pedal stroke of a long relationship with this bike.

A group of us met at Bike and Bean today for a longish ride on a warmish day.  It was in the high 40s with a Southeast wind blowing when I left my house at 10:30.  The flurry of emails this morning indicated that a group was interested in doing the Nashville 90 today.  Now, I have done the 90 before and I can tell you that it can make a strong rider call their girlfriends for a car ride long before you reach the town the ride was named for.  I’ll leave Nashville for March.  A man has to know his limitations.  But that’s the beauty of the bike.     

As usual, my kids ate all of my Clif Bars and the bread was still in the freezer so I got on the bike with just some fruit and an expired Gu I found in my race bag.  I met the group over at Bike and Bean.  Real friendly guys.  You would like them.  Tim on a LeMond and Don, the proprietor, on a nice cross bike.  Jason Urbanski and a former Turtle, Ren-jay Shei rolled up right at 11 as the bells rang at IU.  About eleven of us were there at the start and we meandered over to 446 and headed South.  Colin Allen joined us along the way.

The roads were wet and it was overcast.  The first flat occurred right on Knightridge near the 500m marker for the Wednesday Worlds (don’t try to find this as it’s just a tree that I have picked out during a reconnaissance ride!).  One of the IU riders punctured when a small shard of glass made it through the treads of an old tire.  We booted the gash with a wrapper from an oatmeal bar, all watched as he fixed the flat, then carried on.  Well, the fix didn’t take and we stopped again to correct a mile or so down the road.  We continued on and then another flat occurred on 446 out near the lake. By this time, Gary Palmer joined us (after a tough Ketcham hill workout) and a couple of riders decided to turn back (no correlation).  We just had a few miles to go to the flashers on 58 so a splinter group formed, bid Adieu to the 90 mile group in favor of a 100+K ride.  Me, Gary, Colin and Jason were joined by Kevin, Don and Tim.   We rolled along with a nice tempo and had some pretty good early season efforts up the climbs West of the lake and out by North Lawrence.  Don flatted and made quick work of getting back on the road.  By now I was hungry and cooling down.  The 4 strongest, Gary (despite his heroic pre-workout), Don, Kevin and Colin were setting the tempo up the climbs.  The other three of us were wondering when this was going to end! We got squeezed off the back on the route heading back on old 37.  Colin had enough about midway and I was able to bridge to him as we put together a shabby but successful chase that got us back in contact with the three over by the Starlite drive-in. 

Once through Clear Creek as we neared town our group slowly disbanded until it was just me and Jason left heading toward Kirkwood.  He pulled off in town and I headed back down Cascades.  I was on that same bike that I rode in that Fall race long ago.  It’s painted now, no longer black, but TDF yellow.  It still has its original steel fork.  I’ve upgraded the drivetrain over the years.  It’s still Italian, Campy Chorus, and I have a set of Ksirium wheels set up with a 10 speed cassette.  I’ve had to put a 9 speed chain on, and the shifting is a little finicky even though I still have downtube shifters.  But Italian powerplants were always that way. I shifted into the big chainring and heard the sweet sound of the chain dropping neatly onto the 53 as I headed for home.

The bicycle racer may never be on the creative end of the arc of a perfectly shot basketball, transfixed by the swish of ball and net.  Or, feel the elusive crack of a well hit baseball, waist high and down the middle when bat and ball connect. The perfect coordination of thought and gesture may be just out of our reach.  The finesse of subtle movement, guiding racket to ball, somehow unobtainable.  Ours, rather, is the realm of a quiet and determined, mostly misunderstood dance with a  silent tempo to the rhythmic tapping of our cadence; the clash of pedal and shoe, industrial chain and sprocket. Bearings and grease, rubber and tarmac.  The ever-present wind whistling in our ears, thoughts racing through our minds.  Heads barely held aloft, like a swimmer taking a breath. 

The cyclist is simultaneously at profound peace on the bike and at the center of a powerful force, the whirring windmill-a perfectly balanced metronome, creating energy as it moves through space.  Like a sailboat, powered by an unseen force, hull slicing through the water on the edge of control.  We are all of this.

The consciousness of this sport is a deep mystery to me. Yet I am drawn to it because of this and in many ways, in spite of it.  Now well past my prime, yet still competing I am becoming more reluctant to ask scientific questions of the sport as I once did when a student of the game.  I am no longer interested so much in horsepower or watts or heart rate.  Not that it doesn’t matter to me.  It does, but in a primitive sense.  The way it may matter to a gazelle being chased by a leopard.   Yes, I still keep track of my miles ridden, but in a detached way, more like one writes a note on a calendar. My analysis during each race has become instinctual, unencumbered, predatory, primeval.  And this has set me free.  

It’s a strange relationship we have with the bike.  I wash mine before I race like a samurai anoints his sword with sake.   Often I find myself humming some forgotten tune.  I recently swept out my garage, jettisoned  my car to the elements and have placed my bicycle on a small workstand in the center of the floor, a showpiece, if only for me.  I spin the wheels holding hub between thumb and forefinger, feeling the bearings.  I work the chain through its cog combinations, micro adjusting the play.  My bicycle is not a museum piece, though.  It is a tool in the most complete sense.

Ritualistic behavior is well documented in man’s search for meaning.  For me, my rite of discipline and compassion is for the vehicle that shares in my transcendental voyages taken on sunny afternoons in May and beyond.  

68 riders showed up for an Indianapolis-based Wednesday Spring training ride with several elite present. Nervously talking about their fitness and miles to date, searching in the eyes and legs of their rivals for a weak link.  5 teams were represented with 3 or more riders.  It was in the high 50s but cool and the wind was blowing steady at 15mph out of the southwest. I did a 10 mile warm up in anticipation of a fast start and I wasn’t disappointed!  We left the parking lot, made a right turn on Ditch road in Carmel and were in the tailwind at 27 mph. On these straight, long roads through the cornfields of Indiana, you go a long way before you have to turn.  We were chatty at the beginning but soon were all jockeying for position in the front, anticipating the left turn into the wind.  The initial sorting out had begun.  At the turn echelons immediately formed.  I was lucky to force my way into the first one, literally riding in the gutter, a wheel’s width to the right of the rider ahead.  We were across the road in formation like geese coming home in the Spring.  The group split immediately with riders begging for a wheel.  Gaps of four feet seemed like miles. After one of my pulls at the front, I got caught briefly in no man’s land, exposed to the wind after my pull with no one coming around me.  At 25 mph I was victimized, drifting back on the windward side of the line trying to get some shelter.  Finally, I was able to duck in and recover, still in the first echelon of about 24 riders.  I stopped counting, unable to do the simplest math in my head.  After several attacks and recovery periods for the next 20 miles, with the young guns testing their mettle, we turned toward the finish.  A long (2 miles) stretch of road on a tailwind bent. We were going 28 mph and no one was going off the front except for a couple of TT specialists well known to the group. With 500m to go there was a lull.  I found myself at the front of the group, a remnant of an earlier surge.  Could I stay away?  With thoughts of Cancellara (!) in my head I jumped hard, I held 31+ mph for what seemed an eternity.  My world was getting dark and my lungs were like a coal fired bellows, begging for air.  I could feel the fibers in my legs screaming for mercy.  Where’s the line?  WHERE’S THE BLOODY LINE? A blurry yellow sign still 100m ahead vibrated in the wind.  I watched in slow motion as a group of 14 gathered steam and passed me by in twos and threes. Young men I had never seen before.   For one, brief moment I was heroic and then, more quickly forgotten.  I took a deep breath as I hung on to barely finish with the group.  Alas, pride cometh before the fall.  26 miles. 1 hour, 6 minutes. Another log entry. Another lesson learned.  Another to hopefully learn again!