Calling the Everyday Heroes

Sometimes it seems like the whole country has become addicted to extremes.

When I sit at my computer and surf the biking blogs, I get overwhelmed with messages of titanic effort, suffering, redemption, epicness.

Hundreds of miles of mountain biking in 36 hours! Raising thousands of dollars for an unimpeachable cause by exercising myself into the ground! Jumping off cliffs and flying! Drinking enough caffeine to power a small town for a week!

Bigger! Faster! Sronger! Richer! Go! GO! GO-O-O!!

Okay, America. Put your feet on the floor, relax, and take a dee-e-p breath. Hold it...........

Okay; let it out.

*   *   *

I still get suckered by the extreme side of my most beloved sport. I get lured by the esacpades of guys even older than my 47 years who pack survivalist essentials into a bike-frame bag every weekend and fly off to ride three days into the middle of the arctic tundra, without sleep, surviving on nothing but hand-ground artisan coffee and scavenged berries. I read about dudes who put in hundreds of austere  miles toward their race-readiness, perfectly kitted and floating effortlessly past the 150-mile-mark.

And then I seriously feel I am missing out, or there is something flat-out wrong with me. Am I weak? Is my manhood in question here? Should I go see my doctor?

Where there is room for someone who just loves to ride a bike? Sometimes hard and fast, sometimes slow and pleasurably?  Stopping to take a few pictures (heresy!), chatting with a local. Where are the folks who feel good if they get 20 miles in?

Where are the people who aren't looking to completely redefine themselves every time they swing their leg over a saddle?

We are outliers. Persona non grata.

When I first started riding again a few years ago, I took myself way too seriously, and aimed at becoming one of the Extremers. Over time, my body gave me a serires of very clear messages that this was not my fate.

Without a doubt, I am sad I can't ride hundreds of miles at a stretch -- it sounds like a blast. But I am learning, (very) slowly, to enjoy what I can do. And I am learning that there are everyday heroes right here in the anonymous middle of the continuum: people who get up before the sun on Saturdays  so they can ride over both the hills they were contemplating the night before, and then go back and clean the house, shop for the food, play with the kids, and basically do a good life, contentedly below the radar.

If you're out there, send me a message in a bike bottle. Or better yet, start a blog. We need to remind each other that we're the 99% of the gene pool.

A Cup of Zen

It's well known that cyclists love their coffee. Perhaps we are drawn to it as socially-approved dope. Or maybe it follows naturally from our inner nature, in love as we are with tradition, fancy gear, and pretty much anything European. In any case, I'm no exception. Traditionalist, esthete, and cyclist that I am, I also spend a fair amount of time seeking the perfect cup of rich, strong coffee. For months, as our recent trip to Italy approached, I became ever more excited by the opportunity to experience a culture famous for perfecting both of these mysterious arts. Italy did not disappoint.

Americans think they have gotten the art of coffee down pat in the last 20 years. News flash! The Italians have been working on it since the Dutch were stealing Manhattan from the Indians. Their coffee is so perfect, I nearly wept as I drank my final cup in the Rome airport, knowing that I was not to taste its like again until the next time I touched that distant shore.

In Italy, prendere un caffe, taking a coffee, is an old and gracious ritual, redolent with national character. Here are some of the principles I gleaned in my short time there:

• Do not go to Italy if you prefer brewed coffee to what Americans call espresso. Brewed coffee doesn't really exist in Italy -- and where it does, you don't want to drink it. If you belly up to the bar and ask for un caffe`, you will receive an espresso. There are many other styles of coffee available there, but, with the exception of an occasional cappuccino for breakfast, I never saw anyone order them.
• Less is more: I had something like 20 coffees while in Italy, and I never once was served more than an ounce or two. Four or five delicate sips is a serving. More would only confuse your ecstatic taste buds. That's why they use the iconic tazzinas, the tiny cups and saucers usually marked with the brand of the coffee served.
• Less is more, II: You only need four minutes to enjoy the perfect caffe` in the perfect way. But you must never rush. You are engaged in a ritual far older than you; show respect.
• Less is more, III: There's no need to order a second cup. (I never saw it happen.)  Five sips, a brief chat with the barkeep, and you're off, trailing a merry "Buon giorno!" in your wake. Taking a coffee is a pause in your day, a chance to chat with friends, or to quietly savor and reflect. There are many moments during the day ideal for pausing. Best is mid-morning, on your way somewhere. Four in the afternoon also works well, for a pick-me-up, hours before your 8:30 p.m. dinner.
• While out and about town, you're never more than 50 paces from an espresso machine. However, I saw no equivalent to our trendy neighborhood coffee houses. You can go to a bar, a caffeteria, an osteria, or any other of the omnipresent establishments that serve food. But one law seemed immutable: The better the food, the better the coffee. I learned to stay away from the bars, which, during the day, are basically just snack shops. The most consistently excellent coffee I had in Italy, to my surprise, was in the dining room of our expensive hotel in Siena. Their food was unbelievably good.
• Good coffee is inexpensive. Although food prices were dizzying, a caffe` universally costs one euro -- about $1.44 when we were there. It would be unseemly to overcharge a fellow citizen for what is, essentially, a civil right: Good coffee and good company.
• If, like many Americans (especially the young), you like your coffee to leave you a bit breathless with adrenaline, stay in the States. Coffee in Italy picks you up, but that's less than half of its purpose. It never left me overcharged. (And I usually drink half-caf, which I found non-existent there.)
• When an Italian has a coffee, there is nothing else being done. There is no working, there is no walking between shops, and there most certainly is no driving. From what I've read and witnessed, there is simply no such thing in Italy as a "to-go cup." It's not that it's forbidden; there's no consciousness that such a thing could exist.
• Finally, taste. This is clearly a more subjective topic, but my observation showed that the inky-black, super-bitter stuff young American "experts" have turned espresso into, you'll only find at the cheap, inattentive joints on the street in Italy. The best eateries -- the places where they make food the way we would kiss our own children goodnight -- served a three-dimensional, aromatic cup, easy on the tongue, yet strong. It was never burnt or overpacked with "flavor."

In short, the experience of having a coffee in Italy is the fullest expression of one of their unique concepts: sprezzatura. Roughly translated, this means, "effortless beauty." It's probably the last thing left on Earth that's not for sale at Starbucks.

May Day, May Day!

In the ancient, earth-based religions, May 1st was a very significant moment in the turning of the calendar. Called Beltaine by some traditions, it's a cross-quarter day, occurring half-way between the start of two seasons, and in those days, it marked the beginning of farmable weather, supremely significant in that deeply agrarian time. Celebrations got raucous and lusty, involving food, spirits, and running ribbons around a Maypole (phallic symbol, anyone?). Christians later morphed the celebration into May Day, the name more familiar to us Post-post-moderns.

Currently in Velophoriaville, it's a supernal spring morning. Sun-kissed, dewy, and chilly, but with a promise of warmth later on. Delicate white violets are scattered like confetti on the front lawn, and new greenness is everywhere, banishing memories of the long, hard winter. The steam rises from a mug of freshly-brewed coffee nearby. And I'm prepping for a dirt/gravel adventure.

One weekday morning last month, I turned off my usual road to work, Route 9, which blessedly runs through the Quabbin Reservoir nature reservation, a gigantic swath of woods and water in Central Massachusetts. I'd always been curious about a certain little side road on the Western edge of the town of Ware. Not least alluring is the name of the road: Enoch Sanford. (Who...?) The paved part runs down a beauteous part of the small, picturesque Swift River, and then ends quickly at a dirt turnaround; however, right there some double-track runs off into the woods.

I made inquiries with a local about that double-track one morning this week before work, and learned that it runs at least four or five miles, and is supposed to be pretty. Google maps more or less confirms this, and says it is part of the Swift River Wildlife Management Area. However, most of the satellite view of the road is hidden in trees (promising...!) so the precise truth is unclear. I have a Salsa Vaya now, and discovering the exact truth down a stretch of disused double-track is just exactly what it was made for ("...designed to take on any surface that someone might consider a ‘road’," the company says on their site). Hand-crafted steel and 35 mm tires will pave the way -- so to speak.

I have an additional reason to ride in the woods today. I received some very challenging news about my father's health yesterday. I'm 47, and he's 77, so it doesn't come as a total surprise, but you're never fully ready to get that call. He's my Old Man, you know? He's going to live forever. Anyway, this means it's time for some serious nature therapy, and my prescription is to ride deep into the woods, on a new bike, on an old road, by a pretty little river.

How are you going to celebrate Beltaine, a day of passing and of rebirth? I'm going to find out what's down the double-track at the end of Enoch Sanford Road. Email me quick if you want to come along.

A Taste of the Two-Wheeled Life in Italy

Elegant cyclists abound. Note shoes!

Mrs. V. and I just returned last night from Italy, the Valhalla of cycling, the Aasgard of Coppi and Bartali (which would make them the Thor and Loki of the Earth plane...?) cradle of Cippolini, etc., etc. 12 hours of sleep and a couple espressos have taken the edge off the jet lag, but it's not nearly gone yet, so I'm just checking in to record just a few impressions. I hope to immortalize a lot of pictures and thoughts in a more detailed post later.

1. Yes, there are cyclists everywhere. Everywhere. I was hoping for this and was not disappointed. Even the day we arrived, as we made our way from the Florence airport over the mythic Highway 222 (the skyline drive of Chianti country,  a sub-region of Tuscany) toward Siena, we saw fully-kitted ciclisti in ones, twos and even sixes wending their way over very serious hills with broad, green-and-brown vistas that spark the imagination of stage-race tifosi. I feared that would be the end of my exposure, but indeed, everywhere in Toscana, on weekdays, too, I witnessed the same. On a side-note, the old-school devotees in Italy do not wear helmets.
2. The cyclists, of course, are not all in full kit. Most of them there, as here, are casual, everyday riders, running errands, going to see a friend. In the tiny seaside village of Levanto, our final destination, quite a lot of people used bikes instead of cars to navigate the winding, needle-thin roads, always busy with the famously headlong Italian drivers. They rode to the beach, to the bars, to dinner; everywhere. Italians on bikes, whether outfitted for a stage race or a coffee run, look startlingly elegant to American eyes. Like they were born to it -- surprise, surprise. Young ladies in glamorous outfits sailed elegantly through the streets of Florence, full purses dangling, cell phone pressed to one ear, cigarette gracefully floating in their handlebar hand. Old men, white-haired and bent, pedaled glacially down the footpaths of old Siena, on their implacable way to the next part of their day, presumably by the same means and on the same streets they've used all their years.
3. In the States, the folks in full kit are usually competitive in spirit, and often fit in body. In Italy, the more sporty guys (I saw no women on bikes in cycling kits, for what it's worth) were going 12 mph with a striking cadence of about 100 rpm. This was true whether they rode alone or in groups. Not having had the chance to ride with them, I can only guess at the psychology behind this rule, which was universally applicable. As closely as I could surmise in eight days, the Tao of Life in Italy can be summed up in one phrase: Piano, piano. Slow and easy. Why push? The same task can be done with effort or with grace. Grace is infinitely more beautiful, and beauty, when all is said and done, is the spiritual life-blood of the Italian world-view. (Which, in turn, clarifies the lack of helmets.) It is far more important to enjoy oneself -- and to look stylish while doing so -- than to get there quickly. Regular readers can imagine how much this aspect of the country and its cycling community appealed to the Velosopher in me.

Allora, eccole! So, there you go! A taste of the two-wheeled life in the mother country. More to come.

View from the castle in Tuscan town of Vinci, birthplace of Leonardo and cycling heaven.

To the Ancestral Home of the Sport!

Mrs. V and I are off tomorrow to the land of Coppi and Bartali (and Bianchi and Moser and Giordana and Castelli and...) for a week, so Velophoria will be on hiatus. Send up a prayer to the ancient Tuscan gods that I can get a little two-wheeled time in on those famous strade -- perhaps even the bianche ones, where my dream cycling event takes place every year (WHY can't there be school vacation in October??? Or an Eroica in April???).

Day after we return, I stop by the LBS to pick up the Vaya! One great way to soften the return from an amazing vacation.


Ciao, amici!