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.

"You know, when you're kind of tired. . . ."

Sunday morning Anna insisted on our weekly morning ride, which is what I needed to get myself off my proverbial butt and onto my cycling saddle. Too easy to find excuses not to go, but she would have none of it. Besides, as Mei pointed out -- accurately -- these are the sort of experiences that both Anna and I will recall with pleasure.

We stopped first at her friend's house, to care for a gerbil while said friend was on vacation. while she was inside I sat on the front porch, rocking on a chair; the old phrase, "rocking chair's got me" came to mind, as I listened to the breeze through the branches and the chittering of birds, thinking how nice it would be to have a cup of coffee and a newspaper, and no further plans than that. After all, I told myself, there's no inherent virtue in getting hot and tired on a bicycle; didn't Buddha spend years doing nothing more than sitting? I don't think he found enlightenment through saddle sores and long climbs.

But Anna came out and brought me back to the present. We went on down to Middleton, through old downtown and out along Highway 12 for a bit; it was Anna's first taste of highway riding and, even though it was still mid-morning, and fairly cool at that, and the road was four-lanes with a pretty wide shoulder, the cars whizzing past came a bit too close for her. Also, after the shaded streets of town, the sun reflecting off the flat asphalt was not exactly soothing. But some things are necessary to build character, I suppose, maybe a few steps toward enlightenment.

After a couple miles of this we turned off the highway -- a left turn which had its own share of drama for the uninitiated -- and went up Pleasant View Road. Sort of pleasant for a bit, then we had a long winding uphill past an old quarry, past a tiny little cemetery (three graves, but well-maintained) and up toward the old First German Lutheran Church (pictured; a tranquil bit of the 19th century more and more surrounded and hidden by the encroaching 20th and 21st century developments).

I'd thought the climb was further west, so this was a bit of a disappointment to me. I couldn't quite get us all the way up the hill, despite the lowest gears. So close, and she was working so hard, but I was beginning to get wobbly and felt a sense of parental responsibility; I like to think on Rocinante I'd've made it, I know that I have before). Anyway, we walked the last few feet to the top, paused, and partook of refreshments. That's when Anna said, "You know, when you're kind of tired, you feel really alive." Has a sort of Watsonian ring to it, that sense of wringing pleasure from discomfort. I have to admit it made sense, too -- as I've said before, to me the most seductive part of riding -- when I get out there -- is that it becomes its own self-contained universe. So when we were paused there, admiring the view (and it is pleasant on Pleasant View Road, at least in spots) the sensation was that of being one with that universe, alive in the sense of being here in the now.

A few moments later and we were on our way, down a long downhill, and up again -- made it this time -- across the 4-lanes of Old Sauk Road, and over to Mineral Point Road, and back toward Madison. There we got caught in a long line of cars, I think heading home from the Blackhawk Christian mega-church further south on Mineral Point (definitely neither tranquil nor 19th century). The road was two lanes wide,with a narrow shoulder/bike path, so we cruised along past the crawling cars, sometimes fairly closely; I was fine but Anna, again, was a bit nervous. The only time it bothered me was when we approached the Belt Line on ramp, right after the road became 4 lanes, and divided. We were along the edge of the right lane, with the BeltLine access ramp beginning on our own right. I didn't mind the cars creeping past, but this large SUV came past towing a pontoon boat; the boat was as wide as the lane, and one pontoon -- ominously pointed like a torpedo -- came awfully close alongside, threatening to harpoon us. But it went by and we were back into town, on a wide safe bike lane and uneventfully home. Another chapter, or at least another paragraph.

The Dead Spot

This photo may not look like much, but if so, it's a clear case of how a camera can lie. This is what I have named "the Dead Spot," the point on the long climb on Garfoot Road, where I literally feel the energy and hope dropping from me; I must have stopped at that point half a dozen times, the first when I was riding with Robb up this road for the first time, the last about amonth after the Centurion ride (on which I had also come up short). And I'm not sure which was the harder of the two; on the first I had no idea what was coming up, and had convinced myself that the earlier, long and gentle climb, was the guts of it. I remember rounding the corner, thinking I had peaked, when I saw the road turning upward again. All my resolutions about giving the last and deepest effort, mind over matter, persistence over pain, all disappeared into the simple sensation of being overwhelmed.

I could not make it, and simply wishing or wanting, even "deserving" to make it was not enough. One did it, or one did not. I stopped, walked a ways, got on and ground my way up.

The second time I thought I'd do it. I'd seen that the remainder of the hill from the point was not so bad, and I understood it was a matter of mind and not body, that if I kept the discouragement under control, the ride would go on, and, once the spot was conquered, like I had conquered Mt. Nemesis (who had never succeeded in stopping me despite his fearsomely official 11% grade), the next rides would be easier. I still don't know if that's true, because as I neared the spot, and saw the side road thrusting out, like a taunting arrow or maybe middlefinger, it all went away again. Every damned time. The last time was the worst -- I stopped just beyond the side road, rested a few moments, got back on without walking, and made it. If only I'd had the conviction to keep going past that deepest, deadest, spot. . . .

Then came Daniel's surgery, and winter, and the seductive thought of taking a few weeks' hard earned recovery time. Time that stretched out, like Garfoot Hill, until it began to seem unconquerable. The pounds came back and the desire melted. A few desultory spins on the trainer, some treadmill time, but not much. A glimmer of hope, perhaps, with Mark's simple advice, "just go out and ride, and write about it."

Then Racer came along. Suddenly I had a reason to ride, to get Daniel out. And it would not be easy to push him around on it, but it could be done. So it began. Then the real new incentive: his twin Anna, my sometimes reluctant biking buddy, who never really liked riding. Suddenly she liked being on Racer, covering ground like she'd never covered it, at speeds she'd never attained. Suddenly she's asking me to go for a long ride; and I'm experiencing a taste of fresh riding and fresh joy.

And there's Mei, who'd never been on a bike before, discovering the pleasure of it. I recall friend Mark's comment that he never would have believed one could have so much pleasure from two wheels. Now that's at least two of them.

And so on I go, and we go. I may be moving again off the dead spot, but in my mind The Dead Spot lurks, as I know it will until I conquer it. It would be an amazing thing if I climbed it on Racer, but Rocinante would be as good. I do know I just need to do it.