Ever Upward

TIME TO FACE WHAT LIES AHEAD

 

 

Last Saturday I decided to adopt the theme advanced by Scott Walker in his pseudo-autobiography, Unintimidated, in which he attributes his success thus far to his willingness to face and conquer whatever obstacles life and liberals have placed in his path.  Whether that is true, or whether he has instead been boosted over bumps by the Koch Brothers and their ilk is irrelevant -- there is a truth to his theme.

 

For me and biking, that obstacle has been hill-climbing.  To the extent possible, I generally try to avoid hills.  And judging from the scads of articles on how to be a better climber, I'm not alone in that.  And it's apparently long been part of cycling lore, not the least of which the peddling of the illusion of conquering hills without effort.  As illustrated by the following:

 

 

 

No matter what the copywriters contend, I don't believe that smug face.  Not, anyway, on a chainless bicycle.  I know my face is rarely anything but taut and tired after a long climb.

 

The issue of hill-climbing and my psyche became came to sharply to mind recently, and indirectly, when I listened to a recording of Jeff Shaara's book, The Final Storm, about the Marine amphibious landings on Okinawa during WWII.  In one particularly compelling passage, he describes the demanding personal physical struggle of one Marine, from the time he dragged himself through the surf and mud, up and across the beach, and the long, long, march and climb inland, carrying his pack and his rife, the way he had to move beyond his apparently utter exhaustion until finally reaching a point at which he could stop.

 

I realized that I have never been to where I had to reach beyond the point of mere discomfort, rarely moved myself beyond the point of mere discomfort; when my legs begin to not even hurt, simply express a bit of concern.  And that's primarily because I've never had to -- it's always an option to stop, rest, and remount or walk the rest of the hill.  A luxury but also an overwhelming temptation. 

 

Which brought me to the question:  if I were to really reach inside, what would I find?  After all,  Shaara's character was nothing more than a composite of the real men who made those lands, generally unremarkable men thrown into an overwhelmingly demanding situation.

 

As was my father. 

 

Dad served in the Pacific campaign, though, through no doing of his own, he was sent to Alaska's Aleutian Islands, and never saw combat.  As a kid, and, I must admit until recently, I tended to be dismissive of his service because of that.  No glamour, no glory.  But while reading Shaara, I realized that I was looking at Dad through the lens of hindsight.  When he landed at Adak, the presumption was that Japanese soldiers were waiting for them.  He had to prepare his gear and himself the night before, had to come face-to-face with his mortality and his fears, had to ride that LST to shore, jump out into that freezing surf, struggle onto the beach, drop down, wait, gather himself, and march inland, always expecting gunfire that never came.  He had to reach down and find something within himself, and move past it.

 

And he did.

 

 

ADAK LANDING

 

 

If he could do that, then I, his son, ought to be able to suck it up and climb a few  hills.  So when I went out, I decided to take the direct route downtown, to treat those few manageable hills for what they were, simple topographical deviations.  So I did, and they were.  Once I got downtown, the ride was mostly uneventful, save for one turn on the way home -- I decided to turn upward toward the lake, and found myself facing an unexpectedly short and steep climb, only a block or so, but one that demanded some deep digging.  I was tempted to discard the Adak analogy and listen to my legs, but to my right a troop of Boy Scouts were happily tramping up the sidewalk, and I vowed that I would be damned before I would walk it in front of them.  So I pushed and pushed and panted and climbed, passing them to the top of the rise.  Not the glory of Iowa Jima, I know, but an accomplishment nonetheless. 

 

As I rolled toward home, I had another decision to make.  As part of my brash declaration of unintimidation for this trip, I had considered making my first 2014 climb of Mt. Nemesis as a crowning closing climb.  But, on further reflection, I decided that had been crazy talk.  Not yet.  So I compromised, and took a less challenging route, though I took it without hesitation and without concern for what lay ahead on that route.  And I did it.

 

Nemesis can wait.  For awhile.  In the interim I'll bike and walk the stair-stepper (and the steps). 

 

Maybe this weekend.  Or the next.

 





Two rides, two ways

 

Saturday was a chore day, and I spent most of the day working inside and out.  I hoped to get a ride in that afternoon, if I got the lawn mowed on time.  The great thing about an electric, battery-powered mower is that it doesn't emit many greenhouse gases; the downside is that if you don't plug it in after a mowing, it probably won't have enough juice to do much.  And, son of a gun, I'd forgotten to plug it in.  After a couple hours the power meter barely rose above halfway, so it was obvious Saturday mowing was out.  What to do, what to do.

 

So I decided to take Rocinante out in the broad daylight that remained after dinner.  With nothing special in mind, I more or less let him have his head.  I found myself at the start of the Cooper bike trail off Old Sauk road, a trail I had taken once and had consigned to the useless, which I recalled as a short and inconsequential  little thing, but R wanted to go that way, so we did. It was the road taken, and that made all the difference.  We found a gently turning, mostly downhill, ride through tall old-growth trees, scented by wildflowers and someone else's new-mown grasses, robins hopping and flitting along, shafts of sunlight and rafts of shade, tranquility in the city.  I emerged onto a quiet narrow road that linked several older houses on very, very large and wooded lawns.  Ever and gently downhill, and I came out on Old Middleton Road, the winding, somewhat hilly main drag for the area.  To the right the trail led to the base of Mt. Nemesis, to the left . . . . R decided to turn left, and so we went up and over a bridge, past Kettle Pond, until we turned on Capital Road and came to its intersection with University Avenue. 



 

 

FOLLOWING  ROCINANTE'S  LEAD

 

 We sat at the light for quite awhile, until I realized it was one that would not change unless a car came along or I dragged R over to the side and pushed the button.  Unless I became one of those arrogant cyclists who flout the law.   As I pondered, a pair of cyclists came up, waited a minute or two and took off across the road; I followed, feeling there was safety in numbers when it came to scofflaws.  I followed a new bike trail out west, then down a long hill to Lake View Park, my old fishing grounds.

 

Not having the luxury of enough time to circumnavigate Lake Mendota's 28-mile circumference, we decided to work our way through Middleton and home. For a few minutes I found myself in the middle of the University Avenue at it's busiest time, and found that those drivers cared little about bicyclists; that's part of the paradox of Madison, either all gung-ho bikes or get out of the way, bikes. But soon enough I escaped that, and did something I'd always wanted to do there.  I biked down Hubbard Avenue, a wide and quiet residential street, framed by huge trees and big old houses, the kind that farmers used to retire to, back in the days when they could afford to do such things.  I wanted to do this because long years ago, while perusing a book on cycling across America, the author had a black-and-white photo of a street just like this, and I wanted to be that guy.   At least for a moment.  And I was. Check another thing off the bucket list.

 

If Saturday was a ride of solitude, just me and R, Sunday was the absolute opposite.  For the first time I went down to the "Ride the Drive" event, wherein downtown is reserved for bicyclists for several hours, and booths set up by various organizations.  One, the Wisconsin Bicycle Federation or somesuch, had poster that read, "Last year Nebraska had more cycling miles than Wisconsin."

 

 

2013 RIDE THE DRIVE (SANS ME), ON AN

OBVIOUSLY MUCH COOLER DAY

 

As though that were something to be ashamed of; and I told them so, that if they knew the other two of the tree amigos, it would not be unexpected -- or easily rectified.  The rest of the time I flowed with the crowd, people in funny costumes, hard-ass riders, kids on trailers and their own little bikes, tandems, all moving slowly along through intersections guarded by attentive police, some with their own bikes.  When I got onto some of the main roads I found it very hard to keep from sticking to the shoulder or bike lane, and from looking over my shoulder when I did venture out.

 

The day had opened with spotty showers, but matured into a hot and sunny morning, so much so that when I stopped for a few moments, for water or conversation, sweat dripped down my face, into my eyes and onto my glasses, which took away a bit from the fun; fortunately I knew the directions home, so being blurry-eyed made little difference.   R and I cut through the cemetery on the way home, and I stopped near the giant Baker memorial I see every day when I drive past.  Obviously none of my family -- except in the broad Biblical sense -- but I wanted to see it up close; old, old tombstones in front of the family marker, lichen-covered to the point of being illegible, the newest I saw being in the 1930s, the oldest in the mid-19th century.  I'm not the maudlin type, but I am aware of my mortality, and of the fact that I am nearer the end than the beginning, so I felt a bit as though I were communing with them.  But R got restless, and I got back on, finding my legs beginning to stiffen.  Dark clouds rolled in again, and a block and a half from home a massive boom of thunder shook the sky and big drops of rain began pelting us, the kind of rain you can hear coming, a sort of hard rustle.  It was nice indeed to roll into the garage and settle into the days routine.  Which included mowing later in the day, when the hot sun had returned and burnt off the rain.



Uncertain the Final Run to Shelter

 

 

SOMEONE ELSE ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE 

 

Memorial Day was alternately sunny and gloomy, with  forecast of likely rain and possible thunderstorms.  A good day for a relatively short ride.  I put Rocinante on the back of the ol' CR-V and drove to a parking lot just north of Middleton, to the beginning of a 10- or so mile trail, one that the State put in as a sop to the folks who had opposed the widening of Highway 12 -- when we moved here it was a winding and hilly road through some beautiful landscape, now it's a typical 4-lane after they blasted through hills and farmland. 

 

The trail is mostly straight, totally shadeless, has gently rolling climbs and descents, and ends abruptly on top of a rise, without warning or apology.  A half-mile or so further on there's a bike bridge across the highway, that goes from nowhere to nowhere, and the State has no immediate plans to do anything with or about it.   A good ride for a short and secure day.

 

As I rolled along I was inundated with the familiar smells of rural highway riding -- a not-too-distant feedlot, the grasses, and the insistent odor of roadkill simmering under the summer sun.  Not many riders, most of them seemed to be coming back.  In my mirror I saw the growing speck of rider fast approaching.  He soon burst past me, hunched over the handlebars, obviously on a training ride or simply determined to be fast.  No warning as he passed, and if I'd not seen him in the mirror I'd of been seriously startled.  That, unfortunately, seems to be the dominant behavior among the "serious" riders, and I wonder why -- what's the point of refusing a simple courtesy?  There's an ongoing debate here in Madison between bikers and drivers, and I keep finding myself on both sides.  Most bicyclists are decent people, but so many do seem indifferent to others (I'm especially thinking here of those students around UW who zip around at dusk without lights and in dark clothes).

 

Anyway, I was thinking about that as I ground up the last hill and climbed off the bike for a little R&R.  As I set the bike down and lay the helmet beside it, I felt like a grizzled veteran in a world of fancy riders.  My bike after all, nicked and scratched, was new back in about 1997, the same age as my twins, so with the water bottle; my shoes are almost as old, and I'm easily twice the age of most cyclists out here.  At least the helmet and shorts were new, a sort of concession to my 2014 renaissance.  But I wasn't sure about the veteran part, since I'm more of an occasional biker, certainly not anywhere near hardcore.

 

I looked around me, and saw a typical Wisconsin rural landscape, rounded green hills, a blue silo poking up from behind one of them, and rounded, gray clouds beginning to pile up.  Seriously piling up.  I thought maybe I should start my final run for home.

 

 

 

THE GRIZZLED VETERAN

 

 

I'd carefully noted the absence of a tailwind on the way up, because I wanted to avoid finding myself facing a headwind on the way home.  But of course I outsmarted myself, the coming storm had swirled the winds and now I was going into one.  Not serious, but annoying.  And the clouds began to spit at me as I ground along.  The sun came back, and vanished again, a sort of peek-a-boo that promised nothing.  I began overtaking a couple riders, and felt pretty good, but then they kicked back into gear and into the distance.  The landmarks rolled by and before long I realized I was nearly back, and would likely beat the rain. 

 

I stopped at a traffic light -- a highway crossing -- and as I stood there I saw another biker pulling up behind.  He was nattily attired, and had an obviously late-model bike.  I turned to him and said he may as well pull out first, since he'd likely pass me quickly anyway.  He politely agreed.  But when he pulled past he kept having trouble getting his left shoe to clip onto the pedal, and soon I was passing him.  "Or not," I said.  "I'm having trouble with this cleat," he said, and I replied, "Maybe that's a peril of modern technology," and pulled further ahead.  I heard a click behind me, and a few seconds later he sped past me and out of sight.

 

 



NOT THIS GUY BUT SOMEONE LIKE HIM

 

 

I got to the car underneath a darkening sky, which suddenly broke into sunshine, and the promise of a wonderful afternoon after all 



Fitchburg? Of Course I'm in Fitchburg

 

 Saturday morning seemed like a nice day for a ride.  Sunny and scattered clouds, little wind.  Thought I'd check out the  trails to the south and west, which I of course I hadn't seen since I backed off the bike in late 2010.  Thought I'd go as far as EAGLE school, a ride I recalled as wooded, winding, and cool.  When I got to the Belt Line I was pleasantly surprised to find that the overpass bridging the multi-lane roadway was nicer than I recalled, with an easy and long approach, instead of the usual narrow and steep winding climb.  Then I was on the long and straight road for quite awhile, moderate traffic, no shade.  Shortly after I got into the woods I found an unmarked fork in the trail, and, being without a map, I trusted to my instinct.  And, with apologies to Robert Frost, I took the road less traveled, and that made all the difference.

 

Nice for awhile, then, unexpectedly, I was in an urban setting; not bad, wide roads, little traffic, and on a marked bike route, going away from where I meant to be, but always in a gentle downhill.  With no idea where I was.  Definitely not where I'd meant to be.  I toyed with turning around but decided to see how things played out.  Finally I came upon a population sign, "Welcome to Fitchburg."  I had to laugh. 

 

Because when we first moved to Madison, more than a dozen years ago, I was still in the Omaha mindset of a gridded street system, streets that run parallel or across each other in predicable ways.  Streets that stay put.  Once we'd been here for awhile, I decided from time to time to take a shortcut while driving, and invariably got seriously lost, because most of these streets and roads like to do some traveling of their own, wandering every which way, ignoring the compass.  The ending to my early shortcuts was always one of two alternatives:  I'd find myself behind where I started out (literally, looking ahead toward the intersection I last recalled), or else in Fitchburg, a sprawling expanse of intermixed rural and urban land with a pretense of being a city.  So here I was, again.

 

Not so bad, except the sun was beginning to beat down, and I was soon, Fitchburg or not, right where I did not want to be, on or beside busy concrete, with its familiar sounds of trucks and the sights of scattered debris --  and heat.  I circled around a bit, looking for a way back to the wooded bike trails without (because that would be too easy) simply retracing my trail up that incline.  And in fact I could see where I wanted to be, across wide roads.  Moreover, the bike route signs tended to have "Detour" on them, and to lead away from there.  The sensation was like it must be to be lost in a cave -- when one knows, by compass, the way one wants to go, but where the actual path is dictated by the available routes. 

 

As I followed the bike route, I realized something I should have known long ago:  when I see the phrase "bike route" I tend to presume that it means a good way to go.  But that is not necessarily the case; it can just as often mean "We don't know how or why you ended up out here, and there is no easy way out, but since you are here, this is the least painful way to go."   And so I went.

 

 

"Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink."

 





As I circled some more, narrow and shady side streets beckoned me, always seeming to lead downhill, but I saw them for what they were -- saltwater shortcuts.  Deadly temptations, like seawater to a sailor dying of thirst, offering the illusion of relief tempered with the guarantee of disappointment and worse.  What goes down must come back up, and to go that way would be not only to postpone the inevitable, but to make it far, far worse.  So I stuck to the marked path, such as it was.

Ultimately I found the road again, just beyond a bike route sign that had nothing on it but a picture of bicycle --no words, no arrow, as though it thought about giving advice but given it up as a bad idea.  After a long and threatening pedal across a six-lane divided roadway, it was awhile in the cool of the woods, on a long route as wonderful as I recalled, and, finally, back home, to cold fresh water and, later, lunch.

Of Parnassus on Wheels

 

                                                                     My Super-Sport

My first "adult" bicycle was a lemon-yellow ten-speed Schwinn Super-Sport, complete with splash-guard fenders and a friction-generated front light, bought around 1974, when my cousin Larry and I, roommates at the time,  had decided we would buy into the  bicycling fad.  We had pondered over a few maps and decided we'd do a quick little jaunt from Omaha to the Great Lakes.  Seemed doable, considering all the literature about how simple and easy bicycle touring could be, since multi-speed machines made hills nothing more than minor obstacles.  We did little if any research about the bikes themselves, and went to the Schwinn store based on hope and general reputation.
        The illusion of luxurious ease quickly dissipated on our ride home from the bike shop, when we tried to ride up the steep incline from Saddle Creek Road east to Military Avenue.  Low gear was simply not low enough  for unconditioned legs, no matter what the glossy brochure and the cheery bike shop guy had said. It was a long and somber walk up that hill.
        It was the first of many lessons that bike would teach me over the next dozen or so years.   Larry and I quickly abandoned the Canada trip when we realized the difference between dream and reality, and the bike and I limited ourselves mainly to around town trips, and it spent long days, weeks even, leaning against a wall in my parents' basement. 
       Until Mark and I became friends and he introduced me to the idea of longer rides.  At his incessant urging we gradually extended our rides to the nearby towns of Elkhorn, Fort Calhoun and Fremont, distances that had seemed unrealistic to me after the loss of my Canada dream.  We made many of those rides on hot summer afternoons, without water bottles or helmets, often in blue jeans.  Many times we stopped into a local tavern at the destination tiown, played shuffle board or pool in air conditioned dimness, and drank a few beers.  Then it would be out again into the blazing sun, a bit wobbly, and the long grind back to Omaha.
       It was a wonderful, enlightening mix of  sensations, the giddiness of beer and friendship, the sounds and smells of rural Nebraska, the whip of wind in one's face on a downhill, often enhanced by a joint or two, and then the drawn-out suffering on the those long final miles to home. And the subtle pleasure of young muscles grown stronger, and the satisfaction of accomplishment.
       The Schwinn -- by then stripped of those clunky useless fenders and that stupid ineffective light -- had never had a name.  But it came to me one afternoon that as the vehicle making these myriad experiences possible, it was, if not a muse in itself, it was the source of inspiration, and the doorway to the muses, as in Greek mythology.  It was, in essence, my personal Parnassus, after the mountain home of those muses.  Ironic, of course, that I who have also hated uphill rides, should be inspired by a mountain, but so it was.

  Mt. Parnassus

    Of course, it was more than that, being mobile it was a "Parnassus on Wheels."  And such became its name.  Though that name was not original with me.  I'd often seen it on my father's bookshelves, on the spine of a narrow book that I had never pulled down.  When I finally read it,  I found the name more apt than ever.  That original Parnassus on Wheels, in the book by Christopher Morley, was a 19th century bookmobile, originally owned by an eccentric man who spent his life wandering Britain with his dog and his wagon, dispensing literature and ideas to the countryside.  What a perfect metaphor for this bicycle which, in company with Mark, led me through the countryside and into experiences and feelings I could not otherwise have found. 
      Such is the tale of Parnassus in his glory.  We'll not speak of his inglorious end, worn out and ultimately replaced by a new, shinier and better machine.  Instead, Parnassus has always had a special place in my memory; not a ride goes by that I don't think of him, and of those glorious, young and wonderful, days and rides.

       
            The Original Parnassus on Wheels.

Back in the saddle again

There's something about bicycling.  It can provide some of the most satisfying and exhilarating moments of a lifetime, those moments when the sun shines gently and the road is smooth, and downhill, or at least flat, the wind in one's face, the smells and the sounds -- this morning as I was riding, I heard frogs singing from a wooded area I'd driven past thousands of times.  And, after a short ride, I felt, simply, good.  Refreshed and with adrenaline flowing.  And I had the thought, "How amazing that I can do this for free, and how in the world did I ever forget that?"

But bicycling can provide damnedly awful moments.  I have lived a relatively easy life, physically anyway, so when I find myself toiling up a long hill on hot pavement under a merciless sun, I find myself in misery and wondering why and how long I must keep doing this.  Long-time riders may not even remember that feeling, except maybe on really serious climbs, but it really really hurts.  And I have not yet gotten myself back to a point where I can do or feel otherwise.

But I mean to.

It's been a long, long time.  I really meant to start riding again last year, but back issues -- and subsequent surgery -- provided a reason [excuse] to stay bound to my feet and car. 

I sort of understand what happened.  As anyone who read this before may recall, I had called it "Century before 60" with the goal of completing my first century ride by my 60th birthday.  I had intended to do it in a Centurion ride here in Madison, and spent spring and summer training for it.  Buddies Mark and Paul drove up from Omaha.  The day opened with a cloudburst, the event was shortened to a 50-mile ride for those who remained, and as I dragged home at the end of that beautiful but hilly ride, I realized I was still not really in shape for a Century, at least not under those conditions.  Mark and Paul understood and suggested I come down to Omaha a few weeks later and they'd lead me on a more manageable century.  I agreed.

The night before I loaded Rocinante onto the car rack and prepared to get a good night's sleep and an early departure for the 400-mile drive.  Then my autistic son slipped and fell on a tile floor, shattering his kneecap.  After a long night at the ER, we brought him home in a cast, and miserable.  Even I had the conscience to know that I couldn't leave all that to my wife Mei, so I had to cancel the trip.

And with that, all the enthusiasm seemed to go out of my cycling, like air out of a balloon.  We never re-scheduled that ride, and soon after I decided to take a few weeks off from riding.  And found it impossible to get back on.  Or, rather, found it extremely easy to find other things to do.  Fishing.  Walking.  Whatever.

But this year I had stirrings again, and took stock.  I still have Rocinante, and we also have Racer, a tandem made by Bilenky, intended for Daniel though getting him to ride it is a major, usually ineffective, task; and the accomplishment ends up with him refusing to pedal, so I push this 120 pound guy around a few blocks.  But Anna likes it.  I looked at myself -- 30 pounds overweight, out of shape, and getting older.  And the awareness grew -- I realized that I have only so many more times to try and re-make myself before it all becomes moot.  No Century before 60 -- but how about one before 65?  That tired old Ann Landers saying came back to me, the one that encouraged me to go to law school in my 30s -- "so you'll be 65 when you do the Century?  How old will you be if you don't do the Century?"  The better question is, what shape will I be in when I turn 65.  So I've started out on Rocinante, and on Racer.  A rather feeble beginning, not yet into triple figures in total mileage, but the  year is still  young, even if I am not. 

Stay tuned.

Stirrings

Well, it's happening. An irrational stirring in the nether regions, an urge to slip into some lycra and spend a few hours on a hard bicycle seat bumping and pumping along. I signed up for two rides this summer -- a 150 mile, 2-day, ride along Lake Michigan, a fund-raiser for the Lymphomea society, and a 1-day 35 (or 62) mile jaunt on the rural roads north of Lake Mendota. I'm not sure about the first; a coworker at the Bar mentioned it to me (he wants to get a team together) and the $80 sign-up fee was waived this weekend at the Bike-O-Rama. But I'm not keen on the $300 fundraising minimum. The other, the Coldane Ride, is sponsored by one of the autism support organizations, and is more of an attention-getter and support gathering than a fundraiser per se (no minimum amount - but not nearly as much sag or swag). And I'll likely be riding that on the Bilenky Tandem, with either Mei or Anna or (unlikely) Daniel in front. Either or both ride will demand a lot more than I currently have to give, physically. So I'm hoping it will give me inspiration to get back in shape. I think I can, but I sometimes wonder how many times I have left to do this sort of yo-yo-ing. Still, reading back over the earlier posts here, I realize how much cycling joy I'd had and forgotten -- sort of a microcosm of my life, I think, that I go so far, then set it aside. Maybe this time, for good.