In a Dark Time, the Eye Begins to See...1

Excessive flashpoints, beyond all reach/Solitary demands for all I'd like to keep/Let's take a ride out, see what we can find/A valueless collection of hopes and past desires.
—Joy Division, "Twenty-four Hours"

[In which a relatively uneventful, digitally undocumented² (but nonetheless fun) ride is amplified and embellished and passed through the filters of La Chouffe's N'Ice Chouffe³—and an increasingly small bit of gray matter—to spill freely onto the screen in all its hyperbolic, overblown, pixellated glory, for your crepuscular titillation, as you sip your morning coffee and wonder why you continue to work where you work. Yeah, that's right, it's all about you. Reader, bruder⁴, let's get on with it.]

I’m early, so I duck out of the cold and into Pizzeria Paradiso to see what’s on tap. Outside, my bike, the newly reanimated Cross-check, a.k.a. the Kab Killer, dangles from its u-shaped yoke near a wobbly bus sign pole, whose countless scars and nicks suggest its secret real value. Nearby, Jesse’s aging fixie leans against a lone sapling, absently awaiting the barkeep’s emergence sometime after closing.

Inside, the bar area is empty, save for a busser huddling around a salad plate, stabbing impatiently at the green leaves with his fork like a gaucho knife-fighter, his back to the door. The morbid majesty of “Decades” trickles into my ears as I grab a beer menu and take a seat at the bar. In five minutes, the lure of quality half-price drafts and the icy fingers of a merciless wind will begin to pull people in off the street like a vacuum. I'm early, yes, and maybe just early enough to sneak in a quick one before Anna arrives.

I stow the Shuffle and order an Old Rasputin, a perennial favorite whose complex nature seems to intensify even as it flows from the tap, as if the keg were an alchemist’s cauldron. Beyond the warm wood hues of the restaurant, M Street is awash in the stop-and-go, red- and white-light bustle of rush-hour traffic, as a single goblet is set down before me. The temperature outside hovers in the low 30s, with a windchill of approximately who-the-hell-knows. Regardless, I’m overdressed. Through the windows, shoppers, freshly liberated from sterile cubicles and stuffy clothing, stroll by, clogging the sidewalks of the spectacular nonstop paean to rampant empty consumerism (SNPREC, for short) that is Georgetown. Damn. Still, the beer is good.

I sip the rich elixir between walks to the window to check for Anna. She’s unfamiliar with the place, and I’m not sure whether she expects me to be out front. We didn't work out the details, but she knows me well enough: cold air outside, warmth and beer inside: no confusion, really. The stout is disappearing too quickly. Presently, I see her crest the hill amid hulking car bodies, then dart across when the traffic light smiles on her.

In case you don't know her, let me begin by saying that Anna is one tough chick, though her appearance gives you no such clue. As proof of this assertion, and by way of introduction to this long-winded post, I offer Example A: Anna moved recently, from DC, where she still works, to Frederick, MD. Without going into too many details, Anna occasionally commutes by bike.

Yeah. Something like 50 miles one way. And, hey, it's winter time...dark...cold.

Did I mention that Anna is tough? Want more proof? Okay here ya go, Example B, arguably the most damning bit of evidence: her initials are AK. As in Automat Kalashnikov. Russian a little rusty, comrade? I'll pause while you Google it. There, then, it's settled, n'est ce pas? Okay, let's plod on...

On this very night, I plan to accompany Anna for about 15 miles as she heads westward into the advancing night on the C&O Canal Trail. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement: I get a nice ride out of the deal, Anna gets a little more security, and we both get some company that we may or may not care for by ride's end. It's that last element of uncertainty that, for me, makes it all so appealing. I meet her at the door, and she comes in, trailing a gust of cold air.

While she scans the beer menu, Anna relates the whole u-lock ordeal and, after sampling what's left of my beer, decides to have the same one herself. I pay for mine, and we head downstairs to the Birriera, to take advantage of happy-hour pricing.

Beer flows (too little, truth be told), and it's suddenly time to head out. We settle up with Jesse, then make our way up and out into the chill to saddle up. Anna discovers that one of her lights has decided to go on strike. It's a big beast of a thing, a veritable dinosaur as lights go, with a long, cylindrical battery on which is printed the word Nightstick—an apt title, since truncheon is the only role it can hope to muster this blustery evening. Anna posits that if we ride by my light alone on the way out, she should have enough juice in the battery of her second light (another brontosaur) to get her home.

With my light set on stun (a stroke-triggering strobe)⁵, we head down an alley off M, dismount, hike down some stairs, then roll on to the arguable start of the C&O Canal Trail⁶.

We pedal along the still, dark water, awash in ambient city-light for the moment. There are joggers and cyclists on the trail, not unusual given the proximity to the district. We talk, Anna and I, about everything. The structure and safety and brightness of the city soon give way to the inky stillness of more rural surroundings, and I switch the light from strobe to low. With the conversation, meters turn quickly into miles. I like Anna, she's got a good sense of humor and—let's just get it out here—she can pretty much kick my ass on a mountain bike. It's okay, I'm comfortable with it, since the alternative would mean a helluva lot of work this old man ain't willing to put in, with no guarantee of anything. I'm pretty sure I could take her ass in a dojo, though, just for the record. I'm good with my fists.

Time and miles pass, and the moon hangs high in an ebony sky. We encounter a few odd folks out in the middle of nowhere, including a spooky old guy wearing a black hoodie and riding a cruiser bike, sans light (and scythe), who either waves uncertainly at us or tries unsuccessfully to shield his eyes from my light. Random dog walker and drifter emerge now and again from the blackness ahead as we move along the crushed limestone and packed earth of the trail.

Mile marker 15 comes and goes, and I feel good, so I continue to ride with Anna. We talk and ride, ride and talk, and somewhere just shy of mile marker 18, I stop to say goodbye. I apologize for my actions—I feel like shit cutting out—but Anna is having nothing of it. She's got what she needs to get home, and there's nothing else to it. I promise to go farther next time, but it's meaningless tonight, as the cold and darkness impose. But she's a tough chick.

So I turn around, pedaling a little before pausing to look back, thinking again that I should have pushed on a bit more. In the distance, a feeble cone of orange light rapidly recedes, is swallowed up by the darkness. In seconds. I set off again.

Some ten miles out of Georgetown, I stop and eat an apple, a Pink Lady, something I offered to split with Anna during the ride (bring on the Garden of Eden jokes), but a Pop Tart she'd eaten earlier was enough (I told you she was tough). The apple is delicious and satisfying and all that I need to stoke the fire. I pedal on, and it isn't long before I'm close to Georgetown. To my left, beyond the silent canal, looms the eponymous Canal Road, lit up like a Las Vegas landing strip. In a matter of minutes, I hit the little dirt uphill that leads to the bridge over the canal, then dismount to take the stairs up to the cobblestone alley. From there, I pedal a block or two westward and circle around to M Street and the entrance to Paradiso. I've got some unfinished business inside: a pizza to kill and two pints that beckon. It's a good night, and when the moon finally puts me to bed, I've racked up 55 miles for the day. Not bad.

[Here, now, the present: the bottle is empty, the glass is dry. Good night. And good morning. Thanks for reading.]

1. From Theordore Roethke's poem, "In a Dark Eye". Goddamn, I love poetry—life, love, distilled.
2. The lone shot above, taken with a cellphone camera, fuzzily depicts the inimitable Brasserie Dupont's brewed beatitude, Avec Les Bons Voeux ("With Good Wishes"), with a bit of the Birrieria behind it. Taken after the ride, when I decided to return to Paradiso to fuel up.
3. Thyme and curaçao peel? Who the fuck knew? When it comes to making beer, the Belgians can't be touched.
4. Baudelaire, by way of Nabokov (Lolita)—see the former's prefatory poem Au Lecteur, from the most excellent collection Les Fleurs du Mal.
5. I love this light, a NiteRider Minewt X2. Lightweight, powerful, long-lasting, reliable, useful, and not too pricey. Not much else to ask for.
6. Key Bridge, where we started, is actually Mile 1 of the C&O Canal Trail. The true (and truly elusive) starting point, Mile 0, is a little east of Key Bridge, near the Thomson Boat Center.

No Coastin' for Bold Men: The 24 Hours of Big Bear (Part 2)...

A change of speed, a change of style/a change of scene, with no regrets/A chance to watch, admire the distance/still occupied, though you forget/Different colours, different shades/over each mistakes were made...
—Joy Division, New Dawn Fades

I don't like this arrangement
Your wild schemes are nothing but pipe dreams
I don't like this arrangement
And we can't win without the kid
—Royal Trux, Yellow Kid

[Ed. note 1: Back to the machine gun¹...finally. Just when you thought you didn't give a damn anymore about a race that took place a month ago, this fractured mosaic, this tattered patchwork of Indo-European, West Germanic symbols and universal blank space comes along and confirms your feelings. Such is life. You want posts on fresh races? Go here and here and here...you ungrateful, insatiable bastards!]

[Ed. note 2: This post was written variously under the influence of hops, malt, water, yeast, caffeine, ennui, a mysterious sort of literary inertia, and Joy Division's inimitable chef-d'oeu·vre Unknown Pleasures, and likely against the tacit advice of both the caudate and quadrate lobes of a certain bile-producing organ that is far too forgiving for its own good. You've been warned, and now the lawyers have all gone home for the evening to leer lasciviously at their bloated bankbooks and dream of eternal litigation. Yay!]

Seven in the Morning, Saturday (Race Day):

We emerge slowly from our tents, like zombies dreading the dawn. All through the night, the aforementioned newborn pushed his lungs to their limit, wailing and screaming as if in the grip of some unimaginable pavor nocturnus. Each time he paused for breath, his brother, apparently upset by the sudden, frightening silence, would take over in a lower key, but with every bit as much gusto, as if a gold medal hung in the balance. None of us slept well, save Ricky and Jo, who showed up late amid the horror show soundtrack and decided that camping a little out of range might be a good idea. Now that the sun is up, the children are eerily quiet. Mission accomplished.

After breakfast, I decide to forego the parts-swap I'd been counting on to help me get through the nasty stuff. So, instead of installing the shorter Sugino cranks I'd recently acquired, I choose to "run what I brung" and stick with the 175 mm cranks already on the Monkey. I guessed at the correct spindle length when I bought the new bottom bracket a couple days ago. And now, this close to race time, I don't want to break down the drive train only to discover my guess was wrong, then have to cobble everything together and hope I get within the proper torque range to keep it all intact. I figure the current set-up got me through Lodi, it'll get me through this race as well. I'll pull and toss the ISIS² shit some time post-race, when it makes sense to do so.

One Forty-five in the Afternoon (Race Day)—Introducing "The Kid":

The Kid is tall and whipcord lean, with longish hair that lends him a slight lionine quality. Built for speed, he looks like a cyclist. His racing bio on the team page informs the curious that he is a mere 20 years of age. But looking at him, you'd guess someone somewhere must have rounded up. He's quiet and unpretentious, preferring, it would seem, to let his riding do the talking for him. He's got a good sense of humor. He's new to this group; we met him last year at SSWC in Scotland. He doesn't seem the least bit disturbed by hanging out with a lot of old(er) fucks. Perhaps he feels we've a few bad habits he can adopt by mere association—sort of a mainline approach that gets you there quicker without all the trial and error and, yes, rational thought. Time is on his side, true, but somehow he fits right in with our gearless ad hoc group like a shiny new upgrade. With less than two decades ex utero, he's already a far better rider than me in every way, and right up there in terms of speed and endurance with my other two teammates, the Outlaw and RickyD. The latter two need no introduction. Me, I'm the dark horse, the question mark, the filigree thread (for you third-rate poets) from which Second Place dangles precariously. Bottom line (for you first-rate philistines): I've got nothing to lose, baby.

But it's not my time, not yet, though the hours run away like wild horses over the hills. (Unlike Bukowski's besotted yet prolific imp, my muse is a lazy little bastard, content to corral the fallen fruit with a couple kicks rather than reach for the ripe offerings overhead. Alas, the span between earth below and limb above is the chasm between mediocrity and genius.)

Back to The Kid, who has just banked his first lap. His time is good, especially considering he did the running start. Oh, and he's racing on a Soma Juice with a nice little crack developing at the bottom bracket/seat-stay juncture, a nonticking time-bomb waiting to blow up when the moment is right. The Kid knows this and races it all the same. Like I said, he's young and invincible, and McFate³ doesn't want to McFuck with him right now. There will be time. He's speckled all over with mud, and some of the first words out of his mouth are, "That was tough...well, tougher than I expected."

When Joe returns from his first lap some 83 minutes later, he makes a similar remark, adding that he just couldn't seem to get his legs going. Doesn't seem to matter much—his lap time is the fastest in our class. For the entire race. So much for sluggish pistons. [Ed. note: The Outlaw has since pointed out that, in fact, he had the second fastest lap in the SS/Rigid class. See his comment to this post.]

Sometime After Midnight, Lap 2:

The stream is almost as tricky as the forearm fryer that gave way to it.  Rather than cross it, the course runs through it, following the orphaned artery as it seeks level ground.  The water is deeper than I expect, and the rocks are the size of trolls.  There is no "line" for me; I negotiate my way as much by caroming off obstacles like a hapless pinball as by picking my way through them.  But this section is short, and soon I'm back on more stable ground; "stable" being a relative word.

The trail is degrading by the minute.  Each tire that rolls through the muck acts like a blender, sucking water from the puddles and churning it into the surrounding soil to form an inky batter. The mud tugs at my tires, stealing precious momentum.  I approach and pass a few riders, then settle in on the subtle crests and troughs of the trail, keeping the cranks moving and finding space between islands of rock.

It isn't long before I sense a rider on my ass, or so it seems.  I ask him if he wants to pass.  No response.  A minute passes. I ask again. No response. I ride a little further, and still I hear him behind me, closer this time, I think.  I ask again, and he responds in a frustrated tone, "I'll let you know if I need to pass."   Okay, asshole, have it your way, even if that means pulling my rear tire out of the new gap between your front teeth on the next descent.  I just ain't that fast headed downhill on a fixie.

About five minutes later, I negotiate a tricky section of rocks that are like talons, squeezing the trail edges together so that only a narrow slot remains.  Seconds later, I hear the silverware-set-down-a-flight-of-stairs jangle of sound that announces the spectacular yard-sale of the uptight rider behind me.  Karma, baby.  I call out amid the glow of shadenfreude, asking if he's okay.  No response.  I press my luck again, and this time he replies, "Yeah, I'm fine...thanks, man!"  Huh, change of heart.  I roll on, putting some much-needed distance between us.

A quarter mile later, Karma returns, ponders the previous event, weighs the cause and effect, the action and reaction, the crime and the punishment, and decides to make an adjustment to the cosmic balance.  On a curve hidden from me by a cluster of branches and the limits of a bar-mounted light, I come around too wide, and overcorrect by leaning the bike and jerking on the handlebar.  My front tire washes out in the parfait of mud and pebbles that signals the boundaries of a weak stream.  The bike follows the tire and I follow the bike.  It's not a bad spill, by any definition.  A little trail rash, a flush of embarrassment, and I'm back up and rolling again.  

I cross the shallow stream—hardly more than a trickle, really—and immediately there's a problem.  Something feels off, and in the darkness I'm certain the impact has twisted my stem to the right.  I dismount and check out the controls.  But all is as it should be.  I remount and try to ignore the odd feeling, to make sense of the dubious feedback that reaches me through cromoly conduits.  It's a proprioceptive glitch; a stutter in the flow of nerve impulses that has me questioning the relative position of my hands, the handlebar, and the track the bike takes as I pedal on. Eventually it disappears, and my confidence returns.

The parts of my brain not busy keeping me awake, upright, and moving safely ahead now split the duties of intermittently reminding me that this lap is passing slowly and making sure that "New Pleasure" plays on an endless neural loop in the stadium of my skull.

In the distance, a rider appears, disappears, then reappears as the snaky path my light takes falls in synch briefly with the spectral figure slaloming through the woods ahead. I catch up, and see that it's a chick. She has on a particular outfit for the race. I find out later that she's one of a handful of female racers known as the Live Dirty Girls. Like her teammates, she is dressed à la gamine; in pleated skirt (pink, plaid), black sleeveless top, and white knee-socks, to be precise. Her petite body enhances the illusion. In the grainy circle of light that opens the darkness ahead, I find her image refreshing and energizing, a welcome bit of whimsy amid the dark lumps that sprout from the trail like massive fungi.  She rides with skill, taking the downhills with the kind of confidence that suggests she might have designed the course.   We talk as we ride, and I find out she is one-half of a duo team. I have the opportunity to pass her with each climb, but I hang in behind her instead, talking and riding and mirroring her good moves. She's setting a decent pace and would likely catch me at each downhill anyway. We ride maybe two miles together, and near the end of the lap, I pass her with an effort.

Within the last half-mile of every lap at any race my energy seems to build with every turn of the crank. This lap is no exception. After the last rocky drop-off, where the trail begins to mellow in anticipation of the finish, I lay it down, building enough momentum to climb the ramp seated and at a good clip. I crest, pass over the section where the trail bends back on itself, then relax my legs and let the cranks take over on the descent. A quick arc left at the bottom through loose rock and dirt, around and under the ramp, and I'm through the gate. I locate the baton, hand it over like it's kryptonite, and send The Kid off to war on his third lap. My time is not good, but it's good enough. It's 1:20 in the morning, Sunday.

8:53 a.m., Sunday:

I finish my third and final lap, coming in with just enough time left in the race that, if The Kid and the Outlaw ride true to form, Rick will head out for a fourth lap. It's an evil move, but not one I pursued with malice. I used it only as motivation to keep me moving through my lap. I know where we stand, I know there's no hope for a first-place finish, and also no need to pile up laps to secure second place. We're done, pretty much, as long as Joe and Dan complete their laps in a decent time. I'm done, regardless. Beer time.⁴

We end up taking Second Place—as the Outlaw had predicted—in a three-team category, Single Speed and Rigid. Or, as someone else pointed out, first place in the unofficial Fixed and Rigid class.

Death or glory, indeed.

All photos by D. Ross, except photos 1 and 12, stolen from R. Deleyos and T. Baur, respectively and respectfully. Special thanks to Jojo and Donna for support above and beyond the call of duty. We couldn't have pulled it off without you. And uber props go out to Team "The Wild Bunch," who dug down deep and gave it everything they had to pull off a second place finish in the Women's Sport class. Belated congrats, ladies!

1. Yeah, I know, the relentless march of technology renders the metaphor as obsolete as the equipment itself. I like it anyway, so it stays.
2. The original ISIS system—a large, splined, hollow bottom bracket spindle coupled with bearings the size of flea shit—was a feeble solution to a problem no one had.
3. Humbert Humbert's term personifying the force responsible for a series of uncanny coincidences that Nabokov throws his way in the literary masterpiece Lolita.
4. A quick thanks to the ale-swilling emissaries from Breckenridge Brewing Company, whose beer station was a welcome oasis in the shade-less camping area, and whose free beer was even more welcome. Hard to beat a nice, cold 471 IPA any time, let alone post-race. Thanks, gents!

Death of a Surly...

Crack Kills!

Alas, the Beast—this Beast, my Beast¹—is no more. My Cross-check has checked out, given up the ghost, bought the farm, bit the dust, kicked the bucket, taken a dirt nap, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain, joined the choir invisible, cashed in its chips, hung up its spoon, had its ticket punched, sung its chant du cygne, earned its wings, gone tits up.

It is finished.

Damn, so many fine memories (*sniff*). Life is short—remember to hug your bike and tell it every day how much you love and appreciate it.

All right, maudlin sniveling and pathetic anthropomorphism aside, I did indeed love that bike. Over the course of three and a half years and some 18,000+ miles, it put out tirelessly, responding to rider and road and, yes, trail input like a, well, like the well-oiled machine it was. Ever so faithful to this prowling eye, so forgiving of my occasional infidelity, it rolled on proudly, almost haughtily, knowing all the while that however much I strayed, I'd always return to it. As dear to me in its many ways, it was, as Annabel Lee was to Edgar,¹ as Beatrice was to Dante¹, as Laureen was to Petrarch,¹ as Henriette was to Giacomo, hell, as a young Rimbaud was to Verlaine (though not in that way).

Okay, it was only a bike. But...

For two years running, it carried my ass and a pack or panniers into work almost² every weekday, indifferent to rain and sleet and snow and ice.

It toured the full length of the C&O Canal once, and revisited huge swatches of same, including two overnighters to Harper's Ferry and back, and half again as many White's Ferry Loops.

It was my girl for the Outlaw’s Dirt-track Date, graciously overcoming rocks and roots and logs and gravel with a sort of quiet dignity that discreetly masked my clumsy off-road fixie riding skills, and suffered with me through two 1903 Adventure Rides by the same host.

Years ago, when it was young, it endured an embarrassing “mystery” endo at the hands of its drunken owner and hobbled away with one smooth, shapely leg forever pushed in awkwardly toward the other at the pelvis, twisted irremediably (the replacement fork was black, and cost me a third of the price of the original frame and fork). You always hurt the ones you love.

It bounced back from a run-in with a DC cab with nary a scratch in the early hours of a Friday morning last December, when I recklessly, wantonly, heartlessly let my mind stray beneath the burden of too many beers, shuttling me safely home in the aftermath, as blind in its trust as I was in the intersection.

Like a cold-metal mistress, it tolerated my assignations, mere dalliances really, with other bikes—the prissy Casseroll, the lascivious Eros—and always, always welcomed me back, moustache bars reaching out as if to embrace me in forgiveness.

And it died. Today. Died a gear-virgin, fixed from cradle to grave, died quietly, unceremoniously, in the suburbs, on the Custis Trail, in the morning, while on a ride into work, for fuck's sake.

Farewell, my first fixie, my loyal friend. You will be missed...

"Rock-star tongue" action pic by Sir David Blum, Esq., illustrator par excellence, skilled rider, and all around good-natured gentleman.

1. With apologies to one Vladimir Nabokov, whose masterpiece Lolita juiced the muse, so to speak, for the footnoted bits in this little requiem. When you read a book four times, things begin to stick.

2. I say "almost" here because on some of those days, I rode another bike.

Rollin' Snowmen...

Nothing like a snow day to bring out the not-so-much-hardcore bike commuters as those who simply like to have fun. Even when the snow is little more than a dusting.

Ran into shivasteve on my ride into work yesterday along the Custis Trail, both of us running fixed as usual (the only way to ride snow). Three or four miles later another rider—the first we'd seen—appeared ahead in the distance, a dark sliver that slowly separated itself from the ghostly white landscape all around us. A few pedalstrokes later, and the rider's identity was apparent. It was Butch, smiling like a truant and weaving his way through the slick chum of snow that coated the trail. True to form, he was riding the same skinny treadless tires he runs every day, and doing fine on 'em.

We stopped to shoot the proverbial shit (and a few pix), three fixed-gear riders who "get it" without "it" having to go through the usual thought channels. Motorists dread the threat of snow; cyclists (some) dream of it. A nice snowfall is like a gateway to youth, a chance to roll back the years and have fun, the kind of fun that defies analysis, resists assay, and thrusts a finger in the face of wrinkled maturity, all the while leering like a lecher.

It's these kinds of random encounters, along with the simple joy of metabolically powered travel, that make bike commuting so damn much fun. I was late, shivasteve on time, and Butch a bit early, it seemed. I wondered about the likelihood of such a convergence; I've been commuting by bike every weekday for almost a year and a half now, and it hadn't happened once before in all that time. (I don't mean to imply that the odds of such a meeting are astronomically low, but they are sufficiently slim to suggest something else—be it kismet or cosmic—is at work behind the scenes here¹. Something beyond mere chance. And beyond the realm of our blunted senses to absorb. I think it should remain there, just out of reach, invisible to telescope and microscope alike. I dig the unfathomable precisely because it resists understanding. It's what makes life interesting. The end of speculation, that stillborn time when everything is known, nailed down, pinned to a specimen pad, forced through a filter, torn apart and hastily reassembled, echoed in endless schemata, and rendered instantly accessible, means the death of mystery and intrigue, two qualities that let each of us define the world—our own world—any way we wish.)

Shivasteve and I bade farewell to Butch and continued on along the same slippery path to our respective dungeons. We passed only two other cyclists; their opposing attitudes presented a quick study in contrasts: a chick trundling over the Humpback Bridge who flashed a snow-white smile that added points to her already attractive countenance and ballsy demeanor, and a guy carefully escorting his bike across the 14th Street Bridge, his steps hesitant, his face a mask of dejection, as if he'd been caught unaware in a spat between Lady Nature and Mother Earth.

Here's to the first snow of the winter.

1. The annotated copy of Vladimir Nabokov's masterpiece (a superlative that falls far short of adequate when referring to this novel) Lolita points out to the less-than-supernaturally-astute reader places in the text where the author's presence can be perceived, where Nabokov—sometimes playfully, sometimes malevolently—intrudes in the plot, where "the mask slips". Characters know things they cannot possibly know otherwise, there are shared behavioral traits—parallel proclivities—among the protagonist and antagonist that stretch coincidence to a silky filament, and numerical recurrences crop up at a rate pushing well past the boundaries of believability, of possibility even. And yet, in the "real" world, such phenomena occur more often than we sometimes realize, prompting the rhetorical "what are the chances?" query when we do take notice. Not talking about god here, but a strange mix of fate and chance and nature, with a pinch of the preternatural tossed in after the boil, and garnished, finally, with a wilted sprig of will. May the enigmatic forever remain.
"It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow."
— Vladimir Nabokov

H.F. or Bust...

Having failed in my last-minute efforts to raise a team (hurriedly dubbed The SSOFT Leftovers) from the remnants of the SSOFT proper to ride Big Bear, but wanting to be a comrade dans la misère, I took advantage of the nice weather this weekend past to ride out to Harpers Ferry and back on the C&O Canal Trail.

Like many of my plans, this was a last-minute decision. This meant I'd be throwing everything together on Saturday morning with the goal of leaving no later than 11:00. I missed the mark by an hour and a half. Classic me.

Because I was rushed, I decided to "run what I brung" and go with the 48x16 city gear already set up on the fixie. Laziness and that same time constraint meant that the new Vittoria Randonneur 28c tires currently on the rims would also stay put, and that my ass would have to compensate accordingly. It was an experiment of sorts, trading comfort for speed and assaying the results with an eye toward future long-distance treks. The fraying bar tape that I'd been meaning to replace for months (now a rudimentary streamer) would have to make at least one more journey. I took along two extra spokes on the likely chance that my aging wheelset might suffer a break and render me hors de combat somewhere beyond the bucolic boundaries of Leesburg, Virginia.

So, around 1:30, under beautiful, sun-soaked skies, I set out from my house, riding the five or six miles through Arlington on the Custis Trail, crossing Key Bridge, then taking the sidewalk down to the footbridge over the canal, where I planned to start the trip. The loaded panniers and waterpack pushed the bike on the early downhills, where I had to resist the pedals' angular momentum with extra vigor to maintain a safe speed. The few short climbs posed no problem, as the added mass meant extra initial momentum at the start that I was able to carry to the top.

Once on the trail, the ride up north (the "uphill" direction) was largely uneventful. The gearing proved ideal for a nice, steady pace and the cushiness of the tires belied their spindly profile, transmitting no more trail input than the comparatively fat 40s I rode several years ago when a group of us traveled the full trail over three days. The small diameter meant lighter weight and lower rotational mass, translating into an easier-than-expected effort at the pedals. I felt strong and sure, and the miles flew by with the ease and grace of the handful of herons I spooked to flight along the early miles. The experiment was proving to be a success.

The plan was to make it to Harpers Ferry, WV (mile post 60.7) with enough daylight to grab a meal and a beer or two at the Armory Pub. After that, I'd ride an additional two miles north to set up camp for the night at the Huckleberry Hill campsite just before the sun plunged into the Potomac.

The first and only real shock of the trip came at White's Ferry, where I stopped to get a drink and some bottled water. The anti-bike graffiti gracing the pavement at the entranceway (classy!) and presumably scrawled by the owner with the delicacy and deliberation of a full-bladdered fratboy should have been an omen: a desperate search for my wallet and cash turned up nothing. Damn! Forty miles from home and flat-out busted! Then I remembered the stash pocket in my waterpack, et voilà! A little rummaging reversed the misfortune and I was back in the black. A Gatorade and a liter of water later I was pedaling westward with another 25 miles to go.

The trail was in good shape; muddy in spots but not unusually so. Several downed trees meant a bit of detouring on short arcs already being etched into the soft earth by the tread of hikers and bikers alike.

I arrived at my destination sometime around 7:30, pausing to chat with a hiker beneath two overhead railroad bridges that disappeared into the maw of a tunnel through the gnarled rock of Maryland Heights. I shouldered my bike and ascended the stairs to the footbridge leading into Harpers Ferry (a sign on the railing—suggesting the possibility of a choice—kindly asks cyclists to dismount before climbing the 20-odd steps to cross over the Potomac).

Once on West Virginian soil, I pedaled up a weak hill, stashed my unlocked bike in plain sight, and headed into the Armory Pub for a little refueling. [The pub is named, presumably, after the federal armory against which John Brown—abolitionist guerrilla whose neck found a noose on a December day five score and eighteen years ago (I salute your spirit, if not your tactics)—breechloader in hand, led a violent if ultimately unsuccessful raid in this now quiet little Appalachian town. The start of the civil war has been attributed in part to Brown's insurrectionary aggression.] I ordered a burger and a Rogue Dead Guy Ale, both served me by a lanky and frenetic college kid whose early career could have benefitted immensely with the simple addition of a few grains of hydrocodone. I noticed then that somewhere along the footbridge I'd managed to misplace the dust cover for the new camera I'd recently bought. At this rate, it would be a fantastic piece of luck if I made it home with the lens intact.

I ate the burger and drank the ale. Then I ordered a porter. The sun slinked west. The evening darkened. The waiter brought my beer. Hemingway's bones settled. In a cramped corner of the second-story outdoor patio on which I sat, an aging troubadour with a permanent squint covered a Hendrix cover of a Dylan tune on an aging acoustic guitar for the pack of mostly aging patrons. The requests from the crowd were banal and predictable, but the burger was good and the beer (Rogue Mocha Porter) nothing short of sublime. I drained my glass, paid my bill, tipped the spastic waiter, and left. I made a last minute decision to eschew the Huckleberry Hill campsite and head back about 10 miles to a campsite I noticed was vacant on my ride out.

Near mile post 50, I found the site (Bald Eagle Island, "subject to noise") and set up camp on the dry, fractured clay. The last rays of the sun bowed to the dusk as I cooked up some freeze-dried spaghetti, the burger and beer having long since dissolved into fuel. Far off, the belly of a train grumbled sympathetically. I ate, doffed my cycling togs, then crawled into my tent to read a little Nabokov by headlamp before getting some much-needed rest. I had the joint all to myself.

I made it through one short chapter before the faraway train was no longer far away, its gastric growling now a tornadic howl that crashed down around the campsite as it rushed past not 40 yards from the head of my tent. Subject to noise...every two hours...all night. I slept in short, unrestorative intervals, troubled by the passing trains and beset by vivid, lurid dreams in which I again unsuccessfully pursued an old unrequited love interest (odd how the unconsious mind out-of-doors draws on the verdant fertility of the surrounding woods like a satyr...okay, for me it does).

On Sunday, in the chilly morning haze, I made oatmeal, packed up, and hit the trail by 8:30. I had 55 miles left to ride.

The ride back went surprisingly well, and the slight downhill grade made for a steady one to two miles-per-hour improvement over the previous day's speed ("there really is a difference!"). Again, the weather was ideal. My legs felt strong (no muscular hangover), my ass wasn't yet dreaming of a chaise lounge, and though a tingling numbness had settled into my palms and fingers, I was enjoying the scenery as it rolled past me all the same.

My goal was to continue on some 15 miles until I hit White's Ferry again, where I would stop to grab some fresh water. My water pack was down to a few precious sips, and I hadn't bothered to fill it or my water bottle with the rust-hued liquid I'd managed to coax from a creaking pump back at the campsite.

At White's Ferry, I bought my water and pounded a Gatorade. I rang up Butch to tell him it would be late afternoon before I was back in the area to ride Rosaryville, a plan I'd proposed during an unlikely bout of optimism on Friday. We decided that the time was getting tight, and after a short debate, I canceled my post-ride ride to be fair to him.

Back on the bike, the miles disappeared under my treads. I stopped every now and then to eat a gel or snap some pix. When I resumed, it was usually only to encounter a lone Great Blue Heron standing like a sentinel on the canal bank, eyes peeled for a tell-tale ripple on the otherwise glassy surface of the canal. Each time as I scrambled for the camera, the regal beast would suddenly stoop and step and launch out over the dusky mirror, gliding in a graceful, silent, slow-motion arc to land on a grassy tuft jutting conveniently from the water.

I stopped after one of these episodes to eat a peanut-butter laden bagel on which I spread an apple-pie flavored energy gel as a sort of jelly. Tasty. It wasn't long before I entered the Great Falls area some 14 miles out, where a gentle rain began to fall. The terrain here turns rocky and lumpy, and the vibrations transmitted up the fork and through the bars instantly become more than just a passing nuisance. The roughness of the trail conspired with the weariness of the rider to imbue the last several miles with a violence it truly didn't deserve.

The rain ended, and an hour later I rolled into Georgetown, pounded up the dirt hill leading to the footbridge, crossed over the canal, and veered left the way I came almost exactly 24 hours ago. I made my way down M Street to the usual post-C&O-Canal-ride watering hole, Pizzeria Paradiso, for a pie (Atomica!) and the usual post-C&O-Canal-ride beverage of choice. I managed to add three notches to my liver before heading out to climb through Rosslyn on my way home: a nicely hopped Brasserie d'Achouffe Houblon Dobbelen IPA Tripel (9%), an old favorite, Unibroue's Trois Pistoles (9%), and Avery's fruity tribute to balance in the beery universe, Karma (5.2%).

Mayhem In the A.M: 12 Hours of Lodi Farm Race Report (Part 3)....

[Back to the Lodi Race report after an unexpected and rather dramatic bout of sobriety kept me off the keyboard just long enough to forget the remaining details and for everyone else to cease caring. Fortunately, I've made the necessary adjustments. Yeah, this one is long, full of unnecessary details, and packed with poor-man's prose (beginning with that little blue-medal winner at the alliteration fair); all the things that make me happy—hey, it's a blog, FFS! Grab a beer or a cup of coffee or both and kick back. Or there's a nice list of good links over there on the right, if you haven't the patience. As for the rest of you, with the cheap clink! of a disembodied bottle cap in place of a starter pistol's bang!, here we go...]

The baton bracelot is off my wrist, and for a fleeting moment it feels as if a ball and chain has been removed. I fight the urge to flee like an escaped prisoner back to camp, to the hideout in the wide open, and instead have a few words with Butch. I watch a few riders roll in before ambling back, bike strolling listlessly beside me. My lap time (while not exactly criminal) is a bit of a disappointment, given that my speed should have improved significantly from a sense (real or merely wistful) of having somewhat dialed in the trail on the first lap. (Forgive me the many parenthetical speedbumps—I've been reading a lot of "Grandmaster Nabokov" lately. Oh, and the beer is cold).

The sun is rolling on a long arc to the heavens. Slowly, almost impreceptibly, the woods around the camp take on a dusky haze that is the color of morning being born. DT is out getting in the miracle lap, when even the quotidian event just described takes on a majestic aura in the eyes of a weary riding pounding his way through a thicket on a hunk of steel. My disappointment turns to envy as the day seeps in all around, and I climb into the driver's side of the truck for a rest. I close my eyes, kick back the seat, and throw up my legs wherever they'll stick in the cramped cockpit. I don't sleep.

Butch is laying down in DT's Subaru, I imagine. That, or he's wandering about somewhere. It isn't long before Donna and Jo show up, bearing the gift of cold beer like a couple of misguided Magi. It will be two laps more before I get to try my first taste of Flying Dog's Double Dog double pale ale (motivation ID'd and in the crosshairs), the label of which depicts one of Steadman's chimerical curs in a pair of tighty-whities. It is a grotesque image that uncannily prefigures a scene acted out later in the afternoon.

I move to the back of the truck and lay down. This time, I get in a few minutes of shuteye, maybe 15, which is about all I need. Soon I hear DT call out as he finishes up mile three.

I get up, break out a sandwich (peanut butter and ginger jelly—yeah, it tasted exactly like it sounds; what the hell was I thinking?), wolf it down (the bread is dry), then chat with the ladies a bit. Butch and I hang out together, munching on chocolate-covered coffee beans and trying for the third time to predict DT's lap speed. I move to DT's bumper, before giving in and flopping back onto his King-sized air mattress, the lateral edges of which curl up in the tight quarters like the well-thumbed pages of an ancient textbook.

Some 50 minutes after the end of my second lap, we hear "the Big Meats!" above the din of the campground somewhere near the starting line. I do a panicked situp, banging my high forehead on the low sill of the hatchback at the same time that I yell at Butch, "DT pulled a fucking 50-minute lap! Get up there, man, get the fuck up there, get moving!" Butch stands there motionless, emotionless, as shell-shocked as I am galvanized, and simply says "I'm not ready, man. There's no way." But then he's moving fast, grabbing his shit and trundling off on his Voodoo.

As Butch bolts to the start, Gary appears, camera with a lens like an olisbos in hand and sporting a conspiratorial smile. The puzzle pieces assemble themselves in time-lapse: though he denies it, the group consensus is that it was Gary's voice—and not DT's—we heard calling out the team name but a minute ago. False alarm. Fifty-minute lap?...DT? Not impossible, but not the reality here.

DT rolls in at 6:22, laying down a lap time of 1:06. It is full-blown morning and the air is starting to warm. Butch is starting lap three, rolling down the landing strip that splits the grassy field like an ugly scar and disappearing right, into the maw of brush where the trail begins in earnest.

DT seems pretty fresh and is upbeat and looks to be having a great time. That's what it's all about. Competition can put play through the meat grinder; we compete endlessly, for jobs, in traffic and for parking spots (those who drive), for tickets to shows, for restaurant tables and vacation accomodations, with other people for other people, for attention, for recognition, against sleep for wakefulness, against wakefulness for sleep, for vanishing resources and space on the planet, for the shiny brass ring that all too often turns out to be merely stamped tin (some stronger competitor having long ago and in the dead of night absconded with the real deal). The list of banalties or baubles that hold us enraptured is endless. Fuck the Joneses. Sometimes it should be about play, mindless play, that delightful dereliction of adulthood duties where once again one feels the giddy pointlessness of being a child. (Adulthood is the eyeless mask we don for the eternal masquerade party we insist on throwing ourselves when we consent to "grow up.") Indeed, barring certain elements of romance (another kind of play), maturity is grossly overrated. More than Butch, more than me, more than a lot of people who ride, DT knows how to have fun.

We chat it up, filling in Gary and the girls with details, real and those born of a somnambulant imagination that storms the empty spaces where the radar must have sputtered out in the surrounding dark hills. Inertia can get you through times of no sleep better than sleep can get you through times of no inertia (the coming drive home will confirm this).

Butch calls out at mile three. I try to amp up for my lap while DT tries to wind down from his (there must be some brief period of time where we meet somewhere in the middle, some physiological point of stasis imperceptible to either of us). I decide to forego the bladder bag in favor of a bottle and saddle pack, and transfer my tools and tube from one bag to the other. I shove an energy gel in my shorts pocket knowing that I'll never eat it on the trail. I loosen and raise my brake levers a bit; they've been at a less than ideal angle for months now, and the time to make the adjustment is overdue.

Then all at once it's time to hit the starting line. I head off, knowing that with the sun out, this will be a faster lap, probably my fastest.

Butch crosses the line at 7:20 with a lap time of 58 minutes. The boy has picked it up a bit. He looks as fresh as DT, a good sign, but not a bit surprising. Butch is a strong rider when he's on, possessed of that rare dyad of talents that yields both speed and endurance in equally generous proportions. But he's a family man now and the "on" times can be tough to muster, as anyone with similar responsibilities knows. Still, he's got a damn good record for pulling it off, and the record stands for now.

The baton grips my wrist and I'm off, immediately laying it down. I pass a couple of geared riders and spin out on the same damn greasy hill, hucking the bike up and over it for a third time. Back on, I pick the good line, a thin, vermiform ribbon that dodges between roots, the same one that, like an inverse incubus, played hard to get all last night. The trail rolls by quickly beneath me as I stick to the smooth stuff and avoid when I can the many scabrous roots that jut out like monstrous phalanges. At mile three I give the signal, and hear nothing in response.

I roll on along a dark stripe that circumnavigates the campground before plunging back into the woods at a banked right-turn. I'm quietly surprised at how much faster I seem to be going, at how strong I feel. I pick off a couple more riders, mostly on climbs, where I'm able to stay planted in the saddle and grind the 2:1 up the steeper stuff, using my legs and saving my Achilles' lungs for later. I utter some words of encouragement by way of ingratiation as I pass the riders, and redouble my efforts to put dirt between us. Then the seed of pain that had been planted in my left triceps on the second lap begins to sprout. It will put forth a massive bloom atop a thorny stalk come lap four, but that is a long way off. For now, it's a minor inconvenience. I take a mental inventory on the fly of all the formerly invisible trail detritus that conspired to slow me down hours ago, and adjust accordingly. In the whoopdies section, I pass two more gearies, trading play for competition, and hammer on, feeling the weight of shaven minutes disappear. Soon I'm up and over the water tank, a whimsical feature tossed into the race purely for the hell of it and a sign that the lap is almost over. A few more narrow-topped, off-camber whoopdies and I'm breaking hard right, through the campground, stomping the pedals with everything I've got to reach the line, calling out "104!" as I skid to a stop.

It's 8:15, and I just pulled a 55-minute lap.

End, Part 3