Doggerel Days

One sign that I have hit on the proper admixture of effort, scenery, and fitness on a given ride is a spontaneous burst of literary creativity. I can amuse myself for an embarrassingly long time by composing bits of doggerel, or song lyrics to be sung to well-known tunes.

Here's a slice from a pre-work ride this week:

Frame materials and bicycle fanatics:

A source of debate, feuds, and dramatics

Steel is too heavy, titanium too spendy

Aluminium too tinny, carbon too trendy

We who are left with no way to have fun...

Lace up our sneakers and go out for a run

Breathing

Lately, I have been absent from these pages.

I've been like Joel Fleishman in the last season of Northern Exposure, off in the wild, becoming one with his hand carved golf club, the game becoming the player and the player becoming the game. Invisible, except to those I choose. Struggling, learning, growing, breathing.

Breathing down by the river in the shade of an ancient oak, meditating on the nearly inaudible wash of the river-waves onto the shore far below on the banks.

Breathing the soupy August morning air on runs and rides before work, my chest hurting from the effort of separating oxygen from water.

Breathing as deeply as possible during recent paltry, tedious tests of patience.

Breathing through the extraction of a couple of teeth, breathing into the addition of a very large, probably overly-large, flat-screen TV that allowed us to watch the expressions scudding over the face of Britain's Mo Farah as he flashed past the finish of the men's 5,000. What a beautiful moment, though not as beautiful as the embrace after the 10,000 between Farah and American Galen Rupp, two extraordinary friends who allowed their affection for each other to rise above personal accomplishment or national pride. Rupp was genuinely happier for Farah's gold than he was disappointed about his silver.

Don't think I've seen that before.

I wish I could force every athlete around the world to watch their celebration together. It is exactly what the Olympics is supposed to be all about: Excellence and unity.

Photo from wegotthiscovered.com

The waves are all around, they wash out, they wash up, they run through my atoms; luck goes up, it goes down... If I slow down and take the chance to listen to the particular sounds of the birds, bugs, water, to feel the coolness of the breeze in the muggy heat... I'll be all right.

Heaving Moisture

Hill repeats this morning. Tired of watching everyone disappear when the going gets steep. Hot and humid today, heaving lungs, moisture-filled, the the peristaltic metallic tang in the back of my throat that comes just before vomiting, on the steepest pitch of the final repeat. That's about right.

Suffering is good, but it has to be done in measure. Life is for living, not preparing for living.

Adieu, la forêt!

Down I flew, enjoying the steep descent, a smile twitching at the corners of my mouth. Then -- a sudden sharp bend, lined with buckets of marble-sized gravel. A quick skitter, a futile application of fancy disk brakes, a full-on macarena-style shimmy in the front wheel, a leg out to correct myself, nearly okay now, but OH, NO, a DITCH! hidden in the grass at the edge of this thing they call a "road," and then...

... sailing... over the bars and through the forested air...

...the usual thoughts have plenty of time to make their leisurely way through the mind: "Not again!" "How much will this hurt?" "I'm all alone out here..."

WHAM! goes the body. BAM-SLAM!! goes the bike, ahead of me somewhere.

A choice expletive splits the quiet morning air. A few moments to see if a) I can breathe (check), b) there are any broken bones (negative), and c) I can move -- which I start to do, gingerly. Oh, so gingerly.

This happened last Saturday morning, about an hour and a half into a very rugged back-country ride through protected land in Shutesbury and then Wendell State Forest. The rest is the short story of a long, sweaty wrestling match with a tweaked rear derailleur, and an even longer slog back to the car, and thence, back home.

I was okay, not seriously injured. But how many times do I get to tell myself how lucky I am not to be seriously injured, before my luck runs out? In years of road cycling, I've crashed maybe twice on the road (once badly, but I was 16 and stupid). In one-plus year of off-road riding (mountain biking or, as on Saturday, nasty double-tracking), I've crashed about six times -- four of them serious, and three bad enough to leave me sleeping upright on the couch, or limping in abject pain, for weeks afterward.

                                    *     *     *

Now, Mrs. V is the most supportive wife you could imagine. She knows I have to get my ya-yas out; she supports me in every way as a cyclist. But even saints have limits. When I recounted the tale to her upon my return (c'mon, I had to tell her, guys), she smiled sadly, and eventually worked her way around to the long-awaited moment where she asked me outright not to do any more off-roading.

Oof. 

Heaven knows, she's put up with a lot -- Saturday mornings with me gone for hours on rides. Weeks of yelping and whimpering from painful injuries. Sudden, lightning-like decisions to buy whole new bicycles, costing a lot of money. And yet she still gets happy that I get excited to ride, she loves that I love it. She's like that with every part of my life that's important to me -- encouraging, compassionate, forgiving. She is the original 24-carat gem.

So when she asks me directly to stop something, it's time to hit the brakes.

And here I was working my way around to buying myself a modest mountain bike! "Hey -- 26-inch wheels, that would certainly solve the problem, right? More maneuverability, lower center of gravity!" Yeah, right.

The bottom line is, I'm not meant for mountain biking. I've quickly reached the limits of my potential. I grew up in an apartment building in Manhattan, surrounded by pavement 24-7. The first time I climbed on a MTB, I was 45 -- and I came home with a deeply bruised trocanter (thigh bone) and various badly torn muscles. It took months to recover. She just smiled and rolled her eyes. I couldn't quit, I loved it too much.

Well... I have to quit. I'm 48, starting my own business, adopting a child, I have a wonderful marriage. It's time to think of others first. I can't do any of those things well with a cast on, or from a hospital bed.

The road riding stays -- that's a given. Its my provenance, my roots, planted way back in 1980. And I'm keeping the Vaya for now. It works beautifully on dirt roads, and I love dirt roads. I'm just going to have to stick to the tame ones. No farm fields (injury, caused by a hidden, rock-hard tire-rut). No single-track (headers, teetering sideways destructos). No "gravel roads" which are actually washed-out stream beds (Saturday's debacle).

I'm off to cry under the covers.

Tour de Francis

Just watch it. Trust me.



http://youtu.be/TmN4OF_6qMU